[randallsquared]

Historical guilt and merit still exist in the absence of free will, and those are the important parts that allow us defect against defectors, etc.

[nota_bene]

> Historical guilt and merit still exist in the absence of free will

Historical guilt and merit would simply be the sum of all guilt and merit of a society, meaning actually the sum of a lot of nothing...

[randallsquared]

I didn't mean to say anything about collective guilt or merit, but apparently I didn't communicate well; sorry.

In iterated PD competitions, it's clear that none of the programs involved have free will, but punishing defections is still an important part of either a strategy for getting ahead, or a strategy for reducing defections. That is, the programs still have to keep track of the guilt or merit of their peers in order to make decisions about how to react to past cooperation or defection. Regardless of the moral responsibility of humans for their actions, they still have a responsibility in historical fact.