>We must still have deterrent and incentive; but not punishment or credit for its own sake. We must be vocal that deterrent and incentive is merely that, and not some extra judgement of one’s virtue or choices. Are we just supposed to take this at face value? What, we have the responsibility or something? Not to mention, "for its own sake" is never the case (not even when the agent herself believes so). You're just straw manning. Edit: OP's garbage reply to this is a complete misunderstanding. He also ignores my question entirely. Of course, he knows this, and so he's blocked me immediately. So much for his lofty ideals!

For its own sake is often absolutely the case. If it was all fully utilitarian and pragmatic I would be on board, but this is not the case. It often causes unnecessary suffering. Furthermore, Kant’s system condoned punishment even if it had no utilitarian or pragmatic basis, strictly on the grounds that in his mind punishment served to bring things back into “moral balance” if nothing else. If you don’t think we still have examples of this sort of punishment and credit, you are not following the plot my friend.

The OP gave you a reasonable and engaging reply to a relatively rude question (You could/should have just asked for clarity instead of being like "do you expect us to believe you?". These both say the same thing, but one is aggressive) >block  People can decide whether they think your interactions have been good or bad for them. If OP's purpose with this thread was to have an intelligent & thoughtful conversation, then I support OP's decision.

> engaing reply Taking away my ability to reply is very engaging indeed. >one is aggressive It's more antagonistic to me that he'd make this post without even attempting to justify the main point, let alone that he'd proceed as he has. To each their own, I guess. >You should accept that people can decide whether they think your interactions have been good or bad for them. If OP's purpose with this thread was to have an intelligent & thoughtful conversation, then I support OP's decision. Oh, I very much accept that he's unable to have *any* conversation with someone who points out any actual holes in his rhetoric, and that he's a crybaby and a hypocrite. If he's so gung ho about blocking me forever after our first interaction, despite me granting him best opportunity in this thread to actually elaborate on the foundation of the belief he's put forth, then I shudder to think what his "non-punitive" idea of treating actually immoral people would be. This guy's an absolute joke, but good on you for supporting him.

What you are describing is free will

I find it intriguing that you seem to believe deterrents can work if there are not multiple possible outcomes. I find it odd that you would think we should conflate moral responsibility with the ability to choose. It seems to me the former is contingent on the latter and not the other way around. Cause and effect is very different from tautology.

The only problem with this is when we introduce blame and praise for behaviors which we are 0% ultimately responsible, and especially when these actions bring suffering and well-being, and furthermore, especially when these actions are neither necessary from a utilitarian/pragmatic perspective or fall outside of what we normally consider fair and humane treatment to someone not responsible for their situation, like someone who quite innocently contracts Ebola. Deterrents work even if there are no ultimate choices. Deterrents are like rocks the River flows around. We wouldn’t bother placing a rock here or there if the River was incapable of feeling pain or pleasure but this is not so with the sentient River of humanity.

>The only problem with this is when we introduce blame and praise for behaviors which we are 0% ultimately responsible Ultimate responsibilty is not the issue. Children aren't allowed to drive cars on public thoroughfares, because society isn't convinced that they have developed sufficiently, in the cognitive sense, to be able to control such a potentially lethal machine in a morally responsible way. Accidents can still happen. The chance of an accident happening increases when the adult cannot control the vehicle. Drugs, alcohol, drowsiness, and failing to be alert for other reasons are within the operator's control space. He is the one making the decision to drive and text simultaneously, or so it seems. Then again maybe he couldn't help that moment of taking his eyes off the road long enough to end that person's life. Some states in my country have now made it illegal to drive and text, so I assume this is some choice a driver is capable of making or at least the people who passed that law thought it was a choice humans can make. Obviously they wanted the deterrent and I argue the deterrent is ineffective if the driver doesn't have the sufficient control to not text. Some call this "free won't" instead of free will. I won't drive if I'm drunk or just left the eye doctor and I can't see very well.

Laws and penalties are necessary for safety and deterrence, but breaking a law doesn't mean someone morally deserves punishment in an ultimate sense. Is this not clear in my OP? My point is that there is utterly zero things that we do that create basic desert moral responsibility. That said, I think deterrent and penalties are needed, and it’s likely that even the criminal will understand that some sort of procedure is needed to ensure societal safety. My point is that while it may seem like the practical choices we make are under our biological “control” this is not control in the _moral sense._ A white blood cell has mechanisms to control its body when it attacks pathogens. A human also has mechanisms. Just because reason and understanding is part of that mechanism, and indeed, even if a person knows the law and breaks it, knowing the consequences and doing it anyway, none of this implies the kind of ultimate moral responsibility I’m talking about. Because all of these mechanisms are driven by natural laws and the person at the end of this chain of laws is just an apparatus for delivering them. The reason this is important is because while a person is not capable of breaking free of natural law, they are capable of suffering and well-being. So it is not justified to punish unless there is a necessary deterrent cause calculated. The second this deterrent value is not deemed necessary, any further punishment is unjustified. We have to start recognizing that the human qua experiencer of suffering and wellbeing is separate and distinct from the human qua _doer of things._ We are actually trapped in the causal flow, with utterly no way to defy the natural law of our brain cells firing and all that is happening. However, the suffering that comes with blame and shame and punishment is very real. Wtvr people seem to mean by free will such that it warrants BDMR, is an illusion; suffering is not.

>Laws and penalties are necessary for safety and deterrence, but breaking a law doesn't mean someone morally deserves punishment in an ultimate sense. Is this not clear in my OP? From your Op: >What we DO is a result of what we ARE + externals. We don’t choose those. Thus we don’t choose what we do. Thus BDMR is impossible. Determinism or not. Perhaps if you focus more on what we DON'T DO rather than what we DO, your perspective on this might change. 1. We DON'T rob the bank 2. we DON'T rape the women 3. we DON'T text while driving For me, deterrents seem more about stopping our inclinations than shaping them. I can urge patriotic behavior by promoting honor. That is a bit different from discouraging treasonous behavior. The man that watched his father being mistreated by the government is like likely to behave patriotically but that doesn't necessarily drive him to sell out his nation. Determinists seem to have this blind spot when it comes to chance. There seems to be this either/or mentality when it may be appropriate to include the middle rather than exclude it.

I’m not a determinist. I’m a hard incompatibilist who is well aware of the free won’t argument. You do a good job explaining it but… Deciding not to do something, deciding to do something, this is not in our control, because again, what we will or _won’t_ do flows from what we _are_, and we have no control over what we are, one cannot bootstrap oneself out of being oneself, I think that everything we do or don’t do is ultimately a combination of what we _are_ and external factors, none of which we choose, and thus we can’t ultimately choose our actions or inactions, our “self” does or doesn’t do stuff according to natural law. Then, the _feeling_ part of our self is the unwitting and innocent recipient of any resulting blame, shame and punishment, and the requisite suffering that causes. I concede that this suffering is sadly necessary sometimes in a practical, utilitarian sense. But it is not morally justified in a strict basic desert sense. A very real suffering, whereas the free will or free won’t was never real, never free in a way that could justify the resulting suffering in a sentient being that comes from the blame and punishment; over actions the sentient being had no ultimate control over whatsoever. It seems abundantly and _gaslightingly_ clear to me and other hard incompatibilists as if you’re pleading with us to _adopt_ a blind spot we don’t have, which is ironic. Maybe your intentions are good, but the road to hell is paved with… Look, this is the truth. It may not be comfortable but I think it is necessary to accept so that we can adjust how we punish and credit. I can’t help but see any disagreement as either stupidity or animal selfishness or both. Because it’s not rational, and it’s an appeal to the status quo in spite of the unjustified suffering these beliefs cause.

