From ILP:
Flannel Jesus wrote: iambiguous wrote:Flannel Jesus wrote:I don't know what any of that has to do with the offer I made to you earlier of some ideas I want to discuss. You were asking how responsibility works in determinism, I was offering to have a conversation with you to work through the thought processes involved for the people that think that.
Click.
Then we're stuck. We apparently want to discuss determinism and responsibility [moral and otherwise] from different angles.
That doesn't mean we're stuck.
You started this conversation with incredulity that anybody could have compatibilist views.
No, I start all discussions of free will by noting the gap between what any of us think that we know about it "in our head" and all that none of us really grasp for certain about it given this...
All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was "somehow" able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter "somehow" became living matter "somehow" became conscious matter "somehow" became self-conscious matter.
The part where our brains are explaining something when we have no capacity to grasp the limitations of brain matter itself going all the way back to where the human condition itself fits into why there is something instead of nothing and why it is this somethng and not something else.
Then -- click -- the part where "here and now" I am not myself able to grasp how compatibilists can reconcile determinism and moral responsibility. The part where Mary asks, "if I was compelled by my brain to abort Jane -- never able not to abort her -- how can I be held morally responsible for doing so?" Unless of course in a wholly determined universe as some understand it, the compatibilists themselves are never able to not insist that she was morally responsible.
Then the more we try to untangle all of these profound imponderables the more tangled up we get.
Then those rabid objectivists among us like peacegirl finally able to grasp the implications of that for their own dogmatic "my way or the highway" convictions.
iambiguous wrote:
But what I still find fascinating is how some will argue that...
1] Mary was never able not to abort her unborn fetus but, that...
2] Mary is still morally responsible for doing so
Flannel Jesus wrote: And then I offered to explain some arguments
Okay -- click -- you are able to opt freely to offer explanatory arguments. Or -- No Click -- you are offering us only what you could never have not offered us. The part where we are all stuck.
Flannel Jesus wrote:
Honestly it kind of rests on exactly what you mean by "morally responsible". I can make a case for a form of moral responsibility that is completely compatible with "she couldn't have done otherwise".
And I can also make a case for the argument that lessening determinism doesn't actually give her more responsibility for her actions.
Okay -- click -- let's hear it.
Flannel Jesus wrote: It doesn't matter that we have different angles for that conversation to continue. The only thing that matters is that you care enough to understand the other angle, in order to resolve your incredulity.
If you don't care to understand the angle, then your subsequent approach to the conversation makes total sense. But if you do care to understand the angle, the angle you're fascinated by apparently, then all you have to do is listen. Put your angle to the side for the duration of a conversation and listen. Ask questions, answer questions, have a conversation, try to sate the curiosity you apparently have in this angle you say you're fascinated by -- that doesn't seem massively difficult to me. If I was fascinated in another position, that's exactly what I'd do: find someone who says they understand it, and listen to them.
No, the only thing that matters to some is that we have no capacity -- scientifically, experimentally, experientially, empirically etc. -- to demonstrate that what we
do care about we opted freely
to care about it.
Or have you accomplished this?
Flannel Jesus wrote: The offer's still on the table for you to do that. Committing to listen to another person doesn't mean committing to changing your mind, it just involves having a conversation and trying to understand. That's it. I trust you to be able to do that, and there aren't a lot of people on this forum I'd rather do that with than with you pal. So if you're as fascinated as you say you are, there's the offer.
Again, sure, there's a part of me that is no less convinced than the libertarians that I possess the free will necessary to listen to the arguments of those convinced that they are free to offer such arguments.
So -- click -- let's hear it.
On the other hand, tonight I might have a dream in which I listen to someone reconcile determinism and moral responsibility. And, in the dream, I am no less convinced that it is not a dream at all. That I am of my own volition choosing to listen. But then I wake up and think, "wow, that 'reality' was entirely the creation of my brain, chemically and neurologically!"
Then, of course, those who will absolutely insist that with the waking brain, it's all
different. They "just know" that it is.