Hi dmb, dmb: > If you want to believe those ignorant hacks over at Stanford.... > > > Compatibilism offers a solution to the free will problem. This philosophical > problem concerns a disputed incompatibility between free will and > determinism. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with > determinism. Because free will is typically taken to be a NECESSARY CONDITION > OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY, compatibilism is sometimes expressed in terms of a > compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism.
Steve: I have always granted that free will is _typically_ taken to be linked to free will. What I have asserted is that that link is not a logical necessity. Anyway, I'm glad that you see compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism even though free will and determinism are _typically_ taken to be mutually exclusive terms. dmb continues quoting... > 1. Terminology and One Formulation of the Free Will Problem > 1.1 Free Will > It would be misleading to specify a strict definition of free will since in > the philosophical work devoted to this notion there is probably no single > concept of it. For the most part, what philosophers working on this issue > have been hunting for, maybe not exclusively, but centrally, is a feature of > agency that is necessary for persons to be MORALLY RESPONSIBLE for their > conduct.[1] Different attempts to articulate the conditions for moral > responsibility will yield different accounts of the sort of AGENCY REQUIRED > to satisfy those conditions. What is needed, then, as a starting point, is a > gentle, malleable notion that focuses upon special features of persons as > AGENTS. Steve: You keep highlighting the term "agent" presumably to make some point. An agent is simply an entity that makes choices. I've always said that we make choices and have intentions, moods, desires, preferences, ect. What I question is whether we are free to have different intentions than we now have through an act of will. That doesn't seem to be the case in my subjective experience (I can't will myself to want what I don't want) and such a capacity of "freely" willing isn't supported by science. I also don't see how the capacity to follow DQ cashes out to such a power. dmb continues... Hence, as a theory-neutral point of departure, free will can be defined as the unique ability of persons [MOQ differs here] to exercise control over their conduct in the fullest manner NECESSARY FOR MORAL RESPONSIBILITY.[2] Clearly, this definition is too lean when taken as an endpoint; the hard philosophical > work is about how best to develop this special kind of control. But however > this notion of control is developed, its uniqueness consists, at least in > part, in being possessed only by persons. Steve: This does indeed differ strongly with the MOQ. dmb continues to quote... > 1.2 Moral Responsibility > A person who is a morally responsible agent is NOT MERELY a person who is > ABLE to do moral right or wrong. Beyond this, she is ACCOUNTABLE for her > morally significant conduct. Hence, she is, when fitting, an apt target of > MORAL PRAISE or BLAME, as well as reward or punishment. Free will is > understood as a necessary condition of MORAL RESPONSIBILITY since it would > seem unreasonable to say of a person that she deserves blame and punishment > for her conduct if it turned out that she was not at any point in time in > control of it. (Similar things can be said about praise and reward.) It is > PRIMARILY, though not exclusively, BECAUSE of the INTIMATE CONNECTION between > free will and moral responsibility that the free will problem is seen as an > important one.[3] Steve: If moral responsibility is defined as having control, then whether we have it or not depends on how deeply you want to go looking for it. The deeper you look, the less you find. If it merely depends on having intentions and the capacity to deliberate over the morally correct course of action (i.e., if that is all that is meant by control), then we certainly do have it to some extent. What remains to be sussed out with regard to the MOQ is how DQ (assuming the capacity to respond to DQ is what is meant by free will for Pirsig) cashes out to the free control of an agent. I don't see how. But as for moral responsibility and the MOQ, what makes us and rocks and trees and atoms moral beings in the MOQ is not the assertion of free will but the assertion that reality itself is a moral order. Yet it still makes little sense to talk about responsibility until we get to beings that have social patterns because only such beings have behavior which is modifiable through praise and blame. It's just not worth punishing a rock since there is no hope that its behavior could change as a benefit of punishment (rocks don't participate in social patterns), but a scolded child may behave better next time. 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
