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> This entirely sidesteps the issue, which is that if you employ a compatibilist notion of free will (in other words: a "free" will that is merely an illusion o

> This entirely sidesteps the issue, which is that if you employ a compatibilist notion of free will (in other words: a "free" will that is merely an illusion of agency), then you have no actual agency, and so assigning you moral responsibility for the actions taken is fundamentally unjust and in itself wildly immoral: You had no actual control of the choice taken. Except that's irrelevant. The fact that a murderer had no "ultimate" control over becoming who he is, is irrelevant to the fact hat he felt justified in committing the murder, and the entity that feels justified in murdering has made an unethical choice, and so that entity requires correction. This is the inescapable question free will addresses: who is responsible for a choice? And this addresses your claim here: > This entirely sidesteps the issue, which is that if you employ a compatibilist notion of free will (in other words: a "free" will that is merely an illusion of agency) So this is not an "illusion of agency", this is exactly the kind of agency people care about: if your thoughts and feelings counterfactually determined your choice free of coercion, and if that choice was wrong, your thoughts and feelings require correction via feedback, which is holding you morally responsible. > I'd also strongly content that you're wrong, and that if you actually dig into peoples beliefs about free will deeply enough to ensure they understand what you're suggesting, you will find most people get annoyed, agitated or outright angry at even the notion that they don't imbue outcomes with some magical fairy-dust agency they can't define. You can contend strongly all you like, I cited empirical evidence that was part of a series of studies undertaken over years which tested to see whether people have Compatibilist and incompatibilist intuitions. People agreed strongly with Compatibilism after it was properly explained to them, which is the opposite of what you claim. > The exceedingly rare compatibilists I come across tends to be a small subset of the exceedingly few people who read philosophy papers. Well then you're in for a shock, not only from the paper I linked above, but also because a comfortable majority of philosophers who actually read and write philosophy papers for a living are Compatibilists: https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl EDIT for your edit: > I'd love to see a survey ask people if they think a purely deterministic process, e.g. a suitable program running on a computer, can ever be said to have free will. If people say "no" to that, they are rejecting a compatibilist definition of free will. We already know the answer to this: anthropomorphization is a near universal cognitive bias, by which humans assume a mind behind phenomena, particularly phenomena that exhibits complex behvaiour. This is why people are polite when conversing with chatbots like ChatGPT. If there's a mind that's responsive to moral feedback as I described above, then it makes perfect sense to hold it responsible, and I am 99.9999% certain this is how most people would treat this question.

vidarh 4y ago
> Except that's irrelevant. The fact that a murderer had no "ultimate" control over becoming who he is, is irrelevant to the fact hat he felt justified in committing the murder, and the entity that feels justified in murdering has made an unethical choice, and so that entity requires correction. This is the inescapable question free will addresses: who is responsible for a choice? If most people genuinely saw it like this - a matter of correction rather than vengeance -, the justice system would look fundamentally different. If the goal was indeed correction, sentences would follow evidence of risk, and imprisonment would focus on rehabilitation. Every evidence we see of how people act and respond to sentencing show that people see prison as to a large extent punitive, an attitude that is wildly immoral if the "entity in question" could not have chosen differently given the same inputs and the same state. > So this is not an "illusion of agency", this is exactly the kind of agency people care about Irrespective of whether or not it is "the kind of agency" people care about, if that is what people care about, then people are using compatibilism to justify to themselves allowing harm to people who had no ability to choose differently. If that is the kind of agency people care about, that does not make it better. It makes people worse for understanding that they are harming people who can't choose differently. > if that choice was wrong, your thoughts and feelings require correction via feedback, which is holding you morally responsible. The first part is a utilitarian argument for minimally invasive rehabilitation, not for punishment that does not achieve those goals. The latter part is a smokescreen - if you could not possibly have made a different choice, there's nothing moral about holding you responsible, and punishing you without trying to minimise the impact on you is itself inflicting immoral harm. This is one of those things that tends to get people very agitated when you dig into this. If you accept a purely materialistic universe, then the current "justice system" is nothing of the sort. You can reasonably argue that correction is necessary, but there's certainly no justice in applying further harm to people who had no ability to choose otherwise. > You can contend strongly all you like, I cited empirical evidence that was part of a series of studies undertaken over years which tested to see whether people have Compatibilist and incompatibilist intuitions. People agreed strongly with Compatibilism after it was properly explained to them, which is the opposite of what you claim. I see no evidence of this in the paper you linked to. What these kinds of discussions tends to show me is that you can make all kinds of superficial statements like the ones referenced in the paper, and get people to make seemingly coherent assessments when you give people the "escape clause" that however much you tell them otherwise they think there's some neubulous special thing about humans that give us an ability to decide otherwise, but once you start digging into it people tend to get very upset when you suggest their ability to make decisions is computationally equivalent to a computer (hence my edit, which I realise you might not have seen when you replied to my post above). > Well then you're in for a shock, not only from the paper I linked above, but also because a comfortable majority of philosophers who actually read and write philosophy papers for a living are Compatibilists How is that shocking? The proportion of people who read and write philosophy papers are a tiny little proportion of people. I'm totally unsurprised at the number of people who read philosophy papers for a living come to this view - it's hard to reconcile a strongly materialistic view of free will with living in a society that you then necessarily will see as brutally immoral and without any semblance of justice.

