Yes, somewhat clearer thanks!

You say: "Never mind about examples. I know ALL ABOUT IT from personal experience." Which means: "I don't want to talk about what you're talking about, I want to talk about what I want to talk about, so shut up and listen".

You say the reasoning is "Those who benefit the most have the greatest debt to pay." But that doesn't apply to why Mary has to pay more does it?

That's OK. It's probably me who should apologise. For being such a giant fusspot.

Yeah, you're right. It is a trivial case. But you try telling that to Mary and see what you get! I can flesh out the example if you like. Say Jack is under the threshold and pays zero tax. And Mary is in the first bracket and so pays, let's say, $1,000 dollars a year. Other than that their situation is perfectly identical. (So there is no difference in their level of government service use.) Mary asks me: "hey, why am I paying and Jack pays nothing?". What do I say to her? The only answer I can think of is: "sorry Mary but the tax system is a blunt instrument and we can't fine tune it to cover your circumstances."

(On a different thread somebody gave me some advice about what to do when respondents on a thread I have started fail to stay focussed on the content of the original post. The advice I got was: “Then you bite their head off for straying from the topic”. So here goes.)

You start off with “I'm in favour of progressive taxation because”. But I didn’t ask if you were in favour of it or not. I asked what the reasoning behind it was. I know I’m being a bit silly here and sure I understand that you probably just mean that you think that the reason why you are in favour of it is just the same as the reasoning behind it but still I want you to start your reply with something like “I think the reasoning behind progressive taxation is ...”. Can you do that for me? Of course I did still try to read the rest of your post but I found it really confusing. You say: “not everyone enjoys making money, but everyone should have enough money to participate in most areas of life reasonably equitably”. So is that two lines of reasoning then? First: wealthy people should pay more because they enjoy making money. (But then what about the ones that don’t?) And second: poorer people should pay less because they have a right to “participate in most areas of life reasonably equitably”. Can you re-write your post more clearly? If there are two reasons then can you set them out separately? And then later I think you present another different argument based on the idea that it’s not true “that the poor have the option necessarily to just follow the example of rich people and get rich themselves”. Sorry to be so picky but it’s just I’m having difficulty in parsing your response. (In the meantime I will try to read it again later and I expect it will become clearer then.)

You say “Wealthy people should pay more because they are actually receiving more services”. But my question was a general one. That’s why I deliberately gave the Jack and Mary example where the only difference is that Mary works double the hours of Jack. And there will be plenty of other cases like this. So your response kind of misses the point of what I was asking. ... Also when you say: “If it had been for the US Government deciding in the 1930s” do you mean “if it HADN’T been”.

You say: “The government needs money and the rich are better able to provide this money than the poor.” You have just stated a point to which I have already presented a counter-point, so that’s no good to me. I already said in my original post “Are we saying to wealthy people that they have to pay more just because they can?” and then responded to it.

Yeah, funny.

I will try to respond to subsequent replies later.

Wow, you seem to be getting wired about something not particularly important. How dare you! That's my prerogative!!

In your reply to me you say "I can't see how I'm wrong". But I already said you're right!!

There's just a slight ambiguity in the word "typical", that's all. Sometimes it can imply essentialness and definitiveness. For example when we say "of its type" that means something has some defining characteristic.

Also, this is the lounge. This topic is becoming too serious surely!!

This definition here:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/typical
just says ‘usually expected’ rather than ‘distinctive’ .

I think you’re right that the word ‘typical’ does not (typically!) mean essential. Although I can see that people might use it that way. So then its meaning changes too. You know what words are like! Meaning and use can vary slightly.

The word ‘disinterested’ used to mean something different from ‘uninterested’ but in recent years (due to usage) ‘disinterested’ has come to mean ‘uninterested’ as well as what it really means.

Also: no no, you're not an idiot. (I think that's the correct response to someone who starts by saying “I am an idiot”.)

Oh the irony! Someone on a philosophy discussion forum telling me that I am overthinking!

But seriously though, I am still here and available for conversation. Sounding a bit needy like I've got a sign round my neck saying "Talk To Me".

Yes OK. But, oh dear, you've used the word 'dialectic' and so I might have to take a dip out of this thread and go and have a lie down. I look forward to all the further responses when I come back tomorrow! I literally can wait.

