Hi all, In the Moral Landscape, Sam Harris addresses the issue of free will over about ten very interesting pages.
You can listen to him read those pages here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dodTNPp12rg&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1 Ron and DMB expressed concerns for the implications of dispelling the illusion of free will on the notion of moral responsibility. I encourage you to listen to the book section, but here is a relevant taste: "Clearly, we need to build prisons for people who are intent on harming others. But if we could incarcerate earthquakes and hurricanes for their crimes, we would build prisons for them as well. The men and women on death row have some combination of bad genes, bad parents, bad ideas and bad luck – which of these quantities, exactly, were they responsible for? No human being stands as author to his own genes or own upbringing, and yet we have every reason to believe that these factors determine his character throughout his life. Our system of justice should reflect our understanding that each of us could have been dealt a very different hand in life…The urge for retribution…seems to depend upon our not seeing the underlying causes of human behavior." (109) "Despite our attachment to the notion of free will, most of us know that disorders of the brain can trump the best intentions of the mind. This shift in understanding represents progress toward a deeper, more consistent, and more compassionate view of our common humanity – and we should note that this is progress away from religious metaphysics. It seems to me that few concepts have offered greater scope for human cruelty than the idea of an immortal soul that stands independent of all material influences, ranging from genes to economic systems." (110) The issue of mental illness is relevant to Pirsig of course. We see mentally ill people as compelled to act in certain ways because of malfunctions, but are we then to think that they have less of this special ingredient called free will than sane people? In an MOQ analysis of freedom it actually makes some sense to say so, but on a traditional view of free will this is absurd. Best, Steve Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