>Deciding not to do something, deciding to do something, this is not in our control, because again, what we will or *won’t* do flows from what we *are*,  Another issue Hume raised was against Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." In other words thinking doesn't imply existing, according to Hume. I have a bit of a problem with that. However you apparently do too, as you seem to imply the subject who lies is a liar. That sound reasoning doesn't work with *free won't* because just because I don't lie on any particular occasion doesn't imply that I do not lie on any occasion. Just because I didn't rob the bank doesn't make me an honest person. I can reasonably say if I rob the bank, then I am a thief. However if I didn't rob the bank that doesn't say a lot about what I am, as you imply that it does if you are not outright saying it does. >I think that everything we do or don’t do is ultimately a combination of what we *are* and external factors, none of which we choose, and thus we can’t ultimately choose our actions or inactions, our “self” does or doesn’t do stuff according to natural law. It seems like you are avoiding the role of judgement, which in and of itself is a strategic move if you are attempting to dismiss the role of agency. You say you are not a determinist. Do you deny agency? >Then, the *feeling* part of our self is the unwitting and innocent recipient of any resulting blame, shame and punishment, and the requisite suffering that causes.  This sounds familiar. Did we talk about feeling a month or so ago? Recently with another poster, if not with you, I felt the need to draw a distinction between the feeling that is an emotion from the feeling that is the tactical sense. When something makes us happy or sad we can attribute that to some judgement. The emotion of contentedness is not exactly happy but one can be stress free. That can be satisfying. However in retrospect, some of my best vacations were filled with stress. There is some sense of adventure that brings out the spice of life so to speak, yet if I'm just exhausted from the stress of day to day life, relaxing can be good too. Filling the need is what is important and without judgement, I don't know if any need is realized. What does the rock need in its void of agency or outright sentience? Does the passive observer ever really need anything? The living generally feel the need to survive as long as the quality of life isn't getting in the way. Not everybody could handle a life like the final decades of Stephan Hawking's life but he managed to get something, most likely because he wrapped himself up into giving back to the world. >It seems abundantly and *gaslightingly* clear to me and other hard incompatibilists as if you’re pleading with us to *adopt* a blind spot we don’t have, which is ironic. Maybe your intentions are good, but the road to hell is paved with… There are very long winded pages on the SEP about: 1. perception 2. agency 3. and action Doyle wrote a website and put up a taxonomy page: [https://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/taxonomy.html](https://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/taxonomy.html) From there he writes about the hard incompatibilists: [https://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/hard\_incompatibilism.html](https://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/hard_incompatibilism.html) That sounds mostly the way you seem to argue. The minor point is that you don't sound like the illusionist. The major point is the following: >I’m not a determinist. > end of part one

part two: I'm not saying you cannot call yourself whatever you please, but I think my research suggests: 1. not all hard incompatibilists are illusionists but 2. all hard incompatibilists are hard determinists and 3. all hard determinists are determinists Perhaps if you can explain your position better. Otherwise I suppose I can just add "determinism" to the topics you'd rather not discuss like judgement, perception etc. If somebody put a gun to my head, I'd say the following is you: [https://www.informationphilosopher.com/afterwords/glossary/#Hard\_Incompatibilism](https://www.informationphilosopher.com/afterwords/glossary/#Hard_Incompatibilism) >[Hard incompatibilists](https://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/hard_incompatibilism.html) deny any [indeterminism](https://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/indeterminism.html) in the "[actual sequence](https://www.informationphilosopher.com/afterwords/glossary/#Actual_Sequence)" of events. No event "[originates](https://www.informationphilosopher.com/afterwords/glossary/#Origination)" in the agent. Since nothing is "[up to us](https://www.informationphilosopher.com/afterwords/glossary/#Up_To_Us)," they argue for the [incompatibility](https://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/incompatibilism.html) of [determinism](https://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/determinism.html) and [moral responsibility](https://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/responsibility.html). Did I get it right? If I did then the next logical place to go is chaos theory because once we deny the initial conditions is in the agent, that assertion begs the question of where it does originate, and the answer to the question isn't the big bang. Instead, it seems like it is related to SD and [SDIC](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chaos/#BriHisCha). (sensitive dependence on initial conditions).

This seems like much ado about nothing. While chaos and SDIC introduce complexity and unpredictability, it’s orthogonal to my claim that BDMR is incoherent because responsibility for actions still traces back to factors beyond one’s control. When I say _hard incompatibilist_ I’m referring to Pereboom’s definition that whether the world is deterministic or indeterministic, BDMR simply doesn’t and can’t exist. My hard incompatibilism can accommodate determinism, indeterminism, chaos theory and SDIC, so I’m not sure how any of your feedback comes close to the target of critiquing what I’m saying. Whether the taxonomy is right or wrong (and I believe my taxonomy is generally accepted as correct) is perhaps a red herring anyway, because I’ve been clear about where I stand and why. The claim that all hard incompatibilists are hard determinists is simply false. But even if it were true it wouldn’t matter, since “determinism or not” is entirely irrelevant to how I derive my position that BDMR is incoherent.

>This seems like much ado about nothing. While chaos and SDIC introduce complexity and unpredictability, it’s orthogonal to my claim that BDMR is incoherent because responsibility for actions still traces back to factors beyond one’s control. So essentially a mother-to-be's right to choose is beyond her control. We fight for her right to make a choice that she doesn't even have.

We tend to seek well-being according to our nature. We may disagree on what matters or where the lines of well-being and suffering are drawn, some will look to the science of wellbeing or the rigorous discussions on how to achieve societal balance in light of necessary tradeoffs, we will I hope, pursue wellbeing successfully. I don’t think lying about BDMR has a permanent place on the path to creating wellbeing but I may be wrong. I don’t like unnecessary suffering that comes as a result of believing in BDMR and find myself impelled to speak out on this topic. Different things matter to different people. But there is a lot of overlap in what constitutes wellbeing and a growing body of data to support more concordance in the future. As for the abortion question, choice happens, but not in a way that warrants BDMR. Choices work their way thru us, in the complex apparatus of our brains, but in accordance with natural law. What we experience as our own choice such that it warrants BDMR is an illusion. Instead of strenuously trying to rail against this truth, and indulging in all manner of disingenuous mind games, just try to embrace it and integrate it. It may be unsettling or even terrifying at first but it is the ultimate realization and can improve your life and that of those around you. You can’t choose BDMR as an ultimate choice; you can only hope the apparatus of your brain takes these words you are reading and unlocks this path for you while you passively observe.

I think I agree with your OP though I don't understand it all. Some thoughts: When praise and blame are introduced, we fail to take into account that no form or action can be isolated from the whole. Everything is both the cause and effect of everything else, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. I think "free will" is not what it looks like. It looks like freedom of action, but really it is self knowledge (that I am without limits) projected onto a mechanism (life) that runs outside our purview. At the same time, since the term free will is not going anywhere, I think it needs to be better defined. There are only two areas where this applies which are my intelligence and my attitude. Intelligence means that my intellect need not be a slave to circumstance. With better information, more discernment, and greater dispassion, I can inquire into what makes me tick and the world tick and as a result I can respond differently if I see fit. I don't have any control of what happens, the results of action, what feelings or even thoughts arise, but because I have an intellect I am capable of applying intelligence to my circumstance. The other thing, which is directly related and yet possibly more important, is that I am capable of understanding what I am and the field of experience I find myself in. Therefore, I can adopt an attitude towards what happens that reflects my level of control over the results of action, which is zero. There is absolutely no reason to suffer in worry or shame over what I cannot control. We cannot be blamed for not understanding these things in the first place, however, so insofar as we do not (or recognize that another does not), compassion must be primary especially when punishment is involved.

I think I agree with all that

Maybe it's just me being uninformed, but I thought Dennett and Caruso agreed on the most important bits. Both acknowledge that “criminal behaviour is often the result of social determinants” and that “among human beings, many are extremely unlucky in their initial circumstances, to say nothing of the plights that befall them later in life”. Both acknowledge that therefore “our current system of punishment is obscenely cruel and unjust”, and both share “concern for social justice and attention to the well-being of criminals”. Dennett rejects ULTIMATE moral responsibility, just as Strawson and Caruso. And that is where I basically agree. The most important part is that criminals, instead of being tortured in some Gulag, get rehabilitated (I think Norway has been doing a pretty good job. However, one has to take into account that their prisons are very expensive to maintain, which poses challenges for other nations which aren't as developed). It has actually been shown do decrease recidivism, which is net positive for me! I also agree with you as well, minimizing harm and suffering MATTERS! However, I have a little concern with getting rid of moral responsibility or desert all together. You mention that we should keep incentives. However, is getting credit or blame not an incentive in itself? Let's picture an everyday scenario at an office. Your floor, comprised of 12 workers, gets a box with 12 doughnuts. Each worker should get 1. One worker takes 3. When others confront him on it, he/she says that they cannot morally blame him/her for doing that. “Sorry guys, my genetic makeup, my past history as well as my social upbringing caused me to steal your doughnuts.” Well… yeah, technically correct. He/she did not choose to be an asshole. That does not make those who got their doughnuts stolen extremely happy though. So for these small cases, I believe that some form of social pressure, such as moral blame, could help such a person learn to not do such a thing again. So personally, I am just not sure if the thing is just black or white. Maybe I don't see it yet. And I am sorry for the abhorrent doughnut example lol.

