Submitted by greghickey5 t3_113ecst in philosophy
HippyHitman t1_j8rg9mj wrote
Reply to comment by InTheEndEntropyWins in Free Will Is Only an Illusion if You Are, Too by greghickey5
This doesn’t seem like a logical argument to me. It seems like you’re just saying humans tend to believe we have free will, and our society is based upon that assumption.
I’m arguing that the assumption is incorrect.
Where would we draw the line between free will and compulsion? It has to be arbitrary, just like you noted about a robot’s desires. An automaton desires nothing other than following its programming, so anything a robot does successfully would be an exercise of free will. But I don’t think anybody would actually argue that, they’d argue it’s an exercise of the programmer’s free will. Why is it different for us just because our programming isn’t apparent?
InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j8rrx36 wrote
>This doesn’t seem like a logical argument to me. It seems like you’re just saying humans tend to believe we have free will, and our society is based upon that assumption.
I'm saying that humans use the compatibilist definition of free will. Hence it makes sense to talk about compatibilist free will rather than libertarian free will.
I'm saying it's illogical to use the incoherent concept of libertarian free will.
>Where would we draw the line between free will and compulsion?
It would depend on the facts and I like to look at the legal system, which does this all the time.
In cases like R. v. Ruzic, they looked at the facts and determined they were coerced and hence didn't have free will.
In the case of Powell v Texas, where they tried a defence that it wasn't of their own free will since they were an alcoholic. While this argument shows they didn't have libertarian freewill. The courts didn't accept this argument and it was found they did have free will. So they did distinguish between free will and compulsion in this case.
>It has to be arbitrary
Just like pretty much every high level concept. Even the concept of "life" is arbitrary with many blurred lines. But just because the concept of life is arbitrary doesn't mean it isn't useful or that we can't apply in the context of humans.
>, just like you noted about a robot’s desires. An automaton desires nothing other than following its programming, so anything a robot does successfully would be an exercise of free will. But I don’t think anybody would actually argue that, they’d argue it’s an exercise of the programmer’s free will. Why is it different for us just because our programming isn’t apparent?
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>Why is it different for us just because our programming isn’t apparent?
Maybe that's the main difference. We aren't programmed with a clear simple goal of killing someone, whereas the robot was.
If you change the example of just making the angry and violent, then if the robot following these goals kills someone, I think it is fairly similar to the human case.
CruxCapacitors t1_j8t1c7h wrote
I dislike your focus on the legal use of "free will" because the legal system, particularly in the US (which is where you're citing cases from), has a very poor, punitive prison system that has terrible recidivism rates. I can't help but feel that if more people realized that compatibilism is flawed, we might be able to better rehabilitate people.
InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j8t4336 wrote
>I dislike your focus on the legal use of "free will" because the legal system
If you read the legal judgements around free will you'll see that they have an amazing grasp and understanding of the subject. They are as good if not better than most stuff philosophers write on the subject.
I like looking at the legal approach since is a nice realistic approach and understanding of the world that makes sense rather than an incoherent idea that isn't applicable to the reality we live in.
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>I can't help but feel that if more people realized that compatibilism is flawed, we might be able to better rehabilitate people.
Having a more rehabilitative justice system has absolutely nothing to do with the fact the justice system is based on compatibilist free will. So that's just a non argument.
Any functioning justice system which focuses on rehabilitation needs to also use compatibilist free will to work.
In fact studies suggest the justice system would likely be even worse without compatibilist free will.
>These three studies suggest that endorsement of the belief in free will can lead to decreased ethnic/racial prejudice compared to denial of the belief in free will. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0091572#s1>
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>For example, weakening free will belief led participants to behave less morally and responsibly (Baumeister et al., 2009; Protzko et al., 2016; Vohs & Schooler, 2008) From https://www.ethicalpsychology.com/search?q=free+will
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>these results provide a potential explanation for the strength and prevalence of belief in free will: It is functional for holding others morally responsible and facilitates justifiably punishing harmful members of society. https://www.academia.edu/15691341/Free_to_punish_A_motivated_account_of_free_will_belief?utm_content=buffercd36e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer From https://www.ethicalpsychology.com/search?q=free+will
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>A study suggests that when people are encouraged to believe their behavior is predetermined by genes or by environment they may be more likely to cheat. The report, in the January issue of Psychological Science, describes two studies by Kathleen D. Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan W. Schooler of the University of British Columbia.
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