Even if it’s true that criminals lack free will, they deterministically respond to incentives. By punishing criminals, we affect the incentives that potential criminals face.
Plus, I want to punish killers and child molesters harshly. I can’t help it!
On the topic of moral culpability, I am reminded of the following quotation from General Sir Charles Napier, British Commander in Chief in India, when approached by Hindus wanting to observe the custom of sati, or burning of widows on a funeral pyre:
"“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”
This reminds me of the people defending Lindsay Clancy. It makes me sick to my stomach. Her defenders not only deny an adult woman's responsibility to her children, but also exposes the unconscious bias that children are the property of their parents. Cora, Dawson, and Callan were full human beings deserving of full human rights, yet so many people are treating them as if they were disposable objects. CHILDREN'S LIVES MATTER
The new determinists have become a priestly class wishing their cultured forgiveness can be generalized by the insight of determinism, and that is what gets them in logistic trouble. We actually find them arguing that different outcomes are possible taking different paths, something akin to a - choice?
We are privileged to live in societies where agency can be discussed endlessly, so we can acknowledge that social conditions matter, but it so happens that the kind of societies motivated to accept arguments of impaired or trapped agency- in certain conditions - are exactly the ones that take it for granted that the majority can be held responsible and act accordingly.
In Scandinavia, my original base, I observe that the connected values of personal and social responsibility have been in play, and it is because of this that the treatment of criminals can appear mild and compassionate to other societies. Because the vast majority of people do not want even the mild treatment and are not incentivized by it. We also observe how that system responded when immigrant populations did not play by the rules and were unfazed by the mild treatment. Struggles ensued, practices had to change. When a sufficient amount of individuals did not act socially responsible, the whole system was threatened. Forgiveness was not the solution.
In a high functioning culture, there are both consequences to face and forgiveness to earn, and both have to be perceived as fair by the community at large. If you move away from that in one direction or the other, social tension and dysfunction will arise.
The determinists face the logical problem that it is best if most people remain persuaded that they can be held responsible. I think that we have to arrive at the conclusion that the determinist belief structure sucks as a guideline for social action. And if that is where it gets us, what good is the belief structure?
It seems like your main issues with determinists are their elimination of moral culpability and their exclusion of themselves from their own theories. Btw, I didn’t see any examples of the latter in your article and would be interested to see you “catch” one of these determinists in this inconsistency.
I’m not sure you have steel-manned the determinist position. Reality, at least superficially, looks the same, whether there is free will or not. It’s a question of what’s happening underneath. Determinists don’t propose limited exceptions where some people act with free will, as you seem to imply.
But addressing your issue with moral culpability, free will is a scientific i.e. a falsifiable hypothesis. Consider Libet’s readiness potential experiments. We exercise some level of free will or we don’t. If it’s real, accurate discussions of it it will separate people from their actions. But that does not mean we should eliminate consequences, including the criminal justice system, for those actions. Perhaps it sounds extreme or ignorant, but it doesn’t matter if free will exists or not—we should continue to treat people as if it does.
But we don’t necessarily have to believe or not believe in it while the jury is out. If free will does not exist, and you urge us to believe in it so that our language adequately condemns behavior, doesn’t this fall into the same anti-epistemology that plagues the left? Should we disregard objectivity to pursue a political goal like the 1619 Project or Katherine Maher’s “reverence for truth” as a distraction?
In my experience, it has been educated leftists who argue this, which then gets applied to anti-social people. But it has also been applied to women by women, because the argument is that they're just reacting to a patriarchal system, implying that they're enslaved to patriarchy rather than agents in their own lives. I once lived this way in no small part because my peers believed it and I learned it in school--Foucault was the thread running through everything.
If someone is driven to commit terrible crimes beyond their free will, then they more than anyone should be completely separated from the rest of society. Fortunately, we have a word for that: prison
I think there is a spectrum of emotional intelligence and emotional control where those lacking them hold these views that self-determination and free will are constructs of power, and outcomes are just luck and chance.
It is a quite self-serving thesis because otherwise these people would have to accept that their capability is weak, and that yes, if successful, they might have very well just stumbled on it or were maybe born with a silver spoon. Or if not successful, it is largely due to their own bad choices and bad behavior, and not so much external factors.
Conversely, those of us that have a handle on our impulses and motivations that influence our behavior, know definitively that self-determination and free will are the primary driver of individual and group outcomes. If we fail, it is our own fault. If we succeed, it is our own earned reward.