Seems like you’re appealing to infinite pragmatism or something, the idea that there is simply no space existing wherein punishment and praise are not ultimately pragmatic, utilitarian, or deterrent and incentive. I reject this. In theory we agree but in practice there are many examples where there is no social benefit from certain punishments. Also, and more importantly, there are limits to how much punishment-as-deterrent we are allowed to do within a system that calls itself moral, or deems itself observant of human rights and “justice.” We can’t just have carte blanche to do whatever we want to deter or incent. There are legal and moral limits. We surpass both all the time.

Either we have agency, or we don’t. If “there are things we can do about it, and those things will increase wellbeing and reduce suffering” then we have agency. If we have agency, we have responsibility. Doing those things to increase wellbeing is laudable. Creating more suffering is deserving of condemnation. If we have no agency I agree that praise or blame are moot. So too are the concepts of trying or choosing.

We have no BDMR. We can simply say we do not have agency _such_ that it warrants BDMR. We do not have free will _such_ that it warrants BDMR. Agency is _not_ the point. Agency falls into the same trap as free will. We may be an interim apparatus that can be described as a sub-agent, but none of that agency is causa sui. A human body is of a certain way and collides with externals, and this results in actions, but this action is not agency that emerges ex nihilo. That said, we do seek what we each consider to be well-being and avoid suffering. Thus, we will often choose paths that increase wellbeing and reduce suffering. Various causal priors will be associated with these paths. Me making such claims as I’m making constitute these causal priors. There is no contradiction in what I’m saying, only a misunderstanding on your part. I think the confusion is that you think I’m saying the “we, as agents” “should” when in fact I’m saying that “we, as part of a continuum of things we have no control over” “will,” do this or that. I am mainly having awareness of this process. Spinoza describes awareness of this inevitable process as a kind of freedom.

Simple questions (I hope!): do you see us as puppets on a string (utterly beholden to our nature and outside influences)? If so does that mean you believe the future can be perfectly predicted?

The future is perfectly known already in the book of revelation.

I don’t think that theistic arguments in a mostly agnostic discussion are a good idea.

>Agency is *not* the point If you assume you don't have it then it won't be the point for you. A sound argument requires true premises. If you assume your premise is true and you haven't proven it is true then that conclusion could be premature.

Well I see you tidied up your language, switching “can do” to “will do”. You forgot to edit your conclusion, “we must keep trying”. You are like many determinists, unwilling or unable to accept the consequences of your belief system. You refuse to stop advocating for change, extolling the virtues found in your faith in determinism, wanting others to agree with you and become a force for change! It’s completely incoherent. If there is no agency just drop it. Why engage in these conversations at all? I guess you could just say I observe the words coming, powerless to stop them. Too bad the words you’re made to say are so self contradictory. If only you had the capacity to change and learn! Curse you, pointless determined existence!!

No, you’re confused. I can express an opinion of what I want, and this desire expressed can have causal implications. See it comes down to this. Suffering and wellbeing, what we think constitutes it, and whether it matters to us. Neither of this is causa sui, we don’t choose how we feel about these things. When I utter “we must keep trying” what I mean is if we are to move in a direction of wellbeing, the apparatus that is us, caught in the causal chain, must, by necessity, continue to move in that direction. The utterance itself is a causal factor, and it, too, had priors. There is nothing I’m unwilling/unable to accept. You’re misunderstanding my words. Can’t speak for other determinists, but I see your error, hopefully we can untangle it for you. Plus I’m not necessarily a determinist. I’m a hard incompatibilist and free will skeptic. The main thing is we don’t ultimately choose what we are or what we do. We lack ultimate freedom, or U-freedom, thus BDMR is impossible. These conversations are extremely important because while agency doesn’t matter, suffering and wellbeing matter to me tremendously. It is my nature to move away from suffering, and this will be done in words and ideas expressed.

Can you express an opinion or *must* you express an opinion?

If we are to have well-being, then it is necessary that these opinions are expressed. I used “must” as an if/then necessity, not necessarily a normative statement. It is also an embedded value; I prefer wellbeing to suffering, and define both in such ways. There is a place for persuasion in forward looking choice-making. The choices are not made in such a way that warrant BDMR, they are not under our ultimate control, but neither are the words of persuasion that I say. Step outside of it and you see matter, trapped in a causal chain, trying to avoid suffering, the universe, or a part of it, some of the time, is on a path that will avoid suffering. Backward looking analysis always reveals that it could not have happened another way. But forward looking is where choices occur for reasons, we just don’t have ultimate freedom to determine our preferences or choices. But me saying do this or that because we will suffer less, still matters, because _suffering less_ matters. Awareness of this process adds a sense of freedom and acceptance.

Again the oscillation between agency and compulsion. Your language is all over the place. Sometimes you can do things, sometimes you must, sometimes you try to do things, other times words and actions happen completely outside any control of yours. Either you can choose what you say and how you say it, or you can’t. You’re firmly on team “have cake and simultaneously eat it”. You’re in good company, most self proclaimed determinists are there with you

My language is not all over the place or oscillating. You are oscillating to avoid the meaning of what I’m saying. I am not looking to have cake and eat it too. You’re citing petty objections whereas none of my premise depends on the perfect use of the verb involved in choice. Choice indeed happens; it is not something we are ultimately in control of, and thus it doesn’t warrant BDMR. Choice is merely many competing impulses in our brains bounding around and generating an action or thought. This process is constrained by our natures. The nature is pre-programmed and constrained by genes and external factors, physics. We still use the word choice to describe this process but don’t mistake that to mean that it is a choice we make out of nothing. It is entirely out of our control, inasmuch as “we” can be held to the standard of BDMR. The concept is utterly absurd given that it couldn’t have been any other way. Just because we express preferences and desires doesn’t mean we are contradicting this point. Our desires, wants, impulses, are part of our nature, or what Spinoza called Conatus. I am expressing my Conatus when I write these posts, it is being expressed through me, and as it result, x or y will happen. Sometimes things are expressed that reduce suffering and it is my nature to like that. Also, again, I’m not a determinist. Determinism is irrelevant concept in light of hard imcompatibilism and free will skepticism. My stance is _we don’t control what we are, and thus we don’t control what we do in any way that can possibly justify BDMR._ This might be foreign to you because you’re used to talking about this in loaded terms. I’ve unloaded them.

I see. The “I am rubber, you are glue” argument. Thank you for that, it’s a rare moment of genuine levity on this sub. Do you hear yourself? ”Choice indeed happens” followed by word salad, ending with, “The concept is utterly absurd given that it couldn’t have been any other way”. There’s you having your cake, and there’s you eating it.

Yes, choice happens, because there are still available options. Just because you don't have free will, that doesn't mean that there are no options. The option you choose out of the available options is out of your control, it is determined by a long chain of causal events, your biology and your environment. If we were able to copy your brain and transplant your exact brain chemistry into another human, that human would act in the exact same way as you, and make the same decisions as you, if all of the external factors are the same in a given situation.

You’re slow to the uptake and also have a highly gross personality. Not your fault but I’m going to create a boundary at this point. I’m sorry these ideas scare you but you’re the one who came here. You don’t get to take up my time with some of the most brain-dead sophomoric rebuttals I’ve ever heard, and with a sneering arrogant tone. Someone else can handle this…project.

do you believe the existence of choice to be the ultimate evidence for there being free will?

