Does morality really require free will?

[IstillBELIEVEinPOMO]

I wish you'd make your claims in nominative sentences, stating stuff, instead of asking questions. If and when you ask questions, you are A. not making a claim, and B. you sound ambivalent as to whether your question is inquisitive, or rhetorical.

This is too late to join the conversation, but please, please, please, state claims, and do not ask questions in lieu of making claims in nominative sentences.

BIG THANKS from me if you do.

Well, it led to me answering my own question.

The answer was this: The concept of morality has served a purpose. That purpose is to address / cope with the problem of tension between the way things are and other possible states. Even if free will is an illusion, that problem remains. Even if free will is an illusion, the need to address / cope with that problem remains. Therefore, even if we discard the concept of morality due to free will being an illusion, very little changes.

Problem solved.

Or is it style, not answering questions / solving problems, that really matters?

[-1-]

Well, it led to me answering my own question.

The answer was this: The concept of morality has served a purpose. That purpose is to address / cope with the problem of tension between the way things are and other possible states. Even if free will is an illusion, that problem remains. Even if free will is an illusion, the need to address / cope with that problem remains. Therefore, even if we discard the concept of morality due to free will being an illusion, very little changes.

Problem solved.

Thanks.

I don't think you need to discard the concept of morality while you discard the concept of free will.

Morality may be determined... on bases of the guiding causation by self-interest, empathy and willingness to sacrifice one' s own interests.

A decision is made from one point in time where you do not know what to do, to a later point in time, when you do do that moral act.

The decision is decided by previously existing causes, by taking them into consideration and weighing the consequences of each. Which previously existing considerations you weigh in, is not a function of free will; it is a function of memory.

Memory is selective, even a simple, uncomplicated event can be remembered differently by observers of that event. Their observations will be different, their memory of it will be different, their moral action based on that event will be different.

Or is it style, not answering questions / solving problems, that really matters?

Is the second, shorter quote above a question, or a rhetoric? <-- this is an inquisitive.

Or is it style, not answering questions / solving problems, that really matters?

Yes, in a way. Questions can't be assigned truth values. Only nominative sentences can. Thus, there are no wrong questions; "wrong" or "right" implies consistency to truth, and questions do nothing with the truth.

Nominative sentences can be assigned truth values. In an argument it is simply impossible to shoot down something that can't be determined whether it's true or not. So questions ought not to be used to express opinions.

(VERY, VERY IMPORTANT: there are no wrong questions, but there ARE stupid questions. An example of a stupid question would be: "Why does the Vivikandra Centre offer no coffee with their free backrubs?" or "Where did I leave my better ego?")

[TimeSeeker]

Nominative sentences can be assigned truth values. In an argument it is simply impossible to shoot down something that can't be determined whether it's true or not.

So how DO you determine if something is true or false? e.g what procedure would you use to assert truth-value?

Demonstration:

1. B is the same as В. True or false?
2. B is the same as B. True or false?

Once you've answered the above check your answers here: https://repl.it/repls/BouncyOlivedrabMass

Is why arguments can't be resolved without empiricism. Equivocation and ambiguity are impossible to navigate in language.

[Atla]

Our status as moral agents, along with all of the thought we have developed over many millennia to correctly act on that status, collapses if free will is taken away, we are told.

Products of science, such as evolutionary psychology, and products of philosophy, such as physicalism, make it impossible now for any rational person to believe that we have free will and to see it as anything more than an illusion that has been useful for our survival.

Therefore, morality is toast.

But doesn't all of that depend on how morality is defined?

It seems to me that the most widely understood and accepted definition of morality is "The way things ought to be". It is compared and contrasted with "The way things are".

It is not the way anybody wants things to be. It is not the way anybody thinks things ought to be. It is the way things ought to be, period.

If, say, the way things ought to be includes every member of society being treated the same, that could, in theory, become the way things are through, say, many millennia of the impersonal mechanism of evolution by natural selection, right?

If the way things ought to be includes all members of ecosystems living within the systems' means, that could become the way things are through natural causes and effects, couldn't it?

Or is morality not really "The way things ought to be"?

Or has it been established through metaphysics and science that the way things ought to be can only become the way things are via free will?

Or is there no such thing as the way things ought to be, and really consists of nothing more than the way things are?

If there is nothing more than the way things are, why do we continue to think and talk about morality?

Technically everything is predetermined, but still we should continue believing that we have free will to the most ridiculous degree in our everyday lives, and live, act accordingly. That too is predetermined.

This is how humans always lived, for all practical purposes we have free will, we can make choices, and morality is alive and well.

[TimeSeeker]

Technically everything is predetermined, but still we should continue believing that we have free will to the most ridiculous degree in our everyday lives, and live, act accordingly. That too is predetermined.

This is an absolutist point of view.

That you WILL die is pre-determined (absolute). But you have some degree of control over the HOW and WHEN.
If you want to die SOONER then you can CHOOSE: suicide, euthenasia, drugs, unhealthy lifestyle
If you want to die LATER then you can CHOOSE: healthy lifestyle, regular medical checkups etc etc.

Because you have SOME control over SOME of the variables you have free will.

[IstillBELIEVEinPOMO]

Technically everything is predetermined,

According to what I read a few days ago, quantum physics shows that the universe is indeterminate.

[IstillBELIEVEinPOMO]

Technically everything is predetermined,

According to what I read a few days ago, quantum physics shows that the universe is indeterminate.

[Atla]

Technically everything is predetermined,

According to what I read a few days ago, quantum physics shows that the universe is indeterminate.

Maybe, maybe not. Quantum physics is probably an incomplete theory, but it's the best we have so far. And based on what we can observe, yes the universe seems indeterminate, which leads to problems like the Information paradox. Whether or not there is a nonlocal determinism behind the randomness, may remain forever unanswerable. Some interpretation are deterministic, others are indeterministic.

This kind of randomness has nothing to do with free will though, we can see it as a sort of "deterministic" randomness, from the perspective of free will. And when viewed from a big enough scale, like the scale of the human mind, the randomness tends to even out.

[TimeSeeker]

Technically everything is predetermined,

According to what I read a few days ago, quantum physics shows that the universe is indeterminate.

Well. At the micro scale it may be indeterminate, but at the macro scale it isn't.

This is a one-way ride and it ends here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_deat ... e_universe
That's rather precise and deterministic I think?

There is still hope at the micro scale too though. The Bekenstein bound ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound ) tell us that in order to simulate the universe we need a computer that is actually far smaller than the universe itself: https://youtu.be/0GLgZvTCbaA