Does morality really require free will?

[HexHammer]

No! It can be due to many things:

- compulsions
- right teachings
- opportunism
- "groupthink"

[henry quirk]

- compulsions: disorders and diseases (of the thinking) can, obviously, hobble self-direction.
- right teachings: influence, mebbe deeply ingrained, but still only an influence.
- opportunism: you'll have to explain what you mean here.
- "groupthink": influence again, not determinier.

[TimeSeeker]

As I finished my coffee I found a dead wasp in the bottom of the cup.

Before I discovered I'd drank a mug of wasp-coffee, yeah, I was okay with the mess; after, not so much.

So you couldn't make an empirical distinction but you could make an epistemic one?
The coffee didn't taste any different, else you would've spat it out, but finding the wasp after the fact was significant - why?
We could call it 'disgust'. But why does a wasp in your coffee after-the fact disgust you, and the mess in your house doesn't?

My only point is that you can turn anything and everything into an endless philosophical enquiry , at some point you just have to go "screw it - I don't know why, I just felt like it so I did it!".

But if I had to speculate I’d say that you had some unpleasant experience with wasps in the past

[henry quirk]

"So you couldn't make an empirical distinction but you could make an epistemic one?"

Yeah, I don't know what all that means.

#

"The coffee didn't taste any different, else you would've spat it out, but finding the wasp after the fact was significant - why? We could call it 'disgust'. But why does a wasp in your coffee after-the fact disgust you, and the mess in your house doesn't?"

A messy house is tolerable to some (like me), but a wasp in the bottom of a cup of coffee is -- as you say -- disgusting. It's a cultural thing, I suppose.

#

"My only point is that you can turn anything and everything into an endless philosophical enquiry , at some point you just have to go "screw it - I don't know why, I just felt like it so I did it!"."

Yeah, I'm not seein' anywhere in-thread where I made an appeal to "endless philosophical enquiry". Quite the opposite. I say free will begins and ends with the individual. No infinite regress is hinted at (by me).

#

"But if I had to speculate I’d say that you had some unpleasant experience with wasps in the past"

I've been stung by 'em , and I'm American (meaning, I don't eat bugs).

[Immanuel Can]

Products of science, such as evolutionary psychology, and products of philosophy, such as physicalism, make it impossible now for any rational person to believe that we have free will and to see it as anything more than an illusion that has been useful for our survival.

There are so many errors in this statement that it's hard to know where to start. But we'd better have a go.

Firstly, Physicalism et all are not at all taken for granted as true. Not all "rational people" -- indeed, I would argue no really thoughtful people -- believe in mere Physicalism. It's a mere reduction, by most accounts today. Moreover, it's now beset with very serious empirical problems. One of them is the persistence of things Physicalism doesn't describe well, but which are essential components of (what we take for) existence. But on that subject, I'll have to refer you to people like Thomas Nagel, whose "Mind and Cosmos" provides a concise (but not complete) overview of some of the key issues.

Secondly, the postulate that morality is "illusions useful to our survival" has been shown inadequate in so many ways it's amazing anyone still says it at all. There are plenty of major problems with it -- and recently, these have led Materialistic philosophers to postulate bizarre entities like "selfish genes" to explain away why people do so much that is actually NOT "useful to [their] survival." But that is also a big discussion.

I think what this statement reflects is perhaps a cursory familiarity with Materialism as an idea, and perhaps the misperception that it is somehow tied to "science" and "rationality," as you put it. And I admit that it might have a real "common-sense" appeal at first -- if Physicalism were true, it would seem to cede the whole field to "science" -- at least, to those who have not thought about how much of science actually depends of the metaphysical (see M. Polanyi's "Personal Knowledge" for a full treatment of this). But I think this superficial "appeal" dies very, very quickly when we press some of the key questions further. So it would be unwise of us to jump to the conclusion that Physicalism can be salvaged.

Personally, I think it cannot. We need a better theory.

Therefore, morality is toast.

It would be, if free will were eliminated. As Kant put it, "ought implies can." If you cannot NOT do something, you cannot be held responsible for doing it, and the reverse is true too, of course. But as above, the elimination of free will cannot be simply taken for granted, as above.

But doesn't all of that depend on how morality is defined?

Not really. As even you say, it also depends on the elimination of free will, so it's not a single dependency.

It seems to me that the most widely understood and accepted definition of morality is "The way things ought to be". It is compared and contrasted with "The way things are".

