Yes, this is a thread on TL that involves religion, but I hate to think that our policy should be to blindly close every such thread. Sam Harris is a writer whose books are both insightful and have sparked many good discussions in the past and as long as the thread doesn't derail I'd like to leave it open. This should be the basic premise for every such thread, no matter how high the odds of it derailing. In that light, these posts that just predict the downfall of this thread (whether it be pre-determined or not) are 1) Not contributing to the discussion 2) Backseat moderating 3) Annoying 4) Actually contributing towards derailing it. I'll keep 2 daying people for this.
On March 09 2012 20:21 Marth753 wrote: The problem I see in this argument is that, if you're proposing that there is no free will in the universe, then we should never punish anyone ever for anything they do because it wasn't their choice to act that way. Did Hitler, Charles Manson, and (insert any murderer here) kill someone? Well who cares, because he had no free will to do so. Just like a man lead around like a marionette they should not be held accountable for their actions because they did not act out of their free will.
Yes, some decisions are made reflexively and that's not really operating out of your free will because then it really is the reactions of a bunch of atoms. For any other animal you'd be right in saying they have no (or at least rarely have) free will because they function on a more mechanical level, but ideas and memories and choices aren't just matter, they're something else on a less understood level.
This argument always comes up and let me summarize why it's false.
First off we punish people for their actions and their intent. None of this changes without free will it just means that intent is formed through experience. For example some guy's wife cheats on him and he goes out and kills the other guy. Not everyone will have that reaction and it depends on the individual personality and their past experience even something like hormone level and things like that but all these things come together to form the intent. It's still cause and effect, it doesn't prevent people from making decisions it just means those decisions are determined by the past.
Look at another scenario: some robot goes around and kills people. You still "punish" the robot even if you agree it had no free will in it's decisions. People can change if you punish them, therefore most/all crimes are not punished by death but seek to rehabilitate the person. Again this is cause (punish/rehab) and effect (less likely to commit crime).
Memories are just past experiences and are stored in the brain in neurons that carry the information electrically and chemically. Ideas are synthesis of memories. Saying "they are less understood" doesn't imply free will somehow.
But this doesn't change the fact that this excuses them from everything they did before hand. Under this logic, just to take this to the extreme to show how it's flawed, Hitler did nothing wrong but was simply educated incorrectly and should have been rehabilitated. Under this logic, Hitler was forced to kill millions of Jews by all of his experiences and memories which were, by extension, forced upon him. Under this logic once again, Hitler was just a poor soul forced to kill millions of Jews who we should have reached out to and helped.
If the only reason to punish someone is to rehabilitate them, then let's assume something. There are two ways to fix Hitler from killing millions of Jews ever again: therapeutic care in some tropical paradise that relieves Hitler of his hatred and is simultaneously enjoyable, or send him to jail and show him just how bad his actions were. If you're assuming that all we should do is rehabilitate people then either option is perfectly fine because they fix Hitler from killing again, and yet the whole world would be appalled if you went with the first option because that is not what he deserves. Most people would admit that the second option is appropriate because that is what Hitler deserves for killing 6 million people. And why? Because he consciously made the choice to do something so horrible that it cannot be justified.
Where do you get that hitler did nothing wrong by this logic? The whole point of laws and punishment is to outline what we consider "wrong". I don't know why you bring up hitler I was referring to society's laws not extreme cases. There is no death penalty where I'm from so yes, it's all about rehabilitation and deterrence. Rehabilitation doesn't mean sitting on a tropical island getting therapeutic care. That sort of rehab is for people with emotional problems and such. I'm talking about rehabilitation for criminals which includes serving prison time. There's also an educational and therapeutic aspect.
An extreme case such as hitler may deserve the death penalty though. There's the issue of whether or not you can be sure someone is really rehabilitated and won't do it again. There's also the issue of deterrence i mentioned. The law has to be strict enough to prevent crime while being forgiving enough to allow people to earn their way back into society (for most cases). At best hitler would get life in prison.
And yes hitler is the product of his environment. Had he not had the upbringing that he did it's unlikely he would have become what he was. We're all shaped by our experiences and instincts. That's the cause and effect I was talking about. Hitler wasn't forced to do anything against his will. He wanted to murder the jews and so he did. What I'm saying is that his will (in other words his decision making) was determined by his experiences and his instincts, both of which are deterministic in nature.
If Hitler had been given a different environment, different chemical factors, guess what? It is entirely possible the mass extinction of the jews wouldn't have happened.
Your arguing about semantics over the definition of fault. Even in a deterministic frame work you can place fault on someone for doing something, they still did it. Sure, it was their environment and brain that got them there, but that is still a huge part of their identity.
The whole no one is responsible argument is terrible. In our heads we are obviously making decisions. The process to get there being formulaic or somehow freely formed from our above materialistic minds doesn't matter on the end result and practical implications.
The implications of not having free will are dire, but that is not an argument for free will. It is an argument that we should all buy into the illusion of free will. Technically not having free will means that we can't really be held responsible for our actions. In the same vein, it is unjust for god to burn us in hell forever when he created the circumstances which will caused us to be "sinful". You cannot blame an automaton.
Obviously society would break down, so its best to pretend we aren't robots.
On March 09 2012 20:21 Marth753 wrote: The problem I see in this argument is that, if you're proposing that there is no free will in the universe, then we should never punish anyone ever for anything they do because it wasn't their choice to act that way. Did Hitler, Charles Manson, and (insert any murderer here) kill someone? Well who cares, because he had no free will to do so. Just like a man lead around like a marionette they should not be held accountable for their actions because they did not act out of their free will.
Yes, some decisions are made reflexively and that's not really operating out of your free will because then it really is the reactions of a bunch of atoms. For any other animal you'd be right in saying they have no (or at least rarely have) free will because they function on a more mechanical level, but ideas and memories and choices aren't just matter, they're something else on a less understood level.
This argument always comes up and let me summarize why it's false.
First off we punish people for their actions and their intent. None of this changes without free will it just means that intent is formed through experience. For example some guy's wife cheats on him and he goes out and kills the other guy. Not everyone will have that reaction and it depends on the individual personality and their past experience even something like hormone level and things like that but all these things come together to form the intent. It's still cause and effect, it doesn't prevent people from making decisions it just means those decisions are determined by the past.
Look at another scenario: some robot goes around and kills people. You still "punish" the robot even if you agree it had no free will in it's decisions. People can change if you punish them, therefore most/all crimes are not punished by death but seek to rehabilitate the person. Again this is cause (punish/rehab) and effect (less likely to commit crime).
Memories are just past experiences and are stored in the brain in neurons that carry the information electrically and chemically. Ideas are synthesis of memories. Saying "they are less understood" doesn't imply free will somehow.