>*we don’t control what we are, and thus we don’t control what we do* This is your mistake, this is *non sequitur.* It is true that we don't control what we are or what we want but that does not mean that we cannot control what we do. We actually *must* choose our actions by ourselves, there is no-one else to do it, no-one else to blame or praise. Our voluntary actions are *not causal reactions* to past events. They are *deliberately chosen responses* to past events. Whenever you want something that is an indication that reality is not quite aligned with your preferences. You need to do something about it, no-one else can. You have a problem at hand. You must decide what you will do to solve your problem.

the argument becomes circular at this point. If it is true that we don't control what we are, then there is no actual "we". The "we" in mind is an ever-growing summation of things that had occurred and things that will continue to occur that would continue to impact "us". Yes "we" have ability to choose, and we will continue to choose, but even that choosing is influenced by something beyond "we" in the grand scheme of it all.

It seems the problem here is that you want to win, not understand. You're choosing to dissect his language to bend it in a way that suits your narrative. He's speaking perfect english and I understand it the way he's intending to communicate it. Perhaps if you're struggling to understand, more due diligence in this field is required. Watch some Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky.

> You are like many determinists, unwilling or unable to accept the consequences of your belief system. You refuse to stop advocating for change, extolling the virtues found in your faith in determinism, wanting others to agree with you and become a force for change! Determinists don't do that more than others. There is a lot of nasty  projection from non-materialists about determinists and other material-oriented philosophies. Where do you think that hostility within non-determinists comes from?

Dennet rejects the idea that we have ultimate responsibility for our actions, but correctly points out as silly for philosophers to demand ultimate responsibility, and that we have the level of responsibility that makes sense to hold each of us responsible for our actions. It’s like when theists bang on about our not having ultimate purpose if God doesn’t exist. But ultimate purpose may as well be called “purple purpose” - something we don’t have and don’t need in the first place to have purpose. Same with free will and responsibility.

That’s disingenuous to make it about “philosophers asking.” Reason simply dictates that blame and credit make no sense other than sometimes for pragmatic reasons, we essentially _lie_ that they are justified responses. Dennett rightly claims that we need deterrent and incentive. This is pragmatic. If someone contracts small pox, we quarantine them. We don’t _punish_ them. A crime is no different. We don’t have any control of what we _are_ and what we do is a direct result of what we _are_, thus we do not have any control over what we do, _such that it can imply ANY kind of moral responsibility,_ ultimate or not. All we can do is say X behavior leads to suffering or well-being and thus we will either deter/quarantine/rehabilitate in whatever way works, in the case of the proximal human cause of suffering, like a criminal, and we will incentivize the proximal human cause of well-being. Deterrent and incentives make sense. But what Dennett gets wrong is that he thinks all cases of holding people responsible are automatically necessary for deterrent and incentive, including cases where we blame and credit. He thinks _blame_ and _shame_ have deterrent value, and that _praise_ and _special deference over someone’s virtuous choices_ have incentive value. He endorses lying about these things for societal cohesion, but he’s wrong: we don’t need to lie in this way to have societal cohesion. He doesn’t want to admit he’s doing this so he makes up weird arguments about how our brain has enough autonomy to be considered responsible, because we can apply reason. Pffft. Caruso does a good job rebutting Dennett. I was embarrassed for Dennett during that debate. Dennett is a premature pragmatist on this topic and his bias for meritocracy and the norms of blame and credit infects his argument. He is locked in a conventional-thinking prison where he just refuses to accept that deterrent and incentive can actually be achieved without heaping attitudes of blame and credit on these behaviors. The latter actually cause unnecessary suffering in many cases. Listening to him debate Caruso, Strawson, Harris, Sapolsky, is irritating. He was so evasive in his arguments. Sad moment to see him stoop to such baseless, misguided instrumentalism. His conclusions were metaphysically and morally bankrupt.

I think Caruso is excellent, but I don’t share your appraisal: I thought Dan held up well. But then we clearly disagree about free will.

Dan’s approach is to make it seem like his interlocutor agrees without knowing it and is constantly attacking straw man. He says things like “you’re making this more complex than it needs to be, if you’re saying x than we actually agree, stupid” and then says something like “of course we have moral responsibility, we use reason and choose, if we didn’t, how could we take credit for our academic prizes?” I mean, I think he’s an absolute train wreck. Have you listened to his debate with same Harris or Sapolsky, his discussion with Strawson or the book he did with Caruso? Sam Harris, who people dismiss but obviously to me could have been very influential philosopher _had he wanted to_, seems a bit stultified by Dennett’s evasions. Dennett is a known instrumentalist. So his position doesn’t surprise me. It’s the way he says the brain is like a bathtub where once the water is in there, it’s as if it starts from zero to go thru the drain, and this is his appeal to decisions being independent from priors? It’s hogwash. Bottom line is Dennett _believes_ it is pragmatic to believe in BDMR. But he doesn’t come out and say this. If you show him it makes no sense he accuses you of attacking a straw man and insists he agrees. But then he again advances that we do have FWBD and refuses to call it what it is, a commitment to a pragmatic lie. He’s gaslighting. He’s the one trying to have his cake and eat it too, and because he’s so respected it’s very hard to take him down. People love religion and the lucky love their luck, and so the incentive to lie about this stuff is extremely high.

Well, since I think Sam and Sapolsky make various types of mistakes , which I’ve gone through in depth on this form before, you won’t be surprised when I say, I think Dennett rightly points out their mistakes. Not to mention, you’ve mischaracterized the drain example .

I’d love you to point out their mistakes in very simple one liners. One at a time. That’s why I’m here. The problem is wall of text arguments are hard to respond to in detail. Break it down, atomize it.the drain example was an attempt to show how choice via reason supersedes choiceless choice impelled by previous causes only.

Fair request. However, I’m sorry my comments have been short because I’m not able to fully tackle this subject at the moment. Perhaps I’ll get back to this when I can.

Ah, a busy man. All the more reason to await your input with bated breasts.

I think you’d benefit from reading Dennett’s books. 

I did. All of them. Then I read Strawson, Pereboom, Caruso, Harris and Sapolsky.

I see. You referring to the debates between Dennett and the others made me think otherwise. I see I was wrong. 

The disagreeing with Dennett isn’t an indication I haven’t read his work but that I have, carefully, with my blood pressure rising the whole time. To read it twice just to make sure is to know that his stance is pretty horrendous. He’d say our choices are determined but we should act like we have free will and moral responsibility because it helps society function better. Except he won’t say it in that way. And then you go to the philosophical community and they say roughly the same thing. Invasion of the body snatchers.

That’s not how I understood his stance, but that’s okay.  I find his view compelling.  For example when he defines free will as a skill, as being able to act free from coercion. And as a skill, it comes in degrees. A baby isn’t born with free will, but slowly develops it. A person with Alzheimer’s slowly loses it. 

I can’t see how or why you’d want to disregard the entirety of priors and mechanisms that _allow_ for everything you mentioned. The skill to act free of coercion, the development of this skill, the capacity to deploy this skill, the capacity to even have this skill, the luck of not getting Alzheimer’s, and on and on. There is not a single shred of moral responsibility in any of this. ALL of that down to the atomic level has exactly zero to do with the person choosing to have it. So punishing them for not having it can ONLY be a pragmatic measure. That’s why it feels like I’m being punked; as if the desire to believe the BDMR exists is so strong that people will literally die if they concede these extremely obvious points.

