Responsibility without freewill

[Willamena]

I fail to see the relevance of ego to the issue.


I'd like to reply, but cannot fathom the significance of this ego thing.

It's why we have free will. It stands in opposition to the idea that god (or accident, if you like) is a guiding force controlling every aspect of the world. In owning ego ourselves, "I" (the owned ego) stands free of that guiding force.

What about it?

It's the principal that an explanation with fewer assumptions will generally win out over an explanation with more assumptions. Your explanation is ripe with assumptions, not the least of which that determinism is an ontological reality and indisputable. It's neither.

Are you thinking it's an imperative; all less complex explanations are best? And if you think a cause→ effect (cause)→ effect is more complicated than the idea of free will where both "will" and "free will" go begging for definition, think again. Explain how this freewill thing operates without cause. And if there is such a cause how it arises without cause, and how this cause arose with a cause, and so on back down the line.

Yup.

Both "free" and "will" can be found in any dicitonary.

Free will doesn't operate without cause--that was never its definition. Free will is (as per the dictionary) the power to act, specifically the power for "I" to act, apart from fate, god or outside forces. It doesn't deny fate, god or outside forces, it simply promotes the liberty (freedom) of a man--mankind--in discriminatory and voluntary action.
free will: definition of free will in Oxford dictionary (British & World English)

"I" acts, in complete liberty of self, by virtue of owning ego. "I did that." This ownership is a thought, a powerful thought, one we teach children in their first year to recognize--"me, mine," "you, yours." What you do well, you take credit for, and what you do wrong you take blame for. Responsibility.


That we own our bodies, own our thoughts and that ego, is the heart of "rights" and "liberties" afforded us by the good grace of humanistic philosophy, which mass-influenced European and American thinking from the 17th Century to today. But that's another story.

 

[bobhikes]

Never said I could or will. Predictability has absolutely nothing to do with determinism: the cause/effect operation.
Not to my satisfaction you won't.
Okay.
In "random . . .ways" Else wise, Okay.
Heck no. I go through each day with the illusion that I have freewill, even though intellectually I know I don't. I I have no choice in the matter.

I actually enjoy this once in a while and thanks to you I got a bigger piece of the puzzle. Your dogmatic belief in causation forces me to think on my feet and when I do that inspiration always hits.

Thanks.

My inspiration. If you put 1000's of things(pick a large number) moving and acting randomly in a pure vacuum. Upon interaction with another thing they would automatically move to order. You could keep creating random things but once they interacted with something they would start to follow the laws of the universe. The only way you could find something random is if it did not interact with something else, which would be very hard for us to do.

 

[Straw Dog]

The choosing you see yourself doing was already determined by the sequence of cause/event episodes leading up to the moment of doing. If we had the capability, we could predict exactly what you would "choose" to do. . .and without fail.

A determined choice is still a choice that is uniquely ours. If an external cause has influenced us, then it has become internal.

 

[Straw Dog]

Yes, interactivity and the dynamic emergence of ego may make more sense than just strict A->B causality. However, they're not necessarily in opposition.

 

[bobhikes]

No, it's the result of it.

Don't beg the question. Just because freewill is necessary to validate these concepts doesn't validate freewill itself. And I don't deny that without the notion of freewill running our lives we might be in one hell of a mess, but this too doesn't validate it. The only thing that will validate freewill is to show how it operates free of prior cause. If uncaused then it must an utterly random operation. And I don't think anyone wants to claim that what we do are acts of utter randomness.

If something was truly random how would you know. All you know is patterns. Lets say something pops in your view for a split second or you hear and then its gone, You would dismiss it as not real a blip of your circuitry. You may be seeing random things every second of everyday but they are random and have no pattern so you constantly dismiss them. Isn't noise a term for signal with no distinguishable patterns. Why does there always seem to be noise?

 

[Skwim]

It's why we have free will.

So freewill is the result of ego.

e·go
ˈēgō/
noun
noun: ego; plural noun: egos

a person's sense of self-esteem or self-importance.
​

Well, ya got me flummoxed here. You may as well have said freewill is the result of chocolate ice cream for all the sense it makes.

