this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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The article just says we don't have free will over and over again, but doesn't explain why that would be the case or what research has been done to back it up. Instead just says this dude wrote a book.
It also says determinism means we can’t treat people differently based on their actions, which is just a complete non sequitur.
What's the odds that this author is up to some heinous shit in his free time and this is just a philosophical cover?
It has a paragraph with the explanation: Basically he says our behaviors are driven by our brain chemistry, genetics, and biases formed by prior events. Every decision we make is a culmination of those things. We think we're in control, but we're really just following a pre-ordained script.
Can't decide if I'm onboard with that. Definitely not onboard with letting criminals off the hook for bad deeds. If your "brain script" leads you to kill, you just need to be removed from society. Sorry.
I mean, I am on board with that. There probably isn’t free will.
But, we should continue to jail those not following society’s rules. If we could jail hurricanes so as to not cause damage, we would—why is jailing a person any different?
Yea the article wasn’t particularly thoughtful. As you say, justice can simply preventative without being punitive. But on balance, aiming for rehabilitation can still make some sense even without compassionate anti-blame arguments. There are limits to how much we want to keep people out of society and it costs money, so prisoners will return to society at some point.
So what’s the best approach for preventing harm? If a blame-worthiness approach premised on free will is fundamentally false, or at least not correct enough, then ideas about punishment and deterrence would likely be ineffective compared to more rehabilitation based approaches.
If you accept strict determinism, the fact that killers should go to prison is one of the "biases formed by prior events" that will determine that most people won't become killers. Which in turn determine us as individuals in a society to create and enforce justice systems.
I think that we have free will but it's extremely limited, but we are capable of weighing our emotions and logic to make a choice. I'm always extremely skeptical of people that say we don't have free will, so when they do they better have some really solid evidence. Otherwise what's the point of nature evolving consciousness? Merely to be a passive observer in our predetermined lives? Evolution is effective, if it didnt need it then it wpuldnt have evolved it woth so many animals. Consciousness is there to help us make decisions and map out visions that are beyond the capability of simple automatons.
My bone to pick with this article is that there is no talk about the research that was done to reach the conclusion, so I just have to take this dudes word for it. And I don't feel like reading his book. And based on where we are in science either this is a sensationalized take or this dude is filling in a lot of blanks with his opinions.
So you believe, that if you would rewind time to a specific choice you made, you would be able to make a different choice, even though your brain and your surroundings are in the exact same state as before? Or do you believe your choices to be originating from somewhere else than your brain?
Maybe you couldn't but I'm different, sorry bout it
So you are exempt from the laws of physics?
That's correct, sucks you have that constraint
Not sure that’s fair. The basics of his thoughts seem to be outlined … the article clearly states: behaviours are always primed by experience, history, state and genetics all of which are beyond our control, and so if our behaviour is not within our control we have no free will.
I don’t think there’s anything really there about hardline determinism and I’d bet his basic view is pretty compatible with some form of chaos based individualism.