compatibilism

[phyllo]

If a criminal had no choice or control over their actions or even their intentions, as determinism claims, then it’s hard to see how we could justify putting them in prison. Some determinists conclude that punishment cannot be justified.

If a person is doing destructive things and he can't control it ... that in itself necessitates that he be restrained.

If the state can't/won't do it then people will take matters into their own hands. Personal vengeance, vigilantism, lynchings, contract killings and beatings ...



At times I wonder what could possibly be going through these philosophers' minds. They seem to be completely detached from any practical reality.

[attofishpi]

If a criminal had no choice or control over their actions or even their intentions, as determinism claims, then it’s hard to see how we could justify putting them in prison. Some determinists conclude that punishment cannot be justified.

If a person is doing destructive things and he can't control it ... that in itself necessitates that he be restrained.

If the state can't/won't do it then people will take matters into their own hands. Personal vengeance, vigilantism, lynchings, contract killings and beatings ...



At times I wonder what could possibly be going through these philosophers' minds. They seem to be completely detached from any practical reality.

"Philosophers" lmao

So per determinism - humans are unaccountable for their actions (*it was always going to be the case) - so attempting to punish is unreasonable!!! WTF!!!?

LMAO..ah hang on, now that we have punished (which of course was the only course of determinism) our punishment may have some residual effect upon the mischievous soul such that we have now altered WHAT would have been further determined nastienous and now maybe prevented more murders?>?

IF everything is determined one has two options when it comes to murdering rapist cunts:-
1. Kill them.
2. Put up with them.

(* I prefer option 1. - even in a free will existence, that's the kind of **** I am )

[Sculptor]

Penal reform only makes sense of you believe the world is deterministic. Determinism recognises that criminality is caused.

In the greatest Protestant tradiction especially Calvinist, prisons are institutes of "REFORM", and that is why they were called "Correctional". Because this appraoch understands that free will is a mirage

If crime is just about free will, then no amount of adjustment and learning is going to trun a criminal into a decent citizen.
But outside the USA (where privatisation has just about fucked the whole system) rehabilitation worlks and the rst of the world has much lower rates of repeat offending.
If you steer criminals to a better life, give them skills , job prospects, and so on, they tend to stay away form prison and get on with their lives. Such intervention CAUSES change in most prisoners.
However if you believe they are just willful and evil then you might as well lock them up and throw away the key.

[Sculptor]

Depends man. First i gotta consider what kind of trouble i might get into if i started fuckin with em.

See how everything relevant here depends on what pleases me the most and has nothing to do with what anybody else thinks is right or wrong?

And your knowledge and response is determined by who and what you are at that moment. More info changes your response, being smarter would too.

[promethean75]

Everything sculptor said.

The theory of determinism is completely compatible with a consequentialist theory of ethical justice; whether joe is free or not is irrelevant. He's going to be penalized and made responsible, and this will (hopefully) modify his behavior.

U freewillists are so utterly confused becuz your foundation for justice is absolute baloney.

You'll not convince joe the rapist that his actions are wrong; that argument is dead in the water. But u can change joe the rapist by creating consequences for his actions that he'll want to avoid being subject to.

But worse than joe the rapist are the christians that believe in freewill. Those are the true degenerates.

[iambiguous]

Penal reform only makes sense [if] you believe the world is deterministic.

Okay, and how is what we make sense of in a wholly determined universe not in turn but one more inherent manifestation of the only possible reality?

How is the brain of the penal reformist any different from the brain of the criminal?

That's the part, however, I am at least willing to admit I am not understanding correctly. Whereas there are metaphysical objectivists here just as there are moral objectivists.

Screw "the gap", screw "Rummy's Rule". They are here to tell you precisely how all rational men and women are obligated to think about free will, determinism and compatibilism...just as they do.

[iambiguous]

Free will & Moral responsibility
AQA Ethics

However, other determinists still think that punishment can be justified, however it needs to be on grounds other than retribution.

