[MD] Moral Responsibility and Free Will

[Steven Peterson]

Hi dmb,


> dmb said to Steve:
> Parfit might take such things seriously, but he's coming from a very, very different place philosophically. He's a reductionist who thinks individuals are brains and bodies.
>
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> Steve replied:
> It is a fallacy to think that arguments can be rejected simply by putting a label on someone (or noting that someone else has previously done such labeling). But you do this a lot anyway.
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> dmb says:
> As I see it, you are dismissing a very powerful criticism as some kind of fallacy, as some kind of name-calling. If you really believe that, then you do not understand the nature of this criticism. You are using the voice of a determinist and a reductionist to talk about moral responsibility and free will. That would be wildly inappropriate and needlessly confusing even if we weren't supposed to be talking about the MOQ's version of free will.


Steve:
Nope. That's not it. Why would I try to find people who believe in
free will to support the position that the belief in free will is
_not_ essential to moral responsibility? In spite of the fact that I
keep reminding you of the title of this thread, you keep forgetting
and getting off topic. Once again, this thread started when you
insisted that it was plainly illogical of me to assert that moral
responsibility does not depend on a belief in free will. I'm not using
Parfit to "talk about moral responsibility and free will." That's your
position. You are the one saying it depends on free will. I'm using
Parfit to talk about moral responsibility even in the absence of a
belief in free will.

The Parfit quotes (as well as the Harris ones) show that even if
determinism were true, we could still talk about moral responsibility
in the way he unpacked "could have done otherwise." His explication of
the issue is compatible with Harris, Einstein, and Schopenhauer as
well as SEP.



dmb:
I'm saying that your approach is needlessly confused and weirdly
tone-deaf. I mean, Parfit's point is predicated on causal determinism.
How in the world do you figure that could even be relevant to the MOQ?

Steve:
It was not mean to be about the MOQ. It was meant to be relevant to
your repeated criticisms of my claim as "wildly incoherent."



> Steve said to dmb:
> You reject Parfit's use of "could have" as meaningless. You also rejected the notion of "could have" as being free to will what you will. I still have no idea what _you_ mean by "could have."  ..,if you want to say freedom is a sort of "could have," please recognize that "could" is a conditional term. It is the past conditional. It puts conditions on the past. What conditions are you talking about when you say that free will means "could have acted differently"?
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> dmb says:
>
> I smell the workings of analytic philosophy here and it doesn't just cut against the grain of the MOQ, it's a head-on collision, a real train-wreck. (Don't mistake my colorful language for a lack of substance.)


Steve:
Lack of substance is exactly what it sounds like to me. You have
equated free will with the idea that you "could have acted
differently." I'm just asking what you mean by that.  Maybe you want
to take back your claim that free will equates to "could have acted
differently"??? I would if I were you since I think Pirsig's version
of freedom is very different from free will.


dmb:
You asked a very fundamental question - basically, to what extent do
we follow DQ - and I have dished up several detailed answers to that
question.



Steve:
That is entirely different question from whether moral responsibility
can survive determinism.



dmb:
If you had paid attention to those answers, you'd probably realize how
ridiculous it is to be asking about free will in terms of past
conditionals. It's almost literally a matter of framing an empirical
question in terms of metaphysical pre-requisites. The radical
empiricist simply wouldn't answer the question of free will in that
way. DQ is aesthetic, not conceptual or metaphysical. That's why
freedom entails perception, which is what YOU asked about.


Steve:
Yes, I understand that Pirsig says that we are free to the extent that
we follow DQ. But I thought you had added something that I'm not sure
Pirsig ever said. Did Pirsig equate free will with "could have acted
differently" or is that not actually part of the MOQ?

If free will as "could have acted differently" is part of the MOQ,
then I'm wondering if you can tell me what that phrase means by
explicating the condition or conditions assumed under the past
conditional contained in that phrase. But now you seem to be saying
that a radical empiricist wouldn't describe free will in terms of
"could have acted differently" at all. If that is now your position,
we could then agree that the MOQ does _not_ support a "could have
acted differently" version of free will and that this is something
from the traditional version of free will that you have been sneaking
in the back door.



Best,
Steve