What does hard determinism entail for ethics ?
When libertarian free will was a widely held belief unexamined by philosophy and Plato convinced much of philosophers that you ought to do what is right by definition, moral philosophers searched to know what is right while rarely examining metaethical questions.
However, when the Enlightenment brought hard determinism into the spotlight, the question of whether or not hard determinism entails that ethics is irrelevant became increasingly important, and the fact that free will is presupposed by our justice systems only made the question more important.
Some, such as David Hume, have settled on a soft determinism to avoid the question, while others have answered by proposing that the non-existence of responsibility entails the non-existence of right and wrong.
My view is that hard determinism does not make ethics irrelevant, because right and wrong are also about justification, more specifically, justification of an action, that is, ethics is also about whether an action is justified or not, and free will is irrelevant to justification, therefore we can continue asking moral questions.
Anyway, what do you think ?
However, when the Enlightenment brought hard determinism into the spotlight, the question of whether or not hard determinism entails that ethics is irrelevant became increasingly important, and the fact that free will is presupposed by our justice systems only made the question more important.
Some, such as David Hume, have settled on a soft determinism to avoid the question, while others have answered by proposing that the non-existence of responsibility entails the non-existence of right and wrong.
My view is that hard determinism does not make ethics irrelevant, because right and wrong are also about justification, more specifically, justification of an action, that is, ethics is also about whether an action is justified or not, and free will is irrelevant to justification, therefore we can continue asking moral questions.
Anyway, what do you think ?
Comments (183)
Free will, which is nonsensically defined anyway (free from what?), plays no role in this.
Both agreements and disagreements with said evaluations are determined too?
And also determined is one believing whether or not one has "free will"?
If you justify an action before committing it, doesn’t that imply free will? If you cannot justify it, you act in a different manner.
We distinguish between 2 types of good and evil: external (sometimes also called physical) and moral. External good and evil are ones that come to you; moral good and evil are ones that come from you, that are intended, or willed, which implies a free will.
Without free will, moral good and evil cannot exist. Granted, external good and evil remain, and an ethics can indeed still be based solely on that; but we could not judge people as being morally good or evil. E.g. we could say that Hitler's actions were bad for society (he produced a lot of external evil), but if all his acts were determined, then we could not say he is himself evil ... which sounds absurd.
Hello.
Free will means that our intentions are partially free from the laws of physics (I say partially because we may not have free will when we are dead or unconscious). E.g. if you tie me up, then I am not free to walk around, but I am still free to intend to walk around.
Free will plays a role in ethics because it makes a difference between an accidental homicide and an intended murder. The latter is more severe because it is willed; the former is less severe because it is not willed.
Hello.
I'd say not necessarily. Justifying means "having a good reason", and we can have a good reason without having free will. E.g. killing someone out of self-defense is justified, and compatible with hard determinism.
I think the evidence justifies some level of rehabilitation and social reform in all but rare cases (of course there are thousands of rare cases). Most crimes are committed because of circumstances that could have in principle been altered by healthier relationships and more competent social planning. The law doesn't tend to hold root causes responsible, but instead considers retribution along with the interests of enforcers as paramount, a perspective that typically does long-term harm. Reform and satisfactory relationships are not easy though, requiring much effort and planning, with complications that society has not come close to resolving. Basically, in terms of justification, culture inclines to be a disaster that rubs off on everyone. Punishment and isolation from the rest of the population can be necessary, but should in general be held to a minimum because of the degrading effects on human motivation.
That doesn't really clarify anything. What are sufficient reasons? Who makes the determination? If someones determines to do something upon deliberation, they judge there to be sufficient reasons for doing it. Or, to take a completely different tack, if something happened in a deterministic world at time T, you could say that any earlier or later state of the world contained within itself sufficient reasons for the that thing to happen at T.
There are only 2 types of justifications or causes: efficient cause (what causes the effect), and final cause (the end goal or intention). If you exclude normative ethics from the discussion, which pertains to final cause, then this leaves only the efficient cause. And to @SophistiCat's point, there is always a sufficient efficient cause, otherwise the act would not have occurred.
To better understand, if HD is true, your position on the deterministic nature of the world is the result of the cosmic computer algorithm that forces you to be, and your presentation of argument for or against is just you reciting your required predetermined outputs.
I see free will as a necessary precondition for any human understanding consistent with a Kantian pure intuition, which is an idea I've heard attributed to Thomas Reid, and which I'd be grateful if someone could confirm or deny.
According to Strawson, less than you might think.
I’m not sure than Kantianism avoids its own sort of determinism (fixed categories , ethical universality and an empirically rational universe).
This is where all the action takes place.
Justice is sought for:
1. Retribution (an eye for an eye).
2. Deterrence (to discourage would-be criminals).
3. Rehabilitation (to reeducate criminals).
4. Sequestration/Isolation (take the criminal out of circulation).
Even if we don't have free will, criminals will still need to be imprisoned to achieve sequestration/isolation.. Since, all of 1, 2, 3, and 4 are implemented in correctional facilities and any one of them, singly or in some combination is considered sufficient warrant to punish an offender, it makes no difference whether a criminal committed a crime of his own volition or not; either way, fae lands up in gaol.
In the absence of free will, retributive, deterrent, and rehabilitative arms of justice don't make sense but sequestration/isolation is still in the game, a live issue, in a manner of speaking.
Could you please clarify that statement? Is it that me making that argument is determined or is it that the existence of the argument itself
Talking about normative ethics cannot be done until we have established whether it is possible or not to even do normative ethics, using normative ethics to establish whether normative ethics are possible is a fundamentally flawed way to approach the problem.
Sure. I have attempted to answer this question here.
Quoting Hello Human
Of course, this would be circular. But that was not my point. My point here was that we cannot have a justification without first having a normative ethics.
This is close to my view. I would however correct you here:
Quoting TheMadFool
I think deterrent and rehabilitative are still applicable without free will. Most of us would agree that a dog does not have free will; yet we can use processes to deter and rehabilitate.
Quoting Hanover
Of course, if everything is determined, then everything is determined. But we can still talk about things being true or false, and good or bad. E.g. Even if I am forced to state that "2+2=3", it is still a false statement. Likewise, even if I am forced to kill an innocent man, it is still a wrongful act (according to most ethics).
I humbly beg to differ. Deterrence and rehabilitation require the ability to change, change one's way of thinking or resist one's urges and to oppose one's innate proclivities; free will is a must for that. Sans free will, these aspects of justice are N/A.
I shall deny, albeit second-handedly.
“....This pure form of sensibility I shall call pure intuition..... (A20/B35)
“....it will be found that there are two pure forms of sensibility, or, pure intuitions, namely, space and time.... (A22/B36)
.....The sphere of phenomena is the only sphere of their validity, and if we venture out of this, no further use can be made of them....” (A39/B56)
Freedom of the will is a necessary precondition of some human understanding, but not any human understanding consistent with pure intuitions. That which takes the place of pure intuitions operating under speculative empirical conditions, are the so-called hypothetical or categorical imperatives, which legislate in the same manner but under practical moral conditions alone. The former has to do with what is, the latter with what ought to be.
“...Now morality does not require the speculative cognition** of freedom; it is enough that I can think it, that its conception involves no contradiction, that it does not interfere with the mechanism of nature. But even this requirement we could not satisfy, if we had not learnt the twofold sense in which things may be taken; and it is only in this way that the doctrine of morality and the doctrine of nature are confined within their proper limits....” (Bxxix)
(** absolutely requiring the pure intuitions of space and time)
For whatever all that’s worth......