But this doesn't change the fact that this excuses them from everything they did before hand. Under this logic, just to take this to the extreme to show how it's flawed, Hitler did nothing wrong but was simply educated incorrectly and should have been rehabilitated. Under this logic, Hitler was forced to kill millions of Jews by all of his experiences and memories which were, by extension, forced upon him. Under this logic once again, Hitler was just a poor soul forced to kill millions of Jews who we should have reached out to and helped.
If the only reason to punish someone is to rehabilitate them, then let's assume something. There are two ways to fix Hitler from killing millions of Jews ever again: therapeutic care in some tropical paradise that relieves Hitler of his hatred and is simultaneously enjoyable, or send him to jail and show him just how bad his actions were. If you're assuming that all we should do is rehabilitate people then either option is perfectly fine because they fix Hitler from killing again, and yet the whole world would be appalled if you went with the first option because that is not what he deserves. Most people would admit that the second option is appropriate because that is what Hitler deserves for killing 6 million people. And why? Because he consciously made the choice to do something so horrible that it cannot be justified.
Hitler wasn't "forced" to do anything because that implies that it is happening against his will, but it IS his will. Hitler did something VERY wrong, he WAS simply educated/experienced incorrectly and yes, if it could happen he should be rehabilitated. Just because you can't stomach it doesn't mean it's flawed.
Can you clarify this statement? Because it sounds like you acknowledged that he has free will to choose what to do and that to kill 6 million people was his will so he chose it.
Anyways, to say that we should send Hitler to his favorite paradise island to be rehabilitated would be to reward incorrect behavior. If we reward incorrect behavior, even if it rehabilitates the criminal, then we prompt a whole bunch of people to act in whatever way gets them to paradise island themselves.
you're still making a false connection between the lack of free will and a lack of responsibility. people will do to someone who acts like hitler what people tend to do to what someone acts like hitler. there will be plenty of people who condone harsh punishment, just as there are plenty of people who don't. their reasons don't necessarily have free will behind them either. the agency with power in the scenario (usually some kind of government organization) will ultimately make the decision, which doesn't necessarily require free will either.
the possibility of rehabilitating people is still independent of the possibility of free will, one cannot make an argument for the other.
How can you be punished for something you never chose to do? If we assume a deterministic universe and it's determined that I'm a murderer, then I have no choice, I was established as a murderer before I was ever born and so I have no chance to escape this fate; at some point I will murder some particular person and do not have the choice to do otherwise. Furthermore everything that happens to me previously was determined for me, every choice I make will be determined for me as this is basically the definition of a deterministic universe.
As for the relevance of all of the rehabilitation talk, the point is that if we consign ourselves to a universe where we have no free will, then we excuse people of all blame for whatever they do because what they did was not their will, whether that means something else's will was thrust upon them or there is no such thing as a conscious choice at all. Not only is this extremely counter-intuitive, but it means we must justify every murder and say that murderers are just misguided individuals who we must help by whatever means necessary because they are victims of a plague (wrong ideas) who don't deserve harsh punishment. But if we justify horrible actions and help them then there's no longer any reason for people not to do horrible things which would just lead to more crime and violence. If this is true, then society collapses.
On March 09 2012 20:21 Marth753 wrote: The problem I see in this argument is that, if you're proposing that there is no free will in the universe, then we should never punish anyone ever for anything they do because it wasn't their choice to act that way. Did Hitler, Charles Manson, and (insert any murderer here) kill someone? Well who cares, because he had no free will to do so. Just like a man lead around like a marionette they should not be held accountable for their actions because they did not act out of their free will.
Yes, some decisions are made reflexively and that's not really operating out of your free will because then it really is the reactions of a bunch of atoms. For any other animal you'd be right in saying they have no (or at least rarely have) free will because they function on a more mechanical level, but ideas and memories and choices aren't just matter, they're something else on a less understood level.
This argument always comes up and let me summarize why it's false.
First off we punish people for their actions and their intent. None of this changes without free will it just means that intent is formed through experience. For example some guy's wife cheats on him and he goes out and kills the other guy. Not everyone will have that reaction and it depends on the individual personality and their past experience even something like hormone level and things like that but all these things come together to form the intent. It's still cause and effect, it doesn't prevent people from making decisions it just means those decisions are determined by the past.
Look at another scenario: some robot goes around and kills people. You still "punish" the robot even if you agree it had no free will in it's decisions. People can change if you punish them, therefore most/all crimes are not punished by death but seek to rehabilitate the person. Again this is cause (punish/rehab) and effect (less likely to commit crime).
Memories are just past experiences and are stored in the brain in neurons that carry the information electrically and chemically. Ideas are synthesis of memories. Saying "they are less understood" doesn't imply free will somehow.
But this doesn't change the fact that this excuses them from everything they did before hand. Under this logic, just to take this to the extreme to show how it's flawed, Hitler did nothing wrong but was simply educated incorrectly and should have been rehabilitated. Under this logic, Hitler was forced to kill millions of Jews by all of his experiences and memories which were, by extension, forced upon him. Under this logic once again, Hitler was just a poor soul forced to kill millions of Jews who we should have reached out to and helped.
If the only reason to punish someone is to rehabilitate them, then let's assume something. There are two ways to fix Hitler from killing millions of Jews ever again: therapeutic care in some tropical paradise that relieves Hitler of his hatred and is simultaneously enjoyable, or send him to jail and show him just how bad his actions were. If you're assuming that all we should do is rehabilitate people then either option is perfectly fine because they fix Hitler from killing again, and yet the whole world would be appalled if you went with the first option because that is not what he deserves. Most people would admit that the second option is appropriate because that is what Hitler deserves for killing 6 million people. And why? Because he consciously made the choice to do something so horrible that it cannot be justified.
Hitler wasn't "forced" to do anything because that implies that it is happening against his will, but it IS his will. Hitler did something VERY wrong, he WAS simply educated/experienced incorrectly and yes, if it could happen he should be rehabilitated. Just because you can't stomach it doesn't mean it's flawed.
Can you clarify this statement? Because it sounds like you acknowledged that he has free will to choose what to do and that to kill 6 million people was his will so he chose it.
Anyways, to say that we should send Hitler to his favorite paradise island to be rehabilitated would be to reward incorrect behavior. If we reward incorrect behavior, even if it rehabilitates the criminal, then we prompt a whole bunch of people to act in whatever way gets them to paradise island themselves.
you're still making a false connection between the lack of free will and a lack of responsibility. people will do to someone who acts like hitler what people tend to do to what someone acts like hitler. there will be plenty of people who condone harsh punishment, just as there are plenty of people who don't. their reasons don't necessarily have free will behind them either. the agency with power in the scenario (usually some kind of government organization) will ultimately make the decision, which doesn't necessarily require free will either.
the possibility of rehabilitating people is still independent of the possibility of free will, one cannot make an argument for the other.
