Free choice and personal responsbility?

[Blagsta]

But if you're a materialist and monist, - I don't see how you're going to possibly answer your own question. There just isn't anyway I can see of making sense of morality in a materialist monist worldview.

Not that I think there's anything wrong with monism, maybe, - it's the materialism and the monism together that make it problematic.

How so?

 

[butchersapron]

Oh, that. My take on that is that it's meaningless then to talk about the noumenal, we only know what we can experience. I'm not sure what it has to do with my OP though?

Nor do i. But you've got Demosthenes all over your thread now.

 

[Blagsta]

Nor do i. But you've got Demosthenes all over your thread now.

oh shit

*smacks forehead*

 

[Demosthenes]

Well if you will ask questions that can't be answered from a materialist monist perspective, - then what do you expect?

You could consider your question as being the prompting of your soul trying to point out to you that your worldview can't make sense of loads of things that you want to believe in.

Alternatively, you could carry on believing a load of rubbish, and wondering how it could possibly make sense.

 

[Blagsta]

Well if you will ask questions that can't be answered from a materialist monist perspective, - then what do you expect?

Why can't it be answered? I'm not necessarily looking for answers anyway, more of an exploration.

You could consider your question as being the prompting of your soul trying to point out to you that your worldview can't make sense of loads of things that you want to believe in.

I don't believe in a soul.

Alternatively, you could carry on believing a load of rubbish, and wondering how it could possibly make sense.

Eh?

 

[Blagsta]

Ahhhh, you appear to be some kind of religous nutcase. I see.

 

[danny la rouge]

I'm not sure if we can start with "Individual action".

No, no, you've misunderstood - that flow diagram isn't to be taken in isolation; I thought the rest of my post made that clear. It's like a link in a chain. There's always a social context that precedes any given action of an individual. Of course. And the concept of Self that individual has at the time of that action is already a product of the process.

However, if we take a snapshot here and now, it remains the case that the social response an action generates is then used by the individual. And so on. But with the variations and caveats I outlined above. Am I putting that clearly enough?

So individual responsibility is located in that step in the diagram - how the social response is assimilated prior to further acts.

This gets complicated, because various communities have sanctions they use to maintain norms. Some sanctions are weak (in effect, I mean), some are stronger. And these are then overlaid with the sanctions applied by other groups, and the already internalised mores.

Sometimes societies talk about expecting individuals to take responsibility, but effectively remove responsibility to an external authority. An example of that is police directing traffic in a situation that individuals ought to be able to negotiate themselves. The traffic cop is given responsibility for every one's actions. I once saw a traffic cop directing traffic on a mini roundabout at the Falkirk Wheel. It was quite unnecessary. If a society does that too often, then individuals lose the ability to take decisions about actions, and expect authority figures to do that for them.

 

[Blagsta]

How (and if) the social response is assimilated is also contingent on social circumstance and emotional capability, so we end up chasing our own tails as far as I can see.

 

[danny la rouge]

so we end up chasing our own tails as far as I can see.

It's a feedback loop. Constantly calibrating itself, but the individual plays a real role in the process.

 

[Blagsta]

I'm not arguing that the individual doesn't play a role.

 

[danny la rouge]

Didn't think you were.

The bottom line is - we're social animals. That's what we are. But that fact does not (always) remove (all) responsibility from actions. It's the always and the all that are hotly contested.

 

[Blagsta]

I'm trying to explore how much responsibility we can have, especially as the way we respond to things is deeply affected by our childhoods.

 

[danny la rouge]

Aye, I know. So are a lot of other people. It's a fascinating question.

Did you get hold of the GH Mead?

 

[Blagsta]

Not yet, I've got loads of other books waiting to be read at the moment!

 

[danny la rouge]

Fair enough. I just don't think Kant will get you anywhere in this regard.

 

[Blagsta]

No, I didn't think Kant was in any way relevant.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Nonsense.

Correct

 

[Jonti]

That may be overstating your objections.

Kant was concerend about how free chioce and personal responsibily could be possible in a "clockwork" universe. Today, centuries later, his approach is still thought provoking, for that basic conundrum is yet to be resolved.

 

[Gmart]

It's a deterministic world we live in. We don't have any way of knowing the future, but we only have the illusion of choice.

Difficult to accept, but there you go. The philosophy of as if, live in the moment as if we had freewill.

Responsibility is just the ability to respond. And we will respond if we are genetically predisposed to responding, and we won't if we aren't.

Even the actions of others are down to their genetic codes and so it is impossible to avoid.

 

[Knotted]

Well, it's not a total misreading of Kant, as some respected kantian philosophers are known by me to have thought that he said something of the sort.

I think you are at least on the right lines.