Quoting Mww
Do you have a direct reference to Kant for support of this claim? It's what I was getting at and it seemed to follow from my very imperfect understanding of Kant, but do you know where he specifically asserts that the "speculative cognition of freedom" is required for judgment or something along those lines?
By this I’m guessing you’re referring to:
Quoting Mww
If so, then no, I take that to mean freedom of will is required for understandings other than empirical. Pure intuitions are the necessary prerequisites of knowledge a posteriori, or, experience. Moral understandings, with respect to Kantian moral philosophy at least, and deontology in general, are never derived from experience, but are given as a fundamental human condition, iff the transcendental conception of freedom is subjectively granted, not as the determinant of moral law, which arises from pure practical reason alone in the form of imperatives, but as merely sufficient logical causality for the possibility of such determinations.
Quoting Hanover
Actually, Kant says just the opposite, as quoted from Bxxix above, in that morality, the only proper employment of the will in the first place, does NOT require speculative cognition of freedom. This follows from the theoretical procedures incorporated in his epistemological and moral theses, insofar as judgements, which are merely procedural constituents, are far down the line from antecedent conditions from which they arise. It is then the case that freedom is not required for judgements, as such, at all, but only as an unconditioned causality for that which is to be judged. What is to be judged are our actions; our actions are judged as to their correspondence to our will; our will determines the actions autonomously; the will’s autonomy is given by the transcendental idea of freedom, insofar as the will is free to determine what the action ought to be, in order to sustain the moral constitution of the individual subject to whom the will belongs.
It’s like, say....necessity. We cannot cognize necessity, but only that which is necessary. Same for freedom, in that we cannot cognize freedom, but only that which is free.
There is, on the other hand, this, which says freedom is a necessary attribute, but not that it must be cognized as such:
“...Now I affirm that we must attribute to every rational being which has a will that it has also the idea of freedom and acts entirely under this idea. For in such a being we conceive a reason that is practical, that is, has causality in reference to its objects. Now we cannot possibly conceive a reason consciously receiving a bias from any other quarter with respect to its judgements, for then the subject would ascribe the determination of its judgement not to its own reason, but to an impulse. It must regard itself as the author of its principles independent of foreign influences. Consequently, the will of a rational being must regard itself as free, that is to say, the will of such a being cannot be a will of its own except under the idea of freedom....”
(Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, Sec 3, Para. 4)
Lotsa weeds way down here in the swamp of proper philosophy. Most don’t like getting their feet that wet. Might ruin their post-modernist analytic Gucci’s, doncha know.
You can deter a dog from barking by using a shock collar. Similarly, rehabilitation or training the dog to obey his master can be done by rewarding desired behaviours and punishing undesired ones.
One word, Recidivism
For the record: I think hard determinism is demonstrably false, for if a is true, then that's evidence that b is false and vice versa. But you're asking what it would entail if true - so, I take it you're asking what is entailed if we lack free will.
Well, if we lack free will, then we lack all obligations. Or at least, that seems self-evident. Obligations, whether moral, instrumental or epistemic, presuppose free will. Thus, if we lack free will, then we lack any obligation to do or think anything. As such, if hard determinism is true, nothing you think is anything you ought to think, or ought not to think, and likewise for anything you do. So it is a kind of dead-end.
Recividism refutes your belief that criminals can be deterred or rehabilitated. Mind you, not in an absolute sense because in some, but problematically, not all, cases, what you recommend does work.
If free will exists, there's a good chance that a criminal will see the error of his ways and turn over a new leaf in his life but, more importantly, a criminal can resist/overcome his predelictions/tendencies.
What we should or should not do cannot be derived from being.
Since determinism is part of being, it has no influence on ought.
And the free will has also no connection with it, because it is only a feeling.
These are all islands of knowledge that have nothing to do with each other.
Mmmh... Let's put it this way: For a given case, if recidivism happens, then deterrence and rehabilitation will not be effective, regardless if we have free will or not. Likewise, if recidivism does not happen, then deterrence and rehabilitation will be effective, regardless if we have free will or not. In short, free will does not change the effects of deterrence and rehabilitation.
That said, I agree that the existence of free will would add another "internal force" that can change our behavior.
In the end, for our practical purposes, it should make no difference. If true, then we still need to apply laws to deter bad behavior all the while striving to make laws as humane as possible.
If false, then the same consideration applies.
It's fine if many determinists think that criminals or people who commit crimes (of small offence) should be thus treated less harshly. But this option should be the one we have in mind we thinking about reforming criminal justice the world over.
has any meaning?
My personal opinion is that if we have free will, rehabilitative and deterrent aspects of justice will work because a criminal has the ability to change his ways. There's no guarantee of course since a criminal's proclivities might get the better of faer; the conflict between a person's free will and faer nature not always resolving in favor of the former. Thus, yes, even if we did possess free will, recidivism won't just go away.
In the absence of free will, recidivism would be the norm; no criminal, no matter what rehabilitative/deterrent measures, would be able to resist faer tendency to commit crimes.
It appears then that we have a simple, albeit crude, way of testing for the existence of free will; we could look at the rates of recidivism. The higher the rates among known outlaws, the lower the probability of free will - basically recidivism is inversely proportional to the degree of freedom of will we possess.
What say you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
Say someone implanted a device into Sam that makes it so that the next time Sam gets angry at someone, but then decides to forgive them, the device activates forcing Sam into a fit of rage and killing them. Sam bumps into someone on the street and gets so angry he kills them without the device activating. Is Sam deserving of punishment? I’d say yes. Even though he couldn’t have done otherwise. Because he intended to do harm and did what he intended to do. That seems to be what really matters for ethics.
Well, it may be necessary in some sense - just not in the sense of physical indeterminism. Indeed, if one insists on considering the question in this key (determinism vs. indeterminism), then indeterminism appears to be just as inimical to moral responsibility, if not more so, than determinism. (Hence some philosophers, like Galen Strawson, go so far as to argue that moral responsibility is altogether impossible.)
Quoting khaled
Yeah, one of the Frankfurt cases. So not this sense either. But clearly some sort of freedom - ability to do otherwise - is usually thought of as necessary. (At least in our present Western culture; attitudes towards moral responsibility have varied.)
No, but what is the point?
Can you give an example of how to derive an ought state from a state of being?
If xing is wrong, you ought not x, yes?
Xing is wrong.
Therefore you ought not x.
How do you know that X is wrong? That's just asking the question shifted.
Example: Is it right or wrong for a resource-poor country to invade a resource-rich neighboring country?
Please infer based on the facts alone.
By my reason.
Anyway, you've missed the point. I derived an ought from an is. Here, again:
1. If Xing is wrong, then we ought not to do X
2. Xing is wrong
3. Therefore, we ought not to do X
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I take back what I said. Free will is not another force that we add to sum up among the other inclinations. Rather, free will can always choose against all the inclinations, no matter their intensity. That's what makes it free.
Sorry, I don't understand a word, not even the first sentence:
"1. If Xing is wrong, then we ought not to do X".
Who or what is "Xing"?
Rape is wrong, yes? Don't be dumb and say "how do you know?" That's a different issue - that's an issue in epistemology and that's why I said 'X'. Focus your mind on the topic at hand. Can you get an ought from an is? Yes. Here:
1. If rape is wrong, then you ought not to rape
2. Rape is wrong
3. Therefore, you ought not to rape
Done. Ought derived from an is.