How can you be punished for something you never chose to do? If we assume a deterministic universe and it's determined that I'm a murderer, then I have no choice, I was established as a murderer before I was ever born and so I have no chance to escape this fate; at some point I will murder some particular person and do not have the choice to do otherwise. Furthermore everything that happens to me previously was determined for me, every choice I make will be determined for me as this is basically the definition of a deterministic universe.
As for the relevance of all of the rehabilitation talk, the point is that if we consign ourselves to a universe where we have no free will, then we excuse people of all blame for whatever they do because what they did was not their will, whether that means something else's will was thrust upon them or there is no such thing as a conscious choice at all. Not only is this extremely counter-intuitive, but it means we must justify every murder and say that murderers are just misguided individuals who we must help by whatever means necessary because they are victims of a plague (wrong ideas) who don't deserve harsh punishment. But if we justify horrible actions and help them then there's no longer any reason for people not to do horrible things which would just lead to more crime and violence. If this is true, then society collapses.
No, we don't excuse someone for killing someone because they were going to do it anyway. Please stop making that leap in logic. It doesn't follow logically. Watch or read Minority Report if you have to LOL
In response to the video you edited in: a probabilistic quantum universe still doesn't necessarily contain free will. It could be probabilistic, and if you observed multiple instances of the big bang (following through all the way to the development of life), it might turn out different every time, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's a free will component to how the creatures in the universe act. i'm a physics major, btw, who got interested in physics because of this very question of free will. quantum mechanics gave no answers.
i ultimately concluded that it seems impossible to know whether or not free will exists, and its difficult to define what it would even physically be. people will always act as if it does, so its close enough. i still lean towards it not actually existing (consciousness and our perception of our own reasoning is still just the result of brain processes), but that doesn't mean much in the way of how I'll act in life. Nor would it have any reason to influence how law enforcement agencies work, though you still seem to think so.
On March 09 2012 20:21 Marth753 wrote: The problem I see in this argument is that, if you're proposing that there is no free will in the universe, then we should never punish anyone ever for anything they do because it wasn't their choice to act that way. Did Hitler, Charles Manson, and (insert any murderer here) kill someone? Well who cares, because he had no free will to do so. Just like a man lead around like a marionette they should not be held accountable for their actions because they did not act out of their free will.
Yes, some decisions are made reflexively and that's not really operating out of your free will because then it really is the reactions of a bunch of atoms. For any other animal you'd be right in saying they have no (or at least rarely have) free will because they function on a more mechanical level, but ideas and memories and choices aren't just matter, they're something else on a less understood level.
This argument always comes up and let me summarize why it's false.
First off we punish people for their actions and their intent. None of this changes without free will it just means that intent is formed through experience. For example some guy's wife cheats on him and he goes out and kills the other guy. Not everyone will have that reaction and it depends on the individual personality and their past experience even something like hormone level and things like that but all these things come together to form the intent. It's still cause and effect, it doesn't prevent people from making decisions it just means those decisions are determined by the past.
Look at another scenario: some robot goes around and kills people. You still "punish" the robot even if you agree it had no free will in it's decisions. People can change if you punish them, therefore most/all crimes are not punished by death but seek to rehabilitate the person. Again this is cause (punish/rehab) and effect (less likely to commit crime).
Memories are just past experiences and are stored in the brain in neurons that carry the information electrically and chemically. Ideas are synthesis of memories. Saying "they are less understood" doesn't imply free will somehow.
But this doesn't change the fact that this excuses them from everything they did before hand. Under this logic, just to take this to the extreme to show how it's flawed, Hitler did nothing wrong but was simply educated incorrectly and should have been rehabilitated. Under this logic, Hitler was forced to kill millions of Jews by all of his experiences and memories which were, by extension, forced upon him. Under this logic once again, Hitler was just a poor soul forced to kill millions of Jews who we should have reached out to and helped.
If the only reason to punish someone is to rehabilitate them, then let's assume something. There are two ways to fix Hitler from killing millions of Jews ever again: therapeutic care in some tropical paradise that relieves Hitler of his hatred and is simultaneously enjoyable, or send him to jail and show him just how bad his actions were. If you're assuming that all we should do is rehabilitate people then either option is perfectly fine because they fix Hitler from killing again, and yet the whole world would be appalled if you went with the first option because that is not what he deserves. Most people would admit that the second option is appropriate because that is what Hitler deserves for killing 6 million people. And why? Because he consciously made the choice to do something so horrible that it cannot be justified.
Hitler wasn't "forced" to do anything because that implies that it is happening against his will, but it IS his will. Hitler did something VERY wrong, he WAS simply educated/experienced incorrectly and yes, if it could happen he should be rehabilitated. Just because you can't stomach it doesn't mean it's flawed.
Can you clarify this statement? Because it sounds like you acknowledged that he has free will to choose what to do and that to kill 6 million people was his will so he chose it.
Anyways, to say that we should send Hitler to his favorite paradise island to be rehabilitated would be to reward incorrect behavior. If we reward incorrect behavior, even if it rehabilitates the criminal, then we prompt a whole bunch of people to act in whatever way gets them to paradise island themselves.
you're still making a false connection between the lack of free will and a lack of responsibility. people will do to someone who acts like hitler what people tend to do to what someone acts like hitler. there will be plenty of people who condone harsh punishment, just as there are plenty of people who don't. their reasons don't necessarily have free will behind them either. the agency with power in the scenario (usually some kind of government organization) will ultimately make the decision, which doesn't necessarily require free will either.
the possibility of rehabilitating people is still independent of the possibility of free will, one cannot make an argument for the other.
How can you be punished for something you never chose to do? If we assume a deterministic universe and it's determined that I'm a murderer, then I have no choice, I was established as a murderer before I was ever born and so I have no chance to escape this fate; at some point I will murder some particular person and do not have the choice to do otherwise. Furthermore everything that happens to me previously was determined for me, every choice I make will be determined for me as this is basically the definition of a deterministic universe.
As for the relevance of all of the rehabilitation talk, the point is that if we consign ourselves to a universe where we have no free will, then we excuse people of all blame for whatever they do because what they did was not their will, whether that means something else's will was thrust upon them or there is no such thing as a conscious choice at all. Not only is this extremely counter-intuitive, but it means we must justify every murder and say that murderers are just misguided individuals who we must help by whatever means necessary because they are victims of a plague (wrong ideas) who don't deserve harsh punishment. But if we justify horrible actions and help them then there's no longer any reason for people not to do horrible things which would just lead to more crime and violence. If this is true, then society collapses.
No, we don't excuse someone for killing someone because they were going to do it anyway. Please stop making that leap in logic. It doesn't follow logically. Watch or read Minority Report if you have to LOL
In response to the video you edited in: a probablistic quantum universe still doesn't necessarily contain free will. It could be probablistic, and if you did multiple instances of the big bang, it might turn out different every time, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's a free will component to how the creatures in the universe act.
