r/freewill

It seems that many I can’t say all hard determinists seem to have a passion for things like prison reform. They also seem to want to advocate for the abandoning of our innate sense of justice in favor of something more merciful. I too as a free will advocate share some of these proclivities. Our current criminal justice system is just a higher education system for the career of being a criminal.

The trouble is this idea that if only people embraced determinism it would lead to such an overflowing of empathy for all life , that people would naturally abandon notions like desert. This is a highly naive perspective. The determinist tells us that a criminal is a victim of some combination of genetics or environment leading to their criminal behavior. Seldom do we give much consideration to the other side of the coin though. That side is where the victims of criminals reside. If the criminal is determined to commit crimes surely the victim must ALSO be determined to want justice. We certainly cannot fault the victim for feeling this way as it is determined. So at least an equal amount of understanding would need to be shown them when under our new society we no longer punish the criminal. The victim of necessity may seek their own desert thus thwarting the intentions of the newly enlightened determinist utopia. We can no more stop the human urge for justice than we can stop the human urge to commit crimes. Leaving this dilemma like many others unsolvable even if everyone were determinist.

I want to address the following post and many others like it, because this question comes up all the time:
https://www.reddit.com/r/freewill/comments/1wxniuz/how_to_live_if_you_believe_free_will_is_an

I'm going to answer this in the form of a question. Imagine tomorrow that you found out that all of humankind have been mind controlled by some alien race, and there was nothing we can do about it. Or you found out that we were all programs in some kind of computer simulation, just executing whatever programs are brains were encoded with. Or basically some sort of incontrovertible proof that you had zero control of your thoughts, zero control of your actions, and zero control of your life. (Note: I'm not asking you to believe this is the case. I'm just asking you to imagine it as a hypothetical. In other words, try putting yourself in my shoes.)

Question is, how do you think you would react to this? Would you simply refuse to put on clothes in the morning, knowing you weren't really in control of what you wore? Would you not answer somebody who asks you 'can I take your order?' in a restaurant, because something outside of you is determining what you pick? Would you break up with your significant other, knowing that they were essentially programmed to love you? Would the relationship even mean anything to you any more? If the vast majority of people in the world hadn't had this realization yet and you knew you couldn't convince them, how would you relate to them? Would you still judge people as harshly as you used to? Would you use your knowledge as a 'get out of jail' free card to do every shitty thing you've always wanted to, guilt free? Would any of this even matter to you?

You notice that I'm not answering the question directly. Because losing a belief in free will is like losing a belief in a religion; people are going to react to it in different ways. For some people, it is traumatizing. For others, it is liberating.

How can you believe in moral culpability? That some choice is commendable or not?

Should people really be punished? Or just have their freedoms limited to minimize societal harm? Should we feel sorry for people who make bad choices? Or angry? Why?

Should you feel indignant if someone hurts you? Or just regret that you were a victim?

As Nietzsche and Russell strongly believed was the case.

If Compatibilism does not argue that we do not create our base desires and character then what about the origins of moral responsibility itself and how by definition everyone had absorbed them through environment whether we like it or not.

You could say Dennett has an optimistic view on human nature compared to Russell and Nietzsche's skeptisim, but based on what exactly?

Everlasting punishment in hell doesn't sound very moral.

Was even the ridiculous blood letting connected to morality?

"Under the influence of the Catholic Church, physical disease was frequently conflated with sin and moral corruption. Purging the body via bloodletting was equated with spiritual purification—literally draining away "corruption" or "badness" from the flesh"

Well thank fock science put the brakes on that.

"Wherever responsibilities are sought, it is usually the instinct of wanting to judge and punish which is at work. ...the doctrine of the will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is, because one wanted to impute guilt. ... Men were thought of as 'free' so that they could be judged and punished—so that they could become guilty." Nietzsche

"Those eager to punish are driven by malice, not justice. They mask their cruelty as morality." Nietzsche

If concepts like free will and moral responsibility were explicitly invented by priests and moralists so that people could be judged as "guilty" and this gave society a legal and moral mandate to unleash cruelty (via punishment, shaming, and hellfire) onto others with a completely clean, self-righteous conscience, then does compatabilism and moral responsibility revolve around an optimism about human institutions and self regulation that created blood letting and eternal damnation that itself created a feedback loop of dysfunction and a kind of generational trauma over decades?

Nietzsche argued that the concept of free will was manufactured by the ruling priestly class to make mankind "guilty" and punishable.

If we look at history through this lens, the evolution of Compatabilism ​ and modern moral responsibility​ can be viewed as an attempt to use a system that was originally built on domination and generational trauma.

If free will was invented to make humanity "guilty" so that power structures could unleash cruelty with a clean conscience then why look to society's version of moral responsibility that invented eternal damnation in Hell and bloodletting?

Was Compatabilism and moral responsibility really born from the "we" or more from the select and the chosen "we"?

That if freewill and moral responsibility itself was born out of a desire to inflict cruelty with a clean conscience then Compatabilism itself could be accused of causing the seperation it says it tries to irradicate.

Peace ✌️