Maybe you think nothing is right or wrong in reality. Then you're silly and confused. Silly because there's no reasonable way to arrive at that conclusion. And confused because it would make no real difference to my argument, for if it is 'possible' for an act to be wrong that's sufficient to do the trick, as you'd then have to accept that it is 'possible' to derive an ought from an is.
If you think that it is impossible for any act to be right or wrong, then you're even more silly and confused. Even more silly because it is harder to show that it is impossible for anything to be right or wrong than to show that nothing is actually right or wrong. And even more confused because now you'd have to believe that it is impossible for there to be oughts, and so saying 'you can't get an ought from an is' would be akin to saying 'you can't get a square circle from a married bachelor'.
Petitio principii.
Points 1 and 3 seem logical to me, but point 2 does not. Why is gang rape wrong, for example? Some have fun and there is only one victim. In the sense of utilitarianism this could be commanded.
What is an "inclination"? For example, if someone feels sleepy does he have an inclination to fall asleep?
Just wondering, in what way did you arrive at the opposite conclusion?
In my humble opinion, high recidivism rates would mean we have no control over our preferences (here desire to commit crimes) and that we can't, most importantly, resist/overcome them no matter what the consequences. Hence, I believe, the phenomenon. No?
A low frequency of recidivism, on the other hand, would mean we can override our "programming."
You make a good point though - we can't design an experiment with test and control subjects among humans. Nonetheless, we can compare humans with artificial entities, I'm referring to robots, that can't defy their nature (what they're instructed to do).
Incidentally, this argument refutes utilitarianism:
1. If utilitarianism is the correct normative ethical theory, then gang rape is right (if the gang is sufficiently big)
2. Gang rape is wrong (irrespective of the size of the gang)
3. Therefore utilitarianism is not the correct normative ethical theory.
I mean, do you seriously think any premise in an argument that has the conclusion 'therefore utilitarianism is correct' is going to be more plausible than 'gang rape is wrong'?!?
So, if you try and argue for nihilism your argument needs to have premises all of which are more plausible than 'rape is wrong'. Good luck!
Furthermore, any argument for moral nihilism will, with small adjustment, entail normative nihilism. And that's absurd - indeed, self refuting.
Good point. But almost every action has disadvantages for someone (animals included). How do you want to offset these disadvantages?
Or in other words, what is the correct normative ethical theory?
I agree that rape is wrong (except perhaps for extreme situations where it would be the only way to enable survival of mankind by reproduction). But I have a reason for thinking so: rape causes needless suffering to the woman. I think that the facts of "right" and "wrong" are derived from the experience of pain and pleasure.
Xing fu - was there the other day. The company was top notch - a judge, an environmental engineer, a surgeon, and two businessmen, and a lady with her baby - but the food could've been better although I quite liked the soup.
The exception is when we have good independent reason to distrust our rational intuitions about certain sorts of activity. If, for instance, one lives in a culture in which, say, homophobic attitudes are constantly promoted, then one's intuitions about the morality of same sex relations should be viewed with suspicion, especially if the denizens of other cultures do not share the same rational intuitions. That's when theorizing has a role.
But anyway, to bring this back to the topic at hand: hard determinism entails that we lack all obligations, as free will is surely something obligations require? Yet as we clearly do have obligations, hard determinism should be rejected. For any case for hard determinism will have a premise less plausible than that we are obliged not to do x, where x is some clearly wrong act.
The human species isn't a human. It doesn't die and you can't kill it and it has no interests. It does not experience pleasure or pain and it has no will.
Obligations are more clearly owed to persons than species. But anyway, if people freely decide not to procreate, no wrong has been done. And it'd be wrong to make them breed - very wrong.
Ok, but if mankind went extinct it would cancel the opportunity for further human experiences and their evolution. Surely it would prevent a lot of experiences of pain but also of pleasure, which are apparently more prevalent (since most people value life more than death).
Why? Obligations are just something we want to fulfill to avoid pain of punishment or conscience. They seem compatible with the fact that ultimately all our acts are completely determined by factors that are out of our control.
You think that the power of will can overcome any inclination to sleep?
Indeed, I think that may work. The following assumptions would have to be true:
1. The inclination for recidivism would always or almost always have to be present.
2. If free will exists, many criminals would freely choose to not repeat the crimes.
Quoting TheMadFool
That sounds correct. The robot would have to be virtually the same as the human subject in every way - e.g. same memories, inclinations, situation, etc. - minus free will.
Hopefully there exist arguments on free will that don't rely on waiting on this level of technology haha.
Why would it matter how strong an inclination is if free will is not a force? You said that free will is not a force and can choose against all inclinations no matter their intensity.
Inclination is not a physical force? But inclination to fall asleep is a physical force in the brain. All physical forces give acceleration to mass and their strength is equal to acceleration x mass.
Let's clarify what you are saying. Free will can overcome an internal force in the brain, such as inclination to fall asleep, no matter how strong the internal force is, but only up to a certain point of strength of the internal force. If the internal force is stronger than this point, free will cannot overcome it. Is that what you mean? If so, why would there be such a point in the strength of the internal force?
The ability to negate/say no to is the key to freedom and thus, by extension, also free will. To comply/agree/say yes to means one has surrendered to forces beyond oneself and to the will of others, basically losing one's autonomy.
Maybe a better example: You have the choice to help a friend move or to watch a movie. You have an inclination towards the latter because it is more comfortable, but are still free to choose the former.
Affirmation (yes) is what inanimate, non-free, objects do. They follow (comply with) the laws of nature - falling, flowing, breaking, etc. - and our will too - moving to wherever we wish and staying put until we decide to move them elsewhere.
Animals to some extent but humans for certain are notoriously rebellious; not to say we don't obey rules/laws but we can, if we so desire, resist/defy any and all regulations, only fear keeping us in line as it were. Negation (no) then is what free will is about.
Drives towards pleasure and away from pain are constituted by forces in the brain (neurotransmitters, hormones, electrical signals). Even if we suppose there are also non-physical forces acting in the brain, these non-physical forces must cause physical forces in the brain in order to control the behavior of our physical bodies. So all physical acts of will, whether of physical or non-physical origin, are immediately caused by physical forces in the brain and are dependent on the strengths of these forces. If free will is something non-physical, then in order to overcome some physical force in the brain it must cause a greater counter-force in the brain.
To recognize that there are reasons to do things involves recognizing that one has options - that there are alternative possibilities available and thus one needs to consider what one has most reason to do or believe.
Well, that's what taking oneself to be free involves. As Kant said, to act is to act under the idea of freedom. The very notion that we have obligations then, presupposes that we have free will, for one can't take seriously that one has any reason to do anything without presupposing alternative possibilities and the ability to select which one be actualized.
Second, it is manifest to the reason of most that if you ought to do something, then you can do it. And if you ought not to do x, then you can refrain from doing it. As Kant said, 'ought implies can'.
If, then, we have obligations, we have the possibility of not fulfilling them, and thus the possibility of doing and not doing them and the ability to select which one is the case.
All you are doing is describing behaviour. And yes, one does not need free will to go through the motions, mental or otherwise. But one does seem to need it in order for any of one's behaviour to qualify as the fulfilling of, or violation of, an obligation. And it is plausible that unless some of one's behavior can so qualify, one does not have any obligations. That is, once more, because it seems a condition on having obligations that one is able to fulfill or fail to fulfill them.