It's the principal that an explanation with fewer assumptions will generally win out over an explanation with more assumptions. Your explanation is ripe with assumptions, not the least of which that determinism is an ontological reality and indisputable. It's neither.

Your redundancy aside, I have never said or even intimated that determinism is indisputable. Dispute away. I've only said it's true, or words to that effect.

My inspiration. If you put 1000's of things(pick a large number) moving and acting randomly in a pure vacuum. Upon interaction with another thing they would automatically move to order.

Why? What is this other thing that would impart order on these things?

The only way you could find something random is if it did not interact with something else, which would be very hard for us to do.

Actually, randomness, true utter randomness has been found at the subatomic (quantum mechanical) level.

The choosing you see yourself doing was already determined by the sequence of cause/event episodes leading up to the moment of doing. If we had the capability, we could predict exactly what you would "choose" to do. . .and without fail.

A determined choice is still a choice that is uniquely ours. If an external cause has influenced us, then it has become internal.

My mistake for not putting my "choosing" in quotation marks as I did with "choose" to indicate it was merely a marker for an action and not something I regard as real. I don't see any choice, choosing, or chosen having any reality. No one chooses anything---taking the word to indicate the action of a freewill. That said, I do agree that any particular action is unique to an individual.

If an external cause has influenced us, then it has become internal.

Not following. Sorry.

 

[bobhikes]

S
Why? What is this other thing that would impart order on these things?

Laws of interaction. We two or more things meet there forces interact upon each other. They would no longer be random but a result of their interaction.

 

[Skwim]

Laws of interaction. We two or more things meet there forces interact upon each other. They would no longer be random but a result of their interaction.

But what is the nature of this order you see?

If by some means 30 billiard balls continue to randomly roll about on a billiard table and a small immovable billiard ball is placed in the center of the table, and the billiard balls start to hit it on occasion what kind of order do you see emerging?

 

[Straw Dog]

My mistake for not putting my "choosing" in quotation marks as I did with "choose" to indicate it was merely a marker for an action and not something I regard as real. I don't see any choice, choosing, or chosen having any reality. No one chooses anything---taking the word to indicate the action of a freewill. That said, I do agree that any particular action is unique to an individual.

Not following. Sorry.

Can illusions be efficient or have a sustainable effect? Why does "freewill" work in society?

 

[bobhikes]

But what is the nature of this order you see?

If by some means 30 billiard balls continue to randomly roll about on a billiard table and a small immovable billiard ball is placed in the center of the table, and the billiard balls start to hit it on occasion what kind of order do you see emerging?

A truly random thing would change size, shape, mass, spin etc at will. Once it met something all its defining attributes would be set at that moment of meeting. Those defining attributes based on laws of speed, angular momentum etc would send it off in an orderly fashion based on laws defining the interaction.

It could be considered first cause except that it keeps happening. Random things constantly enter the universe and interact with other things.

 

[Willamena]

Yes, interactivity and the dynamic emergence of ego may make more sense than just strict A->B causality. However, they're not necessarily in opposition.

Where I see the clearest opposition is in the original free will debate: predestination, in the form of the hand of god guiding and steering every aspect of the world, including man, vs. the idea that through liberty (freedom from this hand) mankind is free to make his mistakes, to take his chances, to steer his own course, be it well or failed, through a life-time and arrive in a place where he can be judged for what he chose.

 

[Skwim]

Can illusions be efficient or have a sustainable effect?

As I see it (freewill), it does.

Why does "freewill" work in society?

It fulfills our need to pass judgment with guiltless satisfaction.

 

[Willamena]

Can illusions be efficient or have a sustainable effect?

Surely they must, else they cease to be illusion.

Why does "freewill" work in society?

Because society is built upon it.

 

[Straw Dog]

It fulfills our need to pass judgment with guiltless satisfaction.

Is passing judgment really a need or just a want?

How stable can a society based upon illusions actually be?

 

[Straw Dog]

You can have responsibility in the sense that you, and no one else, committed the act. I, and no one else, picked up the rock and threw it. So I, and no one else, am responsible for breaking the window. As for assigning blame or praise, that's a whole other kettle of crawdads.

