What I meant by relevant was relevant in respect to this topic. I'm arguing that punishing murderers for the sake of punishment is wrong because murderers don't have free will.
What? You make a free will argument in order to claim that no one has responsibility for any of their actions. I attack that argument. Mine isn't relevant? The practical existence of free will negates your argument, which is just a bunch of philosophical fluff. When we're dealing with an issue such as criminal responsibility the real implications of free will outweigh any (when you boil it down, anyways) semantical argument.
Oh, I didn’t realize you were arguing against what I said. I thought you were just making a general point about free will. How is a criminal responsible for his bad genes, bad parents, bad ideas, and bad luck? How is a criminal responsible for the chemical reactions in his brain? How is a criminal responsible for his circumstance? Punishing a criminal is no different from punishing someone who has a severe mental disorder.
What I love about this, is you have managed to say exactly what I would say better than I could say it myself. I will definately use this:
Everyone deals with the obstacles of circumstance. Not everyone chooses to disobey the law. We all (barring the typical exceptions) have the same amount of control over our actions, and we all must abide by the same laws.
My point is that when someone chooses to disobey the law they are not the cause of that choice. None of us have control over our actions. Our thoughts and actions are all caused by causes which are caused by practically infinite causes. How can a criminal be held responsible for those causes? To be clear, I’m not arguing that there shouldn’t be consequences for our actions, of course there should be, but those consequences should have a purpose. Imprisoning a dangerous criminal to keep him away from the rest of society is purposeful. Attempting to rehabilitate a dangerous criminal is purposeful. Punishment for the sake of punishment has no purpose.
I seriously don't get people who attack free will. I'm not holding on to some kind of secret intel, everyone experiences decision-making. You decided to reply to my post. You decided that your position made sense. From personal experience you should have the tools necessary to invalidate your own argument. They made choices. Choices. As in things we choose. Choosing is an action which selects one course of action from many possibilities. No one made it for them. I should think you know how this works after umpteen years of life. Uh, you are saying exactly that. If criminals aren't able to make choices and thus aren't responsible for their choices, the implication is that no one is able to make choices or hold responsibility.
Free Will is a useful fiction, I certainly don't think you should live your life as if it was false. But when it comes to how we are going to treat people who make decisions, and structure our opinions of peoples choices then I feel it is important that we realise that in reality the murderer or the thief or the sex offender really didn't have freedom from origination and as such to treat them as sub-human, or kick the shit out of them wont help and doesn't make sense.
I think that environment plays an important fact in predicting what someone might do. I am from a lower class home with a single mother and an absent father. Does that mean that I'm gonna be a criminal? No.
I didn't decide anything. Some portion of my brain experienced a neural event which activated another portion of my brain which activated another portion of my brain and eventually it resulted in me moving my hands to my keyboard and typing these words. Everything is caused including our decisions and the causes of our decisions, which includes our brain’s decisions to choose a certain decision. There are infinite causes going all the way back to the beginning of the universe. Actually no, choice is not the action of selecting one course of action from many possibilities, because there is only one possibility for us to choose from. That is, the choice that we chose. We were always going to choose what we chose, we have no control over that. Here’s an experiment in free will: I am going to think of a random object and type it down right now: lamp. I typed ‘lamp’ apparently. Why did I type ‘lamp‘? I had many possible choices, I could have chosen any object that I have ever become aware of. It’s probable that I subconsciously saw the lamp on my desk via my peripheral vision. But what caused my subconscious to notice the lamp and choose it? My brain could have chosen any number of currently visible objects. Why didn’t I choose the monitor that I’m currently staring at right now? Why didn’t I choose my keyboard, or the chair that I’m sitting in? For whatever reason, the neurons of my brain chose ‘lamp‘. Was I free to choose another object? How could I have chosen another object if I don’t even understand the causes of my choice. At what point did I become responsible for my choice? Maybe you should be held responsible for my choice because your response is the cause of my response, but then again, I was the cause of your response, and on and on this goes... until the beginning of time. What? That’s absurd. Just because a criminal isn't responsible for his actions does not mean we shouldn’t try to prevent him from producing those actions. That’s like saying we shouldn’t invent technology to prevent destruction during earthquakes because the earth isn’t responsible for it’s actions.
