Sure, quote me and whatnot – let me know of any finished pieces. Thanks for getting the book.

You may want to check out my categories of free will & determinism on my blog:
http://www.skepticink.com/tippling/category/free-will-and-determinism/
and
http://www.skepticink.com/tippling/category/problem-of-evil-2/

It’s an interesting thing you say that also sparks the question as to whether anything unnatural can, by definition, exist, because we are natural creatures ourselves.

I set that out briefly here: http://www.skepticink.com/tippling/2012/11/03/natural-oughts-is-there-such-a-thing-as-natural/

Moving the debate from typical POE theodicies to ones of natural evil is a fascinating move, and a natural extension from seeing humans in a naturalistic paradigm.

Contact me through facebook, twitter, my blog, wherever!

Thanks!

JP

Even more broadly, morality itself seems like a questionable concept in a world of hard determinism. If no one can be held to account, i.e. not responsible for “their” actions as it were, then how can one even judge something as moral or immoral? These actions would just be like an apple falling from a tree, entirely mechanistic, and falling outside any human judgment.

Judgments of morality are largely based on intent and consequences. If intent and consequences are pre-determined, no judgment is possible, unless of course you mean the judgment itself is pre-determined, and this entire discussion is pre-determined, ad infinitum, and this is in some way futile and actually proving your point. Bu, on the other hand, we could be proving mine, by influencing each other and the world around us. Will we ever know either way? I doubt it.

By the way, I am still working on drafting a response to your original replies to my comment. Life and new comments keep getting in the way. Don’t blame me for the delay, maybe it was meant to be this way 🙂

Thanks for your interest. You may well want to check out my free will and determinism category on my blog as i have a lot of stuff there, as well as the POE:

http://www.skepticink.com/tippling/category/free-will-and-determinism/

http://www.skepticink.com/tippling/category/problem-of-evil-2/

I am more than happy for you to quote me – would be interested to see any finished pieces.

“If what you said is true, do you agree that this makes every moral evil ultimately due to some underlying natural evil?”

This is a really interesting question that might spur me on to write something about. The definition of natural vs man-made is actually incoherent since we humans are natural beings and so any man-made thing is, by definition, naturally derived.

http://www.skepticink.com/tippling/2012/11/03/natural-oughts-is-there-such-a-thing-as-natural/

But I like your movement following seeing humans as naturalistic, and denying free will, as changing the POE usual theodicies into natural evil ones.

Contact me through my blog contact or here, or twitter, or facebook, or wherever!

Thanks!

JP

If what you said is true, do you agree that this makes every moral evil ultimately due to some underlying natural evil?

Also, if you have any links to articles/books that will be good for the discussion of how omniscience/foreknowledge/sovereignty relates to evil and unbelief, I really would appreciate if you could direct me (I have your book “Free Will? that I cannot wait to read).

If email is better, my email is [email protected]

We do what is best for society in a moral sense if we want to be the morally best we can be. Obviously, this language is infused with the idea that we have the ability to do otherwise, and this is a challenge for determinists. But we can still author action and our own future. Some Q and A and resources concerning this can be found here, at naturalism.org: http://www.centerfornaturalism.org/faqs.htm#Q4

Here are three salvos form them against fatalism: http://naturalism.org/fatalism.htm

“All actions, regardless of how repugnant they may seem, are beyond moral responsibility, since we could have not possibly done otherwise. We are all just products of our surrounding.”

Of course we are. As a naturalist, what else could be responsible for us? Our surroundings, together with ourselves, produce who we are and what we do.

