BigMike wrote: ↑Fri Feb 17, 2023 3:34 pm
People who reject the concept of free will often believe that individuals do not have complete control over their thoughts, decisions, and actions.
Well, that's what they say. I don't think they believe it, because they never live like they do.
Instead, they see these factors as the result of various environmental, social, and biological factors beyond an individual's control. As a result, these individuals are less likely to hold others solely responsible for their actions and are more inclined to view wrongdoing as a collective problem that requires collective responsibility.
That also makes no sense, Mike.
If people are not individually responsible, they can't be collectively responsible either. There's nothing inherent to the "having more of them" that makes moral obligation or capacity for moral responsibility magically appear.
When a person rejects free will, they often recognize that people's behavior is shaped by a complex set of factors, including their upbringing, social conditioning, genetics, and environmental factors.
They don't have to "reject free will" in order to do this. People who believe in free will all recognize that such factors CAN play a role in shaping options, and DO play a role in our decisions. Nobody even questions that.
The disagreement between them appears only at the final millisecond: and it's over what is going on when the decision is finally made -- is it TOTALLY the product of those factors you mention, or is it decided by human volition. And that's where the
real controversy starts.
This understanding can make them more empathetic towards others...
This, it can never do. If environmental and physical factors are the totality of the decision's causes, then one can only be as "empathetic" as one is fated to be already. There is no improvement in "empathy" possible, in that case, since there was no way the person ever could have had any other quantity of empathy but that which he/she was already fated to have. Moreover, since Determinists do not include "feelings" as causes of things, since that would require volition to be employed, the alleged "empathy" has to be viewed by Determinists as a mere "epiphenomenon" or illusion that happens when certain fated processes take place...and nothing more.
...and more likely to consider the societal factors that contributed to a person's actions. They may also be more inclined to address the underlying causes of wrongdoing rather than simply punishing the individual who committed the act.
Actually, according to Determinism, they can't be made "more" or "less" anything. There was never any other state but the one they find themselves in that they could have been in at all. So there's nothing to which the comparatives "more" and "less" could even refer.
But I see what you're trying to say. You're trying to say that you think free-willians don't take environmental and social factors into consideration AT ALL (which is, unfortunately for your point, untrue) and that taking such things into consideration might make them compassionate about those who, so to speak, "couldn't help themselves" when they did evil.
But it won't, because, again, emotions like "empathy" do not
cause things in a Determinist scheme of belief, and mental conditions are all strictly products of prior forces, and are fated to be whatever they are, not to be "made more" of anything than they would otherwise be.
...these individuals may be more likely to focus on structural solutions to prevent future wrongdoing.
They can't do this, either. They have no volition. They can't "may" anything. They are whatever they are fated to be by prior forces.
In order to think about "structural" forces or "social" arrangements, and to make that
thinking into
action, a person would have to have volition. But Determinists say that volition can't be part of any chain of events that actually makes things happen. They can only be an illusion floating non-causally around predetermined, physical processes, not the actual propulsion for an action.
This understanding can help create a more just and equitable society that prioritizes prevention and rehabilitation over punishment.
I see what you're aiming for, but you can't get it the way you're trying to get it, rationally speaking.
Determinism says that there's no possible "can" and "more" situations, no moral compulsion around "just" or "equitable," and nothing is ever going to be anything except exactly what the prior physical forces were going to make it to be anyway.
So in order to get people to "understand" and thus "create" a "more just an equitable" arrangment, you're going to have to attribute to them free will. As a Determinist, you cannot. They don't have any mental capacities that are related to causal chains. Their actions are all products of other things, not of them or their "understanding" of anything.
So really, if that's your goal, then you have to be an advocate of free will. Free will can include things like environment, socialization, and so on in its reckoning, and act so as to change social arrangements to be more comparable to its abstract moral values like "justice" and "equality" than they would otherwise be; but Determinism can't.