The insecure have a very hard time conceding that others have earned their success.
I don't see how free will, yes or no, changes how society should be structured. Though in some cases we soften punishment based on what we perceive to be intent, those judgements are all based on external actions of the accused. If we get to the point where a robot is considered a citizen, would we change the rules that constrain society? Purpose of the rules are to protect society from malfunctioning people or robots regardless of how they arrived at that state. Interestingly, there was a Outer Limits episode exactly on this topic some 60 years ago -- a robot on trial for murder.
Good point. It turns out that whether or not we have "free will" (which is almost impossible to define) the moral rules don't change. It is a distinction without a difference.
It is only a distinction without a difference if you do not take the determinist position seriously.
When you argue from moral principles or values, you imply that people can and should chose to abide by them because of their validity, not because of their origin or because they can't help themselves. The very fact that we debate these things means that we accept that how we work things out for ourselves makes a difference. For a consistent determinist position the notion that we have agency that makes a difference is an illusion. There is only one way for things to go at any point.
The difficulty I have is how a universe where "everything has already happened" or only can happen in one way at any point as its only possible manifestation has people running around endlessly debating and fretting and discussing, offering guidelines, creating incentives, trying to figure out moral rules, comparing outcomes of different actions, creating models for simulating different outcomes in order to find the best action, creating endless choices for themselves etc. etc.
The debate does not change the rules of society when most people accept that most people should and can be held personally responsible. If most people believed that no one is truly responsible, only a manifestation of prior conditioning, and made this the basis for justice systems, things would have to change or it would be an inconsistent position.
"Notice, though, the asymmetry. The determinist grants agency to himself and a handful of other anointed beings. They can choose to become more enlightened." Also notice the asymmetrical compassion. Compassion for the criminals is high, compassion for those who punish them is low. Ordinary people, cops and prison guards who participate in the system of punishment, deterrent, and isolation quickly become the deplorables.
“Consequently we have only to discover these laws of nature, and man will no longer have to answer for his actions and life will become exceedingly easy for him”
Determinism is true, but free will exists. The will itself is a product of biological and social forces, after all, what else could it be a product of? Even if you say spiritual forces or randomness, those are just other causes. Still, it is a real thing which acts and acts upon itself. The notion that the person is separable from the will and somehow unfree to control it is the implicit error. The individual “is” the mind and the will for the purposes of this discussion. If you are bad and evil because things happened, you are still bad and evil. There is no way to be bad and evil without something causing it. There’s no way to be anything without something causing it.
Even if we assume there is no free will (which I don't), wrong doers can be punished in the interests of the larger community, who themselves lack free will.
A recent Andrew Gold interview of a psychopath who was sent to prison for trying to kill his father may shed some light on the discussion of free will. At 18, David Wood, a clinical psychopath, was tired of following the rules, being civil, and wanted to make a clean break, to assert his superiority - that he was above the stupid rules everyone around him was following- and decided killing his father was the ultimate declaration of his deserved entitlement. He was unmoved by any consideration of punishment or consequences: he simply didn't care. He describes his lack of empathy, giving the example that when he was roused from sleep by his wife (I'm always astonished how people this broken are able to form families and have children) to be told of his father's death (this was years after the attempted murdered) he simply went back to sleep. There was no grief to be felt: it simply didn't exist in his world. Psychopaths are strangely quite charming and attractive in many cases. David Wood is no exception. They think of themselves and their deficits, of which they are aware, in glowing terms. They perceive themselves to be better than other people because of their deficits! Their lack of empathy is to them a sign of a more rational perspective. They think, 'We're all going to die anyway, so why does it matter how someone dies?' The worst of them have no compunction, are natural born killers, and they find it thrilling to express this aspect of themselves. Think Ted Bundy. People are puppets in their view, to be manipulated at will. In the discussion of free will, psychopaths are more free than others, simply because of their brain structure, but when it doesn't comport well with the rest of society, they may well find themselves locked up because of it. Unless, of course, they're billionaires. David Wood, interestingly, says his stint in prison at least taught him what he did was wrong, though it never made much if any impact on him emotionally.
Even if it’s true that criminals lack free will, they deterministically respond to incentives. By punishing criminals, we affect the incentives that potential criminals face.
Plus, I want to punish killers and child molesters harshly. I can’t help it!