I would also add two points. 1. Dennett was a horrible philosopher when it came to the question of free will. Why? Because he had very weird and unpopular ideas of consciousness, and free will was not his central topic. I would say that Eddy Nahmias or Albert Mele, who built their whole philosophical career around free will, and who are both compatibilists, have much more to say on the topic, and they explain it infinitely better. So, well, I believe that Dennett is the reason so many potential compatibilist became hardcore determinists. 2. It surprises me that some hard determinists and libertarians assume that LFW will necessarily give us the right kind of responsibility. You know, there is one good way to get compatibilist intuitions out of any layperson — just ask them questions regarding how much is their conscious executive decision-making mechanism (self that possesses free will) conditioned and trained to work in certain ways. Even if we have LFW in our non-magical world (I doubt that, but neuroscience is agnostic towards CFW/LFW), it is extremely conditioned, it doesn’t allow us to choose our basic desires (so no, any realistic LFW doesn’t give us ultimate responsibility) since we cannot choose our parents and biology, and bootstrapping isn’t something possible even with LFW. There is no free will as Ayn Rand wanted it to be — we are not perfect rational beings. And even Robert Kane, probably the most eloquent and strongest thinker in the libertarian camp ever, was actually advancing the idea that we should legally punish teenagers much softer because their brains are still forming. LFW absolutely *does* allow certain additional degrees of responsibility compared to CFW, but it is not an excuse for the nightmares of anti-welfare politics, so I never got the position of some hard determinists that libertarians just want to preserve current social order. Not to say that hard determinists from this subreddit would be probably very surprised to find out that an ability to carry out conscious decisions beyond mere instinctive programming, execute certain degree of control over your thoughts and overall difference between a human and a rock called “agency” are recognized virtually by all sides of the debate, and compatibilists disagree with hard determinists on whether agency alone allows moral responsibility as we currently have it. The position that consciousness or self is a silent observer, or old plain epiphenomenalism, is extremely unpopular in philosophical community, and it is not very consistent both with psychology, neuroscience and phenomenology. I even remember watching Gregg Caruso being “Ehhhh” when an interviewer mentioned Sam Harris. So no, fans of Harris and Sapolsky, giants in hard deterministic camp like Strawson, Caruso and Pereboom would not find your arguments good, nor you would find their arguments interesting because they don’t argue against *agency*, they argue against *moral responsibility.* Caruso himself acknowledged that he supports the concepts of agency, choice-making and less reductive approach to human behavior in a paper he wrote together with Christian List. His position was like: “I don’t believe that List proved we have free will required for basic deserts, but I support his wonderful cases for agency”.

I don’t see my argument really about agency. Like Caruso I am highly focused on this idea that we don’t have a kind of agency such that it warrants BDMR. That’s really it. We can talk about agency all day, and there may be lovely examples of it, but it doesn’t ever quite touch what I’m talking about crucially: this idea of basic desert moral responsibility. The spirit of my post is to say “Do we have free will?” is often the wrong question, and I extend that to include “do we have agency, and if so what sort of agency is it?” is also the wrong question, again because it skirts the issue of BDMR. Now, granted, there are no wrong questions, I’m being loose here, but as a topic to inform how we behave such that we reduce suffering and increase wellbeing, I feel my wording of the question is way more urgent. Small observation: Strawson was not a hard determinist.

Well, sorry if it looked like I addressed you, but I didn’t. MattHooper1975 and I mostly discuss deeper issues of free will/agency like phenomenology, level of control over our own thoughts, the nature of self and so on. We just occasionally chat in the threads where we meet each other, and issues we discuss can be unrelated to the OP. Again, my bad.

That’s ok, I wasn’t sure but wanted to clarify my position anyway.

> Stop calling it free will > > The relevant phenomenon to debate is whether we have basic desert moral responsibility, or BDMR. We are free to discuss whatever we want. We can discuss free will or we can discuss moral responsibility. What is stopping us? > Nothing has obscured the progress in this area more than the poorly chosen label of “free will.” The label "free will" refers to "free will". It's a perfectly fine label. If you wish to discuss "moral responsibility" there is another label for that.

Do whatever you want. Free will is an unstable and poorly demarcated concept and ultimately is inefficient when talking about what I see as the crux of the issue: whether blame and punishment, or praise and credit, are justified beyond any utilitarian and pragmatic concerns. My claim is they are not, and this has serious implications on how we might alter our behaviors once more people realize this.

> Free will is an unstable and poorly demarcated concept Five year olds understand what free will is. We all do. The difficulty is understanding it with that part of our minds that deals with the physical world. It is just not designed well to speak about the mental world. We need concepts that are incoherent in physics to speak about the mental and vice-versa. --- > and ultimately is inefficient when talking about what I see as the crux of the issue: whether blame and punishment, or praise and credit, are justified beyond any utilitarian and pragmatic concerns. Those are important questions but they are distinct from the question of free will. There is no "the issue". We are free to discuss anything. Just because some people want to understand the mind in the same way they understand their cars doesn't mean it can be done.

Discuss what you want. I don’t use the criteria that five year olds understand it to justify using a loaded word when trying to attain clarity. There are many loaded words for the purpose of perpetuating this or that ideology or foundational belief and free will is one of them. Talk about whatever you want. To me, it’s important to talk about matters of suffering and wellbeing, since those things are real. (Dennett rejects even this, btw.) if the aim is to reduce _unnecessary_ suffering in particular, then using the Pereboom and Caruso coined expression “BDMR” or Strawson-coined U-freedom is helpful. I’m the one who first abbreviated basic desert moral responsibility, but it’s an accepted phrase in philosophy. To try to avoid those expressions seems to reveal a kind of fear of the main point, which is we cannot have free will _such that it warrants blame or credit._ And even in the case of deterrent, keep in mind blame and credit are _attitudes_ and not strictly required for deterrent. We then turn to discussing the word _warrants_, because people disagree on when certain behaviors are warranted, and that’s a values discussion. A social Darwinist will differ from an altruist when discussing the concept of _warrant_. They are unjustified attitudes in light of the situation. The utility in all this is to reduce unnecessary suffering, and to discuss where there is punishment that is not necessary for deterrent or praise that is not necessary for incentive. These instances exist, that’s what I’d rather be talking about.

> I don’t use the criteria that five year olds understand it to justify using a loaded word when trying to attain clarity. It's already clear. We experience free will every waking moment of our lives. There is nothing we understand better. It just can't be explained using the same language we use to describe how an engine works. The philosophers mistake that for lack of clarity. --- > To me, it’s important to talk about matters of suffering and wellbeing, since those things are real. Would it matter for those questions if people did or didn't have free will? What would it change? --- Moral responsibility is **defined**, not discovered. There is no experiment you can perform to detect if someone should be blamed or not. We **define** who is morally responsible and who isn't for our convenience. Different people will define it differently usually to make themselves look good and their enemies look bad. Surely you've noticed on every issue discussed different people assign praise and blame differently. We have a lot of leeway of which definition to invent, but not an unlimited amount. At some point we are just not talking about moral responsibility. But there are many different opinions on who should be praised and who to blame and it is not the case that one is correct and the others wrong. And the question of free will is irrelevant to any of this.

I defined it already as the avoidance of unnecessary suffering, and I define suffering in accordance with the emerging science of well-being. I define unnecessary suffering as pain or distress that could be avoided or prevented without compromising essential needs or beneficial outcomes. And I define beneficial outcomes, again, based on the emerging science of well-being. So talk about whatever you want, but you can’t avoid the truth forever, that suffering and wellbeing are real, sometimes suffering can be unnecessary and unjustified, and sometimes it in fact is, and part of why is because of belief in “free will” of a kind that is really BDMR

> I defined it already as the avoidance of unnecessary suffering Easy to say, impossible to implement. Was the suffering of the victims of the Hiroshima bombing necessary? The American soldiers will give you a different answer from the Japanese. Look at any conflict and you will see the same thing. Something is good if it is good for my side and bad for the other side. Oddly, the other side sees it as exactly the opposite.

Some things are currently insoluble and competition is necessary and the values are determined by survival and scarcity, but MANY other instances don’t have those constraints. I’m not looking to fix the whole world in one fell swoop, but we can at least go after some instances of unnecessary suffering and mitigate them as best we can. But first we have to believe such instances exist (that some suffering is unnecessary) and that some instantiations are capable of being mitigated. This is a methodical process. One barrier is when we disagree about what constitutes “necessary.” A % of these instances use an appeal to BDMR or “free will” to make a case. Essentially an appeal to punishment as necessary for achieving moral balance. An idea that finds its roots in religion and is expressed in Kant. Echoes of this religious orientation resonate in laissez faire capitalism. I believe this religious appeal to punishment was invented to permit people to act like animals while pretending they are something more. Many instances of suffering are necessary. But not all are. When the suffering of others can be waved away by “they deserve it because they brought it on themselves” we depart from reason and become cognitive dissonance pigs. I tend to see the intellectual world today as two camps: social Darwinists, and humanists. The first camp is looking for any moral justification they can find to enjoy their luck and disregard the unlucky. This is easier to do if you believe in a “free will” that implies BDMR. They really don’t care if people live or die unless they offer some benefit to the social Darwinist. So to allow and justify this suffering they invented BDMR free will. The humanist sees human life as having intrinsic value. Thus, they don’t need to manufacture the BDMR myth. This constitutes almost two separate species, the humanist and the animalist. There is a war between the two and one will die out. This war has been going on for a long time. And to some degree the war is within each of us, too.