This doesn't really seem to matter; he seems to think assigning blame to people for doing deterministic things is a choice we have. If we happen to justify murder based on our realization of a deterministic universe, that choice was determined prior. If we choose to continue rehabilitation and such, that was also predetermined.
"But if we justify horrible actions and help them then there's no longer any reason for people not to do horrible things which would just lead to more crime and violence. If this is true, then society collapses."
This scenario assumes free will, which in the beginning of your hypothetical doesn't exist. If the universe were deterministic then the future is already set. Our realization of and reaction to existing determinism is set in stone just like this conversation was. If the universe is deterministic then there are no choices we can make to improve\hurt society because by definition we do not have the free will to do so, we are moving along a set path.
tl;dr Saying our acceptance of deterministic reality is bad and should be avoided assumes we have a choice in the matter (free will)
to spin your logic to an absurdity you might recognize:
viruses are just floating bits of rna that self replicate. they clearly have no bad intent, but they hurt us anyway. but since they didn't will themselves to screw us over, we should ignore them and not vaccinate them.
that's essentially the logic you're applying to criminals with no free will. but regardless of their will, we're still going to try to create an overarching system to deter crime, which usually includes punishing criminals. free will does not enter the equation.
what romantic said too! i sensed an inconsistency like that, but he laid it out quite well~
OH I'VE FINALLY PINPOINTED WHERE YOUR MISCONCEPTION CAME FROM.
You seem to think law enforcement is about fairness, and what is right. That's wrong. Law enforcement is always about advancing the will of a group of people, and what they think should be done to people who choose to disrupt their society. Fairness/overarchingmorality isn't the basis (though some groups attempt to use morality as a basis, it still ultimately comes down to creating a list of crimes and punishments).
Guilt is defined by consequence (A killed B, minimum for manslaughter), and in a few cases, intent (A planned to kill B, minimum for murder 2), but intent is still an empirically observable aspect of a crime (often inferred, but still observable), whereas free will is nothing of the sort. Guilt, as defined by most powers that define it, is independent of the existence of free will
In no way does QM make free will possible. The wave function is still deterministic and all it does is make things more random. Randomness is really the opposite of free will, it'd be like judging whether you should kill someone based on a coin flip. Ofc QM isn't completely random in the sense that everything is equally probably. Instead it describes the probabilities of different scenarios. The human brain doesn't have the power to somehow change these probabilities.
On March 09 2012 20:21 Marth753 wrote: The problem I see in this argument is that, if you're proposing that there is no free will in the universe, then we should never punish anyone ever for anything they do because it wasn't their choice to act that way. Did Hitler, Charles Manson, and (insert any murderer here) kill someone? Well who cares, because he had no free will to do so. Just like a man lead around like a marionette they should not be held accountable for their actions because they did not act out of their free will.
Yes, some decisions are made reflexively and that's not really operating out of your free will because then it really is the reactions of a bunch of atoms. For any other animal you'd be right in saying they have no (or at least rarely have) free will because they function on a more mechanical level, but ideas and memories and choices aren't just matter, they're something else on a less understood level.
This argument always comes up and let me summarize why it's false.
First off we punish people for their actions and their intent. None of this changes without free will it just means that intent is formed through experience. For example some guy's wife cheats on him and he goes out and kills the other guy. Not everyone will have that reaction and it depends on the individual personality and their past experience even something like hormone level and things like that but all these things come together to form the intent. It's still cause and effect, it doesn't prevent people from making decisions it just means those decisions are determined by the past.
Look at another scenario: some robot goes around and kills people. You still "punish" the robot even if you agree it had no free will in it's decisions. People can change if you punish them, therefore most/all crimes are not punished by death but seek to rehabilitate the person. Again this is cause (punish/rehab) and effect (less likely to commit crime).
Memories are just past experiences and are stored in the brain in neurons that carry the information electrically and chemically. Ideas are synthesis of memories. Saying "they are less understood" doesn't imply free will somehow.
But this doesn't change the fact that this excuses them from everything they did before hand. Under this logic, just to take this to the extreme to show how it's flawed, Hitler did nothing wrong but was simply educated incorrectly and should have been rehabilitated. Under this logic, Hitler was forced to kill millions of Jews by all of his experiences and memories which were, by extension, forced upon him. Under this logic once again, Hitler was just a poor soul forced to kill millions of Jews who we should have reached out to and helped.
If the only reason to punish someone is to rehabilitate them, then let's assume something. There are two ways to fix Hitler from killing millions of Jews ever again: therapeutic care in some tropical paradise that relieves Hitler of his hatred and is simultaneously enjoyable, or send him to jail and show him just how bad his actions were. If you're assuming that all we should do is rehabilitate people then either option is perfectly fine because they fix Hitler from killing again, and yet the whole world would be appalled if you went with the first option because that is not what he deserves. Most people would admit that the second option is appropriate because that is what Hitler deserves for killing 6 million people. And why? Because he consciously made the choice to do something so horrible that it cannot be justified.
Hitler wasn't "forced" to do anything because that implies that it is happening against his will, but it IS his will. Hitler did something VERY wrong, he WAS simply educated/experienced incorrectly and yes, if it could happen he should be rehabilitated. Just because you can't stomach it doesn't mean it's flawed.
Can you clarify this statement? Because it sounds like you acknowledged that he has free will to choose what to do and that to kill 6 million people was his will so he chose it.
Anyways, to say that we should send Hitler to his favorite paradise island to be rehabilitated would be to reward incorrect behavior. If we reward incorrect behavior, even if it rehabilitates the criminal, then we prompt a whole bunch of people to act in whatever way gets them to paradise island themselves.
you're still making a false connection between the lack of free will and a lack of responsibility. people will do to someone who acts like hitler what people tend to do to what someone acts like hitler. there will be plenty of people who condone harsh punishment, just as there are plenty of people who don't. their reasons don't necessarily have free will behind them either. the agency with power in the scenario (usually some kind of government organization) will ultimately make the decision, which doesn't necessarily require free will either.
the possibility of rehabilitating people is still independent of the possibility of free will, one cannot make an argument for the other.
How can you be punished for something you never chose to do? If we assume a deterministic universe and it's determined that I'm a murderer, then I have no choice, I was established as a murderer before I was ever born and so I have no chance to escape this fate; at some point I will murder some particular person and do not have the choice to do otherwise. Furthermore everything that happens to me previously was determined for me, every choice I make will be determined for me as this is basically the definition of a deterministic universe.
As for the relevance of all of the rehabilitation talk, the point is that if we consign ourselves to a universe where we have no free will, then we excuse people of all blame for whatever they do because what they did was not their will, whether that means something else's will was thrust upon them or there is no such thing as a conscious choice at all. Not only is this extremely counter-intuitive, but it means we must justify every murder and say that murderers are just misguided individuals who we must help by whatever means necessary because they are victims of a plague (wrong ideas) who don't deserve harsh punishment. But if we justify horrible actions and help them then there's no longer any reason for people not to do horrible things which would just lead to more crime and violence. If this is true, then society collapses.