Yes, we choose the option that seems to maximize our pleasure and minimize our pain (according to our evaluation). We are programmed that way. An autonomous car is programmed to stop at red lights and go at green lights; it too has options when reaching a crossroad: stop, go, turn left, turn right...
Quoting Bartricks
An autonomous car is programmed to stop at red lights and usually it can do it. But if it malfunctions it can keep moving.
What you call "obligations" can be rephrased as "programming", which doesn't require free will.
Well, that's a highly controversial and fairly obviously false pyschological thesis. It's not clear what bearing it has on the current issue - if we're programmed to behave in any way, then we lack free will in that respect and thus will lack any obligations. We'll engage in the behaviour, but none of it will qualify as satisfying or violating obligations. So you're talking past the issue.
Quoting litewave
Yes, and cars are not agents and do not have obligations. My car is not obliged to start when I turn the key, is it? When Basil Fawlty thrashed his car for breaking down, his behaviour was absurd (and therein lay the humour) precisely because he was treating his car as if it was an agent.
The point is that if hard determinism is true - which it isn't - then we lack free will and thus lack obligations (not just moral ones either, but instrumental and epistemic ones as well).
What I have done is explain why this would be the case: obligations presuppose free will. They presuppose possession of reason, and possessing reason means one acts under the idea of free will. And one is not obliged to do something unless one has the ability to do it or refrain from doing it - and so again, the notion of an obligation is intimately bound up with the notion of free will.
One can have free will and no obligations, but one can't have obligations and no free will. So, if we have no free will, then we have no obligations.
Is it? If you mean cases where someone sacrifices his own pleasure for someone else or for some honorable principle, don't you think such a sacrifice has given him a good feeling of satisfaction that was worth the sacrifice and therefore prevailed over the sacrificed pleasure?
Quoting Bartricks
We still have free will in the compatibilist sense.
Quoting Bartricks
Obligations are just a special word for "programming" when referring to humans. We are driven by obligations like machines are driven by their programming. And we can fail to fulfill our obligations like machines can fail to work according to their programming (because of a malfunction, some external interference or a flaw in the program).
Quoting Bartricks
The car is programmed to start when you turn the key, like we are programmed to fulfill our obligations.
Yes, it is highly controversial - it is known as psychological egoism and has virtually no defenders. It's exposed to so many prima facie counterexamples that it just isn't plausible.
Quoting litewave
That's confused. If compatibilism is true, then hard determinism is false. This thread is about what hard determinism entails. So it must be granted that compatibilism is false, for compatibilism is incompatible with hard determinism (hard determinists are incompatibilists about free will).
Quoting litewave
Question begging. We don't have any obligations if hard determinism is true. See earlier reasoning for why - reasoning you've not challenged.
What counterexamples? Like the one I gave about self-sacrifice?
Quoting Bartricks
Ok, so what is the difference between hard determinism and "ordinary" determinism (compatibilism)? Both views say that all our actions are ultimately completely determined by factors over which we have no control. The only difference seems to be a trivial one: compatibilists say that even in this situation we still have a capability called "free will" (because we can still do what we want) while hard determinists say that this capability is not worthy of being called "free will".
Quoting Bartricks
We still have our programming, which includes our obligations and everything else that motivates us.
Yes, there are tons of them.
Let's say I proposed that everyone is concerned for the welfare of others and does nothing out of self-interest at all. That's known as psychological altruism. Is it plausible? No. Sometimes - often - we appear to do things for the sake of ourselves alone, and sometimes - often - partially out of self-interest. ONe could reinterpret those cases as involving self-deception - but at that point one is following one's theory and not following the evidence. So, psychological egoism is no more or less plausible than psychological altruism - that is, not very plausible at all.
The plausible thesis is banal: we are motived by other-directed and self-directed desires. Sometimes we do things for the sake of ourselves, sometimes for the sake or others or some cause or what-not; and sometimes a mixture.
A thesis that says we are only subject to one class of desires - be they exclusively self-directed or other-directed - is implausible on its face (though it may tell one something about the proponent of the view, namely that they themselves are predominantly self-interested or predominantly altruistic, for it is hard to see why else, apart from confusion, they would find such a view prima facie plausible).
Compatibilism is not a form of determinism. Determinism is a thesis about how events are unfolding - it is the thesis that every event that occurs had to occur given the past and the laws of nature. It is not a theory about free will.
Compatibilism is the view that free will is 'compatible' with determinism. So compatibilism isn't the view that determinism is true, or that it is false. It is a view about what can co-exist with what. (Many contemporary compatibilists are agnostic on whether determinism is true or not - they think it simply doesn't matter where free will is concerned, for we have it either way).
The opposite of determinism is indeterminism.
The opposite of compatibilism is incompatibilism.
The incompatibilist believes that free will and determinism are incompatible. They do not, qua incompatibilist, take a stand on whether determinism is true or not.
An incompatibilist who believes that we have free will and thus that determinism is false is known as a 'libertarian'. (Not to be confused with 'libertarian' in political philosophy).
An incompatibilist who believes that determinism is true and thus that we lack free will is known as a 'hard determinist'.
An incompatibilist who believes that determinism is false but that we still lack what is needed for free will is known as a 'hard incompatibilist'.
Anyway, hard determinism is, by definition, incompatible with compatibilism.
Unlike the example of falling asleep, a drive towards pleasure and away from pain does not take over the body's actions (with a few exceptions like a jump-scare). We may be very tempted to do a certain act, but ultimately the decision to act comes from the will. E.g. out of anger, I may be tempted to punch someone, but ultimately the act of punching was my choice. It would be incorrect to claim such an act was done against my will.
I agree there's a distinction to be made but look at it this way: Imagine you see a person complying with another person's instructions. Can you tell, from that alone, whether this person is doing so willingly (free) /unwillingly (not free)? No! Therein lies the rub.
It seems not only implausible but also self-contradictory. What does "concerned" mean? Does it mean that it would make the "concerned" person happy or satisfied if he did something for the welfare of others? In that case the resulting pleasure (happiness or satisfaction) is the person's motive that makes it worth for him to do the act for the welfare of others.
If a person is not motivated by his own pleasure, it means he doesn't care whether to do or not to do the act, or he does the act unintentionally. It doesn't mean that he cares for the welfare of others. Careless and unintentional acts certainly occur but obviously no free will is required for them; any machine can act without care or intention.
Yes, and still it seems that the difference between hard determinists and compatibilists is trivial in that they both say that in a deterministic world where all our acts are ultimately completely determined by factors that are out of our control we still have the ability to do what we want - but while compatibilists are satisfied to call this ability "free will", hard determinists refuse to call it so.
Why? It's the gist of a standard neuroscientific description.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
And why would you resist punching the person? Whatever reason you would have for the resisting, that reason is the minion in your mind that acts against the minion of anger. And the result of this battle between minions will be whether you punch or not.
I can't always tell; but there is a difference between perception and reality. And that difference matters. E.g. the difference between freely accepting a marriage proposal, and marrying a robot that is programmed to say yes.
It may be a correct neuro scientific description of the brain activities, but the will, being free, must be above those deterministic factors. Picture the cartoon with the white and black angels on each shoulder of the person. The black angel typically represents inclinations. The white angel typically represents reason and conscience. The will is the person in the middle that chooses to side with one of the angels. It makes the final call.
