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>If the thief stole your car only because someone was holding his wife hostage, now where does the responsibility lie? Still with the thief. He still has all o

>If the thief stole your car only because someone was holding his wife hostage, now where does the responsibility lie? Still with the thief. He still has all of the other inputs into his system beyond just the fact that someone kidnapped his wife. Believing that causality ultimately determines every decision we make doesn't mean that I believe that it's a simple one to one mapping. He knows he can call the police - this isn't an action movie, and he's not the characters Jason Statham plays. If he is the characters Jason Statham plays, well, it doesn't really matter because he's not going to be caught anyway, and I'm left railing against the hypothetical thief that more often matches reality than your car getting stolen by the living embodiment of an action movie hero/anti-hero. >The circumstances immediately surrounding the car theft are precisely the same, but now an influence further back in the causal chain is presumably responsible. How would you differentiate these two scenarios without free will? By not believing that one changed input unrelated to all of the others somehow invalidates all of them. >Free will is necessary to explain why you are morally blameworthy or praiseworthy for your choice of whether to go with your inclinations. Free will is unnecessary to explain why I am morally blameworthy or praiseworthy for my choice of whether or not to go with my inclinations. Both are assertions that do not stand alone.

naasking 8y ago
> He knows he can call the police - this isn't an action movie, and he's not the characters Jason Statham plays. If he is the characters Jason Statham plays, well, it doesn't really matter because he's not going to be caught anyway, and I'm left railing against the hypothetical thief that more often matches reality than your car getting stolen by the living embodiment of an action movie hero/anti-hero. You're evading the question. The point of moral dilemmas is to highlight the qualities that meaningfully affect the outcome. We have here two scenarios, one in which the thief would be held responsible, and one in which he would not. Free will easily distinguishes these two scenarios, and since you claim we don't need free will to make such judgments, let's hear how you distinguish these.
- cthalupa 8y ago
  >You're evading the question. The point of moral dilemmas is to highlight the qualities that meaningfully affect the outcome. We have here two scenarios, one in which the thief would be held responsible, and one in which he would not. Free will easily distinguishes these two scenarios, and since you claim we don't need free will to make such judgments, let's hear how you distinguish these. Someone kidnapped my wife so I stole a car is not a valid legal defense, nor would I argue it is a valid moral defense. As I stated from the get go, I would hold the thief responsible in both situations.
  - naasking 8y ago
    > Someone kidnapped my wife so I stole a car is not a valid legal defense That's not the scenario I posed, although perhaps the presentation wasn't clear. So to be perfectly clear so there are no misunderstandings, the thief was told to steal your car or his wife would be executed. Clearly he's morally culpable for stealing the car in one scenario and not in the other. This distinction can be clearly made using free will. You claim you don't need free will to make this distinction, so I'd like to hear how you do so.
    - cthalupa 8y ago
      I get your point - where does the distinction lie? At what point does responsibility shift? And I understand that you argue free will is necessary to make that distinction. But you don't need free will to do that. You need a system of inputs that result in an output, with that output being the decision. It's still all a matter of causality. We've evolved in such a way that we want to stay alive, and that the vast majority of people value being alive over having a replaceable object. Or, I suppose in this example, their spouse being alive. Our collective morality is the result of that system of inputs. If you get right down to it, it's a value judgment on life vs. property. Those values are shaped based off of our past.
      - naasking 8y ago
        You still haven't answered the question. You can't claim that we don't need free will to address these questions while simultaneously refusing to provide even a single alternative concept or process that could do so equally well. Clearly some quality leads people to make a distinction between the scenarios I presented. Compatibilism calls this quality the free will of the agent in question. This is not an earth-shattering concept and does not violate any scientific principles, and it matches how people talk and reason about these scenarios.

naasking 8y ago

> He knows he can call the police - this isn't an action movie, and he's not the characters Jason Statham plays. If he is the characters Jason Statham plays, well, it doesn't really matter because he's not going to be caught anyway, and I'm left railing against the hypothetical thief that more often matches reality than your car getting stolen by the living embodiment of an action movie hero/anti-hero. You're evading the question. The point of moral dilemmas is to highlight the qualities that meaningfully affect the outcome. We have here two scenarios, one in which the thief would be held responsible, and one in which he would not. Free will easily distinguishes these two scenarios, and since you claim we don't need free will to make such judgments, let's hear how you distinguish these.

cthalupa 8y ago
>You're evading the question. The point of moral dilemmas is to highlight the qualities that meaningfully affect the outcome. We have here two scenarios, one in which the thief would be held responsible, and one in which he would not. Free will easily distinguishes these two scenarios, and since you claim we don't need free will to make such judgments, let's hear how you distinguish these. Someone kidnapped my wife so I stole a car is not a valid legal defense, nor would I argue it is a valid moral defense. As I stated from the get go, I would hold the thief responsible in both situations.
- naasking 8y ago
  > Someone kidnapped my wife so I stole a car is not a valid legal defense That's not the scenario I posed, although perhaps the presentation wasn't clear. So to be perfectly clear so there are no misunderstandings, the thief was told to steal your car or his wife would be executed. Clearly he's morally culpable for stealing the car in one scenario and not in the other. This distinction can be clearly made using free will. You claim you don't need free will to make this distinction, so I'd like to hear how you do so.
  - cthalupa 8y ago
    I get your point - where does the distinction lie? At what point does responsibility shift? And I understand that you argue free will is necessary to make that distinction. But you don't need free will to do that. You need a system of inputs that result in an output, with that output being the decision. It's still all a matter of causality. We've evolved in such a way that we want to stay alive, and that the vast majority of people value being alive over having a replaceable object. Or, I suppose in this example, their spouse being alive. Our collective morality is the result of that system of inputs. If you get right down to it, it's a value judgment on life vs. property. Those values are shaped based off of our past.
    - naasking 8y ago
      You still haven't answered the question. You can't claim that we don't need free will to address these questions while simultaneously refusing to provide even a single alternative concept or process that could do so equally well. Clearly some quality leads people to make a distinction between the scenarios I presented. Compatibilism calls this quality the free will of the agent in question. This is not an earth-shattering concept and does not violate any scientific principles, and it matches how people talk and reason about these scenarios.