Post Number:#61 
October 26th, 2011, 11:42 am
Enegue wrote,
“IMAGINATION and CHOICE. What good is there in IMAGINING a scenario that doesn't include CHOICE? If there is no CHOICE about your actions, then you are behaving like a robot, and deserve no merit because you are programmed to do so. Instead, IMAGINE a scenario that includes CHOICE. There is merit in behaving counter to your natural inclinations.”
Once again, you very rarely deal with the issue at hand and deviate to another point usually either that is irrelevant to the previous discussions and/or makes your argument typically worse off. Since none of my other objections were dealt with, allow me to outline here how this issue of choice does nothing to clarify your position but also makes that situation far worse off.
Allow me to preface my remarks with, once again, even with the issue of choice in view, my scenario mentioned above deals with HOW we view ethical acts—choice or no! In fact, that was the whole point of the scenario: What you’ve seemed to miss -and insist on missing- is that we still consider such ACTS ethical! A soldier may just act to save his comrades lives- and we normally consider such acts moral ones. What you haven’t dealt with, and, again, miss, is that if you argue that an act MUST include careful weighing of pros and cons (choice), then how do we account for acts that we consider ethical even when they appear to be absent of such choosings? You do not escape having to answer this question simply because you consistently ignore it!
Now, you seem to avoid the inquiry and wish to dictate what is moral rather than explain it. The only thing you seem to say, without qualification, is that if ‘choice’ is absent, then assigning responsibility is not possible. Hence, morality is impossible without choice! Naturally you give no reason as to why this is because none of this follows logically. Once more, you seem to merely assume it! But first allow me to outline why choice alone does nothing to clarify the broader issue at hand.
The problem is brought into view by David Hume’s Fork!
(1) Determinism is either true or false.
(2) If determinism is true, then our choices result inevitably from ancient lawful causes over which we cannot exert control.
(3) If determinism is false, then our choices result from random processes over which we cannot claim authorship.
(4) Either way, therefore, free will is an illusion.
With determinism we can say that actions are conditioned by any number of forces that precede it. However, if we argue this position, we are seemingly left with the problem of assigning moral responsibility. Yet, by saying that our choices are not previously conditioned, we may argue that such actions are, in some way, ours! Yet, without any prior conditions that govern action, we are, in effect, saying that decisions are made without any sort of connected process. Therefore, decisions are made analogous to tossing a dime in the air. In either case, free will cannot be established any better by the notion of indeterminacy (choice -as you seem to think of it). Whether choice is a determined thing or one that is made by conditionless antecedence, it would appear that we have NO control either way!
One might attempt two general types of responses: (1) free will (choice) is some ability that allows us to deviate from prior conditions, or (2) that there exists some supernatural quality or non-physical aspect of ‘mind’ that is able to intervene in the conditioned world and separate ones present action from prior conditioned behavior and mental states! Neither of these will be satisfying. The problem with (1) is that it does nothing to clarify what that ability IS! How do we know that when one deviates from a typical set of behaviors (typical for oneself) that such deviation is not ALSO contingent on prior-conditioned mental responses that led to that deviation? The problem with (2) is that it does nothing to answer the question. It only postpones the problem by one step, that is, it only begs the question, and it never answers it. For one thing, we are now left with having to deal with what non-physical mind or substance is! Moreover, how is it that the physical, the one thing we are intimately familiar with, is better explained by appealing to something far beyond anything that we have any similar epistemic intimacy with? Such a tack only adds to the complexity of the issue! Not to mention that we have excellent reasons to doubt metaphysical dualism of this sort.
Now, given the above, what you appear to imply here -that without choice we are nothing but robots- appears to be lopsidedly wrong! It is obvious, again, given the above analysis, the presence of choice—as you seem to characterize it—does nothing to solve the issue of moral responsibility. We still need some sort of description and justification of HOW choices are made to clarify some of the questions here at stake. I’ll not go into that complicated terrain since accounting for the causal order or genesis of such choice-making would take us far beyond the present discussion. What I will point out is that merely introducing the whole notion of choice does nothing to help us describe what is normally considered prima facie ethical! You solve nothing by introducing it.
