Hi dmb, On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 8:49 PM, david buchanan <dmbucha...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > > Steve said: > I have always granted that most philosophers have traditionally linked the > concepts of free will and moral responsibility. I am saying that that link is > not necessary. It is not a logical necessity. > > > dmb says: > Okay, then please explain how it is possible to have moral responsibility > without some kind of human agency? Go ahead. Explain how that would work. I'd > really like to see you try to make that case. Maybe you will finally realize > what I'm saying in the attempt to actually articulate moral responsibility > without any kind of freedom to act. If that agency isn't necessary, then one > plausible example is all you need. Good luck. > > And I do not think it's true that you've always granted this is true in most > cases, but I'm just going to let that go. I just want you to show how it is > logically possible. That would count as an actual argument. At this point, > it's like that Monty Python skit where the guy pays for an argument but gets > nothing but mere contradiction. > > What I find most disturbing is that you are completely unmoved by the simple > logic of it. > > If we are not free to choose our actions, how can we be held responsible for > those actions? > > You really don't see how it would be logically bogus to say we cannot choose > our actions but we can be held responsible for them? > > Man, I just don't know how to make it any simpler or more obvious or more > broadly supported. And you're still not persuaded. And you're amazed that I'm > not persuaded even though you have zero pieces of evidence and your > assertions can't pass the most basic logical standards. Dude, you got > nothin'. Your position is so weak it can be defeated by two sentences from an > encyclopedia.
Steve: Please provide those two sentences where it explains why this logical connection is necessary. I you can do this, why have you been holding it back from the conversation? I have already explained why the connection is not necessary before, and now I've asked YOU to explain why you think it is logically necessary to link moral responsibility and free will. You respond by throwing the question back to me again so you can play the game of claiming victory simply by sitting back in your chair with your arms folded and remaining unconvinced by my argument and being "disturbed" that I am unmoved by the bald logic of insisting on this common sense link. But common sense as the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen needs to be defended with rational argumentation rather than simply reposed upon as you are trying do here. I'll oblige you in explaining once again, but I also suspect that this being disturbed and then sitting back with your arms folded pose is all just a distraction to avoid having to answer the argument against the capacity to respond to DQ as a form of free will which I have made several times without response... "Look, you have to deal with the fact that if you want to equate free will with the capacity to follow DQ, you have to reconcile some things that Pirsig has said about following DQ with what is meant by the word "will." Pirsig said that to the extent we follow DQ our behavior is free which you take to be a sort of free will. But if we want to know what Pirsig means by "follow DQ" in order to see if that equation makes any sense we have to consider some of the paradigmatic examples he offered for following DQ such as jumping off a hot stove and an amoeba moving away from acid. It is just absurd to talk about these things as any sort of will let alone _free_ will." You wonder how we can have moral responsibility without free will, and I wonder how you can have free will without conscious deliberation about choices. If we follow the "extent to which" notion of freedom as following free will, then you have to deal with the fact that the extent to which our behavior is free is the extent to which we are NOT thinking about what we are doing but reacting to the quality of a situation before we even become aware of what it is we are reacting to (as in the hot stove situation). 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
