Freedomain Radio

pcrs:

idontlikeyou:

Societies are also not completely static as evidence by the fact that societies operating under different beliefs behave differently.

What would be different in our relationship if I believe in free will compared to me believing in determinism? Will you still don't like me? Since this is your name, I assume it is not depending on who you interact with. You don't like anyone here no matter what they believe.

Let me reverse it, as i can only speak authoritatively about my own mind.  If I believed in free will then I would view every action you make as an independent choice.  So if you bought the red drink instead of the blue, looked at the red head rather than the blonde, or reacted strongly to a political/religious message I would assume that each one was a conscious independent choice made for specific reasons.

However if I believed in determinism I would wonder to myself if it's genetic or childhood influences that make you like the red better than the blue.  I'll be curious what in your past makes you like red heads betters.  I will be intrigued as to what the political/religious message is linked to in your subconscious.

On a one on one level there are often situations where there is practialy no difference between determinism and free will but on larger scales and as a component of other concepts significant differences come into play.  Sorry, I'll have to leave it there for tonight.  I'll finish this up tommorow.

i can see how a determinist trying to convince someone else about the illusory nature of free will is not contradictory or incompatible with determinism (ridiculous as it may be) however, have any of you determinists ever said or thought anything along the lines of "i wish i hadnt said that" or "im such an idiot for having done that"? if so, how long did it take you to realise you were an even bigger fool for having asked the question.

idontlikeyou:

To claim that determinism rules out responsibility is to fail to understand determinism in the first place.  I am a causal machine who cannot act beyond his hardware and programming.  However I am responsible for my action just as my copier is responsible for printing a document.  If I do something bad I should be fixed of dealt with for the safety of others.

ok so you acknowledge that a person without free will has no more responsibility for their thoughts or actions than a printer does. thats a good start. so lets move on to how a person would be "fixed" in a way that is appropriate considering humans feel pain and sadness and a copier/printer does not. first you say..

idontlikeyou:

A free-willed justice system would punish the individual and seek vengeance.  A determinist justice system would seek rehabilitation and prevention. 

and then you say...

idontlikeyou:

When a printer puts out a document in green instead of black ink do we say, oh well?  No, we fix the printer or get a new one.  When an animal bites the leg of a person do we just say, oh well?  No, we try to rehablitate it or put it down.  When a man has a phobia do we say, oh well?  No, we encourage him (act as a causal agent) to seek help.  When a person kills nother person does it matter whether hehad metaphysical free will?  Of course not.  How can we hold someone responsible for his actions though?  Easily, he is the direct causal agent and represents a threat to others or violation of the rules so he must be punished.  Our modern penal system is based on rehabilitation and deterent, principles that fit comfortably into determinism.

so on the one hand your saying only a free will justice system would use punishment but then you say that a determinist justice system should use punishment as a deterrant to crime. ie as prevention. so doesnt it seem completely cruel to punish someone even though they had the deterrant of prison or a death sentence in their mind whilst they had the illusion that they were making a decision yet they could not help doing the crime anyway? if there is no free will there is no morality and no resonsibility for ones actions which you acknowledged in your post about the printer. so then having punishment as a deterrant will simply act as some kind of utilitarian means to an end. in this case the end is to create less crime by programming robots, oops, people, with the information that undesirable things will occur to them if they dont "control" their actions. sorry that i keeps speaking in free will terms but its a somewhat hard not to. 

so anyway, for those whom it does not deter you still cannot hold them responsible since the programming that made their brain tell their body to commit the crime was not overridden by the program called "the desire not to end up in prison". none of this is the persons fault of course so the only reason you would be throwing him into the institutionalised rape rooms we call prisons is to try and influence the actions of others. this seems very unjust and open to all sorts of abuse by those in charge or determining the harshness of the deterring punishment. especially if their programming has caused them to be somewhat sadistic, at no fault of their own of course.
hell, if no morality exists (since it cant) and the punishment for some poor bastard who had no choice in the matter is just a means to an end then why not put him on the rack in front of a large crowd or on TV and make sure the "deterrant" is as gruesome as possible. this type of social engineering would certainly cause less crimes to be commited since the fear programming might outweigh the desire to kill or rape in the next guy who considers it.

