🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1992Oct29.180335.3011@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@garnet.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:

>In article <1992Oct29.032255.24455@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU> dabbott@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU (Derek Abbott) writes:
>>In article <1992Oct28.135035.7336@ulrik.uio.no> solan@smauguio.no (Svein Olav G. Nyberg) writes:
>>>It has been claimed that the indeterminist interpretations
>>>of QM secure free will.
>>
>>Therefore it is tempting for scientists to claim that free will is
>>not real. Our feeling of free will is just for comfort.
>>However, this leads to the problem that then no one is responsible for
>>their own actions. Responsibility then becomes just a legal fiction for
>>covenience of organizing society.
>>
>>That is somehow wrong as I know that I can always stop myself doing
>>something wrong, if I choose to. I know that I can change any decision
>>at the last minute. It seems that responsibilty is a real ethic.
>>To deny that would make us ethically bankrupt.
>>

>We are responsible for our actions because we cause them.  Causality
>is essential to the notion of responsibility.  There may be a feeling
>that because those causes have further causes, our responsibility is
>somehow alleviated, but there is no reason to believe this unless some
>other moral agent (the person holding a  gun to our head at the time?)
>can be identified as causing the act in a way extrinsic to our own
>will.

Change it around: *you* are holding a gun to the head of a dictator
and ordering him to call off a massacre.  If he agrees, he "did the
responsible thing," but was "not responsible for his responsible 
behavior."

The point of this little exercise is that there is more than one
meaning of the word "responsible" floating around here, and we ignore
the distinctions at our peril.

>  But if we do something voluntarily, and our will has not been
>meddled with (this covers cases where other moral agents have
>deliberately supplied us with false information, as well as cases
>where we have been coerced) then we are responsible. 

"Voluntarily" is also a loose word.  A true determinist has to redefine
it in the following way: we *appeared* to have done what we did 
voluntarily, though it was not really voluntary because there is really
no such thing.  But since we have this useful little word to play around
with, let's attach it to these illusory instances where we really 
thought we acted voluntarily.

Peter Nyikos