[MD] Moral Responsibility and Free Will

[Steven Peterson]

Hi dmb,



> Steve said:
> Parfit is saying that we don't need to be able to say that we can will ourselves to will anything we want to have enough freedom for moral responsibility. All we need to do is be able to will our choices. Whether or not our motivations for making these choices are determined by forces beyond our control is an issue that can be held as separate. "Could have acted differently" means we would have if we had wanted to. We don't need to insist that could change what we want as a matter of free will. We don't will ourselves to have our values, we ARE our values.
>
>
> dmb says:
> We don't need to say we can will ourselves to will? Okay, then Parfit is knocking down an idea that sounds like ridiculous drivel to me, one that I never asserted. As I understand it, if you "could have acted differently, then you have free will. Period. I have no idea why anyone thinks this free will also has to have "something else".

Steve:
The problem is you can't say, "could have acted differently, period,"
since "could" suggests a hypothetical situation that you ought to be
prepared to explicate.  What do _you_ mean by "could have acted
differently"? Could have after differently if what were true?


Parfit does explicate what "could have acted differently can mean.
Even if that hypothetical situation is rewinding time under
determinism, then "could have acted differently" can still be taken to
mean "if we had wanted to." That works even if "what we want" is
causally determined.

The only problem I thought you could have with that being a sufficient
level of freedom on which to base moral responsibility is that "what
we want" is also free. That is why I raised Schopenhauer's problem of
regress in willing what we will. Freedom to not only will, but freely
choose what to will, and freely choose what we choose to will, and so
on, and so on. You keep saying that that problem of regress is not an
issue for you, but then what exactly is the issue you have with
Parfit's explication of "could have acted differently"?



dmb:
And may I remind you that we are talking about free will in the MOQ,
not Kant's version or Descartes' version or whatever. I suspect your
"something else" comes from some irrelevant source like that.


Steve:
What we are talking about is whether moral responsibility is
predicated on free will. I don't think it depends on _anyone's_
account of free will, so I have defended moral responsibility under
the conditions usually considered to most unfavorable to free will,
namely determinism, to show that moral responsibility can survive even
the mechanistic cause-and-effect picture of the world.

We have already agreed that in the MOQ, freedom is associated with DQ
and perception rather than a human faculty for rational and deliberate
action i.e., "will".) We agree that that sort of freedom is sufficient
for moral responsibility. We are talking about other conceptions of
free will because you have deemed determinism (the antithesis of
traditional conceptions of freedom) as insufficient to support moral
responsibility.

dmb:
But most importantly, the fuss should be about what particular kind of
free will we're talking about. Are we not talking about the MOQ's
particular version of free will? Isn't that the sort that should
interest us? I have narrowed and qualified that version in some
detail. That's the main part and it's the part that apparently has you
baffled most. Doesn't that bother you? That would bug the hell me and
I wouldn't be able to relax until I fixed that problem.

Steve:
Again, we are talking about the possibility for moral responsibility
in the _absence_ of free will because you have insisted that I am some
kind of a nut job for saying that moral responsibility does not depend
on free will. I have been defending myself as no more nutty than the
SEP, Parfit, Harris, Einstein, and Schopenhauer.

Best,
Steve