[MD] Moral Responsibility without free will

[david buchanan]

Andre said:
... Marsha also argues that because something is only conventionally real, and not ultimately real she doesn't accept it as being relevant FROM A MOQ POINT-OF-VIEW! Now this is serious. Apart from the 'free-will' discussion that has been going on for a while Marsha claims it is irrelevant! Why is it 'irrelevant'? Because it isn't 'ultimately real'. She cites Buddhist insights, Garfield, Nagarjuna and a host of others to substantiate her claims and fundamental position (of non-acceptance of anything...seemingly). But my question to Marsha is  "why"? What point are you trying to make? What contribution are you trying to make to the MOQ by maintaining this position? YOU my dear nullify, disarm, annihilate and evaporate any well meant discussion about anything even remotely relevant. And all imho of course.



dmb says:

Exactly. It's only conventional reality. As if we have some other option. As if the "Ultimate" reality is somewhere over the rainbow. By Marsha's reasoning, every single thing that anyone could ever say is irrelevant to the MOQ because it's not "ultimately" real. Just like the bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I suppose. This is know-nothingism with a new-agey, faux-Buddhist veneer. It's empty-heaed anti-intellectualism, served with a dollop of snark on crackers. 

And of course, what's irrelevant is the ontological status of bullets. It simply doesn't matter if they have essential, independent or eternal existence or not - and nobody said they did anyway. But they will kill you all the same. If a gun is pointed at you, does it matter that the bullet is only conventionally real? Hell, no. Is it any comfort to anyone to say the guy with a bullet hole in his head is only conventionally dead?


Don't know about you, but that's the only kind of dead that concerns me. What other kind is there?