4 ms·

If we admit nobody can be blamed for their actions, we can't punish them and thus the incentives not to do bad things disappear and the whole shebang collapses.

If we admit nobody can be blamed for their actions, we can't punish them and thus the incentives not to do bad things disappear and the whole shebang collapses. That's not true. You can put people behind bars, say for example murderers, without blaming them for what did but in order to protect others. Even today we will, for example, lock people with dangerous mental illnesses up in order to protect others from them, even if we know that what they did, they did because of some condition outside of their control.

naasking 3y ago
This still implicitly asserts that the murderers are to blame for something. "Protecting others" carries an implicit assertion that failing to abide by this principle means you are broken, rather than that the principle itself is mistaken, as would be true if you really believed blame didn't exist. And then you still have to account for whether the transgressor was coerced rather than was acting from their beliefs and desires (aka made a free choice). You can't really escape free will.
- simiones 3y ago
  > "Protecting others" carries an implicit assertion that failing to abide by this principle means you are broken, rather than that the principle itself is mistaken, as would be true if you really believed blame didn't exist. Not at all. People seek to stop fires in order to protect others, but few believe fire carries blame for burning people. Of course, you need to believe that there is determinism (the fire is causing the burns, so stopping the fire will stop the burns), but that's it. > And then you still have to account for whether the transgressor was coerced rather than was acting from their beliefs and desires (aka made a free choice). This is still just a question about causality. The problem you are trying to solve is that people are getting hurt. You need to determine the ultimate cause for that in order to effectively solve it. So, if A is killing people that you want to live, you will want to first stop A from doing so. Next, you will have to determine what was causing A to kill people - if A was doing so because B paid for it, then you probably need to stop B as well: otherwise B may pay C to kill people even if A is in jail. If this has been determined, A may or may not need to be jailed at all, based on beliefs about whether A may still continue to kill people even if B has been stopped. None of this requires some metaphysical notion of blame, it only requires a belief in determinism and a model of causality of behavior. A computer could be built that would take such decisions in a purely deterministic way, and using only information about purely physical facts (A performed act x, B performed act y, other people that share characteristics d, e, f with A performed act x, etc).
  - naasking 3y ago
    > but few believe fire carries blame for burning people Because fire doesn't have intentions, beliefs and mental states that respond to feedback about right/wrong, and that govern its future behaviour. > he problem you are trying to solve is that people are getting hurt. You need to determine the ultimate cause for that in order to effectively solve it. So, if A is killing people that you want to live, you will want to first stop A from doing so. Next, you will have to determine what was causing A to kill people - if A was doing so because B paid for it, then you probably need to stop B as well: otherwise B may pay C to kill people even if A is in jail. If this has been determined, A may or may not need to be jailed at all, based on beliefs about whether A may still continue to kill people even if B has been stopped. None of this requires some metaphysical notion of blame It's frankly amazing that you can perform an in depth analysis of how to ascertain who is to blame, and yet conclude that blame is not required. You're performing this elaborate dance trying to avoid the word "blame" despite the fact that this analysis is exactly what everybody means by "blame". There's nothing metaphysical about it.
    - simiones 3y ago
      You can call it blame, of course, but then we also have to say that the fire is to blame for hurting these people. The point was to show that the same analysis for why we should stop a fire (which is not considered a moral agent) is or can be carried out for why we should jail someone. Since we don't need to believe that the fire has free will in order to put it out, it stands to reason we also don't need to believe that a killer has free will in order to justify jailing them.