We could take this disgraceful means to an end even further with prevention in mind. since morality is no longer a factor (and only end results are) and since the people who become sociopaths are not responsible for the killings and rapes they commit but are in fact a product of their childhood abuse, etc.. how about punishing their parents for their crimes as well since it was the parents who are responsible for him having turned out that way. maybe if parents were punished for their childs crimes then it would act as a deterrant for poor child rearing. oh but wait, they only burnt their kid with cigarette lighters because they too had been the victims of abuse as children and never had any choice in the matter. maybe a determinist justice system should punish the grandparents too for what they have caused. what do you say?

ok. end of sarcasm now. despite the fact that deterministic factors are always at play, at some point someone has to be held solely responsible for making the decision to commit a crime if there is to be any reason for punishing them. im sure a justice system that recognised free will (like all the ones we have now but better) would take into account deterministic factors as to what made the person commit the crime when it came to deciding on a sentence and a process of rehabiliation. rehabilitation and prevention are already currently incorporated into the free will based justice system that we have at the moment so how would a deterministic justice system be any different apart form the fact that it could no longer be called a "justice" system since the concpet of justice goes out the window along with moral responsibility. would you rehabilitate violent criminals with clockwork orange style methods? would you use horrible deterrants such as the ones i described above since it will certainly make things safer for others? would you perform frontal lobotomies on repeat offenders as a way to stop them commiting crimes again? after all, in the determinist viewpoint there isnt much difference between a lobotomised person and a normal person. they are both zombies only one still has the sense that maybe he isnt a zombie.

i look forward to a better explanation of how a justice system which does not take free will into account at all would operate on any sane level.

thanks

sven:

so on the one hand your saying only a free will justice system would use punishment but then you say that a determinist justice system should use punishment as a deterrant to crime. ie as prevention. so doesnt it seem completely cruel to punish someone even though they had the deterrant of prison or a death sentence in their mind whilst they had the illusion that they were making a decision yet they could not help doing the crime anyway?

I said a determinist justice system should use rehabilitation and deterrence.  This is opposed to punishment for it's own sake or revenge.  I accidentally equivocated punishment there, I should have been more careful with that word.  Deterrence can be threat of punishment, community stigmatization, and education.  It is not cruel to use punishment to deter future offenses.  Also we have recitivism laws to deal with those whose criminality is too deply ingrained for them to function as members of society.

sven:

if there is no free will there is no morality and no resonsibility for ones actions which you acknowledged in your post about the printer.

 

Whoa Whoa whoa!  I never conceded there is no morality.  Morality doesn't need free will or ultimate responsibility.  Morality exists a system of judgement, regardless matter is re-definitions amongst different schools of thought that is constant.  One can still judge and evaluate actions without there being a free will.  SO I don't concede this point and don't see where you came to the conclusion that I did.

Let's keep in mind that any argument further down predicated on a rejection of morality is not entirely applicable to my stance of determinism as a whole.

sven:

so then having punishment as a deterrant will simply act as some kind of utilitarian means to an end. in this case the end is to create less crime by programming robots, oops, people, with the information that undesirable things will occur to them if they dont "control" their actions. sorry that i keeps speaking in free will terms but its a somewhat hard not to. 

It's very hard when it's done intentionally but not so difficult in casual conversation.  There's nothing inherently utilitarian about determinism or determinist retributive justice.  Means and ends are concepts without a school, so to invoke them to try and pinhole determinism to a school of thought that is not popular here does nothing but show a certain skill in rhetoric.

sven:

so anyway, for those whom it does not deter you still cannot hold them responsible since the programming that made their brain tell their body to commit the crime was not overridden by the program called "the desire not to end up in prison". none of this is the persons fault of course so the only reason you would be throwing him into the institutionalised rape rooms we call prisons is to try and influence the actions of others.

We would toss the criminal in humane prisons, a far cry from what we have now, to deter others, deter from repeat offending, to rehabilitate, and to protect others from harm.

sven:

this seems very unjust and open to all sorts of abuse by those in charge or determining the harshness of the deterring punishment. especially if their programming has caused them to be somewhat sadistic, at no fault of their own of course.

