good sources on the matter — Captain Homicide
..it would be an undetermined free will. One of pure chance. — Haglund
are there any sound non consequentialist arguments for basic desert and punishment under Compatibilism or are the ideas simply too irreconcilable to be held simultaneously?
Are there any good sources on the matter that can help me understand the issue? — Captain Homicide
Overall Dennett’s view seems more a matter of practicality than what laymen truly mean when they say someone who has done evil things deserves to be punished or express satisfaction when something bad happens to a wrongdoer. To quote someone else desert without retribution is just another name for attribution but we don't need the concept of free will for attribution. — Captain Homicide
This sums up my issue perfectly. I’m no free will expert but at first glance it seems bizarre to say that people have compatibilist free will and are morally responsible yet deny that they’re not sufficiently morally responsible to be punished for its own sake when basic desert is an integral part of moral responsibility (at least in the general public’s mind). It’s odd for a compatibilist to say they believe in moral responsibility unlike determinists but when you probe their beliefs it’s really the same kind of consequentialist system that determinists believe in. Maybe there’s something I’m missing.Dennett’s brand of compatibilism fails to preserve retributivist desert moral responsibility—in fact, it rejects it outright. Furthermore, his justification for punishment, being consequentialist in nature, is completely consistent with the skeptic’s rejection of free will and just deserts. While Dennett himself prefers to retain the notion of just deserts, we contend that this is misleading and potentially inconsistent with his reformist conception of moral responsibility. — Joshs
I read and watched Dennett’s discussion with Gregg Caruso about free will and Dennett often speaks about the “Moral Agents Club” and how if you want to live in a society and enjoy its benefits you have to be held morally responsible in a similar sense that people play by rules in a game and by doing so subject themselves to punishment when they make a mistake or lose. He uses the analogy of getting a red card in soccer. It has to work that way otherwise the “game” of society collapses and ceases to function properly. — Captain Homicide
What's Y? Say in the context of a face of a die, X? — Haglund
We now need to make sure that (a) there is no Y such that Y is neither determined nor the result of pure chance; and (b) there is no Y such that Y is both determined and the result of pure chance. The libertarian argument is that (a) is not established. Free action is neither determined (by prior physical causes); nor is it the result of pure chance, because the actor can (at least sometimes) give reasons for action and is subject to no whims but their own. The claim is that the categories are not exhaustive. There is a third category - free action. Which is the very subject of dispute. — Cuthbert
Here's the thing: free will (which essentially makes one deserving of punishment) requires self-creation or at least absence of external creation. Whether determinism is true or not is beside the point.
And it isn't true, because it doesn't make sense. Determinism is the thesis that every event that occurs had to occur. That is, it is the thesis that every event occurs of necessity. However, necessity doesn't make sense as a concept. There is no such thing as necessity. Thus, nothing occurs of necessity.
The same applies to contingency (the opposite of necessity). Contingency, defined as it is in terms of necessity, also makes no sense.
What matters where free will is concerned is that one is the ultimate source of what one does. And that requires self-creation or absence of external creation. — Bartricks
There is also the question whether there can be a 'Y' that is both determined and the result of pure chance. I'm not sure. You ask about the die. The result of a die throw is pure chance. It's also determined by how the particular throw was made. Someone might argue that is an example of 'both determined and pure chance'. I don't think that works - but perhaps it does. Even if it does work, it doesn't help or hinder either side of the argument I think. — Cuthbert
It wouldn’t make sense for the advocate of free-will
to argue that the willing self is nothing but a randomness generator. — Joshs
Free action is neither determined (by prior physical causes); nor is it the result of pure chance, because the actor can (at least sometimes) give reasons for action and is subject to no whims but their own — Cuthbert
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