3 ms·

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

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.
- simiones 3y ago
  The difference between moral agents and amoral agents is only relevant if you care about non-physical effects of morality. The legal system wouldn't need to change if we just believed that no one is a moral agent - this is what I'm trying to say. So, to the extent that free will is required for being a moral agent, doing away with belief in free will would not require any changes in the legal system.
  - naasking 3y ago
    I don't see how you reach that conclusion. The law is specifically targeted at liability and responsibility of moral agents. That's why it has its own definition of free will of moral agents that is agnostic to determinism. That's why you can't sue a fire but you can sue a person. In the future, you will almost certainly be able to sue certain types of AI agents as well. I also assert, with evidence [1], that this legal understanding of free will is how most people think about it. I can't make any sense of your argument unless you're employing a different definition of free will. [1] https://philarchive.org/rec/ANDWCI-3 https://philarchive.org/rec/ANDWCI-3
    - simiones 3y ago
      There are many laws or regulations aimed at the protection of humans from things that are not other humans - regulations on what food or medicine is allowed, regulations for how states have to protect people from fire, regulations for putting down animals that are dangerous to humans etc. There are of course separate laws for protecting humans from other humans, and that is typically where questions of liability and intent etc arise. But I would still argue that these still have nothing to do with beliefs about (strong/non-compatibilist) free will (though of course they historically are related to free-will-based religious conceptions). For one thing, these laws are explicitly targeted at human persons. There is no aspect in the law that would make it apply to a chimp, for example, even if the chimp were determined to have free will just as much as a human. You can't sue a chimp, even if you believe that it is a moral agent: you can only sue a human person. You also can't sue any type of AI agent, and would not be able to without a change in the law. So I would say that existing regulations which apply to non-human beings are also proof that we are perfectly capable of creating laws that don't rely on beliefs about the free will of the entities which these laws govern. The fact that current laws for humans make use of free will terminology is thus incidental, not fundamental. All current legal principles could be re-stated without requiring free will as well - this is what I was trying to claim (though I did claim more than that, for which I was wrong). I will also note that this thread was started by someone who was claiming that you couldn't use the current legal system if you believed the universe is deterministic. The paper you cite works against this argument: it claims that the common notion of free will that most people apply is in fact compatible with a deterministic universe. If you also agree with this paper, then we are probably mostly in violent agreement overall, and in disagreement with sanitycheck's original claim.

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.

simiones 3y ago
The difference between moral agents and amoral agents is only relevant if you care about non-physical effects of morality. The legal system wouldn't need to change if we just believed that no one is a moral agent - this is what I'm trying to say. So, to the extent that free will is required for being a moral agent, doing away with belief in free will would not require any changes in the legal system.
- naasking 3y ago
  I don't see how you reach that conclusion. The law is specifically targeted at liability and responsibility of moral agents. That's why it has its own definition of free will of moral agents that is agnostic to determinism. That's why you can't sue a fire but you can sue a person. In the future, you will almost certainly be able to sue certain types of AI agents as well. I also assert, with evidence [1], that this legal understanding of free will is how most people think about it. I can't make any sense of your argument unless you're employing a different definition of free will. [1] https://philarchive.org/rec/ANDWCI-3 https://philarchive.org/rec/ANDWCI-3
  - simiones 3y ago
    There are many laws or regulations aimed at the protection of humans from things that are not other humans - regulations on what food or medicine is allowed, regulations for how states have to protect people from fire, regulations for putting down animals that are dangerous to humans etc. There are of course separate laws for protecting humans from other humans, and that is typically where questions of liability and intent etc arise. But I would still argue that these still have nothing to do with beliefs about (strong/non-compatibilist) free will (though of course they historically are related to free-will-based religious conceptions). For one thing, these laws are explicitly targeted at human persons. There is no aspect in the law that would make it apply to a chimp, for example, even if the chimp were determined to have free will just as much as a human. You can't sue a chimp, even if you believe that it is a moral agent: you can only sue a human person. You also can't sue any type of AI agent, and would not be able to without a change in the law. So I would say that existing regulations which apply to non-human beings are also proof that we are perfectly capable of creating laws that don't rely on beliefs about the free will of the entities which these laws govern. The fact that current laws for humans make use of free will terminology is thus incidental, not fundamental. All current legal principles could be re-stated without requiring free will as well - this is what I was trying to claim (though I did claim more than that, for which I was wrong). I will also note that this thread was started by someone who was claiming that you couldn't use the current legal system if you believed the universe is deterministic. The paper you cite works against this argument: it claims that the common notion of free will that most people apply is in fact compatible with a deterministic universe. If you also agree with this paper, then we are probably mostly in violent agreement overall, and in disagreement with sanitycheck's original claim.