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by ewzimm
2244 days ago
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I appreciate what you're saying, but I think you might be mixing modalities. Considering that free will may be a pleasant deception doesn't necessarily lead to blaming externalities instead of changing a bad situation. The concept of blame as it is usually expressed depends on the belief in free will. The person whose free choices led to an outcome bears the greatest responsibility. Assigning blame to others is therefore accomplished by proving that the self didn't possess this freedom. When no choice exists, responsibility reverts to environmental circumstances. The condition you're describing can only be coherent if a person believes they lack personal agency but that the framework of free will and the primary responsibility of those who have a choice remains in place. This is a real condition that many people suffer from, and many will disguise it as giving in to inevitable causes and effects, but the problem is not that they lack faith in free will, but that they have assigned freedom elsewhere. If a person accepts the idea that free will is unattainable, the conventional concept of blame becomes incomprehensible. Every dependent choice is related to every other choice. There is no hierarchy of blame that defaults to the environment. A person can either accept no responsibility or all responsibility. Accepting all responsibility will appear impossible to a person holding on to the idea of free will, but to someone who fully abandons it and considers that they are part of a larger whole, personal responsibility for every outcome becomes a natural consequence. |
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I don't see how this works. The biggest reason is that if everyone is personally responsible then noone is responsible; this is pretty well established in psychology, with diffusion of responsibility.