Right, like the particular grounds that any of us have come to fall back on existentially, are not all interchangeably justified given the only possible reality.

The defense of society and the reforming of the criminal are justifications for punishment that do not seem to depend on free will.

Unless, of course, everything that everyone thinks, feels, says and does in regard to crime and punishment is wholly determined.

This is the approach taken by northern European countries like Norway. Criminals there typically receive lower sentence durations, live in better conditions in prison and receive greater focus on rehabilitation and re-joinining society.

Sure, perhaps the citizens in Norway have "somehow" acquired free will while the citizens of, say, Texas have not? Or is it the other way around? But, from my frame of mind, that's how the "free will determinists" seem to function. The criminals were never able not to violate the law, but "society" is "somehow" able to either "choose" to treat them harshly or...coddle them?

Instead of falling apart, countries like Norway who practice this rehabilitation approach to punishment have much lower rates of criminals re-offending compared to countries like the USA which still relies on retributive punishment and even the death penalty.

This, however, is more in the way of a political prejudice. And such prejudices are derived historically and culturally such that Norway took one path to punishment while much of the USA took another path altogether. But that's the part where even given free will the objectivists among us insist their own dogmatic assessments are the only ones that count.

[Iwannaplato]

Everything sculptor said.

The theory of determinism is completely compatible with a consequentialist theory of ethical justice; whether joe is free or not is irrelevant. He's going to be penalized and made responsible, and this will (hopefully) modify his behavior.

U freewillists are so utterly confused becuz your foundation for justice is absolute baloney.

You'll not convince joe the rapist that his actions are wrong; that argument is dead in the water. But u can change joe the rapist by creating consequences for his actions that he'll want to avoid being subject to.

But worse than joe the rapist are the christians that believe in freewill. Those are the true degenerates.

Well, me I'd rather have Christians in general and other freewillists as neighbors then rapists. Call me a madman.
I'd rather find out my wife had a Christian coworker who believed in free will than a rapist coworker.
I know this is idiotic of me.

[phyllo]

Three points:

1. You could never have not felt this way.

2. There is no difference between rapists, Christians and free-willists in the only possible reality.

3. The 'Gap' and 'Rummy's Rules'.

Nuff said.

A nod is as good as a wink to a blind bat.

[iambiguous]

Three points:

1. You could never have not felt this way.

No, that is the case only if the hard determinists are in fact correct. And I would never argue that. After all, how on Earth could I -- could any mere mortal -- possibly know that?

2. There is no difference between rapists, Christians and free-willists in the only possible reality.

Again, that is what some determinists argue. Why? Because they have taken [philosophically or otherwise] a leap of faith to a world whereby everything that we think, feel, say and do, we think, feel, say and do given that human interactions themselves are an inherent manifestation of the only possible reality.

Me? I'm still no less drawn and quartered in regard to the Big Questions here as I am in regard to objective morality.

We may have free will, God may exist, morality may be encompassed deontologically. So, sure, if you believe that is the case then, beyond a world of words, go ahead, give it a shot and try to demonstrate it such that all rational men and women would be obligated to go along with you.

3. The 'Gap' and 'Rummy's Rules'.

To any objectivists here...

How "for all practical purposes" would you go about closing the gap between what you think we know about the human condition "here and now" and all that would need to be known about how and why it fits into the existence of existence itself? You know, before pinning down precisely what the human brain is either capable or not capable of doing?

As for Rummy's Rule, this part...

"...But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know..."

Or are you so arrogant, autocratic and authoritarian in regard to your own understanding of free will that there really is absolutely nothing at all that you don't know about it.

Or, if there is, that's what a God, the God, your God is for?

[Iwannaplato]

Three points:

1. You could never have not felt this way.

That certainly seems possible. And still - while knowing you're taking the piss and not in relation to me - even having heard that, I'd prefer finding a random Christian in my backyard, my apartment, my wife's workplace over a random rapist. Of course, some Christians are rapists, but then....all rapists are rapists.