The way I would some up Kant's arguement is:

1) Time/causality are synthetic a priori notions.
2) If something is not part of a causal chain it exists outside of time.
3) If we follow causal chains back far enough then there must be a first cause.

This leaves us with a dilemma (an "antimony") which Kant resolves by noting that the "something" in 2) is necessarily a phenomenon for the argument to bite. Therefore we must assume that there exist noumena (ie. "things in themselves" which have no phenomenal exitence).

The argument is idealist - what Kant called 'transcendental idealism'.

For me it is flawed most obviously because of the first assumption.

In any case I don't think it informs the debate about free will or responsibility. I could be wrong there. But its certainly not obvious what conclusions should be drawn from it.

My very quick take on the question of responsibility is to question the use of the word 'responsibility' in the first place. Is it a judgement or a statement of fact? We say we are responsible for something specific rather than responsible for actions in general, so it makes sense to judge things by their specific instance. Why are we so worried about moral judgements in general, when surely we should be concerned about the promotion of sociable behaviour?

In other words the question in the OP doesn't really interest me and I'm posting out of pure pedantry.

 

[danny la rouge]

In other words the question in the OP doesn't really interest me and I'm posting out of pure pedantry.

I admire your honesty.

Well done.

 

[Blagsta]

It's a deterministic world we live in. We don't have any way of knowing the future, but we only have the illusion of choice.

Difficult to accept, but there you go. The philosophy of as if, live in the moment as if we had freewill.

Responsibility is just the ability to respond. And we will respond if we are genetically predisposed to responding, and we won't if we aren't.

Even the actions of others are down to their genetic codes and so it is impossible to avoid.

I don't think it's much to do with genetics at all. Current child development research suggests that the care you receive as a baby and young child is much more important.

 

[Blagsta]

That may be overstating your objections.

Kant was concerend about how free chioce and personal responsibily could be possible in a "clockwork" universe. Today, centuries later, his approach is still thought provoking, for that basic conundrum is yet to be resolved.

Except we don't live in a "clockwork" universe. Quantum physics demolished that idea.

 

[Brainaddict]

Except we don't live in a "clockwork" universe. Quantum physics demolished that idea.

Quantum physics revealed inherent uncertainty when it comes to predicting the future but it didn't do anything to change the nature of cause and effect. I've yet to see a convincing philosophical take on what quantum physics actually means but as far as I can see it doesn't actually challenge a deterministic view of the universe, it only says that you can't predict what is determined.

 

[Blagsta]

If you can't predict what is determined, then it's a poor kind of determinism.

 

[Brainaddict]

If you can't predict what is determined, then it's a poor kind of determinism.

But practically speaking it doesn't make that much difference, because to predict what would happen even in a non-quantum universe you would have to process an effectively infinite amount of data. Which is impossible. Determinism says that we can't change the future - but I don't think it ever claimed we could predict it accurately in real-world situations.

 

[Blagsta]

Where does that leave free will?


Anyhow, my understanding of quantum physics was that subatomic processes were essentially random (i.e. whether this or that atom decays is completely random and indeterminate).

 

[Brainaddict]

Where does that leave free will?


Anyhow, my understanding of quantum physics was that subatomic processes were essentially random (i.e. whether this or that atom decays is completely random and indeterminate).

No, it's a common misunderstanding I think. The decay is determined by statistical probabilities - which is very different from randomness. Randomness definitely would break the laws of cause and effect. What you get from QM is statements like 'There is a 70% chance that the atom will decay within two minutes, a 90% chance it will decay within three' and so on. But those statistical probabilities are laid down by the laws of physics so it is absolutely not random.

I'm not convinced that quantum mechanics has anything interesting to say about free will, though plenty of people will tell you that it does - usually people who don't understand it tbh imo.

 

[Knotted]

Where does that leave free will?

OK after having delcared that I'm not interested I'll add more nevertheless.

In the context what does free will mean? What is the will free from? I don't think we need to discuss physics or metaphysics. All we need to say is that an individual's will is to some degree not determined by the rules of society.

In this case it is possible for the individual to break those rules. Obviously this happens.

Further to that we can ask why that individual breaks those rules and we can come up with a whole range of answers from mental illness to alternative beliefs to asocial attempts at cheating. The society may if it chooses to treat these different cases differently. I would be in favour of a society that did.

I think some legal systems make use of a concept of free will, but it needn't have any philosophical baggage unless you really feel the need to be confused.

Morality is just instruction with obfustication.

 

[Blagsta]

I'm not mathematician, but I think I have an OK grasp on the basics of quantum physics, gleaned from A level physics and pop science books by people such as John Gribbin and Paul Davies. I'm pretty sure they say that atomic decay is essentially random (even though governed by probability). We can't say why or whether a particular atom will decay.

Anyway, we're digressing somewhat.