Is free-will morally relevant?

Home Forums Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand Reading Group Is free-will morally relevant?

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  • #29863
    yasharya1991
    Participant

    Suppose someone is on trial for murder. Consider the two cases below.

    Case 1: Humans have free will.
    Judge: Since you are responsible for your actions, you deserve punishment for your crime.

    Case 2: Humans have no free will
    Judge: You had no choice in committing the crime, and I have no choice in punishing you for it.

    Nothing really changes in these two cases.

    From what I’ve seen, determinists such as Sam Harris are inconsistent: He tells you about the criminal not having free will, and expects you to develop more compassion towards him as a result of it (but if he has no free will, neither do you, and aren’t obliged to even able to change your judgement of him.)

    #29867
    Steve Chipman
    Participant

    I suppose Harris could reply that he was merely introducing a new causal element (his comment about the criminal being determined) to lead you to having compassion. But then he would still be inconsistent as he would be asking you to consider (ie think about) his comment and reach a conclusion (knowledge) about the moral status of the criminal. The contradiction still remains ie how can one claim to have knowledge of X if one has no choice about whether to believe X.

    #29908
    Jon Hersey
    Keymaster

    Is freewill morally relevant? Yes, freewill is what makes morality possible. I think what you’re really asking is: If we are actually determined, would that make any difference to our justice system? And the answer has to be that it couldn’t possibly make a difference, that essentially nothing matters because it’s all pre-determined, so why discuss it? Harris is sophisticated enough to say that our mental contents, not just our actions, are determined, but this doesn’t change the situation. He will perhaps argue that he was determined to make the arguments that he has made, and that others are determined to respond to them in whatever way they do. But absent from the entire picture is any choice, and without choice there is no morality. The better tactic in arguing with such skeptics on free will is, I think, to point out that they are freezing the concept of causation at the level of mechanistic cause and effect. LP describes this on pages 64–66 (but he does not actually label it an instance of freezing the abstraction).

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