Before we delve into how your implied position makes the ethical situation intuitively (and in other ways) worse off, I want to briefly examine the assumption that without the capacity of choice—as you seem to think of it—leads to NO moral accountability. This position of yours assumes what Frankfurt calls the ‘principle of alternate possibilities,’ according to which a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. As Frankfurt has argued that the mere fact that an agent could not have done otherwise does not entail that the agent did not act freely or morally responsible. That is, because I would have made the same choice even if I could have done otherwise, the fact that I could have done otherwise does not explain my choice. Likewise, even though determinism precludes one’s doing otherwise, the fact that one could not do otherwise does not necessarily explain why one does what one does. Thus, determinism is technically irrelevant to moral responsibility, and the ‘principle of alternate possibilities’ is false! One can, as Frankfurt attempted, construct a positive account of freedom and moral responsibility with deterministic causation. Therefore, even if I were to cross the street to help the elderly woman because I was somehow determined to do so, the reason(s) for my action are mine regardless of their causal character. In no way was I externally forced to help the woman. In like manner, if I threw her into the street, my reasons for doing so would still be mine, regardless—no one forced me in either case. Nor, in either case, would either action be explained by some appeal to determinism. Moral responsibility is neither diminished nor somehow philosophically improved by the mere possible fact that one is determined to do such and such act!
Therefore, neither the presence of choice nor its absence is enough to settle the troublesome issue of volition and moral responsibility! For you to think that the previous discussions of what we normally take to be ethical action is somehow relevant to the discussion of HOW ethical actions in their entirety is produced is only to confuse issues instead of clarifying them. You outlined a descriptive of how human beings normally conduct themselves and then decided that the only way their actions could be moral is when we introduce choice into the mix. Yet, you at no time outlined why this is even relevant or how such an introduction clarifies this ethically troubled terrain. You simply assumed that your view was the only view and that there was nothing else to consider. Obviously, that was a horrendous oversight!
Now, let us briefly consider the implication that without choice no act can be considered ethical in no way on its face. To say this means that any act, no matter its effects or its ‘apparent’ purpose, is amoral without there existing some conscious volitional act, is to make any act that is not FULLY understood to the person a morally worthless action. There are several problems with this view: (1) it is counterintuitive. The innumerable people rushing to assist those in desperate need during the 9/11 attacks would have to be considered non-heroic! In fact, their actions are morally worthless! A soldier who immediately acts to save the lives of his fellow soldiers by jumping onto a grenade is no more morally praiseworthy than one who scratches his crotch in morning! The man who dives in once he sees a child drowning is no more morally praiseworthy than one who dives into a swimming pool for fun! When I see people in need of an open door and I act-my action is as morally equivalent as an overweight person seeing a box of twinkies and grabs them for himself to consume! The police officers and firemen who daily act in response to spontaneous situations of need are as morally valuable as me responding to my bowel movements in the morning. It is simple to see that it is extremely hard to see how such crude responses of mine and others is equivalent to those responses we normally consider moral. According to this bizarre condition of yours, we would have to see their actions as just ethically worthless actions! Naturally, you never address this issue. I can see why! It’s hard given this narrow view of yours!
(2) What of those who are crooked and carefully seek out their own benefit through the weighing of pros and cons. Take the bankers who skillfully bankrupted our economy. They carefully and skillfully weighed the pros and cons of how such actions would benefit themselves. Would we consider such people moral because they carefully used their volition in some way that you prefer? I’d hope not! If this is the case, then we need something more than mere “choice” to decide whether an act is moral or not! If both an evil act and a so-called moral act make use of choice in the way that you outlined it, then it is readily apparent that we need something more than mere choice in deciding whether an act is good or nay!
(3) What is meant by a person choosing? How much does a person have to weigh the pros and cons prior to an act being considered morally worthwhile? How much information would even be required? What if a person carefully considered the act and the result is horrible regardless? Is the person still to be held responsible even when that person never intended such an act to go horribly awry? Do we hold people accountable for not accounting for all possible outcomes as well? If so, how so? If not, why not? Is intention enough? Probably not! It has often been said by religious types as you that Hell is paved with good intentions!
(4) Speaking of the religious aspect: If only that which has been freely and carefully decided is morally praiseworthy, then how is god praiseworthy? I don’t want biblical texts that will never answer this question-either. Typically, you have only two choices here: (a) what god chooses is morally good—period! If this is so, then god’s choices have no more of a basis than the moral subjectivist that argues that he acted without any reason, he just desired it. Ironically, such a choice would mean that there’s NO basis outside of god’s choice—no reason beyond it. Hence, not a good foundation for moral praise since god’s actions could appear out of nowhere and not through careful consideration! (b) Goodness emerges from god’s nature. Again, this would imply that god is determined to act in a way that doesn’t fit what you consider praiseworthy! If god has no choice than being good, we have no obligation to praise god.
I could go on, but the point is made! If we accept this position, we only make the ethical situation worse off. We are left with more questions than answers. We are led down paths that require some sort of extended explanation-but NO clarity!
Now, I agree with basic determinism. I further agree that there are ways that we may cultivate a sort of minimal view of free will. But in this case I have resources to argue that freedom and moral accountability are compatible with determinism. In your case, neither I— nor anyone else—has any reason to accept your position—or descriptive of the human ethical situation!