vidarh 4y ago

> Except that's irrelevant. The fact that a murderer had no "ultimate" control over becoming who he is, is irrelevant to the fact hat he felt justified in committing the murder, and the entity that feels justified in murdering has made an unethical choice, and so that entity requires correction. This is the inescapable question free will addresses: who is responsible for a choice? If most people genuinely saw it like this - a matter of correction rather than vengeance -, the justice system would look fundamentally different. If the goal was indeed correction, sentences would follow evidence of risk, and imprisonment would focus on rehabilitation. Every evidence we see of how people act and respond to sentencing show that people see prison as to a large extent punitive, an attitude that is wildly immoral if the "entity in question" could not have chosen differently given the same inputs and the same state. > So this is not an "illusion of agency", this is exactly the kind of agency people care about Irrespective of whether or not it is "the kind of agency" people care about, if that is what people care about, then people are using compatibilism to justify to themselves allowing harm to people who had no ability to choose differently. If that is the kind of agency people care about, that does not make it better. It makes people worse for understanding that they are harming people who can't choose differently. > if that choice was wrong, your thoughts and feelings require correction via feedback, which is holding you morally responsible. The first part is a utilitarian argument for minimally invasive rehabilitation, not for punishment that does not achieve those goals. The latter part is a smokescreen - if you could not possibly have made a different choice, there's nothing moral about holding you responsible, and punishing you without trying to minimise the impact on you is itself inflicting immoral harm. This is one of those things that tends to get people very agitated when you dig into this. If you accept a purely materialistic universe, then the current "justice system" is nothing of the sort. You can reasonably argue that correction is necessary, but there's certainly no justice in applying further harm to people who had no ability to choose otherwise. > You can contend strongly all you like, I cited empirical evidence that was part of a series of studies undertaken over years which tested to see whether people have Compatibilist and incompatibilist intuitions. People agreed strongly with Compatibilism after it was properly explained to them, which is the opposite of what you claim. I see no evidence of this in the paper you linked to. What these kinds of discussions tends to show me is that you can make all kinds of superficial statements like the ones referenced in the paper, and get people to make seemingly coherent assessments when you give people the "escape clause" that however much you tell them otherwise they think there's some neubulous special thing about humans that give us an ability to decide otherwise, but once you start digging into it people tend to get very upset when you suggest their ability to make decisions is computationally equivalent to a computer (hence my edit, which I realise you might not have seen when you replied to my post above). > Well then you're in for a shock, not only from the paper I linked above, but also because a comfortable majority of philosophers who actually read and write philosophy papers for a living are Compatibilists How is that shocking? The proportion of people who read and write philosophy papers are a tiny little proportion of people. I'm totally unsurprised at the number of people who read philosophy papers for a living come to this view - it's hard to reconcile a strongly materialistic view of free will with living in a society that you then necessarily will see as brutally immoral and without any semblance of justice.