2. There is no difference between rapists, Christians and free-willists in the only possible reality.

In some ways, yes...no difference. In oher wyas, differences.

3. The 'Gap' and 'Rummy's Rules'.

First off, I'd like to say that even Rumsfeld admits he didn't come with that known, unknown matrix. He got it from NASA and they got it from psychologists. R is clever in a number of verbal and other bullying ways, but he was hardly a creative human.

Nuff said.

A nod is as good as a wink to a blind bat.

Actually I'm sure a blind bat, as long at it had its radar, could easy tell the difference between a nod and wink. I mean, they're catching evading mosquitoes, which are smaller than eyelids and nodding heads and quite quick, in darkness and not useing thei vision..

[Age]

That the Universe consists of BOTH of the 'things' that the words 'free will' AND 'determinism' could be and are referring to IS CLEARLY OBVIOUS, and that BOTH of 'things' known as 'free will' AND 'determinsm' ARE COMPATIBLE is also just AS OBVIOUS.

Now, the very reason WHY ALL of these posters here WERE SO CONFUSED and WERE SO LOST, in the days when this was being written, can be CLEARLY SEEN IN, and BY the CHOICE of, 'the words' that they are "each" USING here.

And, as I KEEP REPEATING, HOW TO FIND, SEE, and KNOW what the ACTUAL IRREFUTABLE Truth IS, EXACTLY, is a VERY SIMPLE, VERY EASY, and thus a VERY QUICK process, AS WELL. That is, OF COURSE, FOR 'those' who ARE Truly INTERESTED, and OPEN.

UNTIL THEN, 'these human beings' COULD and PROBABLY WILL KEEP BICKERING and DISAGREEING, for further millennia, OVER 'this' EXACT SAME one VERY SOLVABLE issue here. That is; WHILE they REMAIN ASSUMING and/or BELIEVING the 'things' that they are, OBVIOUSLY, here, and thus KEEP DOING the VERY 'thing' that has CAUSED ALL PREVIOUS human beings, for millennia, to FALL INTO the EXACT SAME TRAP that 'these ones' are OBVIOUSLY STUCK IN.

[phyllo]

Three points:

1. You could never have not felt this way.

That certainly seems possible. And still - while knowing you're taking the piss and not in relation to me - even having heard that, I'd prefer finding a random Christian in my backyard, my apartment, my wife's workplace over a random rapist. Of course, some Christians are rapists, but then....all rapists are rapists.

2. There is no difference between rapists, Christians and free-willists in the only possible reality.

In some ways, yes...no difference. In oher wyas, differences.

3. The 'Gap' and 'Rummy's Rules'.

First off, I'd like to say that even Rumsfeld admits he didn't come with that known, unknown matrix. He got it from NASA and they got it from psychologists. R is clever in a number of verbal and other bullying ways, but he was hardly a creative human.

Nuff said.

A nod is as good as a wink to a blind bat.

Actually I'm sure a blind bat, as long at it had its radar, could easy tell the difference between a nod and wink. I mean, they're catching evading mosquitoes, which are smaller than eyelids and nodding heads and quite quick, in darkness and not useing thei vision..

You gotta love the economy of it.

It amounts to :

One doesn't know enough to say anything.

One has no control over what one says.

Whatever one says is irrelevant.

[phyllo]

Again, that is what some determinists argue.

So the stuff you post as an answer to almost everything in this thread, is not even your position.

It's the position of "some determinists" who are not here and who are not arguing here. And who shall remain unidentified.

Ha.

[Iwannaplato]

You gotta love the economy of it.

It amounts to :

One doesn't know enough to say anything.

One has no control over what one says.

Whatever one says is irrelevant.

Unless one is poo pooing the assertions and beliefs of others, of course, and categorizing people.