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Whenever I see some one denying the existence of free will, I feel like punching him in the face, then saying "Why are you so angry at me? According to you, I c

Whenever I see some one denying the existence of free will, I feel like punching him in the face, then saying "Why are you so angry at me? According to you, I couldn't help it!"

AlexandrB 3y ago
That's silly. A NOT gate will change state when stimulated by a logic signal. Neither the signal nor the gate have "free will" in any meaningful sense but it happens anyways. Arguably, you're disproving your own point by eliciting a reaction that's not rational according to someone's belief system.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  Then there's no reason for me not to do it, then. Right? We all should do exactly as evolution encourages us to do in any situation.
  - mr_toad 3y ago
    > We all should do exactly as evolution encourages us to do in any situation. What makes you think we don’t?
  - vidarh 3y ago
    This argument is logically incoherent. Whether or not you have free will, punching someone in the face is likely to have consequences. That is your reason to consider whether or not to do it. If we assume you have free will, it provides you with the opportunity to actively make the choice that will get you the best outcome. If we assume you do not, then that won't alter the outcomes, nor the reasons to prefer one choice over the other, the only thing that has changed is whether or not the choice you made was a genuine choice or would always play out the same way if we somehow was able to rewind time. That the outcome would be the same given the same input and same state of your mind does not mean there was no reasons not to act a given way, only that you had no agency in which outcome you actually end up with. But the state of your mind would be a factor in that, and a belief that your decisions has no effect on your future outcomes so it doesn't matter what you choose to do certainly would make you less likely to end up with good ones. Whether or not "rewinding time" would let you make different "choices" does not alter that.
wredue 3y ago
That’s not the argument being made there. At a high level, the argument is that free will is an illusion that is highly constrained by your environment. In fact, your own example of punching him in the face only serves to support their case. You’re not free to randomly punch people in the face in most places on earth.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  I am absolutely free to punch people in the face anywhere on earth. Now, I will likely be punished for that, but that doesn't make me incapable of doing it. People commit crimes all the time, dude. If they have no free will, there is absolutely no justification for punishing them.
  - wredue 3y ago
    I didn’t say I agreed with the author. Just their logic. I think they are conflating free will with freedom and capability and it sounds a bit off the rails.
  - mr_toad 3y ago
    > If they have no free will, there is absolutely no justification for punishing them. Even organisms that clearly lack free will (like bacteria) will respond to stimulus.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    > If they have no free will, there is absolutely no justification for punishing them. This presumes a very specific sets of views on morality. One might argue that it makes whatever reaction you feel like justified, because it was not a choice. Certainly if we can't punish you for hitting someone, we can't punish the person you hit if they hit back. Others would argue that while it would remove the moral justification for retribution, free will or not does not need to affect the moral argument for punishment as a means to reduce the chance of reoffending or even general effects on the rest of the population. Free will only affects whether or not you had any immediate control over what you did, not on the effects it had on society, nor to what extent you pose a future risk or whether failure to punish you affects the future risks to society from others, all of which are factors in peoples views on the extent to which punishment is moral.
jjgreen 3y ago
Whenever I see some one denying the existence of free will, I feel like punching him in the face Convince yourself that you actually do have free will by not feeling that urge.
s1artibartfast 3y ago
Who cares if you could help it or not. I can still be angry you are a bad machine with bad programming. I dont give my water-heater a pass for staring fires because "it cant help it". The water-heater is the problem and fully to blame. It should be fixed or replaced.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  > I can still be angry you are a bad machine with bad programming. By what metric would I be a "bad machine". And who put you in charge of deciding what "bad machines" are? > The water-heater is the problem and fully to blame. Nonsense. Water heaters are not sentient beings with free will and cannot be "blamed" for anything. Perhaps the designer can be blamed, or perhaps the homeowner who didn't maintain the water heater can be blamed, but the water heater itself, having no free will, can't be blamed (or punished) for any behavior it exhibits. I mean, you don't see people putting defective water heaters in prison, right? Why not? Because they have no free will, and are thus deemed incapable of committing crimes..
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    >By what metric would I be a "bad machine". And who put you in charge of deciding what "bad machines" are? My metric is machines that punch me in the face are bad, and I put myself in charge of deciding it. If enough people agree with me, we can make rules and hire cops to stop the machines behavior we don't like. >I mean, you don't see people putting defective water heaters in prison, right? Why not? Because they have no free will, and are thus deemed incapable of committing crimes.. I'm not proposing putting it in jail, just repair or replacement. On the other hand, people don't ignore their water heater starting fires because "it was designed that way" or "it is a product of its environment and mistreatment". I saying it is irrelevant if the water heater has choice or not. It is simply a problem that needs to be delt with either way. Blame isnt mutually exclusive. The water heater could have a defective design, poor maintenance, and as a result be defective itself. I don't have to believe it has choice or there is a tiny man inside it to go about fixing it and stopping it from burning down my house
vidarh 3y ago
And it would be entirely nonsensical, because just as your actions would be driven by cause and effect, so would their reaction.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  By what grounds could you call it "nonsensical", since by your thesis I was required to make the statement because I have no free will. Nonsensicality, criminality, judgment, quality, all go out the window if we are all just puppets on strings.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    That you had no choice does not affect whether or not a statement is nonsensical. You seem to assume that a lot of judgements we make of actions require that the actions have been made "freely". But we judge things that we all agree does not have free will behind them all the time. E.g. we judge the weather. > Nonsensicality, criminality, judgment, quality, all go out the window if we are all just puppets on strings. None of them go out the window. The morality of how we approach some of them are affected. E.g. I do strongly believe that any judgement of peoples actions morally should account for their lack of ability to act otherwise, and that this e.g. makes punishments or reactions based out of a desire for vengeance entirely immoral, and that punishment in general should be based on an assessment of how to minimise the harm to society as a whole - and that includes taking into account harm to the person you're punishing, but that does not remove the need for judging criminals because criminals still affect society irrespective of how they make their decisions. It does mean that from my point of view a punishment is only justified if you can show that the harm from imprisoning someone sufficiently mitigates risks of harms to society that sufficiently outweigh the harm we do to the person we imprison, and that would certainly affect how you deal with those you imprison, and when you use prison sentences, but it would not end imprisonment. And we are just puppets on a string. I feel comfortable making that statement firmly, because nobody has ever even come up with as much of a definition of "free will" that isn't compatibilist (that is, an illusion over predetermination, though many compatibilists would get irate at me describing it as an illusion) or otherwise does not in any meaningful way make actions "free", much less posited any remotely testable hypothesis for what such "free" decisions even would be that would let our minds influence them without any cause and affect that isn't some mix of deterministic and randomness that we have no meaningful influence over. The burden is on those who believe in free will to, for starters, define it in a logically coherent way other than just arguing in the negative by insisting we're somehow different from all other matter and energy we've observed.