1) I think your “far from” is a rather large exaggeration. The philpapers 2009 survey, the biggest ever of philosophers, shows that only just below 14% believe in LFW, and this correlated almost exactly to the number of philosophers who believe in God, and the meta data shows that this is more than a mere correlation, that the naturalistic philosophers denied LFW, and the theists adhered to it. There is the odd exception, such as Robert Kane, but his model doesn’t cut the mustard.
2) “If everything is just another link in a long chain of a causal chain under a hard determinism, what started the chain?” – great question and right up my alley, so to speak. In philosophy and reality there are three ways of grounding things: axiom, infinite regress and circle. Now think of this in terms of the universe. Brute fact, infinite temporal regress or circular. There are theories like Loop Quantum Cosmology which try to get round infinite time in reverse with bouncing reboots of time etc. This is the territory of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, on which I wrote my thesis, and three projects down the line will be a book. I love this topic, so I could bore you here. However, there is a problem for the theist since the KCA and LFW are mutually exclusive, as I set out here:

http://www.skepticink.com/tippling/2013/05/23/libertarian-free-will-defeats-the-kalam-cosmological-argument/
and
http://www.skepticink.com/tippling/2013/07/30/libertarian-free-will-defeats-the-kalam-cosmological-argument-2/

Suffice to say, however the universe stated or rebooted, causality was enacted from thence, and here we are (random interpretations of QM aside).

“Why even get up in the morning, why live, why not rape, murder, etc?” – this is fatalism and not determinism, one being psychological and the other philosophical. I agree that fatalism is a big (psychological) challenge to determinism, though says nothing of the truth. Sam Harris and others talk a lot of this. Here is a thread on his forum with some good explanations and links: https://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread/16904/

Why not rape/murder has nothing to do with determinism, and more to do with your own moral value system, morality and life. I am a determinist, but don’t just think “fuck it all, I’m off to kill someone!”.

Interestingly, Saul Smilansky wrote a book on free will as an illusion and then urged not to let the masses know as it would be dangerous! Also, we potentially evolved the illusion of free will – for a reason. And perhaps shedding that beneficial trait might be problematic! But, like Spinoza and Pereboom and others, I think it will on balance be beneficial to society to understand the universe as best we can, including causality.

3) I believe, in some sense, there is no really big distinction for the purposes here in just deserts and justice. Someone does something wrong, they get time in prison as justice – they deserved it for doing wrong: their just deserts. The question would become, again, “what for?” This is wrapped up, in determinism, with praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, which has no place in hard determinism (though reactive attitudes are part of our makeup – this is why Strawson believes we should retain the illusion of free will because he sees our psychological reactive attitudes as so integral to human nature that we can’t shift them). http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/#FocUpoReaAtt

I will paste the pertinent passage here:
In “Freedom and Resentment” (1962), P.F. Strawson broke ranks with the classical compatibilists. Strawson developed three distinct arguments for compatibilism, arguments quite different from those the classical compatibilists endorsed. But more valuable than his arguments was his general theory of what moral responsibility is, and hence, what is at stake in arguing about it. Strawson held that both the incompatibilists and the compatibilists had misconstrued the nature of moral responsibility. Each disputant, Strawson suggested, advanced arguments in support of or against a distorted simulacrum of the real deal.

To understand moral responsibility properly, Strawson invited his reader to consider the reactive attitudes one has towards another when she recognizes in another’s conduct an attitude of ill will. The reactions that flow naturally from witnessing ill will are themselves attitudes that are directed at the perpetrator’s intentions or attitudes. When a perpetrator wrongs a person, she, the wronged party, typically has a personal reactive attitude of resentment. When the perpetrator wrongs another, some third party, the natural reactive attitude is moral indignation, or disapprobation, which amounts to a “vicarious analogue” of resentment felt on behalf of the wronged party. When one is oneself the wronging party, reflecting upon or coming to realize the wrong done to another, the natural reactive attitude is guilt.

