It is difficult to deal with responsibility without free will, but mostly because of our conditioning to believe they are the same and our emotional reactions like, "Why should we suffer for something we didn't choose to do?"
The sad fact of life is that we constantly suffer for things we didn't choose to do. Why should suffering for things we choose to do be any different? And if we don't actually choose anything? Well, then it's all the same.
There is, however, a big difference between accident and intent. We don't "blame" the baby who shoots someone. Not because he didn't have a choice, but because he didn't do it "on purpose" and since he isn't likely to do it again, he is not much danger to society. This is not so much about free will as it is about knowledge of the effects of one's actions.
The shark is much different. We do blame the shark. I don't know many people who have any compunction about killing sharks.
So we are all the shark, and the person with the brain disease. And yes, we punish people who can't function in our society, regardless of choice. That's the point. We still are responsible for our actions. It doesn't matter if we "choose" them or not.
It's not an ethical issue, or rather that is exactly what ethics is: how do you deal with people who do things that are bad for society?
Why does everyone think the absense of free will is the downfall of society? A society is based on rules and agreements. We just need to redefine our concepts of responsibility and intent. How do you judge a person if they didn't "choose" to do it? You judge the action. We remove murderers from society because they broke the social agreement that we don't kill people. Whether he chose to do it or not is immaterial. We're not going to let him do it again.
Free will has nothing to do with truth. Truth is about consistency. Logic, like Math, is a human construct that allows us to determine if a particular proposition is consistent with the rest of our knowledge about the universe.
If you say 1+1=3, this is demonstrably false regardless of whether you "chose" to say it, or the determinism of your brain manifested itself in that statement.
I almost had to give up porn. Most of the time, just another porn site would pop up and I could continue my business. But sometimes, an ad for a camera or something would pop, and then I'd need to battle windows until I could get back to what I came for. Thank god for Google.
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Yes, like paying attention to what the government is doing.
Yeah. Stupid AT&T. Thank god Google is looking out for us.
Actually, 16/20 is better that 20/20. As anyone with 200/20 eyesight can tell you, they didn't get bonus points.
Damn, I should told all my teachers 10/20 is way better than average.
Plus 92.5% of statistics are made up.
I wonder how much ten kilometers of cable weighs...
It is difficult to deal with responsibility without free will, but mostly because of our conditioning to believe they are the same and our emotional reactions like, "Why should we suffer for something we didn't choose to do?"
The sad fact of life is that we constantly suffer for things we didn't choose to do. Why should suffering for things we choose to do be any different? And if we don't actually choose anything? Well, then it's all the same.
There is, however, a big difference between accident and intent. We don't "blame" the baby who shoots someone. Not because he didn't have a choice, but because he didn't do it "on purpose" and since he isn't likely to do it again, he is not much danger to society. This is not so much about free will as it is about knowledge of the effects of one's actions.
The shark is much different. We do blame the shark. I don't know many people who have any compunction about killing sharks.
So we are all the shark, and the person with the brain disease. And yes, we punish people who can't function in our society, regardless of choice. That's the point. We still are responsible for our actions. It doesn't matter if we "choose" them or not.
It's not an ethical issue, or rather that is exactly what ethics is: how do you deal with people who do things that are bad for society?
Why does everyone think the absense of free will is the downfall of society? A society is based on rules and agreements. We just need to redefine our concepts of responsibility and intent. How do you judge a person if they didn't "choose" to do it? You judge the action. We remove murderers from society because they broke the social agreement that we don't kill people. Whether he chose to do it or not is immaterial. We're not going to let him do it again.
Free will has nothing to do with truth. Truth is about consistency. Logic, like Math, is a human construct that allows us to determine if a particular proposition is consistent with the rest of our knowledge about the universe.
If you say 1+1=3, this is demonstrably false regardless of whether you "chose" to say it, or the determinism of your brain manifested itself in that statement.
I almost had to give up porn. Most of the time, just another porn site would pop up and I could continue my business. But sometimes, an ad for a camera or something would pop, and then I'd need to battle windows until I could get back to what I came for. Thank god for Google.