Quoting litewave
To clarify, are you arguing from the standpoint that free will does not exist? in which case, I would agree with you that our acts are determined by the vector sum of all internal and external forces/reasons. But if we start with the premise that free will exists, then this description leaves no room for a will to be free. Could you clarify your standpoint? Then we can go from there.
But why would the will choose one side or the other? I can only imagine that the will has motives, some stronger than others, and the will's decision is the result of the pushes of those motives. For example, you are hungry but have no money, so there is a push to steal food. And the more hungry you are, the stronger the push. But there is also a counter-push by the fear of being caught or by ethical concerns. So your will goes in the direction of the stronger push, but there may also be a lot of inner struggle and hesitation as the opposing forces grow stronger and weaker based on changing information from the environment, emerging and interacting thoughts, feelings and memories, etc.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
The only kind of free will I can understand is the compatibilist free will to do what one wants. I don't know how a different kind of free will could work.
Fair point but I was trying to point out that if you comply, your free will is meaningless, it doesn't matter whether you have it or not.
In a situation with 2 competing values of the same type, say pleasure, indeed the stronger of the 2 always wins. E.g. In a situation where I choose between chocolate and vanilla ice creams and all else being equal, if my favourite flavour is chocolate; then I will necessarily choose chocolate ice cream.
In a situation with 2 competing values of different types, say pleasure vs ethical, I am free to choose which type is most important, no matter how strong the values are. E.g. Buying ice cream would give me great pleasure, but giving the money to charity would produce a bit of ethical good works. Although hard to quantify, the first value seems greater than the second one, yet I can still choose the second path.
I argue it matters, for 2 reasons.
1. Even if you comply, you are still free to change your mind later.
2. Free choice implies more than one option. If the will is only free when saying no and nothing else, then there is only one option, which makes the choice no longer free. This looks like a self-contradiction.
1 is just another of saying what I said (veto not volo, kind courtesy of @180 Proof)
2 Obeying/complying rounds off to no free will; resisting/refusing rounds off to free will.
But apparently the second value is greater for you, at least in that moment, and that's why you chose it. Why else would you choose it?
You can have motives of various types but they cause forces of the same type in your brain (physical forces), which then cause motion of your body.
Indeed, if I choose the second path, then it means that to me, the ethical is a priority over pleasure, no matter how great the pleasure is expected to be. Now I claim that this original choice, i.e. prioritizing the ethical vs pleasure or vice versa, is freely chosen. Then everything else is determined from there.
Here is the order of the events:
(1) We freely choose to prioritize pleasure over the ethical or vice versa. This is free.
(2) For a situation, we predict the outcome resulting from different decisions. This is determined.
(3) We pick the decision that will result in the greatest outcome we have prioritized in (1). This is determined.
Quoting litewave
Agreed. The motives are a result of the free choice made in (1). From there, everything else is determined.
But why would you choose to prioritize carnal pleasure over ethical or vice versa? It seems you would need a motive to prioritize it.
We are getting into a regress: In order to choose act X, you need to choose the motive to choose act X. But in order to choose the motive to choose act X, you need to choose the motive to choose the motive to choose act X. This regress goes into infinity or it stops at a motive that you didn't choose and this motive determines all the consequent motives that lead to act X.
But if the "choice" is determined by a motive that is determined, then the whole system is determined, and free choice is just an illusion. Isn't that simply hard determinism? What part of compatibilist free will is free?
On the other hand, if free will is to exist, at least to be entertained, then there must be a component that is truly free. In which case, there is no prior motive to drive the choice described in (1). Note, this does not violate the principle of sufficient reason, because a free will, by definition, is a sufficient reason to explain the free choice.
Note that I haven't given a reason to believe in free will yet. We can do that once the above has been clarified.
What is silly is thinking that all of our desires are of one kind rather than the other. It's as silly as thinking everyone is over 6ft and if one encounters anyone who appears to be under 6ft, then that's an illusion- must be, because everyone's over 6ft.
The difference between them is not 'trivial' then. They are opposites. One is an incompatibilism, the other isn't - by definition.
Note, compatibilism is not a view about whether we have free will. It is a view about what it is compatible with. So, one can be a compatibilist and disbelieve in free will. There's no name for that combination, but it is logically possible.
The important point is that compatibilism is incompatible with hard determinism because hard determinism essentially involves a commitment to incompatibilism, and thus essentially involves rejecting compatibilism.
The part that we can do what we want (although our wants are determined by factors over which we have no control).
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
You can do something without a motive, but that just means you don't care about doing or not doing it, or you do it unintentionally. Is that free will? Any machine can act without care or intention.
Still, the desire is yours, and so the pleasure from the fulfillment of this desire will be yours too (and I will be happy too, of course). So you are motivated by your own pleasure, whether your desire is self-directed or other-directed.
A hard determinist thinks that free will requires more than this. (Most contemporary compatibilists think free will requires more than this too - but the 'more' it requires turns out to be satisfiable under determinism).
A hard determinist is an incompatibilist about free will, so they think that determinism precludes free will. They would not dispute that if determinism is true we still sometimes do what we want. Rather, they argue that merely 'doing what one wants' is not sufficient for free will, as doing what one wants is compatible with, say, having been programmed to want what you want (or, more straightforwardly, it is compatible with everything one does being the causal product of matters one had nothing to do with). Yet that is not compatible with being morally responsible for one's decisions - which is what free will makes one. Therefore, free will requires more than simply doing what one wants - it requires that one's wants are suitably one's own (and incompatibilists think that it is only if indeterminism is true that one can be said to be the true originator of one's decisions and so on).
Basically, if you think it is, in principle, entirely just to punish someone - and to punish them because they 'deserve' it - for doing what they want, even if their doing so was causally determined, then you're a compatibilist. If not, then you're an incompatibilist.
These are common fallacies that lead people to conclude that psychological egoism is true.
First, that a desire is located in you, does not make it self-interested. Whether a desire is self-interested or altruistic is determined not by its location, but its content.
If you deny this, then all you are actually saying when you say that we always act out of self-interest, is that we always act on the basis of our own desires - which is true, but not an interesting psychological thesis, for it is entirely compatible with those desires often being altruistic.
So, the first mistake is to confuse the 'location' of a desire with its 'direction'. Altruistic desires are not desires that lack a desirer. They are desires whose satisfaction requires something happening to someone else, rather than to you (there are other, non-altruistic desires like this - such as sadistic desires). If I want you to be happy, then my desire will not be satisfied unless something happens to you - unless, that is, you are happy - rather than anything to happening to me. Similarly if I wanted you to be unhappy - that too is 'other directed' in that something needs to happen to someone else in order for it to be satisfied.
The second mistake is to confuse the consequence of a desire being satisfied, with its direction. If my desires are satisfied, then I derive satisfaction (by definition). But it does not follow that my desire was 'for' my own satisfaction. Whether the desire is self or other directed is not, then, determined by its outcome for its bearer, but by what it would take to satisfy it.
An unintentional act would be the opposite of an act from free will, because the word 'will' is synonymous to 'intention'. E.g. I will to do this = I intend to do this. If you use the word 'motive' in the sense of 'intention', then the original free choice I speak of in (1) is the motive you speak of. In other words:
(1) We freely set our intention to prioritize pleasure over the ethical or vice versa.
If the act of setting our intention is free, you need an intention to set the intention. Regress again.
Why would you set the intention? If you have no motive/intention for the act of setting the intention, then the intention just appears in your mind without being chosen by you. It is the same problem as with motives, only now you replaced "motive" with "intention". Intention is a kind of motive that drives a specific action.
