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For the moral and legal system, 'Free will' is important because it means people are responsible for their actions. In that sense, a world where someone could
by rocqua 10y ago
For the moral and legal system, 'Free will' is important because it means people are responsible for their actions.
In that sense, a world where someone could have made a different choice is a world with less free will. After all, the choice they made was random, it wasn't inherent in their character.
What matters here is agency. Did you act of your own volition, with your own agency? Or did someone else use their agency to manipulate you (threats, etc.).
In this perspective, free will means that your choice depend on who you are (i.e. in the causal chain that lead to your decisions, your 'character' was of very large influence). In a materialist view, your character would be a property of your body. There is a gray area, as alluded to in the aricle, for those properties of your body you are not aware of, that play a large role in the decision process. (e.g. being cranky because of some indigestion)
- ThomPete 10y agoNot sure what you mean with it being random. It's not. The choices they made are based on previous choices they made. In that respect it's more akin to an evolutionary way of looking at our choices. You don't need to be manipulated by anyone else it might just be that you simply don't make the choices you think you do but that they are spread out over a much longer timeline.
- rocqua 10y agoI was arguing for the existence of some conception of free will in a deterministic world (i.e. compatiablism). Specifically, I was arguing against the definition of free will where someone has a choice in the sense of 'they could have done something else'. This gets into a harry discussion about what 'could' means.
- ThomPete 10y agoAhh yeah. The way I look at it is basically and to oversimplify: We learn from our past never our present. As long as we survive the present that information gets used to update our reaction in the future. Sometimes large updates (once scorned, twice shy) other times incremental improvement (practice). Perhaps one could say that we dont have free will but things are not 10% deterministic either it's just not our consciousness who is running the show but the entire system.