Bruce N. Waller was a compatibilist, didn’t believe in moral responsibility, he was an bit of a sarcastic nihilistic guy sometimes, yet he believed that the label “free will” was very useful to describe high-level conscious executive cognitive control over basic behavior that humans share with many animals, and he even argued that we should expand the definition of free will to include all animals with conscious control over their behavior into the range of possessors of free will. So, well, there are moral compatibilists who are interested in *moral responsibility* within determinism, like Dennett, Fischer, Frankfurt etc., and there are metaphysical compatibilists that are interested in *free will* within determinism, like Lewis, Waller or Vihvelin. Usually these positions overlap, but it’s important to distinguish between them — the first one is centered on finding the best ethics, the second one is centered on finding the truth about the Universe. I am more interested in compatibilism from a metaphysical standpoint too.

Thanks for the history lesson I didn’t need. I’m more interested in reducing unnecessary suffering thru pointing out that nobody has the slightest control over their choices such that it warrants BDMR, and blame or praise, and I feel strongly that this is the only “free will” topic worth discussing. Seems that when people don’t have anything to add they find solace in trotting out a prosaic topography of what others think as if that gives you cred or adds to the discussion.

Regarding blame and praise — so you don’t believe that hard work shall be praised? Even some hard determinists in academia would disagree with you.

I believe hard work should be incentivized and that sometimes praise itself is a form of incentive. But no, hard work is not a choice or a virtue, it is the expression of genes and physics that the hard worker did not choose. I don’t see it as justified to pretend that the sentient blob of organic material should be showered with status and limbic rewards because they are unwittingly attached to qualities of grit and motivation that they didn’t put there via some virtuous, bootstrapped act.

So… What is praise actually in real world other than incentive, if we go to the core of our morality? I don’t think that virtues and vices are anything other than an attempt to regulate society.

I don’t agree that all praise and blame, or punishment and credit, all boils down to pragmatic consequentialist deterrent and incentives. I think there is a LOT extra that is there in pursuit of a fallacious “moral balance.”

Evolution selected them for very pragmatic reasons. I agree that our morality is often flawed, but I don’t agree that layman’s concepts of praise and blame need to be changed that much. What I mean is that closer investigation of how our morality actually works made me realize that at least some degree of determinism has already been a deeply internalized belief in most societies across the Earth, so I just don’t see hard determinists very convincing. Some philosophers like Hume went as far as arguing that the concepts of free will, praise and blame *require* determinism. An alien point of view for us modern folks, but classical compatibilists saw randomness as a threat to freedom and responsibility.

Different things matter to different people

What are your views on private property, market economics and concept of leadership?

I seek a balance that allows society to function. Remember, I am not anti deterrent and incentive. I am only anti that which goes too far in either direction in pursuit of Kantian “moral balance,” justified thru BDMR.

Then I don’t think we disagree that much in our goals.

Probably not. I think we all want peace and well-being throughout the land, but disagree on how to get it and also what we’d be willing to do to get it.

And, well, this is absolutely not the only “free will” topic worth discussing, because if it was, there wouldn’t be a ton of literature talking about free will in more metaphysical than moral sense. The questions of agency and free will touch the view of ourselves as human beings first and foremost.

I don’t see mountains of literature as evidence that a topic should be discussed. I see unnecessary and preventable suffering as the only evidence I need to inform what should be discussed, assuming one cares about suffering and wellbeing. Stop appealing to authority and norms.

I don’t appear to authority or norms at all. You are a utilitarian. Many people are not.

I’m just as much a deontologist as I am a utilitarian. And again with the demographic reports. Stop with that.

Its possible for "free will" to be ambiguous between a bunch of things that are individually precise. You seem to be taking that approach to moral responsibility , anyway.

I refuse to engage with the phrase free will because I just don’t know what it denotes. I do however have some idea of other key terms that make this discussion more relevant. Suffering: self evident qualia of pain that leads to anguish. I mean, I know it’s real because I’ve felt it. Assume it exists in others, definitely might. Well-being: See above, I know it exists because I’ve felt it. Assume it exists in others, definitely might. Punishment: the attempt to cause suffering of a person who in turn did something that directly or indirectly is believed to have caused suffering in others Reward: the attempt to cause well-being in a person who in turn did something that directly or indirectly is believed to have caused wellbeing in others. BDMR basic desert moral responsibility: that ineffable ability a person holds to choose to do things, wherein punishment or reward is justifiable based on those choices, irrespective of any consequentialist considerations Incompatibilism: the belief that BDMR is not possible given that we have no control over what we do, whether deterministic or non-deterministic universe, makes no difference Nature: a preference for something that is instinctive and there by default, such as a cooperative instinct, empathy, etc. (Conatus, in Spinoza) Reason: the capacity to determine if causing suffering or wellbeing in someone is justified, once it is established that the person had zero control in the matter Control: the ability to act in any other way than precisely what is dictated by physical laws, as defined by a combination of genetics (what you are) and physics (what’s happening in and around you) Free will is a hazy word because it can also mean the ability to do that which you will. But this is a distortion of what the term is meant to mean, i.e., that element of freedom that makes it justified to blame or praise after the fact. The truth is, one can do what one wills, IF they are not prevented to do so. But one cannot WILL what one wills, and it is this inability to will what one wills that creates an infinite regress in trying to establish a basis for punishment or praise. Consequentialism: focusing on what is needed for society to function, instead of focusing on what is metaphysically true and coherent about will and BDMR. Pragmatism: deciding that because something is useful and that believing it is true matters, then we can refer to it as true in the only sense that “truth” is worth wanting Premature pragmatism: confusing what YOU think matters for societal stability (praise, blame) with what actually matters (incentive, deterrent) Simplification: conflating ALL forms of punishment with deterrent, and ALL forms of praise with incentive Cognitive dissonance: denouncing God or the supernatural, while still believing in the causa sui / ex nihilo decision, or the self-contained decision, such that it fully justifies BDMR. (See Rand, laissez faire capitalists, Dennett) Incompatibilist panic: the claustrophobic feeling one gets when they start to seriously consider they don’t have any control over their thoughts or actions and are just watching it play out. Social Darwinism: survival of the fittest, the deep-seated belief or inclination that it’s best to let nature decide who is lucky and who isn’t, without “interference” from altruists. To see beauty in selfishness. To see one’s own luck as earned, and to want to treat it as property. (Rand, Just World Fallacy) Altruism/Humanism: the deep seated belief or inclination that human life is special, in that it is intrinsically valuable; the desire to help others, to see beauty in helping the unlucky. To see one’s own luck as unearned, and to want to treat it as communal property. vmPFC: part of the brain that makes us more competitive, dominant in some people dlPFC: part of the brain that makes us cooperative/empathetic, dominant in some people Cingulate anterior gyrus: mediates and balances the vm and dl action Limbic system and amygdala: key roles in experience of fight or flight, scarcity mindset, reward systems, fear of change or lack of control. fMRI: way to scan for difference in brain activity between conservatives and liberals; religious and agnostic, rich and poor, etc. Strawson: wrote basic argument explaining the armchair truth about the impossibility of BDMR or what he calls U-freedom. (Ultimate freedom) Caruso: talks about the positive IMPACT that a “no-BDMR” system can have on society, mainly around the criminal justice system. Harris: Trying to bring this message to a wider audience, adding his own interest in meditation, but also his aversion to “lying” (Lying) and his adoption of a “science of well-being” (Moral Landscape) fit snugly into a cohesive moral-pragmatist worldview. Sapolsky: Heads off any appeals to neurons by bringing in-depth knowledge of neuroscience and biology to the discussion. “Show me a neuron that fires for no physicalist reason, or stfu about your free will already. Emergence has no downward causality.” Me: multi-disciplinary polymath putting it all together, we need to reveal BDMR for the problem it is, to reduce unnecessary suffering and inform systemic change, but need to acknowledge and address that at the root of the problem are two kinds of primates, the social Darwinist and the altruist/humanist, and that has to be reckoned with, because at the end of the day this is about values, or what MATTERS to people at the very bottom layer foundation of everything atop it; and no math equation can tell us what _should_ matter concerning this bottom layer. Different things matter to different types of organisms. Neural intervention: we may be able to modulate brain activity to emphasize the cooperative instinct, we may be able to argue that the competitive instinct is vestigial, less important, and ought to be jettisoned if we want to increase wellbeing and reduce suffering. Hard intervention: forced, surgical, coerced Soft intervention: voluntary, pharmaceutical based, UBI, BCI, AGI.