Strawson wanted contestants to the free will debate to see more clearly than they had that excusing a person — electing not to hold her morally responsible — involves more than some objective judgment that she did not do such and such, or did not intend so and so, and therefore does not merit some treatment or other. It involves a suspension or withdrawal of certain morally reactive attitudes, attitudes involving emotional responses. On Strawson’s view, what it is to hold a person morally responsible for wrong conduct is nothing more than the propensity towards, or the sustaining of, a morally reactive attitude of disapprobation. Crucially, the disapprobation is in response to the perceived attitude of ill will or culpable motive in the conduct of the person being held responsible. Hence, Strawson explains, posing the question of whether the entire framework of moral responsibility should be given up as irrational (if it were discovered that determinism is true) is tantamount to posing the question of whether persons in the interpersonal community — that is, in real life — should forswear having reactive attitudes towards persons who wrong others, and who sometimes do so intentionally. Strawson invites us to see that the morally reactive attitudes that are the constitutive basis of our moral responsibility practices, as well as the interpersonal relations and expectations that give structure to these attitudes, are deeply interwoven into human life. These attitudes, relations and expectations are so much an expression of natural, basic features of our social lives — of their emotional textures — that it is practically inconceivable to imagine how they could be given up.

Back to me. I would not be so strong on utilitarianism, since about 90% intuitively are (on the trolley experiment in basic form). The simple fact of the matte ris no moral value system works perfectly. It’s that simple. Philosophers have got nowhere in all the time they have spent arguing the most fundamental area, and are currently split into roughly thirds among the three main contenders (deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics). This lends to the fact that perhaps we should adhere to moral nihilism (in the sense that abstract ideas don’t exist ontically, outside of our conceptual minds, and thus to claim morality is objectively true would be false). This can be uncomfortable for some, but it is consistent with what is descriptively going on. I believe in a universal subjective morality based on lots of caveats. Whether this is actually moral realism, I doubt. I am a conceptual nominalist, so abstract ideas, as mentioned, do not exist outside of conceiving minds.

As for consequentialism, there are many nuanced forms, and very complex and intricate manners of trying to get around the problems you seem to see. Eg http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/

A few examples: Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only on consequences (as opposed to the circumstances or the intrinsic nature of the act or anything that happens before the act).
Actual Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only on the actualconsequences (as opposed to foreseen, foreseeable, intended, or likely consequences).
Direct Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act itself (as opposed to the consequences of the agent’s motive, of a rule or practice that covers other acts of the same kind, and so on).
Evaluative Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on the value of the consequences (as opposed to non-evaluative features of the consequences).
Hedonism = the value of the consequences depends only on the pleasures and pains in the consequences (as opposed to other goods, such as freedom, knowledge, life, and so on).
Maximizing Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on which consequences are best(as opposed to merely satisfactory or an improvement over the status quo).
Aggregative Consequentialism = which consequences are best is some function of the values of parts of those consequences (as opposed to rankings of whole worlds or sets of consequences).
Total Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on the total net good in the consequences (as opposed to the average net good per person).
Universal Consequentialism = moral rightness depends on the consequences for all people or sentient beings (as opposed to only the individual agent, members of the individual’s society, present people, or any other limited group).
Equal Consideration = in determining moral rightness, benefits to one person matter just as much as similar benefits to any other person (= all who count count equally).
Agent-neutrality = whether some consequences are better than others does not depend on whether the consequences are evaluated from the perspective of the agent (as opposed to an observer).

1) I am not a theist, and cannot speak for theists, but theists are far from being the only ones who believe that free will can or does exist. Yes, theism is faced with the ever present problem of “can God create a rock so heavy that even he cannot move it?”, but I think we have other issues to deal with.

2) If everything we “choose” to do is strictly governed by biology, genetics, etc. then what gave rise to those genetics, biology, etc? If everything is just another link in a long chain of a causal chain under a hard determinism, what started the chain? I don’t know, nor do I think anyone does, nor can know, precisely because as I described earlier, it is impossible to test either theory out.
However, truly working under the assumption that there is no free will, in my view, leads either to some impractical, or worse case, horrifying, consequences. Why even get up in the morning, why live, why not rape, murder, etc?
I ask these half-jokingly. If there is no free will, and everything is pre-determined, that undermines a lot of people’s premises on which their actions are based.
Now, yes, of course none of this means that there is free will, obviously. I think we are going down a rabbit hole with no end to it, and one that would take us all to a place we don’t want to go, regardless of how true it may be.

