[MD] Moral Responsibility without free will

[david buchanan]

dmb quoted the Stanford encyclopedia:

Compatibilism offers a solution to the free will problem. This philosophical problem concerns a disputed incompatibility between free will and determinism. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. Because free will is typically taken to be a NECESSARY CONDITION OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY, compatibilism is sometimes expressed in terms of a compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism.

Steve replied:
I have always granted that free will is _typically_ taken to be linked to free will. What I have asserted is that that link is not a logical necessity. 


dmb says:
Lots of entries mention the fact that there are exceptions but I've only run across one source that actually says what those exceptions are; the Oxford Companion to Philosophy. It says there are two exceptions, one being a position that no philosopher has ever held and the other one is predicted on the conflation of two different concepts of the will. So they only exceptions are either wrong or non-existent. 

But I was really hoping you would simply think about the logical relation ON YOUR OWN. You've done everything except that and it's pretty clear to me that your position is incoherent and you don't appreciate how morally disastrous that position is. One of the main things that Pirsig're reformulation is to avoid the view that morals aren't really real. 


Steve said:
You keep highlighting the term "agent" presumably to make some point. An agent is simply an entity that makes choices. 


dmb says:
Yes, there is a point to repeatedly stressing the relation between freedom and morality. It sure would be nice if you got that point.


Steve continued:
...I've always said that we make choices and have intentions, moods, desires, preferences, etc.. What I question is whether we are free to have different intentions than we now have through an act of will. That doesn't seem to be the case in my subjective experience (I can't will myself to want what I don't want) and such a capacity of "freely" willing isn't supported by science. I also don't see how the capacity to follow DQ cashes out to such a power.


dmb says:

Are we free to will our intentions? What? That is redundant, recursive nonsense. It's like asking if we are free to have liberty to be free, if we have a choice about our choices we choose. 

And if it's not simply weirdly put redundant nonsense, then you are apparently asking about two different concepts of will at the same, then you are conflating the concrete practical reality with a metaphysical will as the cause behind the concretely lived experience. And that would be nonsense as well.

If you are willing to admit we make choices, then that's all we need to say we make choices. If you saying we had no choice but to make that "choice", then you are simply defying the meaning of the word "choice". And that's nonsense too.

This is more specifically what I mean when I say I can't make any sense of what you're saying. 


Steve said:
What remains to be sussed out with regard to the MOQ is how DQ cashes out to the free control of an agent. I don't see how. But as for moral responsibility and the MOQ, what makes us and rocks and trees and atoms moral beings in the MOQ is not the assertion of free will but the assertion that reality itself is a moral order. Yet it still makes little sense to talk about responsibility until we get to beings that have social patterns because only such beings have behavior which is modifiable through praise and blame. It's just not worth punishing a rock since there is no hope that its behavior could change as a benefit of punishment (rocks don't participate in social patterns), but a scolded child may behave better next time.



dmb says:

Man, you are so not getting the point. It seems like you really don't understand what moral responsibility is. I mean, the idea that praise and blame are just a means of modifying behavior is not about moral responsibility. Quite the opposite. If we comply simply to avoid punishment, that is not morality at all. It's merely fear-driven obedience, coerced compliance. This is how most psychopaths stay out of jail. They will avoid murder because it puts them at risk of going to jail. It's not because THEY think it's morally wrong, but because they know that other people think it's wrong. One philosopher who looked into this says the immoral psychopath knows what's moral in the same way that an atheist can have knowledge of theology without actually believing any of it himself. 

Anyway, those Stanford quotes were supposed to help you see the intimate connection between agency and morality, between freedom and responsibility.