No, we don't excuse someone for killing someone because they were going to do it anyway. Please stop making that leap in logic. It doesn't follow logically.
The responsibility/excuse stuff is mostly about certain words having a lot of things attached to them. Replace "excuse" with "reason" and something interpreted as bad usually seems neutral, replace "reason" with "excuse" and something neutral usually sounds bad. The words have different uses of course, they just happen to be used a lot in context where they fundamentally mean same thing. Our ability to communicate has a lot of flaws surprise surprise.
On March 09 2012 20:21 Marth753 wrote: The problem I see in this argument is that, if you're proposing that there is no free will in the universe, then we should never punish anyone ever for anything they do because it wasn't their choice to act that way. Did Hitler, Charles Manson, and (insert any murderer here) kill someone? Well who cares, because he had no free will to do so. Just like a man lead around like a marionette they should not be held accountable for their actions because they did not act out of their free will.
Yes, some decisions are made reflexively and that's not really operating out of your free will because then it really is the reactions of a bunch of atoms. For any other animal you'd be right in saying they have no (or at least rarely have) free will because they function on a more mechanical level, but ideas and memories and choices aren't just matter, they're something else on a less understood level.
This argument always comes up and let me summarize why it's false.
First off we punish people for their actions and their intent. None of this changes without free will it just means that intent is formed through experience. For example some guy's wife cheats on him and he goes out and kills the other guy. Not everyone will have that reaction and it depends on the individual personality and their past experience even something like hormone level and things like that but all these things come together to form the intent. It's still cause and effect, it doesn't prevent people from making decisions it just means those decisions are determined by the past.
Look at another scenario: some robot goes around and kills people. You still "punish" the robot even if you agree it had no free will in it's decisions. People can change if you punish them, therefore most/all crimes are not punished by death but seek to rehabilitate the person. Again this is cause (punish/rehab) and effect (less likely to commit crime).
Memories are just past experiences and are stored in the brain in neurons that carry the information electrically and chemically. Ideas are synthesis of memories. Saying "they are less understood" doesn't imply free will somehow.
But this doesn't change the fact that this excuses them from everything they did before hand. Under this logic, just to take this to the extreme to show how it's flawed, Hitler did nothing wrong but was simply educated incorrectly and should have been rehabilitated. Under this logic, Hitler was forced to kill millions of Jews by all of his experiences and memories which were, by extension, forced upon him. Under this logic once again, Hitler was just a poor soul forced to kill millions of Jews who we should have reached out to and helped.
If the only reason to punish someone is to rehabilitate them, then let's assume something. There are two ways to fix Hitler from killing millions of Jews ever again: therapeutic care in some tropical paradise that relieves Hitler of his hatred and is simultaneously enjoyable, or send him to jail and show him just how bad his actions were. If you're assuming that all we should do is rehabilitate people then either option is perfectly fine because they fix Hitler from killing again, and yet the whole world would be appalled if you went with the first option because that is not what he deserves. Most people would admit that the second option is appropriate because that is what Hitler deserves for killing 6 million people. And why? Because he consciously made the choice to do something so horrible that it cannot be justified.
Hitler wasn't "forced" to do anything because that implies that it is happening against his will, but it IS his will. Hitler did something VERY wrong, he WAS simply educated/experienced incorrectly and yes, if it could happen he should be rehabilitated. Just because you can't stomach it doesn't mean it's flawed.
Can you clarify this statement? Because it sounds like you acknowledged that he has free will to choose what to do and that to kill 6 million people was his will so he chose it.
Anyways, to say that we should send Hitler to his favorite paradise island to be rehabilitated would be to reward incorrect behavior. If we reward incorrect behavior, even if it rehabilitates the criminal, then we prompt a whole bunch of people to act in whatever way gets them to paradise island themselves.
you're still making a false connection between the lack of free will and a lack of responsibility. people will do to someone who acts like hitler what people tend to do to what someone acts like hitler. there will be plenty of people who condone harsh punishment, just as there are plenty of people who don't. their reasons don't necessarily have free will behind them either. the agency with power in the scenario (usually some kind of government organization) will ultimately make the decision, which doesn't necessarily require free will either.
the possibility of rehabilitating people is still independent of the possibility of free will, one cannot make an argument for the other.
How can you be punished for something you never chose to do? If we assume a deterministic universe and it's determined that I'm a murderer, then I have no choice, I was established as a murderer before I was ever born and so I have no chance to escape this fate; at some point I will murder some particular person and do not have the choice to do otherwise. Furthermore everything that happens to me previously was determined for me, every choice I make will be determined for me as this is basically the definition of a deterministic universe.
As for the relevance of all of the rehabilitation talk, the point is that if we consign ourselves to a universe where we have no free will, then we excuse people of all blame for whatever they do because what they did was not their will, whether that means something else's will was thrust upon them or there is no such thing as a conscious choice at all. Not only is this extremely counter-intuitive, but it means we must justify every murder and say that murderers are just misguided individuals who we must help by whatever means necessary because they are victims of a plague (wrong ideas) who don't deserve harsh punishment. But if we justify horrible actions and help them then there's no longer any reason for people not to do horrible things which would just lead to more crime and violence. If this is true, then society collapses.
No, we don't excuse someone for killing someone because they were going to do it anyway. Please stop making that leap in logic. It doesn't follow logically.
The responsibility/excuse stuff is mostly about certain words having a lot of things attached to them. Replace "excuse" with "reason" and something interpreted as bad usually seems neutral, replace "reason" with "excuse" and something neutral usually sounds bad. The words have different uses of course, they just happen to be used a lot in context where they fundamentally mean same thing. Our ability to communicate has a lot of flaws surprise surprise.
On March 09 2012 20:21 Marth753 wrote: The problem I see in this argument is that, if you're proposing that there is no free will in the universe, then we should never punish anyone ever for anything they do because it wasn't their choice to act that way. Did Hitler, Charles Manson, and (insert any murderer here) kill someone? Well who cares, because he had no free will to do so. Just like a man lead around like a marionette they should not be held accountable for their actions because they did not act out of their free will.
Yes, some decisions are made reflexively and that's not really operating out of your free will because then it really is the reactions of a bunch of atoms. For any other animal you'd be right in saying they have no (or at least rarely have) free will because they function on a more mechanical level, but ideas and memories and choices aren't just matter, they're something else on a less understood level.
This argument always comes up and let me summarize why it's false.
First off we punish people for their actions and their intent. None of this changes without free will it just means that intent is formed through experience. For example some guy's wife cheats on him and he goes out and kills the other guy. Not everyone will have that reaction and it depends on the individual personality and their past experience even something like hormone level and things like that but all these things come together to form the intent. It's still cause and effect, it doesn't prevent people from making decisions it just means those decisions are determined by the past.
