[tjoff]

I'm not meaning the excuse to be interpreted literally with all the social context it implies. I'm saying that whether the action is performed because of free will or not doesn't matter.

We as a society has come up with ways to direct the responsibility and the answer will be different depending on the viewpoint of who is asking it. But this is arbitrary, just something we as a society has decided is "fair", you have responsibility for your actions and the consequences you face should be in proportion to that responsibility.

You can argue that this reasoning is all based on the assumption that everyone has free will, because if you don't then the blame should be directed further up the chain (the hammer isn't responsible for the actions performed with it).

We still do this plenty today though, even with humans. If a rocket crashes because of one person installing a gyro the wrong way you don't necessarily put the blame squarely on him/her, the processes involved should have prevented that from being undetected and thus the responsibility and blame goes further.

(EDIT: the gyro example was a bad example as the person installed it didn't want to do it in the wrong direction. A better example would be the engineer implementing the code to cheat emission tests. But that is also a point, we do still blame people even when there is no intent (or will) to base it on)

But the reasoning is still arbitraty. A human would, free will or not, still react to the consequences (direct as well as risk assesment) of its actions. The concept of responsibility still works and doesn't need to change.

[foldr]

We don't as a society respond the same way when someone involuntarily does something harmful and when someone voluntarily does someone harmful. If all acts are in fact involuntary, it's hard to justify that. (We could of course keep acting as we do now but without the justification.)

[tjoff]

No we don't, and neither would a society without free will.

Whether something was done by accident or intent has nothing to do with free will or not. An entity without free will can still compare two options, realize the consequence for both and choose an action.

If that action is illegal in the eyes of society that signifies intent. But if the action was a mistake (perhaps the entity miscalculated or didn't have enough information to do it correctly) it will then be treated as a mistake or carelessness.

[foldr]

You're conflating unintentional actions with involuntary actions, but the two are distinct. It's unfair to punish someone for an intentional but involuntary action. And all actions are involuntary if people do not have free will.

[tjoff]

From societies perspective there is no difference between someone with free will choosing bad (illegal) decisions from a bad entity programmed to make bad decisions. The society will have the exact same incentives to take exactly the same actions to prevent such behavior. Nothing about free will or lackthereof makes it unfair.

Someone making involuntarily actions that harms others are a danger to society and should be dealt with. If it is coupled with intent that is very bad, but if not it is unfortunate - but still needs to be dealt with. No reason to involve free will in this reasoning at all.

It's unfair to punish someone for an intentional but involuntary action.

Intent is exactly what is fair to punish someone for. What can be fairer?

[foldr]

>From societies perspective there is no difference between someone with free will choosing bad (illegal) decisions from a bad entity programmed to make bad decisions.

Says who? Those strike me as different. Society could certainly choose to recognize them as different.

>Intent is exactly what is fair to punish someone for. What can be fairer?

It isn't fair if people have no control over their intentions, which they don't if they don't have free will.

[UnFleshedOne]

An entity making bad decisions because its whole history and current environment made it that way (no free will) and an entity making identical decisions because it has an out-of-universe-outside-of-physics control unit that merely takes history and current environment into consideration (free will) while making those decisions -- are identical when viewed as a black box from outside.

In fact if you start asking questions on what makes the out-of-universe control unit lean this way or that, you can arrive at it either having that inherent property (it just choses right more often than left) or it is a result of some outside influence. And we are at the square one again.

It's p-zombies all the way down.

From society perspective the goal is to minimize or encourage certain behaviors. The only lever available in either scenario is to change the history (by reducing harmful events in general for example) and current environment (by promising punishment or reward and affecting risk assessment for example).

Whether you have a free will or not, the only way to influence your decisions is by affecting your history and current environment. Assigning blame and holding people responsible is a lever that works the same. Doesn't mean you can't look at exactly how effective it is comparing to other methods though.