      - naasking 3y ago
        > The point was to show that the same analysis for why we should stop a fire (which is not considered a moral agent) is or can be carried out for why we should jail someone. Since we don't need to believe that the fire has free will in order to put it out, it stands to reason we also don't need to believe that a killer has free will in order to justify jailing them. The key difference is that fire is not considered a moral agent and a person is. That's why the justification is required.
- danbruc 3y ago
  This still implicitly asserts that the murderers are to blame for something. Well, this will quickly turn into the nuances of definitions of words. Blame can have several subtilely different meanings, so call it blame if you want. I will avoid that problem by saying that we go from asserting that a person did something wrong and could and should have done otherwise to asserting that a person did something wrong. "Protecting others" carries an implicit assertion that failing to abide by this principle means you are broken [...] Yes, if we have the principle that one person should not harm another and you do not follow that principle, then in a deterministic universe we would say that you are not behaving as expected, that you are broken if you want. Well, there is probably some nuance required here, are you really broken and will keep harming others or was this more like an exceptional situation making you misbehave once but unlikely to do so again? "[...] rather than that the principle itself is mistaken, as would be true if you really believed blame didn't exist. Take the example of some manufacturing robots, if one of them breaks and keeps crashing into others, then you will remove and replace the broken one, you are not going to blame it or assign any responsibility to it, because one of the wires connecting a sensor got lose. I do not see why enforcing a policy, categorizing behavior into acceptable and unacceptable behavior, requires blame in any form. We just categorize, we do not even have to look why something ended up in one category or the other. A related but different question is what our policy is, where the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior lies. And then you still have to account for whether the transgressor was coerced rather than was acting from their beliefs and desires (aka made a free choice). That falls under the point mentioned above, more nuance, whether the behavior was situation specific or is likely inherent. But that is again independent of free will - whether I am determined to do bad things or freely decide to do bad things, one should try to prevent me from doing bad things. And it matters even less in case of coercion, or maybe it is even more complicated in the case of free will. There is not really anything to be said about deterministic coercion to do a bad thing, but if you have free will, maybe you should have resisted more? This will not always apply, but at least sometimes you will have a choice to resist the coercion and probably experience some negative consequences in return, or to go along a cause negative consequences for others.
  - naasking 3y ago
    > a person did something wrong and could and should have done otherwise to asserting that a person did something wrong. These statements seem equivalent. To say someone did something wrong is to say they should have done something else. > then you will remove and replace the broken one, you are not going to blame it or assign any responsibility to it Yes, you are literally saying this robot is to blame for the problem. The only difference with intelligent beings is that they can understand what they did wrong if they are given feedback, and thus change their future behaviour, and that's why holding them responsible requires a different kind of action than holding a dumb robot responsible. When AI advances to the point that the robot too can understand this, then it would make sense to also hold it responsible in a similar way to humans. Note that responsibility and blame don't necessarily entail punishment. This is a common mistake. In many prior discussions, I've found people jumping to hard determinism rather that Compatibilism simply because they don't like punishment, but nothing in Compatibilism necessarily requires punishment.

