So suppose Mary points a gun at Jack and demands he hands over some secret documents and he does. Then we would say that he didn’t do so “of his own free will” and we would not blame him. — tinman917
If Mary threatens Jack it is because she thinks he can make a choice. — Londoner
...does predestination permit free will/ the illusion of free will and how does judgement relate to ideas of free will? — Edmund
As Locke might have said at the end of the century, if society shapes the individual what right has society to punish the individual it has created? — Edmund
If we don't have free will, we still have the illusion of free will, and so basically everything works out the same in the end. — VagabondSpectre
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? — tinman917
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. — tinman917
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. — tinman917
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. — tinman917
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.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
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?Intuition tells people they have free will — 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. — tinman917
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? — tinman917
So about the answer to my “do you mean the following” question. Is that yes or no? — tinman917
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. — tinman917
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? — tinman917
How does this relate to the ordinary understanding of what free will is? — tinman917
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. — tinman917
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? — tinman917
want to remain focused 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. — tinman917
How does this relate to the ordinary understanding of what free will is? So suppose Mary points a gun at Jack and demands he hands over some secret documents and he does. Then we would say that he didn’t do so “of his own free will” and we would not blame him. But if Jack had handed over the documents despite not being threatened in any way (for example Mary bribed him instead) then we would say he handed them over “of his own free will”. And we would blame (and maybe punish) him accordingly. — tinman917
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. — tinman917
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. — tinman917
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? — tinman917
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”.) — tinman917
What does it mean to say that, in this case (bribe), Jack has no “absolute moral responsibility”? — tinman917
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. — tinman917
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. — tinman917
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. — tinman917
(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!) — tinman917
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