I'm sorry. I didn't realze you could use a link. Was it a car accident? Or is this a kind or royal attitude?
We don't use links, peasant.
Here, your highness. Here's are the arguments that in two forums you have opted not to respond to. Yes, the one in this forum was not addressed to you, but then I linked to it three times. You did quote from it, but you did not interact with it. And these are not the first times that Phyllo, FJ or I (and possibly others) have responded to your request.
Two posts from earlier in the thread combined below. Underneath this, the version at ILP.
1) Please explain why it would be wrong/non-sensical/false to hold someone responsible for unprovoked physical violence. Don't just ask nebulous questions as an appeal to incredulity. Don't just appeal to determinism - maybe we are all compelled to think.....
2) Because you continuously use appeals to incredulity around this issue, which means you think it is obvious we can't hold people responsible for there actions because maybe their actions are determined.
3) Actually interact with what I wrote.
4) Don't attribute to me or ask me about positions I do not have. I do not think that my responses to the violence of my posts here are exceptions to determinism. I don't think that brain cells are autonomous.
5) Don't merely tell me 'Well, from my perspective.....'. If you have a persepective, justify it.
As I've said earlier I think responsibility is compatible - and to me clearly in the practical sense - with determinism. I see no reason to not react to, including taking measures, iindividuals doing things we consider dangerous to others, for example. Sometimes in this and other of his threads he hsa made the distinction between intellectual contraptions and, in my words, down to earth, practical applications of ideas. Well, I see it as perfectly reasonable to isolate a rapist from society. I don't hold a table responsible for his raping. I don't hold non-rapists responsibile. I might hold, for example, his parents or someone who sexually abused him parly responsible and take measures in relation to them also. There might also be societal causes: systemic sexism, for example - and these I might also want to hold responsible and take measures in relation to. The up in the clouds idea that his actions could not have been otherwise going back to the Big Bang might lead to greater sympathy for the rapist on my part. But I would still consider him a person who may rape again and it is more likely he will than someone who has not raped and we need to do something about that.
I am not comparing a person to bacteria, but in terms of causation, I would also potentially take antibiotics because I think a specific bacteria in my body is responsible for my fever and sepsis. I will take measures in relation to that. I hold the bacteria responsible - and perhaps my idiotically not clearning a wound that got infected and take steps to remedy my own responsibility for creating this problem.
The person we punish is not empty of traits, even in determinism. He, in this case, is someone who has the desire to rape and lived it out. While the causes go back to the Big Bang and perhaps beyond, and even though they are inevitable, this does not mean that his nature has nothing to do with his acts. He is the one who rapes. He has qualities that lead to rape.
If causation had nothing to do with essence, it would be different. I'm not sure how. But if anyone regardless of attitudes toward women, tendencies to aggressive acts and all that had NOTHING to do with rape, that might be a different situation.
For exmaple, let's say that humans who come within five feet of ladybugs try to rape a woman shortly after.. A causation that has nothing at all to do with the essence/traits/tendencies of a paticular person was the cause of rape. That's different. I suppose my focus would be entirely on measures that keep ladybugs from the proximity of men and vice versa.
But here we have a person with traits that lead to rape. I can feel bad, certainly, if he had a childhood that was violent and abusive, for example, and he was trained to hate women or see rape as justified. But I am still dealing with a person with these tendencies.
EDIT: See below for an addition
Further it seems very up in the clouds to not consider the person responsible. Iambiguous has talked about compatibilists changing the meaning of the word. Some may, but to me that is a focus on intellectural contraptions.
In a deterministic universe...
Is anger in reaction to a rape justified?
Is taking measures in relation to a rapist justified?
Is thinking of that person as presenting a problem justified?
I think the answers are yes to all of those.
Will these reactions be experienced by the rapist as holding him responsible - and not some guy in the apartment next door to him, for example - for the rape?
Does it leave room to look at other causes and factors if I hold this person responsible and take measures that he does not want?
I think the answers to those questions are yes.
We can try to make some intellectual contraption happy and use some other word than responsible, but it won't change anything at all about my general reaction to the situation. He did it. We need to deal with him first. We can deal with other causes and prevention strategies after, despite holding him responsible.
If I considered abortion immoral, sure I could hold someone responsible for having done that. And in a practical sense, I would hold someone responsible for doing that, even without moral judgment. If she or they came to my clinic, asked for an abortion, I performed it and she started saying she was not going to pay for my services because the Big Bang was responsible for her getting the abortion, I would not suddenly buckly in my claim for payment.
