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> Free will is inescapable. Without it, you have no ability to assign moral blame, which means law and order become impossible. Even if that were the case, tha

by dghf 6y ago

> Free will is inescapable. Without it, you have no ability to assign moral blame, which means law and order become impossible. Even if that were the case, that doesn't bear on whether or not free will exists. Having reasons to want something to be true doesn't in itself make it true.

naasking 6y ago
You're missing the last step that closes the loop: in order for society to exist and function, moral blame is essential. Therefore some notion of moral responsibility for breaking the law must be imposed, so we invent some quasi-free will notion that's compatible with determinism in order to do this. But how do you know this quasi-free will notion isn't exactly what people really mean by free will. In fact, that appears to be the case: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compatibilist_Intuitions_are_not_Mistaken_A_Reply_to_Feltz_and_Millan https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compa...
- dghf 6y ago
  >You're missing the last step that closes the loop: in order for society to exist and function, moral blame is essential. Therefore some notion of moral responsibility for breaking the law must be imposed, so we invent some quasi-free will notion that's compatible with determinism in order to do this. If your argument that it is necessary for the public to believe in free will (because of the negative consequences if they don't), regardless of whether or not it actually exists, then that's different. I thought you were arguing that free will must necessarily exist because of those consequences. I apologise and withdraw.
  - naasking 6y ago
    > I thought you were arguing that free will must necessarily exist because of those consequences. I'm saying that this is exactly what most people really mean by free will [1], and that people like you who claim that free will doesn't exist are making a mistake in assuming free will is something that it isn't. Typically, you're arguing against a theistic conception of free will with "souls" and whatnot, but that's just one (incoherent) conception of free will and not the whole debate. "Free will" is ultimately some notion of control over one's actions that grounds moral responsibility: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/ If you acknowledge that being able to designate who is responsible for some undesirable outcome is a necessary condition for being able to remedy it, then you are acknowledging some notion of moral blame. If you further accept that people's actions can be described counterfactually by their thoughts, feelings and beliefs, then that implies some sort of control over those actions. Therefore we have control + moral responsibility, and that's free will (in Compatibilism). If this seems kind of familiar, it should! Compatibilism was first formulated from our notions of free will from law. Notice how if you remove the control requirement (say they had a tumour driving some behaviour, or they're insane), a person is no longer acting of their own free will and so are not responsible for their actions. This is what I meant by free will being inevitable. No society can exist without blame for breaking the law. You might define the terms to avoid terms like "blame" and "free will", as hard determinists try to do, but the ultimate function will be the exact same. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compatibilist_Intuitions_are_not_Mistaken_A_Reply_to_Feltz_and_Millan https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compa...
    - dghf 6y ago
      > people like you who claim that free will doesn't exist Where did I claim that free will doesn't exist?
      - naasking 6y ago
        You're right, mixed you up with another poster in this thread, sorry!
        dghf 6y ago
        No problem!
    - ravenide 6y ago
      I find the 'control' part of this iffy. People's actions are caused by their thoughts, feelings and beliefs, but their thoughts, feelings and beliefs are themselves caused by various other things. This is why I think the root question is whether you could have chosen differently. If you could only have ever made one choice, how much control do you really have? The fact that moral responsibility requires the assumption that people have control doesn't mean people do have control. It just means that people who like moral responsibility (including myself!) have an inconvenient reality to contend with. It means we have to find some way to run a society morally despite the shaky grounding on which we find ourselves. I would find the compatibilist argument more convincing if it simply said, here are some beliefs that would benefit us if we assumed they were true, rather than saying they are true. We can define free will as 'the assumption that is needed to make moral responsibility work,' and we can even make that assumption in order to have a practical, working framework for moral responsibility, but it still doesn't prove the assumption is true.
      - naasking 6y ago
        > I find the 'control' part of this iffy. People's actions are caused by their thoughts, feelings and beliefs, but their thoughts, feelings and beliefs are themselves caused by various other things. That trips most people up, but it goes right back to our first discussion about cars also being "not real". If I say to a coworker, "I got in my car and drove to work", and they reply with, "Well that's impossible, because cars don't exist, nor do day jobs", that's kind of nonsense right, because there I am at work, standing in front of my coworker with my car in my parking spot. It's a category error, and it's the same error made when people say that a choice wasn't really ours because it's dictated by the movements of particles. The fact that thoughts, feelings and beliefs may be caused by deterministic underlying physics is actually irrelevant, which is why Compatibilism is compatible with determinism. What matters is that thoughts, feelings and beliefs counterfactually dictate your choices, and so, by changing thoughts, feelings and beliefs via moral feedback, you change behaviour. Moral blame is that feedback. The type of control that's needed is simply not the type of control that you're assuming it must be. This is the mistake incompatibilists make as well: they assume the type of control needed has certain logical properties, but these properties have been shown to be flawed. Now what consequences follow from blame is a completely separate question (of justice), and I mention this because it trips a lot of people up: they assume blame entails punishment, and given they cannot justify punishment when some things are simply beyond one's control, they want to do away with blame itself. But that's unnecessary, because blame by itself doesn't immediately entail retributive justice with punishment, there are plenty of other forms of justice that would serve equally well.