Look at another scenario: some robot goes around and kills people. You still "punish" the robot even if you agree it had no free will in it's decisions. People can change if you punish them, therefore most/all crimes are not punished by death but seek to rehabilitate the person. Again this is cause (punish/rehab) and effect (less likely to commit crime).
Memories are just past experiences and are stored in the brain in neurons that carry the information electrically and chemically. Ideas are synthesis of memories. Saying "they are less understood" doesn't imply free will somehow.
But this doesn't change the fact that this excuses them from everything they did before hand. Under this logic, just to take this to the extreme to show how it's flawed, Hitler did nothing wrong but was simply educated incorrectly and should have been rehabilitated. Under this logic, Hitler was forced to kill millions of Jews by all of his experiences and memories which were, by extension, forced upon him. Under this logic once again, Hitler was just a poor soul forced to kill millions of Jews who we should have reached out to and helped.
If the only reason to punish someone is to rehabilitate them, then let's assume something. There are two ways to fix Hitler from killing millions of Jews ever again: therapeutic care in some tropical paradise that relieves Hitler of his hatred and is simultaneously enjoyable, or send him to jail and show him just how bad his actions were. If you're assuming that all we should do is rehabilitate people then either option is perfectly fine because they fix Hitler from killing again, and yet the whole world would be appalled if you went with the first option because that is not what he deserves. Most people would admit that the second option is appropriate because that is what Hitler deserves for killing 6 million people. And why? Because he consciously made the choice to do something so horrible that it cannot be justified.
Hitler wasn't "forced" to do anything because that implies that it is happening against his will, but it IS his will. Hitler did something VERY wrong, he WAS simply educated/experienced incorrectly and yes, if it could happen he should be rehabilitated. Just because you can't stomach it doesn't mean it's flawed.
Can you clarify this statement? Because it sounds like you acknowledged that he has free will to choose what to do and that to kill 6 million people was his will so he chose it.
Anyways, to say that we should send Hitler to his favorite paradise island to be rehabilitated would be to reward incorrect behavior. If we reward incorrect behavior, even if it rehabilitates the criminal, then we prompt a whole bunch of people to act in whatever way gets them to paradise island themselves.
you're still making a false connection between the lack of free will and a lack of responsibility. people will do to someone who acts like hitler what people tend to do to what someone acts like hitler. there will be plenty of people who condone harsh punishment, just as there are plenty of people who don't. their reasons don't necessarily have free will behind them either. the agency with power in the scenario (usually some kind of government organization) will ultimately make the decision, which doesn't necessarily require free will either.
the possibility of rehabilitating people is still independent of the possibility of free will, one cannot make an argument for the other.
How can you be punished for something you never chose to do? If we assume a deterministic universe and it's determined that I'm a murderer, then I have no choice, I was established as a murderer before I was ever born and so I have no chance to escape this fate; at some point I will murder some particular person and do not have the choice to do otherwise. Furthermore everything that happens to me previously was determined for me, every choice I make will be determined for me as this is basically the definition of a deterministic universe.
As for the relevance of all of the rehabilitation talk, the point is that if we consign ourselves to a universe where we have no free will, then we excuse people of all blame for whatever they do because what they did was not their will, whether that means something else's will was thrust upon them or there is no such thing as a conscious choice at all. Not only is this extremely counter-intuitive, but it means we must justify every murder and say that murderers are just misguided individuals who we must help by whatever means necessary because they are victims of a plague (wrong ideas) who don't deserve harsh punishment. But if we justify horrible actions and help them then there's no longer any reason for people not to do horrible things which would just lead to more crime and violence. If this is true, then society collapses.
No, we don't excuse someone for killing someone because they were going to do it anyway. Please stop making that leap in logic. It doesn't follow logically.
The responsibility/excuse stuff is mostly about certain words having a lot of things attached to them. Replace "excuse" with "reason" and something interpreted as bad usually seems neutral, replace "reason" with "excuse" and something neutral usually sounds bad. The words have different uses of course, they just happen to be used a lot in context where they fundamentally mean same thing. Our ability to communicate has a lot of flaws surprise surprise.
i don't understand the relevance
It's a semantic debate when people simply replace "reason" with "excuse", and so on.
This argument always comes up and let me summarize why it's false.
First off we punish people for their actions and their intent. None of this changes without free will it just means that intent is formed through experience. For example some guy's wife cheats on him and he goes out and kills the other guy. Not everyone will have that reaction and it depends on the individual personality and their past experience even something like hormone level and things like that but all these things come together to form the intent. It's still cause and effect, it doesn't prevent people from making decisions it just means those decisions are determined by the past.
Look at another scenario: some robot goes around and kills people. You still "punish" the robot even if you agree it had no free will in it's decisions. People can change if you punish them, therefore most/all crimes are not punished by death but seek to rehabilitate the person. Again this is cause (punish/rehab) and effect (less likely to commit crime).
Memories are just past experiences and are stored in the brain in neurons that carry the information electrically and chemically. Ideas are synthesis of memories. Saying "they are less understood" doesn't imply free will somehow.
But this doesn't change the fact that this excuses them from everything they did before hand. Under this logic, just to take this to the extreme to show how it's flawed, Hitler did nothing wrong but was simply educated incorrectly and should have been rehabilitated. Under this logic, Hitler was forced to kill millions of Jews by all of his experiences and memories which were, by extension, forced upon him. Under this logic once again, Hitler was just a poor soul forced to kill millions of Jews who we should have reached out to and helped.
If the only reason to punish someone is to rehabilitate them, then let's assume something. There are two ways to fix Hitler from killing millions of Jews ever again: therapeutic care in some tropical paradise that relieves Hitler of his hatred and is simultaneously enjoyable, or send him to jail and show him just how bad his actions were. If you're assuming that all we should do is rehabilitate people then either option is perfectly fine because they fix Hitler from killing again, and yet the whole world would be appalled if you went with the first option because that is not what he deserves. Most people would admit that the second option is appropriate because that is what Hitler deserves for killing 6 million people. And why? Because he consciously made the choice to do something so horrible that it cannot be justified.
Hitler wasn't "forced" to do anything because that implies that it is happening against his will, but it IS his will. Hitler did something VERY wrong, he WAS simply educated/experienced incorrectly and yes, if it could happen he should be rehabilitated. Just because you can't stomach it doesn't mean it's flawed.
Can you clarify this statement? Because it sounds like you acknowledged that he has free will to choose what to do and that to kill 6 million people was his will so he chose it.