What you seem to be describing is prediction or hindsight, not any sort of lack of free will. Prediction in the sense of, "If an individual is known so well that whatever situation they are presented, their outcome or action will always be known." Hindsight in the sense of, "Looking back the reasons for the action of an individual can be traced and used to explain exactly why this individual made this particular action. However these two ideas do not destroy the fact that there are many options for an individual to choose from, and they do not always choose the same way given the same conditions.
If we were presented with the exact same conditions in which we had made a choice then we would make the exact same choice. If we did not make the same choice then the conditions were at least slightly different. For example If I went back in time to a few hours ago when I was typing my last post, but nothing was different at all including my memory of the future, then I still would have thought of the word 'lamp'' instead of some other word.
Here's what I'm getting from you two: let's throw out the entire conception/basis of rights/duties, economics, sociology, and every other discipline because we've got semantical issues with free will. ... Come on. One of the major problems you've got is illustrated perfectly in your 'lamp' example. Conditions could be completely different and you could choose the exact same answer. So what? It makes no difference whether or not we absolutely have free will because free will exists insofar as the concept actually matters. What you are missing entirely here is that free will is a human term for a human concept. When you take an entirely human concept and try to throw the whole of reality at it you're going to come into some conflict. But we invented this concept to describe a phenomenon that we all experience. Whether or not choice is an illusion doesn't matter. We perceive (even those who argue against free will) that choice exists. This makes it a truth in its own right. If you can ever look at a single slice of time in the smallest unit possible and make a 100% accurate prediction as to everything that's going to happen next, then you've definitively proven absolute free will wrong. But even if you did, it doesn't diminish the existence of choice so far as choice matters.
If you're defining free will to mean the choices we can't choose, then fine. I have little problem with using that definition in every day speech. But don't try to justify punishing people for choices they couldn’t choose.
@CorB I believe that you hold this philosophy because through it, any mistakes or bad decisions you make can be rationalized away as unavoidable and nothing could be done to prevent it, thus relieving you of responsibility of your actions.
No. I hold this position because it is a basic and obvious truth. I am completely unable to wrap my head around the concept of free will, it simply makes no sense. It is clear to me that no one is responsible for their actions, however that does not mean there shouldn't be consequences for those actions. If I make a bad decision that has a negative effect on others or myself, then I would not be responsible, but I would still be able to learn from my bad decision. If my bad decision had such a substantially negative effect on others, and it is perceived that I am a danger to others, then action should be taken to prevent me from acting on my bad decisions. I would not deserve to suffer for what the causes upon causes upon infinite causes caused me to do. Another aspect of this way of viewing things is that I believe I am more sympathetic and understanding towards others because of it. I believe if I was placed in anyone else’s situation, I would do exactly what they do. If someone angers me, it’s okay because they did exactly what I would do. It allows me to forgive easily. I don’t believe anyone deserves anything but compassion. I consider no individual person to be evil. People can commit evil, but they themselves can not be evil. For example, I don’t consider Hitler to have been an evil person. If I was put into Hitler’s exact situation, in the exact same time, exact same place, with the exact same genes, parenting, and ideas. I would experience everything he experienced and I would do exactly what he did. We all would. This is a basic and undeniable truth.
Sorry for editing your quote, but i'd like to point out your hypocrisy: you said you make bad decisions. No explanation. And under this argument you'd never learn, because you'd have no choice to change your actions.
Wait... you do realize I was being hypothetical? I don’t actually believe I’ve ever made a bad enough decision worth imprisoning me over. And what do you mean I wouldn’t be able to learn from my bad decisions? I see nothing hypocritical about anything I said.