Eric D.
“IMAGINATION and CHOICE. What good is there in IMAGINING a scenario that doesn't include CHOICE? If there is no CHOICE about your actions, then you are behaving like a robot, and deserve no merit because you are programmed to do so. Instead, IMAGINE a scenario that includes CHOICE. There is merit in behaving counter to your natural inclinations.”
Once again, you very rarely deal with the issue at hand and deviate to another point usually either that is irrelevant to the previous discussions and/or makes your argument typically worse off. Since none of my other objections were dealt with, allow me to outline here how this issue of choice does nothing to clarify your position but also makes that situation far worse off.
Allow me to preface my remarks with, once again, even with the issue of choice in view, my scenario mentioned above deals with HOW we view ethical acts—choice or no! In fact, that was the whole point of the scenario: What you’ve seemed to miss -and insist on missing- is that we still consider such ACTS ethical! A soldier may just act to save his comrades lives- and we normally consider such acts moral ones. What you haven’t dealt with, and, again, miss, is that if you argue that an act MUST include careful weighing of pros and cons (choice), then how do we account for acts that we consider ethical even when they appear to be absent of such choosings? You do not escape having to answer this question simply because you consistently ignore it!
Now, you seem to avoid the inquiry and wish to dictate what is moral rather than explain it. The only thing you seem to say, without qualification, is that if ‘choice’ is absent, then assigning responsibility is not possible. Hence, morality is impossible without choice! Naturally you give no reason as to why this is because none of this follows logically. Once more, you seem to merely assume it! But first allow me to outline why choice alone does nothing to clarify the broader issue at hand.
The problem is brought into view by David Hume’s Fork!
(1) Determinism is either true or false.
(2) If determinism is true, then our choices result inevitably from ancient lawful causes over which we cannot exert control.
(3) If determinism is false, then our choices result from random processes over which we cannot claim authorship.
(4) Either way, therefore, free will is an illusion.
With determinism we can say that actions are conditioned by any number of forces that precede it. However, if we argue this position, we are seemingly left with the problem of assigning moral responsibility. Yet, by saying that our choices are not previously conditioned, we may argue that such actions are, in some way, ours! Yet, without any prior conditions that govern action, we are, in effect, saying that decisions are made without any sort of connected process. Therefore, decisions are made analogous to tossing a dime in the air. In either case, free will cannot be established any better by the notion of indeterminacy (choice -as you seem to think of it). Whether choice is a determined thing or one that is made by conditionless antecedence, it would appear that we have NO control either way!
One might attempt two general types of responses: (1) free will (choice) is some ability that allows us to deviate from prior conditions, or (2) that there exists some supernatural quality or non-physical aspect of ‘mind’ that is able to intervene in the conditioned world and separate ones present action from prior conditioned behavior and mental states! Neither of these will be satisfying. The problem with (1) is that it does nothing to clarify what that ability IS! How do we know that when one deviates from a typical set of behaviors (typical for oneself) that such deviation is not ALSO contingent on prior-conditioned mental responses that led to that deviation? The problem with (2) is that it does nothing to answer the question. It only postpones the problem by one step, that is, it only begs the question, and it never answers it. For one thing, we are now left with having to deal with what non-physical mind or substance is! Moreover, how is it that the physical, the one thing we are intimately familiar with, is better explained by appealing to something far beyond anything that we have any similar epistemic intimacy with? Such a tack only adds to the complexity of the issue! Not to mention that we have excellent reasons to doubt metaphysical dualism of this sort.
Now, given the above, what you appear to imply here -that without choice we are nothing but robots- appears to be lopsidedly wrong! It is obvious, again, given the above analysis, the presence of choice—as you seem to characterize it—does nothing to solve the issue of moral responsibility. We still need some sort of description and justification of HOW choices are made to clarify some of the questions here at stake. I’ll not go into that complicated terrain since accounting for the causal order or genesis of such choice-making would take us far beyond the present discussion. What I will point out is that merely introducing the whole notion of choice does nothing to help us describe what is normally considered prima facie ethical! You solve nothing by introducing it.