Wait there’s more! (Oh yes there’s more!)

Because often the only responses to a post will be from whatever people just happen to read it. I feel like it should be more systematic than that. If I am a member of a group and I say something I want everyone to be obliged to give their serious considered response to what I have said. (And I would do likewise of course.) Rather like in an election everyone should be required to vote.

What I don’t want is just the more or less impertinent immediate reactions of whatever slack-jawed yokels happen to be loitering at the particular street corner where I have made my point. (Apologies for the rather laboured and possible slightly offensive analogy!)

The compromise is a focussed real-time (mostly) one-to-one conversation. Preferably sat in some comfortable faux-leather high back armchairs.

Bite their head off? Who do you think I am? Ozzy Osbourne? No. I want people who don't need telling.

What’s the worst that can happen?

I once used to go to a (IRL) philosophy ‘group discussion’. The format was that an issue was presented and then each person (going round the table) had their say. And at the end we all went home. No interactive conversation. No follow-up questions. I thought: what was the point of that? But it was a discussion, right?? That's the worst that can happen.

Or on this kind of online forum. I ask a question. And immediately three or four people get into a heated argument with each other about something else entirely. And, despite my requests, fail to address my original question. In general it is too easy to ignore people and say what you like without consequences in a discussion forum. Which, to me, isn’t polite. (Sorry I know I sound really snooty and a bit condescending here, but!)

Yes I heard that quote in the movie 'Slacker'. Don't know if people have seen it.
But the quote itself is originally from something called Oblique Strategies.
(see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies)
Which is a kind of game.

(And (oops!) I have slightly misquoted: it's "withdrawing" not "withdrawal" but I kind of prefer the latter!)

I like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP_f-klArPs
More amusing than profound I suppose.

Hi, OP here. In case anybody is wondering, I'm bailing out on this post. People have (as usual) gone so far off my original quite precise (or so I think anyway) question (and are arguing amongst themselves about other things) that I can't remain involved in it! Never mind. Better luck next time I guess.

Thanks to @Bitter Crank for his reply. But I’m still not sure that’s exactly what I want.

I want to hear what people think about the issue of exactly how Socialism relates to equality. An account of some sort of chain of reasoning which gets you from Socialism to equality. And, of course, an important part of such an account would be to say what you think Socialism is. And what you understand by ‘equality’. I myself would probably take equality to mean equality of material standard of living. (Not absolute equality between individuals but a narrow range of inequality.)

So, then I try to get to the chain of reasoning. As remarked in my original post, I noticed that the “from each” motto (as a statement of what Socialism is) doesn’t get to equality. (Despite on the face of it, seeming to do so.) Then (as mentioned by Bitter Crank and others) we have the idea that Socialism is a situation where capital is not privately owned. But rather it is somehow ‘collectively owned’. But neither is it clear how this gets us to equality. Certainly being more precise about what ‘collectively owned’ means here might help.

And, come to think of it, we need to be more clear about what we mean by ‘equality’. Maybe being clear about what we mean by equality is saying something more about HOW the equality is got. For example suppose we had a ‘brute force’ redistributive system where we simply had a law that just took some of the money that rich people have got and gave it to poor people. Is this the manner in which Socialism gets us to equality? I would have thought the method would need to be something more sophisticated than that!

(I agree that equality (obviously) doesn’t mean giving everyone an equal amount of stuff or money. Because, as Bitter Crank says, people have different needs. But this point is included in the “from each” motto. Which, as I have said, doesn’t, in its wider application, yield equality.)

Thanks for all the contributions guys, but I think that what I really wanted was for someone to just address the particular issue of the relation between equality and socialism, as stated in the original post. It’s something that I was thinking about and I wondered what other people thought about it. I suppose that what I want is to (so to speak) peek into someone else’s mind to see how they have thought through this matter. I want them to give me a considered, carefully explained account of their understanding of how (or if) the idea of socialism fits in with the idea of equality.

(I think @Bitter Crank was on the right lines with his brave attempt at saying in a detailed way what Socialism is. And you would need to do this before you could say how equality relates to Socialism.)