Good point!
On the topic of moral culpability, I am reminded of the following quotation from General Sir Charles Napier, British Commander in Chief in India, when approached by Hindus wanting to observe the custom of sati, or burning of widows on a funeral pyre:
"“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”
If a murderer can't help what he did because he lacks free will,
then I can't help but want to see him swing at the end of the rope because the universe has made me this way.
At the very least, if he doesn't have the free will not to murder, he should not have the free will to move about in society. Lock him up for life.
This reminds me of the people defending Lindsay Clancy. It makes me sick to my stomach. Her defenders not only deny an adult woman's responsibility to her children, but also exposes the unconscious bias that children are the property of their parents. Cora, Dawson, and Callan were full human beings deserving of full human rights, yet so many people are treating them as if they were disposable objects. CHILDREN'S LIVES MATTER
The new determinists have become a priestly class wishing their cultured forgiveness can be generalized by the insight of determinism, and that is what gets them in logistic trouble. We actually find them arguing that different outcomes are possible taking different paths, something akin to a - choice?
We are privileged to live in societies where agency can be discussed endlessly, so we can acknowledge that social conditions matter, but it so happens that the kind of societies motivated to accept arguments of impaired or trapped agency- in certain conditions - are exactly the ones that take it for granted that the majority can be held responsible and act accordingly.
In Scandinavia, my original base, I observe that the connected values of personal and social responsibility have been in play, and it is because of this that the treatment of criminals can appear mild and compassionate to other societies. Because the vast majority of people do not want even the mild treatment and are not incentivized by it. We also observe how that system responded when immigrant populations did not play by the rules and were unfazed by the mild treatment. Struggles ensued, practices had to change. When a sufficient amount of individuals did not act socially responsible, the whole system was threatened. Forgiveness was not the solution.
In a high functioning culture, there are both consequences to face and forgiveness to earn, and both have to be perceived as fair by the community at large. If you move away from that in one direction or the other, social tension and dysfunction will arise.
The determinists face the logical problem that it is best if most people remain persuaded that they can be held responsible. I think that we have to arrive at the conclusion that the determinist belief structure sucks as a guideline for social action. And if that is where it gets us, what good is the belief structure?
It seems like your main issues with determinists are their elimination of moral culpability and their exclusion of themselves from their own theories. Btw, I didn’t see any examples of the latter in your article and would be interested to see you “catch” one of these determinists in this inconsistency.
I’m not sure you have steel-manned the determinist position. Reality, at least superficially, looks the same, whether there is free will or not. It’s a question of what’s happening underneath. Determinists don’t propose limited exceptions where some people act with free will, as you seem to imply.
But addressing your issue with moral culpability, free will is a scientific i.e. a falsifiable hypothesis. Consider Libet’s readiness potential experiments. We exercise some level of free will or we don’t. If it’s real, accurate discussions of it it will separate people from their actions. But that does not mean we should eliminate consequences, including the criminal justice system, for those actions. Perhaps it sounds extreme or ignorant, but it doesn’t matter if free will exists or not—we should continue to treat people as if it does.
But we don’t necessarily have to believe or not believe in it while the jury is out. If free will does not exist, and you urge us to believe in it so that our language adequately condemns behavior, doesn’t this fall into the same anti-epistemology that plagues the left? Should we disregard objectivity to pursue a political goal like the 1619 Project or Katherine Maher’s “reverence for truth” as a distraction?
In my experience, it has been educated leftists who argue this, which then gets applied to anti-social people. But it has also been applied to women by women, because the argument is that they're just reacting to a patriarchal system, implying that they're enslaved to patriarchy rather than agents in their own lives. I once lived this way in no small part because my peers believed it and I learned it in school--Foucault was the thread running through everything.
If someone is driven to commit terrible crimes beyond their free will, then they more than anyone should be completely separated from the rest of society. Fortunately, we have a word for that: prison
I think there is a spectrum of emotional intelligence and emotional control where those lacking them hold these views that self-determination and free will are constructs of power, and outcomes are just luck and chance.
It is a quite self-serving thesis because otherwise these people would have to accept that their capability is weak, and that yes, if successful, they might have very well just stumbled on it or were maybe born with a silver spoon. Or if not successful, it is largely due to their own bad choices and bad behavior, and not so much external factors.