Why choose pleasure? Because it is pleasurable.
Why do the right (ethical) thing? Because it is the right thing to do.
Pleasure and the ethical are last ends in themselves. This means that these are ultimately the only motives for why we do anything, and also that there cannot be any other motives beyond them.
If not for another motive, then how do we choose one over the other? Free will.
We choose that for which we have a stronger motive. There are various kinds of pleasure: from eating, relaxation, sex, watching an interesting movie, doing interesting work, philosophizing, praying, etc. The satisfaction from doing the right/ethical thing is a kind of pleasure too.
I say there are not one but two last ends. Yes, being ethical can be pleasurable, but that is not necessary. In fact, siding with Kant (I think), if the intent of a good act is only for the pleasure that results from it, then the act has no moral worth. A good act has moral worth only if done with the intent that it is the right thing to do. Pleasure can still result, but as a side effect.
Yes but there are various kinds of pleasure (pleasant feelings) - carnal, intellectual, spiritual, ethical... Avoidance of pain is a motive too, but since pain is the opposite of pleasure, avoidance of pain is the same as seeking to increase or maintain pleasure.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
If your act is not motivated by pleasure, it means that you don't care about the act. Caring about an act means that you gain some satisfaction from doing it.
Sounds good. We could say the "pleasurable" is seeking pleasure and comfort, and also avoiding pain and discomfort.
Quoting litewave
I'd argue the opposite. If you perform the good act only as a means to the end of pleasure, it means that if the pleasure were to be gone, then you wouldn't do the act, thereby showing that you don't care about the act itself. On the other hand, if you do it for the ethical, then you would always perform the ethical act even if it were not always pleasurable, thereby showing you care about the act itself.
If you desire to perform an ethical act, performing it will satisfy the desire and thus bring you pleasure. It may be a different kind of pleasure than, say, carnal pleasure, but it is still a satisfaction of a desire.
Not everything that is ethical is pleasurable. E.g. After having committed a crime and having a change of heart about it, you decide to turn yourself in; not because it is pleasurable but because you believe it is the right thing to do.
Ok, it depends on what satisfactions (of desires or intentions) you are willing to include under pleasure. If you don't want to call all satisfactions "pleasure", then just say that all our freely willed acts are motivated by satisfactions.
My understanding is that "satisfaction" is the feeling we get from attaining an expected good. E.g. If I have good expectations for a movie and these are met, then I am satisfied.
If that description is correct, then satisfaction occurs after the attainment of any good, pleasure or ethical, and thus it cannot be what drives us to choose one good over the other.
Why not? We choose the good that brings us greater satisfaction.
1. The laws of nature [premise]
2. We are part of nature [premise]
Ergo,
3. No free will [conclusion]
unless...
1 is false - there are no laws of nature [try hard and you might be able to see it]
and/or
2 is false - we are not part of nature [we might not be]
It depends on how you define free will. If you ask your friend if he wants coffee or tea and he chooses coffee, do you say: "That wasn't free will, because that was clear since the Big Bang, please choose what you really want!"?
We have choices. Like it or not, as per the argument which I simply reproduced, none of the choices you make are free i.e. they're determined by forces beyond our control. That should cover all the bases, no?
Likewise, My True Nature stands above the laws which make it up.
Nature is not subject to its laws. An example?
Your true nature stands above the laws... An example?
You can also define that free will prevails when one has the feeling to decide freely. If there is coffee and tea in my kitchen and I decide for the tea and also have the feeling to have decided freely, then I could speak of free will.
Otherwise, every thing is what you define it to be. If I define "free will" as a hotdog, then a hotdog is just free will.
The container cannot be contained by its content.
Nature is the super-container of everything except itself. So how can anything in nature limit it?
I am also a container.
Nature doesn't follow the law. Nature is the law.
I don't follow the laws of my nature. I am the root principle which the various sub-principles of my nature are rooted.
I agree that we can engage in moral deliberation, and speak about things like values, intentions, actions, justifications, and personal responsibility, without relying on a conception of free will.
On the other hand, I think your approach concedes too much to the hard determinist. I suggest the alleged conflict between determinism and freedom is a paradigm case of a philosophical pseudoproblem. There is a sort of freedom that animals like us clearly do have. I would argue that this freedom of ours is compatible with whatever degree of "causal determination" may be said to apply to things like us or to the whole cosmos. Accordingly, I see little room for hard determinism. It's not clear to me what could motivate a hard determinist to argue against the sort of compatibilist view I've indicated -- short of something like a radically reductive eliminativism, which I would reject on other grounds.
Yes, going to jail is highly unpleasurable but not turning himself in might be even more unpleasurable for him due to pangs of conscience or maybe a religious belief. Such a decision is surely highly emotional, it's not just that he plainly observes that turning himself in is the right thing to do.
If a person doesn't act in the direction of their strongest motive/pleasure/satisfaction then why would he act so? It seems that such an act would be unmotivated, at least to the extent of the difference between the person's motive (if any) for the act and his stronger counter-motive. But any machine is capable of an unmotivated act.
It is not unmotivated since the act is motived by the ethical. So to reiterate: The end goal between pleasure and the ethical, i.e. black angel and white angel, is freely chosen. After that, the drive is indeed the strongest motive to that end goal, which once reached, will produce some satisfaction.
Let me try another way: If a seemingly morally good act is always motivated by pleasure or satisfaction to oneself, then it sounds like all acts are inherently selfish. But as selfishness is typically seen as immoral, it would follow that there really are no morally good acts. Doesn't this sound absurd?
But if a motive appears only after the choice of the goal, it means that the choice itself (the act of choosing the goal) is unmotivated.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Even if all acts are motivated by the actor's own pleasure or satisfaction, some acts may be directed to helping or benefitting others so these could be called altruistic. Loving acts typically bring pleasure to both the actor and the person to whom the act is directed.
As I see it, nothing prevents the choice of the end to be motivated by the end itself. Choose pleasure because the end is pleasurable, or choose the ethical because the end is righteous.
Quoting litewave
Yes, but if the drive is only the pleasure to oneself and nothing else, then the pleasure to others is merely a byproduct or an accident. Like a rock falling down a cliff which happens to hit a criminal and prevents a crime - it's a good outcome, but there is no merit to the rock.
Then the end is a motive that will make the person choose this end, unless the person has a stronger counter-motive.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
The pleasure provided to others from an altruistic act is not just a byproduct of the act; it is the condition on which the pleasure of the giver depends.
There is no such thing as justification under hard determinism. Everything is determined. Justification is just an utterance made without any meaning. Everything is determined.
The real problem with hard determinism is that there really isn't any discussion in this thread. It's all been determined. Now as fantastic as is may seem, the Big Bang determined persistent discussion about all kinds of subjects. Pure Black Magic.
Hard Determinists have created a more fantastical tale than the stories in the Bible, yet they believe it. Why? Because people like to create their own religious stories that they can believe in. Religious beliefs are archetypical. Determinism is just the latest religious doctrine.
The end is indeed what motivates the will to choose it, but not because of its strength (those general ends don't have a strength; only particular instances of them have a strength); but rather because of its nature. E.g. pleasure is a subjective value whereas the ethical is an objective value.
Quoting litewave
That's fine. So it can be a byproduct or a means to an end. But the point is that the pleasure to others is still done for my sake and not theirs. The act is merely a tool for my own pleasure, and if the tool were to cease providing me pleasure, then I would drop it. Altruism is supposed to be selfless, or, at best, it is my pleasure that is the byproduct.