Before we delve into how your implied position makes the ethical situation intuitively (and in other ways) worse off, I want to briefly examine the assumption that without the capacity of choice—as you seem to think of it—leads to NO moral accountability. This position of yours assumes what Frankfurt calls the ‘principle of alternate possibilities,’ according to which a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. As Frankfurt has argued that the mere fact that an agent could not have done otherwise does not entail that the agent did not act freely or morally responsible. That is, because I would have made the same choice even if I could have done otherwise, the fact that I could have done otherwise does not explain my choice. Likewise, even though determinism precludes one’s doing otherwise, the fact that one could not do otherwise does not necessarily explain why one does what one does. Thus, determinism is technically irrelevant to moral responsibility, and the ‘principle of alternate possibilities’ is false! One can, as Frankfurt attempted, construct a positive account of freedom and moral responsibility with deterministic causation. Therefore, even if I were to cross the street to help the elderly woman because I was somehow determined to do so, the reason(s) for my action are mine regardless of their causal character. In no way was I externally forced to help the woman. In like manner, if I threw her into the street, my reasons for doing so would still be mine, regardless—no one forced me in either case. Nor, in either case, would either action be explained by some appeal to determinism. Moral responsibility is neither diminished nor somehow philosophically improved by the mere possible fact that one is determined to do such and such act!
Therefore, neither the presence of choice nor its absence is enough to settle the troublesome issue of volition and moral responsibility! For you to think that the previous discussions of what we normally take to be ethical action is somehow relevant to the discussion of HOW ethical actions in their entirety is produced is only to confuse issues instead of clarifying them. You outlined a descriptive of how human beings normally conduct themselves and then decided that the only way their actions could be moral is when we introduce choice into the mix. Yet, you at no time outlined why this is even relevant or how such an introduction clarifies this ethically troubled terrain. You simply assumed that your view was the only view and that there was nothing else to consider. Obviously, that was a horrendous oversight!
Now, let us briefly consider the implication that without choice no act can be considered ethical in no way on its face. To say this means that any act, no matter its effects or its ‘apparent’ purpose, is amoral without there existing some conscious volitional act, is to make any act that is not FULLY understood to the person a morally worthless action. There are several problems with this view: (1) it is counterintuitive. The innumerable people rushing to assist those in desperate need during the 9/11 attacks would have to be considered non-heroic! In fact, their actions are morally worthless! A soldier who immediately acts to save the lives of his fellow soldiers by jumping onto a grenade is no more morally praiseworthy than one who scratches his crotch in morning! The man who dives in once he sees a child drowning is no more morally praiseworthy than one who dives into a swimming pool for fun! When I see people in need of an open door and I act-my action is as morally equivalent as an overweight person seeing a box of twinkies and grabs them for himself to consume! The police officers and firemen who daily act in response to spontaneous situations of need are as morally valuable as me responding to my bowel movements in the morning. It is simple to see that it is extremely hard to see how such crude responses of mine and others is equivalent to those responses we normally consider moral. According to this bizarre condition of yours, we would have to see their actions as just ethically worthless actions! Naturally, you never address this issue. I can see why! It’s hard given this narrow view of yours!
(2) What of those who are crooked and carefully seek out their own benefit through the weighing of pros and cons. Take the bankers who skillfully bankrupted our economy. They carefully and skillfully weighed the pros and cons of how such actions would benefit themselves. Would we consider such people moral because they carefully used their volition in some way that you prefer? I’d hope not! If this is the case, then we need something more than mere “choice” to decide whether an act is moral or not! If both an evil act and a so-called moral act make use of choice in the way that you outlined it, then it is readily apparent that we need something more than mere choice in deciding whether an act is good or nay!
(3) What is meant by a person choosing? How much does a person have to weigh the pros and cons prior to an act being considered morally worthwhile? How much information would even be required? What if a person carefully considered the act and the result is horrible regardless? Is the person still to be held responsible even when that person never intended such an act to go horribly awry? Do we hold people accountable for not accounting for all possible outcomes as well? If so, how so? If not, why not? Is intention enough? Probably not! It has often been said by religious types as you that Hell is paved with good intentions!
(4) Speaking of the religious aspect: If only that which has been freely and carefully decided is morally praiseworthy, then how is god praiseworthy? I don’t want biblical texts that will never answer this question-either. Typically, you have only two choices here: (a) what god chooses is morally good—period! If this is so, then god’s choices have no more of a basis than the moral subjectivist that argues that he acted without any reason, he just desired it. Ironically, such a choice would mean that there’s NO basis outside of god’s choice—no reason beyond it. Hence, not a good foundation for moral praise since god’s actions could appear out of nowhere and not through careful consideration! (b) Goodness emerges from god’s nature. Again, this would imply that god is determined to act in a way that doesn’t fit what you consider praiseworthy! If god has no choice than being good, we have no obligation to praise god.
I could go on, but the point is made! If we accept this position, we only make the ethical situation worse off. We are left with more questions than answers. We are led down paths that require some sort of extended explanation-but NO clarity!
Now, I agree with basic determinism. I further agree that there are ways that we may cultivate a sort of minimal view of free will. But in this case I have resources to argue that freedom and moral accountability are compatible with determinism. In your case, neither I— nor anyone else—has any reason to accept your position—or descriptive of the human ethical situation!
Eric D.