If there is no free will, then does it stand to reason that there is no right or wrong?
Absent of free will, can it be said that a murderer had no choice in the matter?
Without free will, is it fair to judge people as moral or immoral?
It's never entirely clear to me exactly what people are referring to when they talk about free will. I can give my thoughts on a couple of the more common interpretations I've seen. However, if there's a particular interpretation you want to discuss then I'm happy to take a shot at it.
So, free will version 1 is simply the ability to make choices in general. In this instance, I would say that we do have free will. We can also freely determine what we consider right or wrong and choose to act accordingly.
Version 2 is the ability to make choices completely independently of our biology, culture and history. In this instance, I'd say we don't have free will but are still able to question at least some of those choice inhibiting factors. For example, the fact that somebody lives in a culture that has the death penalty doesn't mean that everybody in that culture is compelled to unquestioningly accept that the death penalty is morally justified.
Finally, some people argue that free will means that our thoughts and actions aren't already determined. I don't see how you prove this one either way but for the sake of argument I'll assume that we really are just playing out a script. In this case, whether or not it's fair for us to judge a murderer is irrelevant as I see it. Just as the murderer was always going to murder somebody, we were always going to judge them for it.