You are assumuing that deterence is flogging and public humiliation, it's a loaded question.  Also it's textbook Argumentum ad consequentiam.  The pleasantness or unpleasantness of the consequences of a proposition's truth does not have any impact on the veracity of the proposition.

sven:

hell, if no morality exists (since it cant) and the punishment for some poor bastard who had no choice in the matter is just a means to an end then why not put him on the rack in front of a large crowd or on TV and make sure the "deterrant" is as gruesome as possible. this type of social engineering would certainly cause less crimes to be commited since the fear programming might outweigh the desire to kill or rape in the next guy who considers it.

Are you here to actually discuss my position or run for office?  Obfuscation, argument from emotive language, and strawmen (see above) will not carry the day.  If you have an actual argument here I would love to hear it.

sven:

ok. end of sarcasm now.

How mature of you.

sven:

despite the fact that deterministic factors are always at play, at some point someone has to be held solely responsible for making the decision to commit a crime if there is to be any reason for punishing them.

This assume what it's trying t prove that people could have chosen otherwise.  Also no, sole responsibility is not necessary and is in fact rather counter productive.  By identifying abuse and moving to counter-act it, by education, by punishment, and by understanding the factors that make a criminal you can reduce crime.  Free-Will justice says that we should attack criminals as willfully evil, deterministic justice says we should attack crime and the roots of crime because it produces people who commit evil actions.  It is free-will that says we should put the man on the rack attacking the criminal, it is determinism that says we should try to attack the roots of his criminality and rehabilitate.

sven:

im sure a justice system that recognised free will (like all the ones we have now but better) would take into account deterministic factors as to what made the person commit the crime when it came to deciding on a sentence and a process of rehabiliation.

That would be a compatibalist based justice system as traditional free-will posits an agency free of deterministic factors.

Against other factors in my head that tell me this is a bad idea (yes determinism doesn't say there is only one factor involved in decision making) I will answer the gist of your why not torture people questions.  One, morality does exist even without free will (you should really check what my premises are before constructing an argument around something I never advocated).  Two, torture is not effective at anything.  Three, what is effective is humane punishment, rehabilitation (Like we have now?  No, actual rehabilitation), and a society that discourages crime (discourages as in makes crime both less necessary and highly risky, one without the other is useless as we've seen).  Determinism looks at the causes of crime in addition to the act of the criminal and acts in both societies and the criminals best interests (which is to take in a criminal and pump out a well adjusted member of society).

Now, if you would like to ask some real questions in place of the three redacted paragraphs of hysterical rhetoric then I would be happy to answer them.  If however you are only interested in preaching then I ask you to please do so elsewhere.

since the majority of your response was spent attacking my style instead of addressing the issues i raised, ill stick to the part at the end where you actually answered the questions

idontlikeyou:

One, morality does exist even without free will (you should really check what my premises are before constructing an argument around something I never advocated). 

you still seem to think that what you are talking about is morality when it isnt morality at all. if you want to be taken seriously you will have to stop reinventing the meaning of concepts to suit your argument. why cant you just acknowledge that what you are proposing is not morality but a system of procedures on how to deal with things when they happen in order to achieve a desired result. (ie. nut comes loose --> get spanner and tighten ---> machine continues to operate as we want it to). this is not morality, and yes you did indeed acknowledge that there was no morality when you compared humans to a printer. unless of course you consider a printer to be immoral when it fails to print your document or spills ink everywhere, in which case youd be completely insane according to the "predetermined" textbook definition. 

morality, judgement and justice all require that people are responsible for their actions at least to some degree. no will at all = no responsibility at all. end of story. i left out the word "free" because people who believe in free will are not silly enough to think that everyone is 100% responsible for their actions. they know that all choices are limited by circumstance and past experience. obviously no-one is responsible for being born or for the way they were brought up. but to me, the idea of punishment (or creating a deterrant as you like to call it) for somebody who had no choice in the matter at all is no different to imprisoning a robot because somewhere along the way another robot programmed it to be vicious and attack people. there is no morality in a situation like this, only cause and effect. to say that something the robot did is wrong is simply to say that we dont like the effect that it had. this will always be relative by the way.