That word, responsible, is how we frame reacting to actions we like and abhor. It is part of the process of deciding on what measures we take: giving someone a reward, expressing gratitude, calling someone a Stooge, putting them in prison, firing them, giving them a bonus.
People take idiotic measures, yes. People have all sorts of moral postions, including obviously contradictory ones and ones I abhor, but should it turn out to be the case that we are determined utterly and this is finally laid to rest and proven, I see no reason to change the basic process here involved in holding indviduals responsible for acts.
There can certainly be an incredible amount of needed discussion about the measures taken and what other now existent things, people and processes might or might not also be responsible. And this doesn't eliminate issues like 'is there an objective morality' for me.
And any rapist arguing that they should nto be held responsible because it was inevitable that they would rape due to determinism would be using an intellectual contraption that has very little to do with life on the ground, here in day to day life. That would be an up in the clouds response and assessment and not one he would use in relation to infections, someone stealing his car, someone hitting him with a hammer in the street, someone who did him a favor and so on. In those instances he would hold people and things responsible. He'd be being a hypocrite. And of course his argument would mean he has nothing to complain about in relation to the people considering him responsible and taking measures, given that they would not be responsible for their reactions in his schema.
And then the case I made in ILP
I’m not sure what a soft determinist is (or a hard one). I’d like to move away from the complicated, highly charged abortion issue to a simpler one, where people generally agree on the morality involved. I don’t think abortion is a good issue in relation to responsibility and determinism because there are so many issues that will get brought up in practice around it.
The issue I will present is someoner runs up to me on the street and hits me with a hammer. This is someone I do not know and I haven’t done anything to this person. Would I hold them responsible if I believed in any form of determinism, soft or hard? Yes.
The circumstances of their life might shift the degree of my emotional reactions to them, but I would still hold them responsible. What does this mean? I would call the police, knowing full well, that this person might end up in prison or potentially some kind of forced psychiatric care. Yes, that was an inevitable act on his part, but he did it. He is the person who does this kind of thing. If someone had his wife at gunpoint and said hit that guy with a hammer, then he isn’t really a guy who runs up to strangers and hits them with a hammer. It took a very specific chain of causes to lead him to this act, ones that society can consider very unlikely to occur again, and in any case any measures taken to prevent such repeated situations are better aimed at other people and not this guy.
He is, it seems, a person who can do this. I will feel those feelings I feel when I hold someone responsible for someone and I see no reason to try to stop having those feelings if I am convinced completely it is a fully determined universe. Heck, my feelings are also caused. I also see no reason to not treat him as responsible for the act. I could hold the universe responsible, but that gives me no practical reaction. Holding this man responsible leads to measures being taken that hopefully will prevent or minimize the changes of it happening again AND will also be cause possibly preventing other hammar wielders.
Oh, they put people in prison for attackinig people with hammers, I am going to try not to do that, even though I feel a strong urge. Holding the individual responsible sets in motion consequences that in turn become causes that may prevent other people from doing that or something similar.
The specific measures taken due to my holding someone responsible are certainly up for debate: psychiatric care, me yelling at them until they (possibly) feel shame, prison, probation, counseling, attending AA or NA (if addiction was a factor) and so on. But I want some kind of measures taken and I want those measures first of all aimed at that man.
Of course other factors are at play and if determinism is the case, I think I might focus even more on societal causes. For example, if he was bullied in school horrendously for a decade and no one did much about this, I would also hold the school system, either part of it or the system itself, responsible. So, responsibility gets spread around, perhaps to some degree more if one is a determinist. But one does not need to choose between. And, of course, the school system had to be the way it was, in terms of determined outcomes. I could try to hold the Big Bang responsible and try to hit it with a hammer, but this 1) I can’t do 2) doesn’t in any way help prevent future violence and 3) need not rule out holding this guy responsible.
If it turns out he is psychotic, my reactions will be affected, and if meds or therapy can eliminate the problem, then in a sense I would no longer hold him responsible, once that first holding him responsible led to him getting the care he needed. I’m certainly not going to suggest anti-psychotic meds get put in our water supply. No I will be viewing him as the problem until he is not.
Do you hold people responsible for their actions? How would this change if you were sure determinism was the case or you were sure free will was the case? Would you, for example, hold objectivists less responsible if things are completely determined, and how would this play out? In other words, not just the thoughts in your head, but how would your thoughts affect things on a practical level?
You could also use the hammer incident example? There’s free will and you know it OR there’s determinism and you know it. What practical differences would you want there to be in relation to the hammer wielder? Would you hold him responsible in one universe where you know it is determined and another where you know there is free will? And if the answer is different - for example, you would hold him resonsible in the free will world but not in the other, what actual differences would this thought lead to?