Anyways, to say that we should send Hitler to his favorite paradise island to be rehabilitated would be to reward incorrect behavior. If we reward incorrect behavior, even if it rehabilitates the criminal, then we prompt a whole bunch of people to act in whatever way gets them to paradise island themselves.
you're still making a false connection between the lack of free will and a lack of responsibility. people will do to someone who acts like hitler what people tend to do to what someone acts like hitler. there will be plenty of people who condone harsh punishment, just as there are plenty of people who don't. their reasons don't necessarily have free will behind them either. the agency with power in the scenario (usually some kind of government organization) will ultimately make the decision, which doesn't necessarily require free will either.
the possibility of rehabilitating people is still independent of the possibility of free will, one cannot make an argument for the other.
How can you be punished for something you never chose to do? If we assume a deterministic universe and it's determined that I'm a murderer, then I have no choice, I was established as a murderer before I was ever born and so I have no chance to escape this fate; at some point I will murder some particular person and do not have the choice to do otherwise. Furthermore everything that happens to me previously was determined for me, every choice I make will be determined for me as this is basically the definition of a deterministic universe.
As for the relevance of all of the rehabilitation talk, the point is that if we consign ourselves to a universe where we have no free will, then we excuse people of all blame for whatever they do because what they did was not their will, whether that means something else's will was thrust upon them or there is no such thing as a conscious choice at all. Not only is this extremely counter-intuitive, but it means we must justify every murder and say that murderers are just misguided individuals who we must help by whatever means necessary because they are victims of a plague (wrong ideas) who don't deserve harsh punishment. But if we justify horrible actions and help them then there's no longer any reason for people not to do horrible things which would just lead to more crime and violence. If this is true, then society collapses.
No, we don't excuse someone for killing someone because they were going to do it anyway. Please stop making that leap in logic. It doesn't follow logically.
The responsibility/excuse stuff is mostly about certain words having a lot of things attached to them. Replace "excuse" with "reason" and something interpreted as bad usually seems neutral, replace "reason" with "excuse" and something neutral usually sounds bad. The words have different uses of course, they just happen to be used a lot in context where they fundamentally mean same thing. Our ability to communicate has a lot of flaws surprise surprise.
i don't understand the relevance
It's a semantic debate when people simply replace "reason" with "excuse", and so on.
I used "excuse," the transitive verb meaning "to let go / to ignore." It's not interchangeable with "reason." I don't think the confusion is semantic. Two of my posts ago, I think I pinpointed where the confusion was, which is that he's assuming law should always operate on "fairness," which can be linked to free will, when it doesn't.
But this doesn't change the fact that this excuses them from everything they did before hand. Under this logic, just to take this to the extreme to show how it's flawed, Hitler did nothing wrong but was simply educated incorrectly and should have been rehabilitated. Under this logic, Hitler was forced to kill millions of Jews by all of his experiences and memories which were, by extension, forced upon him. Under this logic once again, Hitler was just a poor soul forced to kill millions of Jews who we should have reached out to and helped.
If the only reason to punish someone is to rehabilitate them, then let's assume something. There are two ways to fix Hitler from killing millions of Jews ever again: therapeutic care in some tropical paradise that relieves Hitler of his hatred and is simultaneously enjoyable, or send him to jail and show him just how bad his actions were. If you're assuming that all we should do is rehabilitate people then either option is perfectly fine because they fix Hitler from killing again, and yet the whole world would be appalled if you went with the first option because that is not what he deserves. Most people would admit that the second option is appropriate because that is what Hitler deserves for killing 6 million people. And why? Because he consciously made the choice to do something so horrible that it cannot be justified.
Hitler wasn't "forced" to do anything because that implies that it is happening against his will, but it IS his will. Hitler did something VERY wrong, he WAS simply educated/experienced incorrectly and yes, if it could happen he should be rehabilitated. Just because you can't stomach it doesn't mean it's flawed.
Can you clarify this statement? Because it sounds like you acknowledged that he has free will to choose what to do and that to kill 6 million people was his will so he chose it.
Anyways, to say that we should send Hitler to his favorite paradise island to be rehabilitated would be to reward incorrect behavior. If we reward incorrect behavior, even if it rehabilitates the criminal, then we prompt a whole bunch of people to act in whatever way gets them to paradise island themselves.
you're still making a false connection between the lack of free will and a lack of responsibility. people will do to someone who acts like hitler what people tend to do to what someone acts like hitler. there will be plenty of people who condone harsh punishment, just as there are plenty of people who don't. their reasons don't necessarily have free will behind them either. the agency with power in the scenario (usually some kind of government organization) will ultimately make the decision, which doesn't necessarily require free will either.
the possibility of rehabilitating people is still independent of the possibility of free will, one cannot make an argument for the other.
How can you be punished for something you never chose to do? If we assume a deterministic universe and it's determined that I'm a murderer, then I have no choice, I was established as a murderer before I was ever born and so I have no chance to escape this fate; at some point I will murder some particular person and do not have the choice to do otherwise. Furthermore everything that happens to me previously was determined for me, every choice I make will be determined for me as this is basically the definition of a deterministic universe.
As for the relevance of all of the rehabilitation talk, the point is that if we consign ourselves to a universe where we have no free will, then we excuse people of all blame for whatever they do because what they did was not their will, whether that means something else's will was thrust upon them or there is no such thing as a conscious choice at all. Not only is this extremely counter-intuitive, but it means we must justify every murder and say that murderers are just misguided individuals who we must help by whatever means necessary because they are victims of a plague (wrong ideas) who don't deserve harsh punishment. But if we justify horrible actions and help them then there's no longer any reason for people not to do horrible things which would just lead to more crime and violence. If this is true, then society collapses.
No, we don't excuse someone for killing someone because they were going to do it anyway. Please stop making that leap in logic. It doesn't follow logically.
The responsibility/excuse stuff is mostly about certain words having a lot of things attached to them. Replace "excuse" with "reason" and something interpreted as bad usually seems neutral, replace "reason" with "excuse" and something neutral usually sounds bad. The words have different uses of course, they just happen to be used a lot in context where they fundamentally mean same thing. Our ability to communicate has a lot of flaws surprise surprise.
i don't understand the relevance
It's a semantic debate when people simply replace "reason" with "excuse", and so on.
I used "excuse," the transitive verb meaning "to let go / to ignore." It's not interchangeable with "reason." I don't think the confusion is semantic. Two of my posts ago, I think I pinpointed where the confusion was, which is that he's assuming law should always operate on "fairness," which can be linked to free will, when it doesn't.
I probably shouldn't have quoted anyone. Wasn't trying to imply there was something wrong with what you wrote. Just happened to quote the post because it was the last post in the excuse/responsibility discussion.
On March 10 2012 09:35 L3gendary wrote: In no way does QM make free will possible. The wave function is still deterministic and all it does is make things more random. Randomness is really the opposite of free will, it'd be like judging whether you should kill someone based on a coin flip. Ofc QM isn't completely random in the sense that everything is equally probably. Instead it describes the probabilities of different scenarios. The human brain doesn't have the power to somehow change these probabilities.