Ethics and pleasure are both general/abstract concepts which in a concrete situation manifest in concrete motives, that is, in a concrete ethical concern or a concrete desire for a concrete experience of pleasure, which are both subjectively experienced and move the person toward performing an act.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
These two pleasures are inseparable.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Which means you would stop desiring to perform the ethical act.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
An altruistic act can be seen as "selfless" in the sense that it is directed to benefitting others without giving the actor certain kinds of pleasure such as carnal or corrupt, or while causing the actor carnal displeasure or even harm.
Sounds good. So my point is that the initial choice of prioritizing the ends of pleasure or the ethical, which can be made prior to any particular instance, cannot be motivated by their strength, since as general concepts, they don't have one.
My bigger point is that, while the initial choice is not motivated by something other than the ends themselves, it is neither random nor a guess. It is not random since it is willed, and it is not a guess since the choice is informed by what the ends are.
Quoting litewave
But it must cause the actor some pleasure that outweighs the carnal displeasure or harm, doesn't it? If ultimately the act is determined by what is expected to cause the greatest net pleasure to oneself, then there cannot be an altruistic act that is expected to result in a net displeasure to oneself.
But we are not motivated by general concepts. We are motivated by concrete motives (which are concrete instances of general concepts) experienced in our consciousness, and these motives move us according to their strengths. Entities without strengths cannot move us and so they cannot be motives. I can't even imagine how something without a strength could motivate me; I choose according to attraction or appeal of different motives, and attraction or appeal are just other words for the strength with which the motives influence me.
I don't even think we can be conscious of general concepts. Can you be conscious of general triangle or general red color? General triangle doesn't even look like a triangle and general red color doesn't even look like something red. They don't look like anything because while a concrete triangle or a concrete instance of red color are spatial objects, general concepts are not. When we imagine a general concept we actually imagine a concrete instance (example) of it or a concrete object that represents/symbolizes the concept (word as heard or seen, graphical symbol...).
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Right.
That may indeed be the case. If a motive is like a force that pulls the will in its direction, and if the will were to be truly free in the initial choice, then that initial choice must be unmotivated. The will is however informed by the ends in order to make an informed choice; just like the archer is informed of the targets position in order to aim the arrow towards them.
Quoting litewave
I agree that we cannot imagine general concepts (although we can understand them, since we can communicate using general terms).
Quoting litewave
I, on the other hand, claim that we can act in a way that is expected to result in a net displeasure, if we prioritize the ethical. Given the same situation and the same knowledge of it, two agents may act differently if they have prioritized different ends.
But an unmotivated choice is not freely willed - it is made without care, desire or sometimes even without intention.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
These ends and information are the motives that influence the agent to act in a certain way. Even the information about the targets position steers and pushes the agent's action, together with his motive to hit the targets.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
If the agent expects an act to give him a net displeasure (net dissatisfaction), it means that the act would be against his strongest motive and thus would be unmotivated to the extent of the difference between his strongest motive and any weaker motive he may have for the act.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
But the differences in their acts may be caused by differences in their bodies and in the structures of their minds.
Most of the concerns above may be cleared up if we can clarify what constitutes "motivation".
If motivation is nothing but "what we expect to bring us pleasure", then being informed of a target and its position is not motivation, because not all targets bring pleasure. If on the other hand motivation includes "anything that influences our choices", then being informed of a target and its position is part of motivation, but then what motivates us is not just what brings us pleasure.
All of our motives influence our choices toward what we expect to bring us pleasure (satisfaction). If we didn't have a motive to hit the targets, information about the targets position would not motivate us to shoot at them. On the other hand, if we had a motive to hit the targets but didn't have information about the targets position we wouldn't be motivated to shoot at the targets either (because we wouldn't know where to shoot). So in this case we need both motives/influences to shoot at the targets.
We may not call the information about the targets position a "motive" but it is still a force that pushes us, together with the motive to hit the targets, toward shooting at the targets. This just means that in order for our motives to work we may also need other conditions, including a spacetime and laws of physics, but we can't choose those conditions just as we can't choose our motives.
Now, for the sake of argument, let's buy into the following premise: that there is another possible motive, the ethical, which is not necessarily compatible with pleasure. E.g. "I did this, not because it is pleasurable but because it is the right thing to do". What could possibly push us to choose either the end of pleasure or the end of the ethical? It cannot be either pleasure or the ethical, since these are the ends we are choosing from. We must therefore posit another "force" which we call free will. It is influenced by things like information, but not motivated when it comes to choosing between these two ends. Thus it is free.
We are pushed toward the ethical by motives such as compassion, pangs of conscience, desire for rewards in afterlife, fear of hell in afterlife, desire for order, fairness, balance, harmony in society... What else? But satisfaction of all these motives is a kind of pleasure, a kind of satisfaction.
I don't deny that these are all possible motives of pleasure; but I still claim that it is possible to choose the right thing simply on the basis that it is the right thing to do. Sure, satisfaction may result from it as well, but that would be merely a byproduct. This means that even if satisfaction did not result from doing the right thing, we could still choose to do it.
For many religious people, the reward called heaven does not necessarily mean pleasure, but being good.
Even if an ethical concern or desire motivates us with something else than pleasure/satisfaction, it is still a motive in the set of motives that influence us. Every motive influences us with some strength; without strength it would not influence us at all. And the joint influence of all our motives determines our action. Thus our choice of action can be free in the sense that we can act according to our motives (do what we want to), but it is determined by our motives, which we cannot choose (and by other conditions which we cannot choose either).
I agree that both pleasure and the ethical are types of motives. But the two ends differ not in degree (i.e. strength) but in kind. As last ends, we cannot choose pleasure because it is ethical, or choose the ethical because it is pleasurable (otherwise they wouldn't be last ends but a means to another end).
So while they are both in the same set of motives, the two subsets are separate, and the influence of strength applies only to motives within the same subset.
[s]Ethics/Morality/Good & Bad[/s]
Ethics stops making sense without free will.
Why would influences of strength apply only within the same subset? Many objects in our world are under the influence of different kinds of forces and the object's motion is determined by the joint influence of these forces.
Because, as mentioned a while back, it is possible to choose what is ethical at the cost of sacrificing great pleasure, or vice versa, choose pleasure at the cost of sacrificing what is greatly ethical. This shows that the strength of the motive is not really a factor, if at all, when the competing motives are for different ends.
So it appears that we can choose to prioritize pleasure over the ethical or vice versa, no matter their strengths, and this act cannot itself be motivated the strength of those ends.
Yes, it is possible to choose against our strongest motive but to me that is an unmotivated choice, namely a choice without intention. Or if I have no strongest motive I can choose without caring about the choice. When I am choosing according to my motives (intentionally and with care), I am considering the attractiveness (= strength) of these motives. Whether the motives motivate me by some kind of classical pleasure or by intellectual, spiritual or ethical satisfaction, it is always according to the attractiveness of the motives.
Quoting Hello Human
Re "hard determinism does not make ethics irrelevant": "hard determinism", by definition, is incompatible with free will. Changing that, tying to "sweeten" it, "adding water to the wine", etc. doesn't change it. Better talk directly about "soft determinism" and other "-isms". Using such terms, however, are only good for academic discussions. The essence follows ...
Re "right and wrong are also about justification": Of course. One must always judge whether an act was justified or not before condemning the person who committed it.