Whenever I see some one denying the existence of free will, I feel like punching him in the face, then saying "Why are you so angry at me? According to you, I couldn't help it!"

AlexandrB 3y ago

That's silly. A NOT gate will change state when stimulated by a logic signal. Neither the signal nor the gate have "free will" in any meaningful sense but it happens anyways. Arguably, you're disproving your own point by eliciting a reaction that's not rational according to someone's belief system.

Turing_Machine 3y ago
Then there's no reason for me not to do it, then. Right? We all should do exactly as evolution encourages us to do in any situation.
- mr_toad 3y ago
  > We all should do exactly as evolution encourages us to do in any situation. What makes you think we don’t?
- vidarh 3y ago
  This argument is logically incoherent. Whether or not you have free will, punching someone in the face is likely to have consequences. That is your reason to consider whether or not to do it. If we assume you have free will, it provides you with the opportunity to actively make the choice that will get you the best outcome. If we assume you do not, then that won't alter the outcomes, nor the reasons to prefer one choice over the other, the only thing that has changed is whether or not the choice you made was a genuine choice or would always play out the same way if we somehow was able to rewind time. That the outcome would be the same given the same input and same state of your mind does not mean there was no reasons not to act a given way, only that you had no agency in which outcome you actually end up with. But the state of your mind would be a factor in that, and a belief that your decisions has no effect on your future outcomes so it doesn't matter what you choose to do certainly would make you less likely to end up with good ones. Whether or not "rewinding time" would let you make different "choices" does not alter that.

wredue 3y ago

That’s not the argument being made there. At a high level, the argument is that free will is an illusion that is highly constrained by your environment. In fact, your own example of punching him in the face only serves to support their case. You’re not free to randomly punch people in the face in most places on earth.

