Posted: Mar 14, 2014 10:47 pm
Deremensis, thank you for your comments.
Realizing that no one can be ultimately responsible for their actions renders irrational a number of negative emotions, as discussed in the middle of page 6. This is the primary relevance of free will impossibilism to my philosophy.
With free will impossibilism, punishment for retributive purposes makes no sense. And much of our legal and judicial system is based on retribution. That said, punishment for pragmatic reasons--such as deterrence, quarantine and rehabilitation--still applies.
Not if you define free will in terms of ultimate responsibility, the way I have.
Fair points, but nothing that contradicts anything in my document. In my philosophy, moral skepticism--the way I define it--is relevant because it supports negative hedonism, both directly and indirectly (via support for existential skepticism).
Deremensis wrote:I don't particularly find the argument against free will compelling myself. But I've also never thought the question was very relevant to begin with. In what way does our way of living change if we reject free will?
Realizing that no one can be ultimately responsible for their actions renders irrational a number of negative emotions, as discussed in the middle of page 6. This is the primary relevance of free will impossibilism to my philosophy.
Deremensis wrote:Pragmatically, we'd still need to punish people for certain negative actions, so what would it matter if they had a choice in the matter?
With free will impossibilism, punishment for retributive purposes makes no sense. And much of our legal and judicial system is based on retribution. That said, punishment for pragmatic reasons--such as deterrence, quarantine and rehabilitation--still applies.
Deremensis wrote:I've always simply treated free will as axiomatic: to question free will, it seems like you'd have to suppose the existence of free will in the first place.
Not if you define free will in terms of ultimate responsibility, the way I have.
Deremensis wrote:I'm not sure how I feel about the moral skepticism stuff. I of course feel that there are not objective facts of reality that define morality. But it seems like you could have an objective means of deriving moral facts: i.e. IF such and such is the goal for your life, society, political system, or whatnot, THEN it can be derived that such and such are the absolutely necessary things and such and such are the things that absolutely must not happen, therefore these are right and wrong. Sure, it's not an objective fact of reality, but the method of finding these rules IS objective and, at the least, non-arbitrary/non-whimsical.
Fair points, but nothing that contradicts anything in my document. In my philosophy, moral skepticism--the way I define it--is relevant because it supports negative hedonism, both directly and indirectly (via support for existential skepticism).