What do you mean the waveform is deterministic? Like it always collapses the same way under the exact same conditions?
On March 10 2012 09:35 L3gendary wrote: In no way does QM make free will possible. The wave function is still deterministic and all it does is make things more random. Randomness is really the opposite of free will, it'd be like judging whether you should kill someone based on a coin flip. Ofc QM isn't completely random in the sense that everything is equally probably. Instead it describes the probabilities of different scenarios. The human brain doesn't have the power to somehow change these probabilities.
What do you mean the waveform is deterministic? Like it always collapses the same way under the exact same conditions?
well once it collapses it's determined, and we can't go back in time and uncollapse certain wavefunctions. though probability may determine what it collapses into, its still... deterministic in a sense? i think thats what he means
On March 09 2012 20:21 Marth753 wrote: The problem I see in this argument is that, if you're proposing that there is no free will in the universe, then we should never punish anyone ever for anything they do because it wasn't their choice to act that way. Did Hitler, Charles Manson, and (insert any murderer here) kill someone? Well who cares, because he had no free will to do so. Just like a man lead around like a marionette they should not be held accountable for their actions because they did not act out of their free will.
Yes, some decisions are made reflexively and that's not really operating out of your free will because then it really is the reactions of a bunch of atoms. For any other animal you'd be right in saying they have no (or at least rarely have) free will because they function on a more mechanical level, but ideas and memories and choices aren't just matter, they're something else on a less understood level.
This argument always comes up and let me summarize why it's false.
First off we punish people for their actions and their intent. None of this changes without free will it just means that intent is formed through experience. For example some guy's wife cheats on him and he goes out and kills the other guy. Not everyone will have that reaction and it depends on the individual personality and their past experience even something like hormone level and things like that but all these things come together to form the intent. It's still cause and effect, it doesn't prevent people from making decisions it just means those decisions are determined by the past.
Look at another scenario: some robot goes around and kills people. You still "punish" the robot even if you agree it had no free will in it's decisions. People can change if you punish them, therefore most/all crimes are not punished by death but seek to rehabilitate the person. Again this is cause (punish/rehab) and effect (less likely to commit crime).
Memories are just past experiences and are stored in the brain in neurons that carry the information electrically and chemically. Ideas are synthesis of memories. Saying "they are less understood" doesn't imply free will somehow.
But this doesn't change the fact that this excuses them from everything they did before hand. Under this logic, just to take this to the extreme to show how it's flawed, Hitler did nothing wrong but was simply educated incorrectly and should have been rehabilitated. Under this logic, Hitler was forced to kill millions of Jews by all of his experiences and memories which were, by extension, forced upon him. Under this logic once again, Hitler was just a poor soul forced to kill millions of Jews who we should have reached out to and helped.
If the only reason to punish someone is to rehabilitate them, then let's assume something. There are two ways to fix Hitler from killing millions of Jews ever again: therapeutic care in some tropical paradise that relieves Hitler of his hatred and is simultaneously enjoyable, or send him to jail and show him just how bad his actions were. If you're assuming that all we should do is rehabilitate people then either option is perfectly fine because they fix Hitler from killing again, and yet the whole world would be appalled if you went with the first option because that is not what he deserves. Most people would admit that the second option is appropriate because that is what Hitler deserves for killing 6 million people. And why? Because he consciously made the choice to do something so horrible that it cannot be justified.
Hitler wasn't "forced" to do anything because that implies that it is happening against his will, but it IS his will. Hitler did something VERY wrong, he WAS simply educated/experienced incorrectly and yes, if it could happen he should be rehabilitated. Just because you can't stomach it doesn't mean it's flawed.
Can you clarify this statement? Because it sounds like you acknowledged that he has free will to choose what to do and that to kill 6 million people was his will so he chose it.
Anyways, to say that we should send Hitler to his favorite paradise island to be rehabilitated would be to reward incorrect behavior. If we reward incorrect behavior, even if it rehabilitates the criminal, then we prompt a whole bunch of people to act in whatever way gets them to paradise island themselves.
you're still making a false connection between the lack of free will and a lack of responsibility. people will do to someone who acts like hitler what people tend to do to what someone acts like hitler. there will be plenty of people who condone harsh punishment, just as there are plenty of people who don't. their reasons don't necessarily have free will behind them either. the agency with power in the scenario (usually some kind of government organization) will ultimately make the decision, which doesn't necessarily require free will either.
the possibility of rehabilitating people is still independent of the possibility of free will, one cannot make an argument for the other.
How can you be punished for something you never chose to do? If we assume a deterministic universe and it's determined that I'm a murderer, then I have no choice, I was established as a murderer before I was ever born and so I have no chance to escape this fate; at some point I will murder some particular person and do not have the choice to do otherwise. Furthermore everything that happens to me previously was determined for me, every choice I make will be determined for me as this is basically the definition of a deterministic universe.
As for the relevance of all of the rehabilitation talk, the point is that if we consign ourselves to a universe where we have no free will, then we excuse people of all blame for whatever they do because what they did was not their will, whether that means something else's will was thrust upon them or there is no such thing as a conscious choice at all. Not only is this extremely counter-intuitive, but it means we must justify every murder and say that murderers are just misguided individuals who we must help by whatever means necessary because they are victims of a plague (wrong ideas) who don't deserve harsh punishment. But if we justify horrible actions and help them then there's no longer any reason for people not to do horrible things which would just lead to more crime and violence. If this is true, then society collapses.
I'm still not completely sold on the whole Quantum Physics debunking determinism argument. What's the cause of unpredictability of electrons? If there's a cause isn't it just further justification of a deterministic universe?
On March 10 2012 09:35 L3gendary wrote: In no way does QM make free will possible. The wave function is still deterministic and all it does is make things more random. Randomness is really the opposite of free will, it'd be like judging whether you should kill someone based on a coin flip. Ofc QM isn't completely random in the sense that everything is equally probably. Instead it describes the probabilities of different scenarios. The human brain doesn't have the power to somehow change these probabilities.
What do you mean the waveform is deterministic? Like it always collapses the same way under the exact same conditions?
No, that's not the case, so what I think he means is that given a particular state of the universe, the probability distribution for the position of a particular particle is determined. But where that particle is observed to be is still random.
Sort of like how the chance of rolling a 1 on a dice is deterministic, it's always 1/6. But what the dice actually rolls is random.
here is a question for the "no-free-will atheists": does evolution even make sense in a deterministic universe? wouldn't you have to conclude, that, since everything is determined right from the big bang, that there is a plan (kind of) that lead to your existence? how does that differ from a "divine plan?" /discuss
i'm an atheist, and i think, atheists should own the free-will argument. it's the religious people who will tell you, that god has an awesome plan for your life, who have prophecies and revelations. bad news for free will. we have quantum physics.
This, pretty much. If there is no free will, there might as well be an omniscient god.