For all the bashing of theism (I am guilty of this too sometimes), and the shortcomings of theism, much of what we enjoy and take for granted today would not be possible without millennia of theism affecting our social and biological development. I’d actually rather have a moral, peaceful and free order built on falsehood, than an amoral, violent and ruthless one that was built on the truth. I am not saying that those are the only two possibilities, but merely illustrating my priorities.

3) “Locking up – this is a phrase that can hide a multitude of ideas. What are you locking them up for? Is is as a deterrent? For rehabilitation? For just desserts? For a deterrent, that is OK if your moral value system is utilitarianism where you can use people for a particular end. However, next time you go into a hospital, perhaps you might be stolen and harvested for your organs, because this serves the greater good of leading to 5 people surviving medical problems. The concepts surrounding consequentialism here take a lot of unpicking. Rehabilitation is the most sound reason, and keeping them humanely quarantined whilst this is happening is morally fine. Just desserts for someone who could not do otherwise, in a retributive sense, is the least acceptable outcome under determinism.”

Jonathan, you have missed an important term/concept in your brief list of what we lock up perpetrators for: justice.
In m view, this is similar, but not exactly the same as just deserts.
While deterrence and rehabilitation (despite, quite frankly, the failure of this approach) are part of the rationale, justice is the more over-riding component, hence the name presumably.
While I would agree that utilitarianism is abhorrent and completely amoral (for various reasons that we can get into for those who may not know why – like I did not until relatively recently), deterrence has virtues beyond just utilitarianism. Deterring the rape and murder of innocents of a small number of people by a larger number of people would be such an example. Burning, killing and hanging gays/albinos/etc. by a mob is not allowed, even though one could possibly argue that the net gain in “utility”/happiness to the mob outweighs the net loss to the smaller group.

On to your point about humanely quarantining. Who says this is morally fine? There is no science to back this up. This is an arbitrary value judgment. Even IF that person could not do otherwise (and I think the evidence to back this up is sorely lacking), humane quarantine is still arbitrary. One might say that it is not, since that would be the least unpleasant option for themselves, and operating under the Golden Rule, it seems reasonable to apply that to others. Still, using the Golden Rule itself is a value judgment.

Even IF the perpetrator (is that term even allowed under no free will, since the perpetrator was ultimately the universe itself???) in question could not have possibly done otherwise, then what should do?
Well, if we torture him/her, burn them alive or feed them to piranhas while alive, we couldn’t have not done otherwise either, so we are in the clear too. See what I did there?
All actions, regardless of how repugnant they may seem, are beyond moral responsibility, since we could have not possibly done otherwise. We are all just products of our surrounding. Please don’t take this as me being facetious, but I am taking this thinking to its logical conclusion.

1) Yes, free will an and omniscient God who knows your future freely willed actions will indubitably come to pass is notoriously dodgy as a concept. This is why Open Theism has evolved, with adherents believing that God does not know future contingent decisions. However, this is problematic for a whole host of reasons, not least of all reducing God to effectively randomising the world (yet still having prophecies in the Bible etc).

2) It is not just biology, but all the ologies: your biology & genetics, your environment – every single variable enacted in you, on you and by you. The question you should ALWAYS ask is why? If there is no answer, it becomes “just because” and thus effectively random; if there is an answer, then this invites determinism through the door.

3) Locking up – this is a phrase that can hide a multitude of ideas. What are you locking them up for? Is is as a deterrent? For rehabilitation? For just desserts? For a deterrent, that is OK if your moral value system is utilitarianism where you can use people for a particular end. However, next time you go into a hospital, perhaps you might be stolen and harvested for your organs, because this serves the greater good of leading to 5 people surviving medical problems. The concepts surrounding consequentialism here take a lot of unpicking. Rehabilitation is the most sound reason, and keeping them humanely quarantined whilst this is happening is morally fine. Just desserts for someone who could not do otherwise, in a retributive sense, is the least acceptable outcome under determinism.

4) I’m a Sainsbury’s Organic or Yorkshire Tea man myself. Given the theoretical choice…

Thanks for the interest!