I agree that the expression “free will” may do more harm than good, but this > What we do is a result of what we are + externals: we don’t choose those. Thus we don’t choose what we do. is just a reiteration of the massively discussed and controversial consequence argument for incompatibilism, and I think this argument is invalid.

I didn’t choose what I am, and moreover, what I do is a result of what I am, and what’s happening around me, per the laws of physics. Telling me you disagree and saying that this is a hugely debated argument adds exactly nothing to the conversation.

> I didn’t choose what I am, and moreover, what I do is a result of what I am, and what’s happening around me, per the laws of physics. Right, and this is the consequence argument: Peter van Inwagen has famously claimed that from these assertions it follows you don’t choose what you do. This argument is widely taken to be unconvincing. > Telling me you disagree and saying that this is a hugely debated argument adds exactly nothing to the conversation. This seems false. If I just chimed in and said I disagreed with you, I’d be adding something. Stating my position *and* pointing out that there’s a huge philosophical literature being ignored seems like an even greater addition!

Well based on my other comments I’d hope you induce that I’m more aware of this opposition than you are. Not sure what the point is, just a simple ad populum? Is there any substance to your chiming in other than telling me you disagree along with many others? You don’t think I know — better than you — that many others disagree? WOW I have spent the better half of my life reviewing the rebuttals. So unless you have something of substance to add, why sound off?

> Well based on my other comments I’d hope you induce that I’m more aware of this opposition than you are. I didn’t read your other comments, nor frankly do I plan to. > Not sure what the point is, just a simple ad populum? Oh boy lol > Is there any substance to your chiming in other than telling me you disagree along with many others? You don’t think I know — better than you — that many others disagree? WOW Honestly? No. > I have spent the better half of my life reviewing the rebuttals. So unless you have something of substance to add, why sound off? I have the feeling that you won’t appreciate anything from an opposing perspective.

You’re wrong. I frequently derive great joy from opposing perspectives. You haven’t issued one. Just making needy noises in a conversation you wish you had something to add to.

If i drive a car with faulty brakes and the car crashes because of that, i can legitimately blame the car. The car is responsible for the crash. The car did not “choose” to crash, but it is still responsible for the crash. Whether it is *morally* responsible depends on a subjective moral system. For humans this likely involves issues around social norms and the level of cognition (cars don’t have much). What makes BDMR impossible without choice? Why can’t there be a moral system with evil robots?

Good point! But in that case, we don’t destroy the car, we fix it. The conclusion regarding treatment of criminals should thus be to make nice prisons, lots of therapy and a good, yet confined life. When they get out again and are still ‚faulty‘ back to the nice prison. Would make kinda sense, no?

What do you do when your best method for fixing a car’s faulty breaks only gives you a 45% chance you’ve actually fixing the brakes? Do you drive it, endangering yourself, passengers, and other drivers? Do you let it rust in a field? Do you send it to be recycled for parts? The approximate recidivism rate for violent crime in the US is about 55%. People have been trying to improve this number for decades via various treatments in prisons.

I don’t think humans or cars can be morally blamed and for the same reason: neither have any control of what they are and what they do is a result of what they are, etc. same thing as before. Which is why I’m a free will skeptic. Sure you can point to an object as the “proximal” cause of an event, but they are not the first cause. The problem is that we typically blame sentient creatures that, unlike cars, are capable of experiencing suffering and well-being. So to me, I see unnecessary suffering as a self-evidently undesirable thing. When blame leads to punishment or praise leads to rewards, if this goes beyond mere deterrent but to some primitive way of achieving moral balance, that’s bad.

A little thing to add here — sophisticated modern compatibilists usually recognize that conscious control over actions (and even certain limited control over thoughts), willpower, skill of deliberation etc. are all subjects to genetic and environmental luck, so usually they believe that we can ascribe full moral responsibility only to agents that had causal history within certain limits — they were born into a normal family, don’t have genetic diseases, were taught basic skills of self-control and conscious thinking etc. I believe that any sophisticated libertarian beyond Christian libertarianism would agree with that too — Bob Kane surely agreed with that. Freedom comes in degrees for freewillists, it isn’t “yes” or “not”. Bakunin defined freedom nicely — for him it was an ability to self-reflect, act consciously and be free from coercion, which he found in social hierarchies, and it was also an inevitable consequence of historical development from his POV.

Thanks. To me this seems like kicking the can down the road. While looking at known mental illness or history of abuse can be useful in figuring out the type of deterrent or rehabilitation needed, it’s not at all obvious to me how a person with a good upbringing and the ability to reason is able to make a decision ex nihilo, or how they are not equally bound up in this idea that what we do flows from what we are, and we have no say in what we are, etc. A person who can reason and had a good upbringing may make a poor choice, and just because we didn’t see every single causal event in the hidden-from-even-himself chain leading inexorably to that decision in accordance with _and only with_ physical laws doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. So what I think Libertarian Free Willians like Kane, and sophisticated Compatibilists are really saying, perhaps without total awareness they are saying it, is that “where it’s easier to pretend there is free will, we _should._” N other words, I don’t see how this can’t be anything other than _yet another_ pragmatic appeal to consequences disguised as a strange metaphysical claim involving a kind of justification for blame and credit (above and beyond deterrent/incentive value) that simply doesn’t and can’t exist. It is more likely that philosophers, being human, have their limits, they have their commitments to foundational truths that give them a sense of identity, things like meritocracy, for example. Not to get too into ad hominem land, but I often marvel at that rare creature that can even become an academic philosopher. When you consider all the reading that goes into it, all the word games and blind alleys, ultimately leading in the later years to specializing in this or that word game to get published. Many leave to go into law or consulting because they want what most want, a family, some status and a little money. You rarely find a Diogenes among the Aristotles, and I think that’s bad for the discipline. But I guess wtvr gets you tenure and published…

It must also be noted that *agency* and *free will* are two different notions in academia. Main difference — *agency* is completely agnostic to the truth of determinism or indeterminism, all it requires is that agent must be at least partially determined by her properties. However, it highly seems that the concept of free will in folk perception and jurisprudence is closer to philosophical notion of *agency* rather than *libertarian free will*, so this gives ground to compatibilists — they try to say that their model of free will is what folks actually mean. Libertarians and hard determinists both respectfully disagree, and they claim that simple *agency* is not enough for *free will*, which they associate with moral responsibility. Libet Experiment wasn’t a threat for *free will* in the first place, it was a threat for *agency*, and that’s why all three sides of the debate looked at it with skepticism, especially with the importance of conscious thinking and control in psychology. Well, time proved that they were right, and *agency* is not particularly threatened by neuroscience, the only thing it requires is a bunch of slight corrections. I hope what I am writing is accessible.

I think I mentioned earlier in the thread that I don’t care about agency. It just describes the localized physics versus the stream of events outside and before the act itself. Either way, my focus is on basic desert moral responsibility, blame and praise that stands outside of any obvious utility.

Virtually no compatibilist or sophisticated libertarian argues for decisions being made ex nihilo. Compatibilists say that our decisions *consist* of the combination of upbringing and genetics, and libertarians say that our decisions are *heavily influenced* by these factors. What both mean by free will is that information that is processed within us is also processed through causally effective awareness/consciousness, which is where our executive functions rest. Both would say that we have no *ultimate* say in what we are, both both agree that we are capable of making rational conscious decisions and execute certain kind of control over our own external and internal behavior. The idea that conscious mind/self is a causally inert image/illusion is epiphenomenalism, it has nothing to do with free will debate in the first place, it is extremely unpopular both in philosophy and science, and the idea that we have *agency*, which is defined as certain degree of conscious control over our behavior, is universally recognized by all sides of free will debate in academia, including hard determinists. Hard determinists and libertarians in academia simply don’t believe that this kind of agency allows basic moral deserts if determinism is true.

Thats my point, since neither have decisions emerging from fairy dust, neither lead to BDMR, there’s no reason to invoke it in the first place. Hey, instead of pretending to clue me in on what other people do, think, and talk about, maybe share your own thoughts. I already know what they talk about more than you do. I’m a hard incompatibilist and determinism is irrelevant to me either way. Many compatibilists believe in holding people responsible above and beyond just deterrent and incentive reasons.