naasking 3y ago

This still implicitly asserts that the murderers are to blame for something. "Protecting others" carries an implicit assertion that failing to abide by this principle means you are broken, rather than that the principle itself is mistaken, as would be true if you really believed blame didn't exist. And then you still have to account for whether the transgressor was coerced rather than was acting from their beliefs and desires (aka made a free choice). You can't really escape free will.

simiones 3y ago
> "Protecting others" carries an implicit assertion that failing to abide by this principle means you are broken, rather than that the principle itself is mistaken, as would be true if you really believed blame didn't exist. Not at all. People seek to stop fires in order to protect others, but few believe fire carries blame for burning people. Of course, you need to believe that there is determinism (the fire is causing the burns, so stopping the fire will stop the burns), but that's it. > And then you still have to account for whether the transgressor was coerced rather than was acting from their beliefs and desires (aka made a free choice). This is still just a question about causality. The problem you are trying to solve is that people are getting hurt. You need to determine the ultimate cause for that in order to effectively solve it. So, if A is killing people that you want to live, you will want to first stop A from doing so. Next, you will have to determine what was causing A to kill people - if A was doing so because B paid for it, then you probably need to stop B as well: otherwise B may pay C to kill people even if A is in jail. If this has been determined, A may or may not need to be jailed at all, based on beliefs about whether A may still continue to kill people even if B has been stopped. None of this requires some metaphysical notion of blame, it only requires a belief in determinism and a model of causality of behavior. A computer could be built that would take such decisions in a purely deterministic way, and using only information about purely physical facts (A performed act x, B performed act y, other people that share characteristics d, e, f with A performed act x, etc).
- naasking 3y ago
  > but few believe fire carries blame for burning people Because fire doesn't have intentions, beliefs and mental states that respond to feedback about right/wrong, and that govern its future behaviour. > he problem you are trying to solve is that people are getting hurt. You need to determine the ultimate cause for that in order to effectively solve it. So, if A is killing people that you want to live, you will want to first stop A from doing so. Next, you will have to determine what was causing A to kill people - if A was doing so because B paid for it, then you probably need to stop B as well: otherwise B may pay C to kill people even if A is in jail. If this has been determined, A may or may not need to be jailed at all, based on beliefs about whether A may still continue to kill people even if B has been stopped. None of this requires some metaphysical notion of blame It's frankly amazing that you can perform an in depth analysis of how to ascertain who is to blame, and yet conclude that blame is not required. You're performing this elaborate dance trying to avoid the word "blame" despite the fact that this analysis is exactly what everybody means by "blame". There's nothing metaphysical about it.
  - simiones 3y ago
    You can call it blame, of course, but then we also have to say that the fire is to blame for hurting these people. The point was to show that the same analysis for why we should stop a fire (which is not considered a moral agent) is or can be carried out for why we should jail someone. Since we don't need to believe that the fire has free will in order to put it out, it stands to reason we also don't need to believe that a killer has free will in order to justify jailing them.
    - naasking 3y ago
      > The point was to show that the same analysis for why we should stop a fire (which is not considered a moral agent) is or can be carried out for why we should jail someone. Since we don't need to believe that the fire has free will in order to put it out, it stands to reason we also don't need to believe that a killer has free will in order to justify jailing them. The key difference is that fire is not considered a moral agent and a person is. That's why the justification is required.
danbruc 3y ago
This still implicitly asserts that the murderers are to blame for something. Well, this will quickly turn into the nuances of definitions of words. Blame can have several subtilely different meanings, so call it blame if you want. I will avoid that problem by saying that we go from asserting that a person did something wrong and could and should have done otherwise to asserting that a person did something wrong. "Protecting others" carries an implicit assertion that failing to abide by this principle means you are broken [...] Yes, if we have the principle that one person should not harm another and you do not follow that principle, then in a deterministic universe we would say that you are not behaving as expected, that you are broken if you want. Well, there is probably some nuance required here, are you really broken and will keep harming others or was this more like an exceptional situation making you misbehave once but unlikely to do so again? "[...] rather than that the principle itself is mistaken, as would be true if you really believed blame didn't exist. Take the example of some manufacturing robots, if one of them breaks and keeps crashing into others, then you will remove and replace the broken one, you are not going to blame it or assign any responsibility to it, because one of the wires connecting a sensor got lose. I do not see why enforcing a policy, categorizing behavior into acceptable and unacceptable behavior, requires blame in any form. We just categorize, we do not even have to look why something ended up in one category or the other. A related but different question is what our policy is, where the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior lies. And then you still have to account for whether the transgressor was coerced rather than was acting from their beliefs and desires (aka made a free choice). That falls under the point mentioned above, more nuance, whether the behavior was situation specific or is likely inherent. But that is again independent of free will - whether I am determined to do bad things or freely decide to do bad things, one should try to prevent me from doing bad things. And it matters even less in case of coercion, or maybe it is even more complicated in the case of free will. There is not really anything to be said about deterministic coercion to do a bad thing, but if you have free will, maybe you should have resisted more? This will not always apply, but at least sometimes you will have a choice to resist the coercion and probably experience some negative consequences in return, or to go along a cause negative consequences for others.
- naasking 3y ago
  > a person did something wrong and could and should have done otherwise to asserting that a person did something wrong. These statements seem equivalent. To say someone did something wrong is to say they should have done something else. > then you will remove and replace the broken one, you are not going to blame it or assign any responsibility to it Yes, you are literally saying this robot is to blame for the problem. The only difference with intelligent beings is that they can understand what they did wrong if they are given feedback, and thus change their future behaviour, and that's why holding them responsible requires a different kind of action than holding a dumb robot responsible. When AI advances to the point that the robot too can understand this, then it would make sense to also hold it responsible in a similar way to humans. Note that responsibility and blame don't necessarily entail punishment. This is a common mistake. In many prior discussions, I've found people jumping to hard determinism rather that Compatibilism simply because they don't like punishment, but nothing in Compatibilism necessarily requires punishment.