also i dont see how you can advocate the punishment and rehabilitation only of the end party when they are nothing but the very last step in a long chain of causation which resulted in a undesired effect being created. the only thing which can truly be blamed for anything in a deterministic universe is the big bang. everything else is predeteremined after effects. so please tell me why only the killer should be punished and rehabilitated when he is as much responsible for the murder as the people he has associated with and the people they have associated with and so on ad infinitum.

idontlikeyou:

Two, torture is not effective at anything.  Three, what is effective is humane punishment, rehabilitation (Like we have now?  No, actual rehabilitation), and a society that discourages crime (discourages as in makes crime both less necessary and highly risky, one without the other is useless as we've seen). 

to say that torture is not effective is completely naive. it is very effective in many ways. the only reason most of us dont do it is because its morally wrong. except from a utilitarian perspective if it brings more desireable effects to those who arent being tortured (which fits in well with your idea of creating a deterrant for others). harsh punishments do work as deterrants but they are unjust which is why we 'enlightened' western societies no longer use them. go ask someone from saudi arabia or united arab emirates if there is much theft in their society and get back to me. the point i was making above is that there are plenty of things which are effective that we dont do because we consider them immoral. killing everyone with AIDS in order to eliminate the disease and save many more future lives would be one example. too bad the determinist position automatically disregards such a thing as morality and is concerned only with effects.

idontlikeyou:

Now, if you would like to ask some real questions in place of the three redacted paragraphs of hysterical rhetoric then I would be happy to answer them.  If however you are only interested in preaching then I ask you to please do so elsewhere.

we will soon find out whether it was predetermined that i do so or not.

PS - you remind me of the comic book guy in the simpsons.

Vichy:

The problem here is that what you are calling 'choice' seems to be different than the physical fact of considering and coming to a conclusion, which it isn't.

It is different. You confusion stems from crossing the conceptual "layers" of reality and misusing the terms. The term "considering" applies to a functioning mind but not to any of its physical substrate. Same with "choice", "will", "responcibility", etc - they are concepts of the mind, not propeties of physical matter. Those are not "physical facts" - they are processes of the mind. Physical facts can be observed, measured, reproduced with sense organs. One cannot observe "choice" or, for that matter "money" or "value".

While the mind is based on matter, it is not determined by it. For a simple analogy, consider a book. In order to exist it must be based on sone substrate - elementary particles -> atoms -> molecules -> letters. But meaning is only present starting with the level of words and nothing in the properties of the substrates determines - or even affects - the meaning of the book.

miko

I don't know.

Holy smokes you guys are still going at it!

Well fair enough, but for my part I think this debate is about as useful as a cock-flavoured lollypop.

 Determinism= Ego religion

What I find interesting in this so-called debate is that people are taking a position - asserting - even 'Idontlikeyou' who claims to be against assertion. In the above discussion I have seen no logic that proves either way. Am I the only one who doesn't feel the need to take a position ? - I feel comfortable living in uncertainty. My own personal feeling is that I would like to believe in free-will, because to me If I were to strongly accept determinism I might feel that I was a victim of circumstance and not strive to change my life for the better and be defeatist. But I really don't know the truth. Can either side tell me how they know they are right ?

Andy:

Can either side tell me how they know they are right ?

If I do, will you change your mind?

bockman:

Andy:

Can either side tell me how they know they are right ?

If I do, will you change your mind?

 

If you know and can prove to me what, if anything was before the big bang, I'll think about it.

Stefan Molyneux:

Ah, but his response is pre-determined, as you say, he has no choice in his posts, so asking him to 'do better' denies your own argument.

And so it is the same contradiction every time...

Andy:

What I find interesting in this so-called debate is that people are taking a position - asserting - even 'Idontlikeyou' who claims to be against assertion. In the above discussion I have seen no logic that proves either way. Am I the only one who doesn't feel the need to take a position ? 

I feel the same way, and I don't know one way or another.