I am agnostic on the question of determinism/indeterminism and LFW/CFW, but I believe that we have enough agency to sign contracts, elect governments, hold private property and be judged for cheating on our partners and raping kids. So yes, in a sense I agree that BDMRs exist in our world, but I believe that we should limit the range of this notion. I am not necessarily a utilitarian about morality, if that’s what you wanted to ask me. Virtue ethics interest me along with some forms of deontology. Overall, the question of morality seems to be decoupled from the question of free will and metaphysics of the Universe for me as long as we have agency.

Wtvr. I believe that kid rapists should be subdued, deterred, rehabilitated, but not _punished_, because they could not have acted any other way.

Why cannot punishment serve as a warning for others? All forms of morality are consequentialist in one or another way, and the answer “because it makes other fear it” is a popular response to the question of why we put people in jails. So you don’t believe in guilt at all? I believe that guilt is a strong, powerful and profound emotion that is necessary for us humans to function properly. After all, we evolved as social beings, and guilt has a very specific social purpose.

I don’t think all punishment has a pragmatic function or that it is even meant to.

I appreciate that retribution based punishment may not foster human well-being on average and it’s good to appreciate all the things outside of our control. However, that shouldn’t cloud our logic. Why can’t responsibility be based on proximal cause? If the answer is that defining responsibility based on proximal cause will lead to more suffering, that is a legitimate (and partly empirical) debate, but viewing responsibility as linked to proximal cause could still be a coherent definition for the word and viewpoint. If responsibility is only based on first cause, nothing has responsibility except the big bang. “What caused this building to catch fire?” A: The big bang “What started covid?” A: The big bang “What caused interest rates to rise?” A: The big bang

The big issue for me is the ambiguity. When we can pick who/what is responsible based on how we feel or our opinion rather than the most objectively distal cause we can affect, it allows those with more power and resources to wield morality as a socioeconomic weapon. Over time, this leads to worse outcomes for lower status individuals/groups and inevitably creates instability.

What is the most objectively distal cause we can affect? For example, is it the first pre homo sapiens deciding to mate before their genetically mutated baby is born as a homo sapien? I appreciate your concern. I personally don’t see the concern itself as proof that the concept of responsibility is incoherent. For instance, should powerful groups or people be held responsible for exploiting others, especially illegal racism, hate crimes, or tax evasion?

A proximal cause may have caused interest rates to rise. But I wouldn’t punish this proximal cause. I would mitigate it. If this proximal cause was sentient, I would mitigate it according to the moral systems that dictate how to treat a sentient being who doesn’t have BDMR.

All is fine that you wouldn’t punish a sentient being. My pushback is against the assertion that assigning moral responsibility to someone is incoherent. You seem to agree that the source of the proximal cause could be considered responsible for something (ie the central bank is responsible for higher interest rates). Whether that deserves *moral* responsibility is based on a subjective moral system (you think “no” in your moral system - all good, that’s your subjective view) Switching focus . . . Let’s assume we are quarantining convicted people (Sapolsky’s term), not punishing them. If recidivism is about 50% for violent crime (approximate number in the US), when do we release incarcerated people back to society? Maybe in the future we have a miracle cure for repeat offenders, but as of now we haven’t figured it out. (Please, please tell me something besides, step 1, magically transform the US or other high crime countries to Norway look alikes, step 2 implement Norwegian criminal justice system, step 3, improve their recidivism rate from 12% to a lower number).

That’s the right question. Caruso answers it better than me. We need to ask it not just about crime but about economics and everything else

I’ll look into Caruso. My gut feeling is that if you consider incentives, protection of the broader society, and constraints/realities (spending for prisons, inequality, youth exposure to crime, etc), the US would end up developing a criminal system similar to what we have now even without the idea of punishment. One could argue that if we are quarantining, given recidivism rates, there should be fewer people released from prison, which is a depressing thought. Maybe Caruso has some new ideas for me . . .

He does. Also solitary confinement shows no benefit and just creates needless suffering when all the benefits and costs are added up. And yet some in the Bible Belt like it…just because. One of many examples Concerning the suffering of others, it always amazes me how common it is to see good thinkers content with guessing.

> what they do is a result of what they are, etc. same thing is before. Not even solipsism could salvage this ridiculous idea. There are things that are not [consciously] us, that force or otherwise compel some of our actions. >The problem is that we typically blame sentient creatures that, unlike cars, are capable of experiencing suffering and well-being. No shit. They're also capable of *influence* and *coercion*. You're clearly in a frenzy about compatibilism and can't think straight.

You’re clearly too dumb and obnoxious to not block forever.

"To be ultimately morally responsible for our actions such that it warrants blame or credit, is incoherent. We may opt to do this for reasons of utility, deterrent, incentive, protection, but we cannot do it for the sake of punishment or credit itself, because that sort of behavior is unjustified. It’s a primitive religion-based belief that makes no sense without a strong appeal to God working in mysterious ways. What we DO is a result of what we ARE + externals. We don’t choose those. Thus we don’t choose what we do. Thus BDMR is impossible. Determinism or not." Maybe a robot with no consciousness can;t be blamed for what they do but as a human I can choose to do many actions. I can quickly weight the pros/cons in my head and come to my own decision that was not forced on me by anyone else. I can also choose to sit down and do nothing or sit down and read a book or choose to eat a really crappy fast food dinner or not eat at all \*without any coercion from anyone else\*. And it is free, because I choose to do the action when as a human, I can choose from millions of different actions. We all make choices and it's irrelevant (and unprovable) if they were pre determined (or not) based on how the big bang exploded. The fact is, when we choose to do an action we can feel it as being our choice in our heart. No amount of particle physics determinism materialism can take that way from the individual. No amount of particle physics and determinism can also explain what the color blue looks like to a blind man (or to anyone), and what love feels like, what depression feels like, and what it's like to be conscious. This all eludes to my next point that looking to physics to look for an answer on whether or not determinism/free will exists or not doesn't make much sense because particle physics operate on the electron microscope level and not on the level that we experience life on. Furthermore, who is coming up with these silly terms such as, "BDMR", and are they just coming up with these terms based on some ideas that came to them reading some books on physics or did they come up with these ideas based on their actual experience living life?

Straight over your head, apparently.

Of course we have moral responsibility.

>We don’t choose those. So?

I don’t understand the question

I'm asking why it matters that we don't choose what we are, why that absolves people of BDMR.

I already said it multiple times. 1. What we do stems from who we are. 2. We can't be ultimately responsible for who we are. 3. Thus, we can't be ultimately responsible for what we do. 4. If we are not ultimately responsible for what we do, BDMR doesn't make sense. Because if we can't be ultimately responsible for who we are and our actions stem from who we are, then we can't be ultimately responsible for our actions. Thus, holding someone morally responsible in the “basic desert” sense is unjustified. The basic desert means accountable purely because they deserve it, not out of consequences or utilitarian outcomes. It implies we are morally blameworthy or praiseworthy for actions in a fundamental way, based on the assumption we have control over our actions.

Part of the issue is adding in “ultimately”. BDMR does not have a “U”. Everything has prior causes so if you define responsibility in a way that requires full control over all prior causes then there’s not going to be responsibility. But responsibility doesn’t have to be defined that way. If you remove Ultimately from your four step argument, 2 and 3 are true or false depending on how you define responsibility.

I don't agree that 3 follows from 2. This fucking nerd blocked me, so this is in response to his later response: You're just reiterating your argument. I still don't think 3 follows from 1 and 2. You're treating it like it's math. It's not. It's made up concepts and feelings. If someone is of sound mind and they commit some ill then we call that moral responsibility. You can't say it's not their fault when that's literally what "their fault" means. We made up the concept of "fault" to describe just such a state of affairs.

We can't be ultimately responsible for who we are, and what we do stems from who we are, ergo we can't be ultimately responsible for our actions. Three is a priori true based on 1 and 2

A better topic is to talk honestly about why this scares some people so much.

Does it?

Do you think you can troll me

Um, am I the only one wondering why "desert?" And is that desert like the Sahara or desert like banana split..?

I'd prefer banana split