Conversely, those of us that have a handle on our impulses and motivations that influence our behavior, know definitively that self-determination and free will are the primary driver of individual and group outcomes. If we fail, it is our own fault. If we succeed, it is our own earned reward.
The insecure have a very hard time conceding that others have earned their success.
I don't see how free will, yes or no, changes how society should be structured. Though in some cases we soften punishment based on what we perceive to be intent, those judgements are all based on external actions of the accused. If we get to the point where a robot is considered a citizen, would we change the rules that constrain society? Purpose of the rules are to protect society from malfunctioning people or robots regardless of how they arrived at that state. Interestingly, there was a Outer Limits episode exactly on this topic some 60 years ago -- a robot on trial for murder.
Good point. It turns out that whether or not we have "free will" (which is almost impossible to define) the moral rules don't change. It is a distinction without a difference.
It is only a distinction without a difference if you do not take the determinist position seriously.
When you argue from moral principles or values, you imply that people can and should chose to abide by them because of their validity, not because of their origin or because they can't help themselves. The very fact that we debate these things means that we accept that how we work things out for ourselves makes a difference. For a consistent determinist position the notion that we have agency that makes a difference is an illusion. There is only one way for things to go at any point.
The difficulty I have is how a universe where "everything has already happened" or only can happen in one way at any point as its only possible manifestation has people running around endlessly debating and fretting and discussing, offering guidelines, creating incentives, trying to figure out moral rules, comparing outcomes of different actions, creating models for simulating different outcomes in order to find the best action, creating endless choices for themselves etc. etc.
The debate does not change the rules of society when most people accept that most people should and can be held personally responsible. If most people believed that no one is truly responsible, only a manifestation of prior conditioning, and made this the basis for justice systems, things would have to change or it would be an inconsistent position.
"Notice, though, the asymmetry. The determinist grants agency to himself and a handful of other anointed beings. They can choose to become more enlightened." Also notice the asymmetrical compassion. Compassion for the criminals is high, compassion for those who punish them is low. Ordinary people, cops and prison guards who participate in the system of punishment, deterrent, and isolation quickly become the deplorables.
“Consequently we have only to discover these laws of nature, and man will no longer have to answer for his actions and life will become exceedingly easy for him”
Determinism is true, but free will exists. The will itself is a product of biological and social forces, after all, what else could it be a product of? Even if you say spiritual forces or randomness, those are just other causes. Still, it is a real thing which acts and acts upon itself. The notion that the person is separable from the will and somehow unfree to control it is the implicit error. The individual “is” the mind and the will for the purposes of this discussion. If you are bad and evil because things happened, you are still bad and evil. There is no way to be bad and evil without something causing it. There’s no way to be anything without something causing it.
Even if we assume there is no free will (which I don't), wrong doers can be punished in the interests of the larger community, who themselves lack free will.
Beautiful finish!
A recent Andrew Gold interview of a psychopath who was sent to prison for trying to kill his father may shed some light on the discussion of free will. At 18, David Wood, a clinical psychopath, was tired of following the rules, being civil, and wanted to make a clean break, to assert his superiority - that he was above the stupid rules everyone around him was following- and decided killing his father was the ultimate declaration of his deserved entitlement. He was unmoved by any consideration of punishment or consequences: he simply didn't care. He describes his lack of empathy, giving the example that when he was roused from sleep by his wife (I'm always astonished how people this broken are able to form families and have children) to be told of his father's death (this was years after the attempted murdered) he simply went back to sleep. There was no grief to be felt: it simply didn't exist in his world. Psychopaths are strangely quite charming and attractive in many cases. David Wood is no exception. They think of themselves and their deficits, of which they are aware, in glowing terms. They perceive themselves to be better than other people because of their deficits! Their lack of empathy is to them a sign of a more rational perspective. They think, 'We're all going to die anyway, so why does it matter how someone dies?' The worst of them have no compunction, are natural born killers, and they find it thrilling to express this aspect of themselves. Think Ted Bundy. People are puppets in their view, to be manipulated at will. In the discussion of free will, psychopaths are more free than others, simply because of their brain structure, but when it doesn't comport well with the rest of society, they may well find themselves locked up because of it. Unless, of course, they're billionaires. David Wood, interestingly, says his stint in prison at least taught him what he did was wrong, though it never made much if any impact on him emotionally.
https://youtu.be/5WmGKTAy4p8?is=e-4dQmgrZuxYOQIT