Re "free will is irrelevant to justification": Justification is a way of showing that an act was right or reasonable. But not only free will is relevant, it is actually a prerequisite! If someone who commits a crime is proved --by medical examination or just opinion-- not to be able to distinguish between right or wrong, he is sent to a mental hospital instead of a prison. In that case, we cannot talk about either justification or free will. Justification and free will are inseparable. Free will is a prerequisite for ethics, responsibility and control.
Take free will out of the human equation and you get criminality, insanity, anarchy and chaos.
To be clear, this claim that "strength is not a factor" only applies to the initial act of prioritizing one end over the other. After that, strength is definitely a factor, and so much so that I claim it is not possible to choose against the strongest motive that meets the end we have initially prioritized. Free will only chooses which end to target. After that, all acts are determined by the strongest motive, that is, the most effective means to the end, and any additional choice becomes superfluous.
But why would you prioritize one end over the other? Because one seems more attractive to you than the other. So strength of motives is a factor in any intentional choice. A motive can motivate you only through its strength (attractiveness). You may sacrifice great carnal pleasure but this sacrifice is more than compensated by satisfaction from fulfilling an ethical desire or need.
As previously mentioned, the general concepts of pleasure and the ethical don't have strengths, as they are general and not particular instances. The initial act of prioritizing pertains to the general concepts. That act is unmotivated, that is, free, and yet it is informed.
Let's give an application of that idea. Suppose there existed a "happy pill": a pill that gives immense pleasure. The cost is that, as a result, you are effectively in a comma; you are no longer able to interact with the ones you love, build a family, make an impact in the world; etc. Would you take it?
Things that don't have strength cannot influence us; they are inert. We can only choose between them unintentionally or without caring about the choice. If general concepts don't have strengths, they cannot influence us - they have no attractiveness for us. We cannot even be conscious of them. However, we can be influenced by concrete examples or concrete symbols (for example heard or seen words) of general concepts, and we can also be conscious of these concrete things.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I don't have much expectation that such a pill exists and it also raises questions about how long the pill would work (shorter duration decreases total pleasure) and whether it is harmful physically, mentally or socially, including to my social relationships (all these harms decrease total pleasure). So if it resulted in a long-term blissful paralysis, it is safe to say that it would cause great harm to my relationships, which could decrease its attractiveness for me to such an extent that I would reject it.
I'm not sure I follow your historical prelude. But you present an interesting path of objection to the claim that hard determinism "makes ethics irrelevant". I'm inclined to say it's a fair objection. But I'm not sure that someone who sincerely claims that "hard determinism makes ethics irrelevant" would agree with us.
I expect the people who claim that hard determinism undermines morality would likewise claim that hard determinism undermines moral justification. If it's just an illusion that we're free, I can hear them saying, then it's just an illusion that our actions can be morally justified or morally unjustified.
I'd prefer to give less ground to the hard determinist than you have here, and pull this thing out by its roots. From my point of view, incompatibilist determinism is as arbitrary and unwarranted as incompatibilist libertarianism. Has anyone definitively established that the cosmos is (or isn't) completely deterministic? No matter how determined it is -- even down to the last jot of human action -- clearly there is a sort of freedom that agents like us really do possess. On what grounds would the hard determinist insist that we refrain from using the word freedom to characterize this aspect of human life? Only on the grounds that some people have overburdened and inflated the term with fanciful metaphysical hopes and wishes. Ditch the metaphysics, keep the ordinary concept of freedom -- with indifference to the degree of determinism in the cosmos and in human action.
Along these lines, I suggest that "soft-determinism" and "compatibilism" are unhappy names for the sort of approach to this topic I've indicated, as they leave too much room for the impression that this time-honored debate is anything more than a boondoggle and a pseudoproblem.
They are an influence insofar as we have knowledge of them, although indeed they have no attraction. It is not without care if it is willed, as opposed to accidental.
Quoting litewave
It's only a thought experiment of course. Let's say the pleasure and comma are permanent, and also the pleasure from the pill is significantly greater than the pleasure lost from losing relationships. After all, if pleasure is the only ultimate end, then everything else is only a means to it; and so the particular means is irrelevant, so long as the end is reached.
Ok, tell me one motive without attraction. I can't imagine that such a motive exists.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
My doubt and worries about the properties of such a pill already greatly reduce my expected pleasure from it. It is as if someone tried to coax me into comitting suicide with the promise of a blissful afterlife. But if the coma was not permanent and I saw someone try the pill and testify to its blissful effect without harm to their health, I might try it too.
Quoting Hello Human
Why do you ask, if you are not responding to replies?
I have sent you my reply almost a week ago ... (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/607088)
And when they know the difference they are judged for their responsibility.
Sorry for not answering. Thanks for pointing it out, I wouldn't have responded if you hadn't.
Now, I 'd like to point out that I don't really think my argument was convincing anymore. I!m not sure what to believe now. But still, keep objecting, it will help me see the flaws and the good in the argument.
Thank you for repsonding.
Quoting Hello Human
Right.
Quoting Hello Human
This is a very sane thinking and attitude. I have met it in only very few philosophical discussions!
My view is that in order for criminal justice to exist (as we know it) we must assume a certain level of autonomy and responsibility of individuals, called "free will". It doesn't matter that your actions from the moment you were born, to what you are going to eat for dinner are determined by the laws of nature. As long as you are a citizen who is participating in a society, it is inevitable that you will be judged by your actions which are guided by your own free will to make choices of your own volition.
I don't think that is the case because whether or not a killer has free will does not change the fact that we must do what we can to prevent him from killing again.
Imagine this scenario: a person unable to distinguish between right or wrong has a voice in his head that tells him to, let's say, give all of his fortune to charity. Can we evaluate his actions ? If he was a billionaire, and his money allowed to save 1 million lives from war and disease, can we say that he acted morally?
My view is that to answer the question we must first make a distinction between a good action and commendable action. I think that the former entails that the action was done with benevolent intent and was compatible with the laws of morality while the latter entails the action was merely compatible with the laws of morality regardless of intent.
An act as the above will certaily appear as one of charity. What we have to evaluate is not the act itself --which is easy, it it's a good by itself, under any moral rules-- but rather the motivations for it, the intentions behind it, the reasons why it was done. This will characterize it as a moral act of just an act. If it is done on free will and with the intention to help, it will certainly be an act of charity, i.e. a moral act. Otherwise, there are hundreds of reasons why someone could do that: he might have a mental condition (hearing voices in his head that are telling him what to do), he might done it under threat, he might have decided to give away everything and live as monk (some have done that), etc. In that case we can't talk about charity, of course.
Quoting Hello Human
Billionare or not, the main thing is that the person gave away all his money and he's left with none. The ony diference is that a rich man can do that easier because he most probably will be able to make money more easily than someone with a low income. But anyway, the morality of his action will be judged according to what I said above.
Quoting Hello Human
I can't see a big difference between them, although there may be some nuances. I consider both of them ethical (moral). But again, as long as they are done on free will and with the intention to help.
I can't. I too believe that all motives have an attraction. My point was that even though the two general ends have an attraction, the choice to prioritize one end over the other is both unmotivated and without attraction.
Quoting litewave
Sure. But the condition is that the comma is permanent. Yet, you still feel the effect of great pleasure through it.
Hard determinism simply underlines the lack of free will and the realization that all is process. Sin is thus negated, and one's total responsibility for ones present condition in the here and now must be reexamined though the process of thought about the processes of ones life.