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> I would argue that is because the conception of morality you are using happens to be compatible with the resulting morals that I believe arise from determinis

> I would argue that is because the conception of morality you are using happens to be compatible with the resulting morals that I believe arise from determinism here. Indeed, we are coincidentally in agreement from a values perspective since my argument with respect to determinism could remain unchanged even if I e.g. favored a retributive system of justice. > Given their lack of responsibility and control of their being, how do you design a society that treats them fairly Any possible conception of fairness exists entirely with respect to the material circumstances of reality in the moment, the ethereal weight of determinism is not detectable on the scales of justice. To put it another way, if we lived in a universe capable of libertarian free will, it would not follow logically that we should then amplify the needless suffering of criminals. Imagine two criminals living in such a universe, both having committed identical crimes under identical circumstances, but only one is capable of libertarian free will... what changes? The deterministic criminal didn't choose to want to commit the crime, but he still wanted to commit the crime by following the same reasoning that the free criminal willed himself into, in every observable aspect of reality their motivations are equally damning. This is further compounded by the fact that both victims are equally harmed regardless of which criminal committed the crime. From the victim's perspective, two equally harmful acts should merit the same consequences, one victim does not suffer less because the crime was committed deterministiclly. >The questions of what we optimize for are also highly impacted by free will/determinism. How so?

GoblinSlayer 6y ago
Criminal court doesn't really use the concept of responsibility, it assigns punishment based solely on who did the crime. And the concept of crime itself is provided by lawmaker, not by human's judgement.
- root_axis 6y ago
  > Criminal court doesn't really use the concept of responsibility, it assigns punishment based solely on who did the crime. Saying someone "did the crime" is just another way of saying that they are responsible for the crime. > the concept of crime itself is provided by lawmaker, not by human's judgement. What? The entire point of the judicial system is to interpret the law with respect to human judgement.
adjkant 6y ago
> Any possible conception of fairness exists entirely with respect to the material circumstances of reality in the moment, the ethereal weight of determinism is not detectable on the scales of justice. You've just made another coincidental compatibility here, so I'm curious - how did you arrive at only valuing material circumstances? For me, that is explicitly derived from following determinism into meta-ethics which then follows into a consequentialist physicalist view. > To put it another way, if we lived in a universe capable of libertarian free will, it would not follow logically that we should then amplify the needless suffering of criminals. That's a different argument. Something else has to underpin that, and I would again be curious what that is, and if that also shares compatibility. > The questions of what we optimize for are also highly impacted by free will/determinism. > How so? I'm still formulating this fully, but essentially it follows from determinism that objective ethics essentially don't exist (I go with error theory here), which then passes off all of practical ethical meaning to the physical state of the universe in relation to what all beings care about, which I suspect is the step that ends up causing much of the coincidence. So for morality, things that humans (and other beings, but we'll set them aside for now) care about are ethics. I tend to focus on happiness, empathy, and fairness, but there's of course a lot more there. Generally, it means moral psychology actually informs ethics quite a bit. Since I suspect this isn't going to change anything you specifically believe given the compatibility seen elsewhere, let me highlight some specific ethical views that immediately come under intense pressure from those conclusions: - basically all deontology (Immanuel Kant and others) - virtue ethics are then limited to admitting to being a practical compromise at best (originally Aristotle but virtue ethics has been on the rise in many modern debates, and this could 100% shape those) - even many forms of consequentialism make arguments to optimize for a singular thing or one somewhat removed from humans. This highlights the optimization function is not on a single or even a few variables given that humans don't have a single psychological focus. Or maybe we do and we should be spending more of our time in ethics doing psychological research. But all of this derives originally from that conclusion on determinism. Basically, even a small difference in underpinning can still lead to different focuses and conclusions down the chain of course.

GoblinSlayer 6y ago

Criminal court doesn't really use the concept of responsibility, it assigns punishment based solely on who did the crime. And the concept of crime itself is provided by lawmaker, not by human's judgement.

root_axis 6y ago
> Criminal court doesn't really use the concept of responsibility, it assigns punishment based solely on who did the crime. Saying someone "did the crime" is just another way of saying that they are responsible for the crime. > the concept of crime itself is provided by lawmaker, not by human's judgement. What? The entire point of the judicial system is to interpret the law with respect to human judgement.

adjkant 6y ago

> Any possible conception of fairness exists entirely with respect to the material circumstances of reality in the moment, the ethereal weight of determinism is not detectable on the scales of justice. You've just made another coincidental compatibility here, so I'm curious - how did you arrive at only valuing material circumstances? For me, that is explicitly derived from following determinism into meta-ethics which then follows into a consequentialist physicalist view. > To put it another way, if we lived in a universe capable of libertarian free will, it would not follow logically that we should then amplify the needless suffering of criminals. That's a different argument. Something else has to underpin that, and I would again be curious what that is, and if that also shares compatibility. > The questions of what we optimize for are also highly impacted by free will/determinism. > How so? I'm still formulating this fully, but essentially it follows from determinism that objective ethics essentially don't exist (I go with error theory here), which then passes off all of practical ethical meaning to the physical state of the universe in relation to what all beings care about, which I suspect is the step that ends up causing much of the coincidence. So for morality, things that humans (and other beings, but we'll set them aside for now) care about are ethics. I tend to focus on happiness, empathy, and fairness, but there's of course a lot more there. Generally, it means moral psychology actually informs ethics quite a bit. Since I suspect this isn't going to change anything you specifically believe given the compatibility seen elsewhere, let me highlight some specific ethical views that immediately come under intense pressure from those conclusions: - basically all deontology (Immanuel Kant and others) - virtue ethics are then limited to admitting to being a practical compromise at best (originally Aristotle but virtue ethics has been on the rise in many modern debates, and this could 100% shape those) - even many forms of consequentialism make arguments to optimize for a singular thing or one somewhat removed from humans. This highlights the optimization function is not on a single or even a few variables given that humans don't have a single psychological focus. Or maybe we do and we should be spending more of our time in ethics doing psychological research. But all of this derives originally from that conclusion on determinism. Basically, even a small difference in underpinning can still lead to different focuses and conclusions down the chain of course.