It is not the way anybody wants things to be. It is not the way anybody thinks things ought to be. It is the way things ought to be, period.

This now reintroduces free will through the back door. For "ought" implies that things are not deterministically settled already. It posits that there is "another way things could have been," so to speak. But in a purely Physicalist or Materialist cosmos, that's clearly impossible. There is no "ought," just an "is." And it becomes inexplicable why we even have a concept of "ought," since no such thing can possibly exist.

If, say, the way things ought to be includes every member of society being treated the same, that could, in theory, become the way things are through, say, many millennia of the impersonal mechanism of evolution by natural selection, right?

Quite the contrary. "Natural selection" implies permanent inequality. Otherwise, there's nothing for which Mother Nature can "select." Why would Mother Nature suddenly revert to egalitarianism, thus plugging her evolutionary machine and destroying the evolutionary development of the human species?

If the way things ought to be includes all members of ecosystems living within the systems' means, that could become the way things are through natural causes and effects, couldn't it?

As above, certainly not.

If there is nothing more than the way things are, why do we continue to think and talk about morality?

This is the real question. So thank you for raising it, even by so circuitous and dubious a route.

[TimeSeeker]

This is the real question. So thank you for raising it, even by so circuitous and dubious a route.

Claude E.Shannon gives you the simplest of answers.

Thus we may have knowledge of the past but cannot control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it.

Entropy and Information. An idea as old as biblical times - chaos and order.
Now formalized in mathematics and empirically measured by quantum physics.

If you want me to explain it better - you will, unfortunately have to learn another language. Mathematics

This is the upcoming paradigm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information

It has philosophical holes too. But far fewer than what you are dealing with now.

[Immanuel Can]

If you want me to explain it better - you will, unfortunately have to learn another language. Mathematics

Not necessary. Remember?

On the other strand, you insisted that languages have no objective meaning. So you don't objectively mean we need any mathematics.

But that discussion is one we won't continue here, because it's on the other strand already.

[TimeSeeker]

Not necessary. Remember?

On the other strand, you insisted that languages have no objective meaning. So you don't objectively mean we need any mathematics.

Argument from ignorance.

I insisted that informal languages have no objective meaning. Regular languages do because they are consistently interpreted/computed to mean something - Curry-Howard isomorphism.

This is a distinction lost on you because you lack the Mathematical theory necessary to understand it.

We use regular languages to build AI. It can do stuff you can. It can't tell right from wrong.

[Immanuel Can]

Not necessary. Remember?

On the other strand, you insisted that languages have no objective meaning. So you don't objectively mean we need any mathematics.

Argument from ignorance.

No. Just a repetition of your own argument on the other strand.

Meanwhile, I don't take it to be true.

[TimeSeeker]

Meanwhile, I don't take it to be true.

Cool. Don't.

In the mean while I am getting pretty wealthy building AI that can do human jobs using Mathematics.
It works. Whether that is sufficient for 'truth' - you tell me.

[Immanuel Can]

Meanwhile, I don't take it to be true.

Cool. Don't.

In the mean while I am getting pretty wealthy building AI that can do human jobs using Mathematics.
It works. Whether that is sufficient for 'truth' - you tell me.

No, of course it's not. But you know that.

[TimeSeeker]

No, of course it's not. But you know that.

No. I don't know that. No philosopher has ever been able to state their standards for truth.

[Immanuel Can]

No, of course it's not. But you know that.

No. I don't. No philosopher has ever been able to state their standards for truth.

Well, you know, "I make money on AI," and "I tell the truth" are not equivalent sentences. So the former isn't sufficient for truth, just as you asked.

Check that: maybe you don't. After all, language is infinitely flexible, right? You might possibly believe anything at all. I could never tell.

[TimeSeeker]

Well, you know, "I make money on AI," and "I tell the truth" are not equivalent sentences. So the former isn't sufficient for truth, just as you asked.

Check that: maybe you don't. After all, language is infinitely flexible, right? You might possibly believe anything at all. I could never tell.

I don't know if I tell the truth. You made up the word. I don't know what it means - teach me how to use it.

[Immanuel Can]

I don't know if I tell the truth. You made up the word. I don't know what it means - teach me how to use it.

I can't. You deny the objective reference of words. There's no convergence point at which I can meet you, then, and nobody can "teach" anything.