Note also that the aim of my enquiry is inquisitorial (in the good sense of the word!) rather than adversarial. By which I mean that I’m not asking my question to get into an argument (much as I love to have a good argument!) or to persuade or be persuaded of some particular position. It’s more that I just want people to share their thought processes with me.

But then it seems as if saying that Jack has no "philosophical" free will isn't saying anything at all.

Because we are still going to treat him as blameworthy ("deserving" of imprisonment etc) in the same way we would if we had said he does have "philosophical" free will. Which suggests that really we think he does have such free will.

Sorry to persist but I’m not sure you answered the question. (If you think you have answered then it might just be me being dense so ignore this.)

Where the question was: what’s the difference in terms of attitude of blame in each of the cases of absence of “legal free will” and absence of “philosophical free will”?

In particular, in the case of absence of “philosophical free will” (using the Jack being bribed example) what’s the attitude of blame towards the agent who lacks that sort of free will? (I think that’s the bit I don’t quite understand.)

So (sorry to repeat, but just to be clear) what is the answer to the "is it the same or different?" question in my last post. Using the Jack being bribed and Jack at gunpoint scenarios from my earlier posts as examples of (the absence of) "philosophical" and "legal" free-will respectively.

(We are in the "after hours" for this thread now!)

OK so we got two meanings. I'm trying to figure out what the significance of lacking "philosophical free-will" is? I mean in terms of attitudes of blame towards the agent. Is it the same or different to the significance of lack of "legal free-will"? If different then how different?

(P. S. "two different meanings"?? I'm worried there might be three. At least! :smile: )

So, in conclusion. (A long-awaited conclusion to this thread.) You are saying that when we say Jack is blameless in the bribe scenario, this isn’t the same as the blamelessness he has in the gunpoint scenario. The latter blamelessness is the ordinary one which consists of us saying that he shouldn’t be punished. But in the bribe scenario it just means that he shouldn’t “burn in hell for eternity”! That’s the only consequence of his not having hard free will. But we can still blame him in this life.

So when we say about Jack in the bribe scenario that he has no (hard) free will and is blameless it seems to me we are saying nothing really. On the whole, I don’t find it a very satisfactory conclusion that we have arrived at. It doesn’t sound quite right to me! But there you have it.

In fact it has occurred to me in the past few days that the statement “we don’t have free will” is somehow meaningless due to a lack of falsifiability. Because there is no possible scenario of some agent choosing to do something “of their own hard free will” which would show that statement to be false! So saying it is saying nothing.

(By the way in your last message you say: “In addition to "hard free-will", I'd also like to introduce "compatibilist free-will" so that there can be no confusion.” But I think that this compatibilist free-will is the same as the “normal (soft) free will” that we have already been referring to!)

OK so let me see if I’ve understood what’s been said so far. So the idea is that, when we say “there is no free will”, this means that all our choices are the outcome of prior factors. Such that any choice we make could not have been otherwise than the way it was.

Clarification point. We should clarify that “could not have been otherwise” here is not meant in the same way as that same phrase when we are talking about normal free will. So, in my previous example, when Jack hands over the documents at gunpoint we would say “he couldn’t have chosen otherwise” where this refers to the fact that he was being coerced to do what he did by being threatened with being shot. But in the hard free will case the phrase does not mean that. It means something else.

Then, as for the blame issue. That’s what I’m not clear about. Is the idea that, because an agent has no hard free will, that then we don’t blame them? So we don’t blame Jack for handing over the documents to Mary in return for a bribe. We treat him as blameless in that scenario as we do if he had handed over the documents at gunpoint?

In your last response you seem to be saying that the only sorts of punishment that are appropriate in cases of lack of hard free will are things like incarceration simply as a kind of preventative measure. That suggests you mean that we treat people who lack hard free will in the same way as ones who lack normal free will. Because in the latter situation preventative incarceration is also justified. (For example with regard to people diagnosed with certain “mental illnesses”.)

I know you give other examples (rapists, drug addicts) but, to keep it simple, let’s stick to the example of Jack handing over the documents in return for a bribe. (After all the idea I am figuring out that “we have no free will” applies to all choices of all agents.) What does it mean to say that, in this case, Jack has no “absolute moral responsibility”?