So you're saying that responsibility is a neutral fact, but personal judgment may never be warranted because our actions are ultimately caused by forces beyond our conscious control?

 

[Skwim]

Is passing judgment really a need or just a want?

Need. I see a real need in humans to aggressively rectify acts we call crimes, and if an act is not consciously chosen, the result of willful intent, how can one ethically hold the perpetrator at fault? One can't. Which is why courts today use this as a measure of culpability. Take away the notion of freewill and courts dealing with victims becomes moot. Victims are merely unfortunate individuals of pure chance. All of which challenges our sense of right and wrong behavior. I believe this need to impose penalty or find fault is hardwired in us. We can't help it.

On the flip side, we also enjoy praising those who go beyond the norm, applauding their accomplishments because we feel they had a choice in doing so---they deliberately worked to bring us pleasure. We don't applaud a beautiful sunset because we recognize it had no such choice. Again, I see this need to confer acclaim---show our appreciation---is hardwired in us. We can't help it.

How stable can a society based upon illusions actually be?

Look around you. We're in it.

So you're saying that responsibility is a neutral fact, but personal judgment may never be warranted because our actions are ultimately caused by forces beyond our conscious control?

I'm saying that one has to recognize the context in which the word "responsible" is used. In one context it merely establishes the operator; the who: he, she, or me did it. In the other it seeks to place accountability, an obligation that might come with consequences.

 

[Straw Dog]

I'm saying that one has to recognize the context in which the word "responsible" is used. In one context it merely establishes the operator; the who: he, she, or me did it. In the other it seeks to place accountability, an obligation that might come with consequences.

Got it.

So could someone personally accept accountability for their actions while realizing that there is no real imposed obligation?

 

[Skwim]

Got it.

So could someone personally accept accountability for their actions while realizing that there is no real imposed obligation?

Certainly.

 

[Willamena]

Certainly.

But why would they?

 

[Penumbra]

Conventional wisdom holds that we cannot be held accountable for our actions unless we have freewill. In particular, existentialists emphasize the correlation between personal freedom and responsibility. Although I share many existential views, a faith in transcendental freedom is not one of them. This thread is meant to argue that we are actually still responsible for our actions and their consequences even in a world without an abstract freewill.

Everything that is our own doing is a manifestation of internal causes. This internalization of causality is what defines us as individuals, although we may share some causes with others. It doesn't make sense to say that our internal causes made us do such and such as if we were a victim because we are nothing other than the manifestation of those causes. Even if a decision is made before we are consciously aware of it, it is still our decision. Upon critical reflection, it becomes rational to accept responsibility for our original natures. To represent ourselves as something other than or beyond our very own nature is to represent nothing. Self-representations must identify holistically with our total nature rather than just specifically with consciousness.

Discuss.

Free will, I think, is a fairly important illusion. We seem to have evolved with the predisposition to view other people as moral agents. It's a cultural universal, as far as I know. And it's hard to function otherwise. Religion itself may be the predisposition to personify forces of nature.

I think responsibility is more of a practical matter than a philosophical matter. For example, if some malfunctioning robot hurts someone, we could debate all day about the level of responsibility of the robot itself, but the real crux of the issue is that we either have to fix the robot or put the robot where it won't hurt people anymore.

If an employee is lazy, the extent of their responsibility in philosophical terms is complicated with nature/nurture debates, brain chemistry, and other things, but in the end, a business owner wants productive employees and will replace unproductive ones for productive ones.

If a person commits a crime, we can look at things like neurological psychopathy, childhood abuse, poverty, and other things, but in the end, the main questions are how can we keep other people safe from this person, and how, if possible, can we rehabilitate this person?

I don't view terms like free will and responsibility to be logically coherent. Instead, I think practicality is the most important thing, and a certain level of consistency between how we assign the idea of freedom and how we assign the idea of responsibility. I don't think there can be philosophical responsibility without philosophical freedom, for example. But even if both are missing, we can still have prisons and people can get fired and so forth.