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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. P

• 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.