Hi dmb,
> dmb said: > ...If we are not free to choose our actions, how can we be held responsible > for those actions? Put another way, how can there be moral responsibility > without some kind of human agency? I'm not asking about SOM or the MOQ. I'm > only asking about the simple logical connection between agency and morality, > regardless of the metaphysical framework. > > > Steve replied: > I'll let Sam Harris explain... > "The Supreme Court has called free will a “universal and persistent” > foundation for our system of law, distinct from “a deterministic view of > human conduct that is inconsistent with the underlying precepts of our > criminal justice system” (United States v. Grayson, 1978). Any scientific > developments that threatened our notion of free will would seem to put the > ethics of punishing people for their bad behavior in question. > ...The great worry is that any honest discussion of the underlying causes of > human behavior seems to erode the notion of moral responsibility. If we view > people as neuronal weather patterns, how can we coherently speak about > morality? And if we remain committed to seeing people as people, some who can > be reasoned with and some who cannot, it seems that we must find some notion > of personal responsibility that fits the facts. ...Happily, we can. What > does it really mean to take responsibility for an action? ...To say that I > was responsible for my behavior is simply to say that what I did was > sufficiently in keeping with my thoughts, intentions, beliefs, and desires to > be considered an extension of them. ... Judgments of responsibility, > therefore, depend upon the overall complexion of one’s mind, not on the > metaphysics of mental cause and effect." > > > dmb says: > Exactly. If we view people as weather patterns, how can we coherently speak > about morality? Sam is making MY point, Steve. This is the same point made by > Pirsig, the dictionary, Stanford and, apparently, everyone else who's ever > thought seriously about the issue. Even Sam, with his own kind of > neurological determinism, still thinks we need "some notion of personal > responsibility". He's not denying any kind of human agency, just the > "metaphysics of mental cause and effect" or the "causal agent living within > the human mind". For Harris, the brain and mind are the same thing and that's > all you need for human agency. (You can see why Patricia Churchland would > call Harris a reductionist when he suggests, to put it crudely, that brains > cause murder: "How can we make sense of these gradations of moral blame when > brains and their background influences are, in every case, and to exactly the > same degree, the real cause of a woman’s death?") Steve: Since the quoted text is from his article "Morality Without Free Will," I think you'd have a hard time convincing Sam that he is actually arguing that free will is required for morality. The issue was never that deny moral responsibility. The issue has been that you assert that moral responsibility is only possible if we are (as you say above) "free to choose our actions." Harris denies that we are free to choose our actions. He of course does not deny that obvious fact that we make choices and have intentions and desires. I have emphasized that point many times over the past few months. What he denies is that such phenomena are free. dmb: > "What we condemn in another person is the INTENTION to do harm," Sam says and > we can do that "without any recourse to notions of free will. Likewise, > degrees of guilt could be judged, as they are now, by reference to the facts > of the case: the personality of the accused, his prior offenses, his patterns > of association with others, his use of intoxicants, his confessed INTENTIONS > with regard to the victim, etc. > > See, Sam has rejected the Cartesian self, "the causal agent living inside the > human mind" but he's not denying that we have intentions and he is fully > acknowledging the fact that moral blameworthiness has everything to do with > our intentions. That definitely counts as some kind of human agency, and Sam > is saying quite explicitly that there are good reasons why the conscious > decision to do another person harm is considered to be particularly > blameworthy. "Because consciousness is, among other things, the context in > which our INTENTIONS become available to us. What we do subsequent to > conscious planning tends to most fully reflect the global properties of our > minds—our beliefs, desires, goals, prejudices, etc." > > Our intentions, beliefs, desires and goals? Come on, how is that NOT a > description of human agency or human will? > > The challenge is to find a plausible example of moral responsibility without > some kind of human agency. Sam Harris doesn't count as an example because his > view does have some kind of human agency. That means you still have not > answered the question. Steve: No, dude. What you insisted is that I was holding an illogical view in denying free will while maintaining the notion of moral responsibility. The question was never about agency as the mere fact that we make choices or have will or intentions or moods and desires. It was about _free_ agency. I have always said that we obviously do make choices. The issue is about whether we make _free_ choices. In Harris's perspective as a neuroscientist, all these moods, desires, intentions, etc. are the product of chemical processes over which we have no control. But he asserts that even if we have no control over what our intentions are, we can still condemn bad intentions. If fact, he is saying we _have_ to condemn them precisely _because_ intentions are modified by external stimuli. Punishments in this view only make sense not as retribution but as ways for modifying behavior to prevent future crimes. Anyway, if you agree with Harris's view that we can have moral responsibility while denying free will then we have no argument this at point, so I guess you can stop saying that my view defies logic, and I hope you'll retract your many insistences that it would be simply illogical to hold such a view. The link between free will and moral responsibility is not a logical necessity as you have been insisting. I'll take your response above as your humble admission that you were wrong and that you now agree with me that we _can_ make sense of moral responsibility while denying free will. 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