I was looking for an example of some agent doing something NOT of their own “hard free will”. But now that I think of it, given that we’re working with the idea that we don’t ever have hard free will, then I guess we could just use an example of mine from earlier. Jack chooses to give Mary the secret documents for a bribe. This choice is a free choice, he chooses of his own “normal free will”. But not of his own “hard free will”. (Because, according to the idea I am considering, all of our choices are not of our hard free will). Is this OK as an example?

Then the first question is: what is it exactly about Jack’s choosing to give Mary the documents in this example that constitutes it being a not hard free will choice.

The second question is: what are the ramifications? You would say, as you said before, that Jack has “practical responsibility” (due to his having “normal free will”) but not “absolute moral responsibility”. But what does it mean exactly to say he does not have absolute moral responsibility here?

P. S. Thanks to the other people for the recent new replies but I’m not going to respond to these yet as I want to remain focussed on my initial query. Which is (to recap) that I am trying to figure out exactly what it means when people say that we have no free will. And what (if any) significance there is of this not having free will.

So about the answer to my “do you mean the following” question. Is that yes or no?

I must admit that I’ve got confused by you introducing other concepts such as revenge and the responsibility of children for their actions! (Both of which raise other issues I think.) Can you explain what you mean without using those concepts?

Maybe we should back up a little. Previously you said: “But there are a few ramifications of lacking hard-free will.” Can you give an example of some agent doing something not of their own hard free will. This might help me understand what you say about the ramifications after that.

But there are a few ramifications of lacking hard-free will. Torturing someone to death for revenge (for instance) makes no moral sense if they are not truly responsible. — VagabondSpectre

Can I clarify what you mean by this? Do you mean the following: if someone is lacking hard free will then they are not truly responsible, and so this has the ramification that it makes no moral sense to inflict any sort of punishment on them for whatever objectionable thing they might have done.

Intuition tells people they have free will — VagabondSpectre

When you use the term “free will” here (and in the rest of your reply after this quote) do you mean hard free will or normal free will?

OK, so let me see if I’ve understood you. Basically what you’re saying is that the idea that “we have no free will” is only saying that we have no “hard free will”. It’s not at all saying we don’t have (what we might call) normal (or “soft”) free will. Is that right?

(By the way I really like the term “hard free will”! I've not heard it before but I’m going to use it from now on.)

And, as you say, it’s very difficult to define what this hard free will is. Or even to give an example of it. It’s easy to give examples of normal free will. But, despite trying, I can’t come up with an example of someone doing something of their own hard free will.

So when people say “there is no free will” they are denying the existence of something where they can't really say what that thing is. And whatever they are denying the existence of doesn’t matter. Because, while the absence of normal free will makes a difference to the important issue of responsibility, the absence of hard free will doesn’t make any difference to anything.

So is that it then? Or is there more to it? Because if all the above is right then there is no free will problem at all is there? But, I can’t help thinking I’ve missed something.

(P.S. If anybody responds to this can you please keep it as short as possible and make sure it relates very directly to my query. It’s just that I get confused very easily! Thanks.)

Thanks for the responses. But I’m confused by what Londoner says.

To recap (and maybe clarify) my original line of enquiry. I hear people say “we have no free will” and I think: if that was true then there would be no difference between some instance about which we say “Jack did that of his own free will” and some other instance about which we say “Jack didn’t do that of his own free will”. The idea that there is no free will would imply that both of these are equally instances where it is true to say “Jack didn’t do that of his own free will”. But that seems plain wrong. Which suggests that the idea that “we have no free will” is obviously false. But then I think: that can’t be right either.

So I’m trying to get my head round to an understanding of what “we have no free will” actually means. Where what it means doesn’t end up with me concluding that it’s obviously false in the way I’ve described.

In reply to which Londoner seems to be saying (correct me if I’m wrong) that actually in the instance where we say “Jack didn’t do that of his own free will” we are wrong to do so and that he did do it of his own free will. Because he had a choice.

But I don’t understand how that point relates to my original query. The aim of which is, like I said, to understand what “we have no free will” means.

Also doesn’t it follow from what Londoner is saying that we always have free will. Which is the opposite of “we don’t ever have free will”! Londoner talks about making choices. But isn’t there a difference between “making a choice”, which we can always do, and “making a free choice” (where this means roughly the same as “having free will”), which sometimes we can’t do.