Hi Matt, (dmb), all, Steve said: What remains to be sussed out with regard to the MOQ is how DQ 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.
dmb said: ...If we comply simply to avoid punishment, that is not morality at all. It's merely fear-driven obedience, coerced compliance. This is how most psychopaths stay out of jail. They will avoid murder because it puts them at risk of going to jail. It's not because THEY think it's morally wrong, but because they know that other people think it's wrong. One philosopher who looked into this says the immoral psychopath knows what's moral in the same way that an atheist can have knowledge of theology without actually believing any of it himself. Steve: This sounds to me like dmb is invoking a Kantian prudence-morality distinction that I would think a pragmatist would eschew. Matt, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on pragmatism and this distinction. For everyone else, I'm always wondering how such a distinction could be described in terms of the MOQ levels. 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