Turing_Machine 3y ago
I am absolutely free to punch people in the face anywhere on earth. Now, I will likely be punished for that, but that doesn't make me incapable of doing it. People commit crimes all the time, dude. If they have no free will, there is absolutely no justification for punishing them.
- wredue 3y ago
  I didn’t say I agreed with the author. Just their logic. I think they are conflating free will with freedom and capability and it sounds a bit off the rails.
- mr_toad 3y ago
  > If they have no free will, there is absolutely no justification for punishing them. Even organisms that clearly lack free will (like bacteria) will respond to stimulus.
- vidarh 3y ago
  > If they have no free will, there is absolutely no justification for punishing them. This presumes a very specific sets of views on morality. One might argue that it makes whatever reaction you feel like justified, because it was not a choice. Certainly if we can't punish you for hitting someone, we can't punish the person you hit if they hit back. Others would argue that while it would remove the moral justification for retribution, free will or not does not need to affect the moral argument for punishment as a means to reduce the chance of reoffending or even general effects on the rest of the population. Free will only affects whether or not you had any immediate control over what you did, not on the effects it had on society, nor to what extent you pose a future risk or whether failure to punish you affects the future risks to society from others, all of which are factors in peoples views on the extent to which punishment is moral.

jjgreen 3y ago

Whenever I see some one denying the existence of free will, I feel like punching him in the face Convince yourself that you actually do have free will by not feeling that urge.

s1artibartfast 3y ago

Who cares if you could help it or not. I can still be angry you are a bad machine with bad programming. I dont give my water-heater a pass for staring fires because "it cant help it". The water-heater is the problem and fully to blame. It should be fixed or replaced.

Turing_Machine 3y ago
> I can still be angry you are a bad machine with bad programming. By what metric would I be a "bad machine". And who put you in charge of deciding what "bad machines" are? > The water-heater is the problem and fully to blame. Nonsense. Water heaters are not sentient beings with free will and cannot be "blamed" for anything. Perhaps the designer can be blamed, or perhaps the homeowner who didn't maintain the water heater can be blamed, but the water heater itself, having no free will, can't be blamed (or punished) for any behavior it exhibits. I mean, you don't see people putting defective water heaters in prison, right? Why not? Because they have no free will, and are thus deemed incapable of committing crimes..
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  >By what metric would I be a "bad machine". And who put you in charge of deciding what "bad machines" are? My metric is machines that punch me in the face are bad, and I put myself in charge of deciding it. If enough people agree with me, we can make rules and hire cops to stop the machines behavior we don't like. >I mean, you don't see people putting defective water heaters in prison, right? Why not? Because they have no free will, and are thus deemed incapable of committing crimes.. I'm not proposing putting it in jail, just repair or replacement. On the other hand, people don't ignore their water heater starting fires because "it was designed that way" or "it is a product of its environment and mistreatment". I saying it is irrelevant if the water heater has choice or not. It is simply a problem that needs to be delt with either way. Blame isnt mutually exclusive. The water heater could have a defective design, poor maintenance, and as a result be defective itself. I don't have to believe it has choice or there is a tiny man inside it to go about fixing it and stopping it from burning down my house

vidarh 3y ago

And it would be entirely nonsensical, because just as your actions would be driven by cause and effect, so would their reaction.

Turing_Machine 3y ago
By what grounds could you call it "nonsensical", since by your thesis I was required to make the statement because I have no free will. Nonsensicality, criminality, judgment, quality, all go out the window if we are all just puppets on strings.
- vidarh 3y ago
  That you had no choice does not affect whether or not a statement is nonsensical. You seem to assume that a lot of judgements we make of actions require that the actions have been made "freely". But we judge things that we all agree does not have free will behind them all the time. E.g. we judge the weather. > Nonsensicality, criminality, judgment, quality, all go out the window if we are all just puppets on strings. None of them go out the window. The morality of how we approach some of them are affected. E.g. I do strongly believe that any judgement of peoples actions morally should account for their lack of ability to act otherwise, and that this e.g. makes punishments or reactions based out of a desire for vengeance entirely immoral, and that punishment in general should be based on an assessment of how to minimise the harm to society as a whole - and that includes taking into account harm to the person you're punishing, but that does not remove the need for judging criminals because criminals still affect society irrespective of how they make their decisions. It does mean that from my point of view a punishment is only justified if you can show that the harm from imprisoning someone sufficiently mitigates risks of harms to society that sufficiently outweigh the harm we do to the person we imprison, and that would certainly affect how you deal with those you imprison, and when you use prison sentences, but it would not end imprisonment. And we are just puppets on a string. I feel comfortable making that statement firmly, because nobody has ever even come up with as much of a definition of "free will" that isn't compatibilist (that is, an illusion over predetermination, though many compatibilists would get irate at me describing it as an illusion) or otherwise does not in any meaningful way make actions "free", much less posited any remotely testable hypothesis for what such "free" decisions even would be that would let our minds influence them without any cause and affect that isn't some mix of deterministic and randomness that we have no meaningful influence over. The burden is on those who believe in free will to, for starters, define it in a logically coherent way other than just arguing in the negative by insisting we're somehow different from all other matter and energy we've observed.