by dghf 6y ago

naasking 6y ago

You're missing the last step that closes the loop: in order for society to exist and function, moral blame is essential. Therefore some notion of moral responsibility for breaking the law must be imposed, so we invent some quasi-free will notion that's compatible with determinism in order to do this. But how do you know this quasi-free will notion isn't exactly what people really mean by free will. In fact, that appears to be the case: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compatibilist_Intuitions_are_not_Mistaken_A_Reply_to_Feltz_and_Millan https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compa...

dghf 6y ago
>You're missing the last step that closes the loop: in order for society to exist and function, moral blame is essential. Therefore some notion of moral responsibility for breaking the law must be imposed, so we invent some quasi-free will notion that's compatible with determinism in order to do this. If your argument that it is necessary for the public to believe in free will (because of the negative consequences if they don't), regardless of whether or not it actually exists, then that's different. I thought you were arguing that free will must necessarily exist because of those consequences. I apologise and withdraw.
- naasking 6y ago
  > I thought you were arguing that free will must necessarily exist because of those consequences. I'm saying that this is exactly what most people really mean by free will [1], and that people like you who claim that free will doesn't exist are making a mistake in assuming free will is something that it isn't. Typically, you're arguing against a theistic conception of free will with "souls" and whatnot, but that's just one (incoherent) conception of free will and not the whole debate. "Free will" is ultimately some notion of control over one's actions that grounds moral responsibility: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/ If you acknowledge that being able to designate who is responsible for some undesirable outcome is a necessary condition for being able to remedy it, then you are acknowledging some notion of moral blame. If you further accept that people's actions can be described counterfactually by their thoughts, feelings and beliefs, then that implies some sort of control over those actions. Therefore we have control + moral responsibility, and that's free will (in Compatibilism). If this seems kind of familiar, it should! Compatibilism was first formulated from our notions of free will from law. Notice how if you remove the control requirement (say they had a tumour driving some behaviour, or they're insane), a person is no longer acting of their own free will and so are not responsible for their actions. This is what I meant by free will being inevitable. No society can exist without blame for breaking the law. You might define the terms to avoid terms like "blame" and "free will", as hard determinists try to do, but the ultimate function will be the exact same. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compatibilist_Intuitions_are_not_Mistaken_A_Reply_to_Feltz_and_Millan https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compa...
  - dghf 6y ago
    > people like you who claim that free will doesn't exist Where did I claim that free will doesn't exist?
    - naasking 6y ago
      You're right, mixed you up with another poster in this thread, sorry!
      - dghf 6y ago
        No problem!
  - ravenide 6y ago
    I find the 'control' part of this iffy. People's actions are caused by their thoughts, feelings and beliefs, but their thoughts, feelings and beliefs are themselves caused by various other things. This is why I think the root question is whether you could have chosen differently. If you could only have ever made one choice, how much control do you really have? The fact that moral responsibility requires the assumption that people have control doesn't mean people do have control. It just means that people who like moral responsibility (including myself!) have an inconvenient reality to contend with. It means we have to find some way to run a society morally despite the shaky grounding on which we find ourselves. I would find the compatibilist argument more convincing if it simply said, here are some beliefs that would benefit us if we assumed they were true, rather than saying they are true. We can define free will as 'the assumption that is needed to make moral responsibility work,' and we can even make that assumption in order to have a practical, working framework for moral responsibility, but it still doesn't prove the assumption is true.
    - naasking 6y ago
      > I find the 'control' part of this iffy. People's actions are caused by their thoughts, feelings and beliefs, but their thoughts, feelings and beliefs are themselves caused by various other things. That trips most people up, but it goes right back to our first discussion about cars also being "not real". If I say to a coworker, "I got in my car and drove to work", and they reply with, "Well that's impossible, because cars don't exist, nor do day jobs", that's kind of nonsense right, because there I am at work, standing in front of my coworker with my car in my parking spot. It's a category error, and it's the same error made when people say that a choice wasn't really ours because it's dictated by the movements of particles. The fact that thoughts, feelings and beliefs may be caused by deterministic underlying physics is actually irrelevant, which is why Compatibilism is compatible with determinism. What matters is that thoughts, feelings and beliefs counterfactually dictate your choices, and so, by changing thoughts, feelings and beliefs via moral feedback, you change behaviour. Moral blame is that feedback. The type of control that's needed is simply not the type of control that you're assuming it must be. This is the mistake incompatibilists make as well: they assume the type of control needed has certain logical properties, but these properties have been shown to be flawed. Now what consequences follow from blame is a completely separate question (of justice), and I mention this because it trips a lot of people up: they assume blame entails punishment, and given they cannot justify punishment when some things are simply beyond one's control, they want to do away with blame itself. But that's unnecessary, because blame by itself doesn't immediately entail retributive justice with punishment, there are plenty of other forms of justice that would serve equally well.