Dan said:
...What some contributors seem to be saying is that determinism entails a lack
of responsibility for one's actions. That is only so if we insist on believing
our actions cause outcomes in predictable ways. They both do and do not.
dmb says:
Well, yes, that's how the issue is framed everywhere I look, from simple
dictionary definitions to Siegfried's scholarly analysis of William James. In
each case, determinism precludes responsibility. Determinism is the claim that
our actions are caused by forces beyond our control. It's a claim about the
causes of our actions, not the predictability of the consequences of our
actions. In the former, our actions are the effects of causes while in the
latter our actions are the causes of effects. See what I mean?
Steve said:
For what practical reasons do we want to know whether we are responsible or
determined? We would still need to condemn the intention to do harm and praise
the intention to do good whether or not we think of people as subject to a
chain of causality or free of such chains (for the practical reason that we
think that doing so has predictable effects on others).
dmb says:
On top of practical matters of moral and legal responsibility there are also
concrete situations like the one we're in right now. Are we free to adopt a
point of view on these issues or are we caused to believe the things we do by
forces beyond our control. Is your perspective culturally, psychologically or
physically determined? And if it is so determined, on what basis can I praise
or condemn you for seeing it that way? This brings me to your second sentence...
How can our "intentions" have any meaning if they are determined by a chain of
causality or anything else? If they are caused by forces outside of our
control, in what sense can we even say that they are OUR intentions? Isn't that
exactly what determinism denies?
And then your parenthetical comment seems to be saying that we ought to convict
those who act with bad intentions in order to deter others from doing the same,
even though the convict did not act freely and neither can those who are
supposedly deterred by that conviction. I guess this could make sense if you
think of deterrence as putting a new cause in place so that others respond to
it mechanically and otherwise get determined by it. But this begs the question
of moral responsibility precisely because we have no choice in the matter. We
can't rightly blame or praise any action unless the actor was free to do
otherwise, unless the actor was NOT determined by causal chains or any other
determining factors.
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