Which of these do we take into account? The ones you and I are talking about are the medical and social forces I discussed. On the other hand, some people understand our lack of free will to be dependent on a materialistic interpretation of basic ontology. — T Clark
So, what’s the answer? Does it make sense to hold people accountable for their actions given that there is no free will? — T Clark
This is a very small part of what constitutes holding someone accountable. It applies in all sorts of situations where there may be no specific rules - in employment, in personal relationships, in business relationships, basically in every aspect of human interaction. — T Clark
From a practical perspective, which is one I am partial to, I see several important questions - Should I hold myself accountable for my actions? Or maybe - Should I be held accountable for my actions? To turn that around - Should I hold other people accountable for their actions? — T Clark
according to a growing chorus of philosophers and scientists, who have a variety of different reasons for their view, [free will] also can’t possibly be the case. “This sort of free will is ruled out, simply and decisively, by the laws of physics,” says one of the most strident of the free will sceptics, the evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne. Leading psychologists such as Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom agree, as apparently did the late Stephen Hawking, along with numerous prominent neuroscientists, including VS Ramachandran, who called free will “an inherently flawed and incoherent concept” in his endorsement of Sam Harris’s bestselling 2012 book Free Will, which also makes that argument. According to the public intellectual Yuval Noah Harari, free will is an anachronistic myth – useful in the past, perhaps, as a way of motivating people to fight against tyrants or oppressive ideologies, but rendered obsolete by the power of modern data science to know us better than we know ourselves, and thus to predict and manipulate our choices.
Are you asking whether, assuming there is no free will, no real choice, it makes sense to hold people accountable from a pragmatic or a moral standpoint? I'd say from a pragmatic standpoint, any society must hold its members accountable for their actions; that's the pragmatic perspective. On the other hand from the point of view of moral judgement, if people could never have done otherwise than what they have done, then I can't see how they could be morally accountable anymore than animals, lightning or volcanoes are. — Janus
Does it make sense to hold people accountable for their actions given that there is no free will? — T Clark
Insofar as the mind understands all things as necessary, to that extent it has greater power over the emotions or is less acted on by them.
Proof The mind understands that all things are necessary (by 1p29) and are determined to exist and operate by an infinite nexus of causes (by 1p28); and therefore (by the previous proposition) it ensures to that extent that it is less acted on by the emotions arising from them and (by 3p48) it is less affected toward them. Q. E. D.
Scholium
The more this cognition that things are necessary is concerned with particular things that we imagine quite distinctly and vividly, the greater the power of the mind over the emotions. Experience itself also testifies to this. For we see that sadness for the loss of some good thing that has perished is mitigated as soon as the person who lost it considers that that good thing could not have been saved in any case. Thus we also see that no one pities an infant because it does not know how to speak or walk or reason and because it lives for so many years as it were unconscious of itself. But if most people were born as adults and only one or two as infants, then everyone would pity every one of the infants, because then they would consider infancy itself not as a natural and necessary thing but as a fault or something sinful in nature; and we could give several other instances of this sort. — Spinoza: Ethics: Cambridge University Press
Aristotle started this discussion; but what the old philosopher meant to say (and would have said had we been there to help him) is that the forces of the deterministic universe are too subtle, too pervasive, and too complex for us to follow. — Bitter Crank
it was a spoiled jar of Gerber Asparagus baby food. it made you intensely sick for several days. You didn't know what was happening at the time. — Bitter Crank
So, what’s the answer? Does it make sense to hold people accountable for their actions given that there is no free will? — T Clark
But as a matter of practical decisions about people, agents who bind themselves to obligation are the only one's worth arranging anything with. That is the mark of voluntary action well beyond the apportionment of blame. Are such willing agents free? — Paine
A little Spinoza might help here. — Paine
I have my doubts about free will. Many decisions seem to pop into consciousness from hidden areas of the brain. — jgill
I think the answer is obvious: yes, we should keep holding each other accountable. Practically speaking, the answer to the question of free will doesn't drastically change our behaviour regarding accountability. — pfirefry
Although we can argue that the universe must not be deterministic or that free will must not exist, I tend to think that there is an answer which allows both statements to hold true. — pfirefry
The criminal system works well with the absence of will: this person is a criminal, they don't seem to control their own actions and therefore we need to send them into prison for the benefit of society. — pfirefry
The concept of FW is the result of determinism being too complex for us to countenance. We big-brained apes can grasp and understand only so much--and a full understanding of determinism is more than we can manage. — Bitter Crank
Therefore, we do hold ourselves and others accountable. There is no conceivable way to track all the factors that led Joan to murder Sam, so we are forced to settle for personal guilt and prison. The opposite is true too. "I am a successful businessman because I am very smart, and I chose to do everything just exactly right." — Bitter Crank
I don't understand. Are you saying that only people who agree to be judged should be held accountable? — T Clark
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