[vidarh]

People get emotional about free will because if you come to believe there is no free will it makes you question a lot of things that are emotionally difficult.

E.g. punishment for the sake of retribution is near impossible to morally justify if you don't believe in free will because it means you're punishing someone for something the had no agency over.

Similarly, wealth disparities can't be excused by someone choosing to work harder, because they had no agency in the "decision".

You can still justify some degree of punishment and reward, but a lack of free will changes which justifications are reasonable very substantially.

E.g. punishment might still be justified from the point of view of reducing offending and reoffending rates, but if that is the goal then it is only justified to the extent that it actually achieves those goals, and that has emotionally difficult consequences. For example, for non-premeditated murders carried out out of passion rather than e.g. gang crimes, the odds of someone carrying out another is extremely low and the odds that the fear of a long prison sentence is an actual deterrence is generally low, and and so long prison terms are hard to justify once vengeance is off the table.

And so holding on to a belief in free will is easier to a lot of people than the alternative.

My experience is that there are few issues where people so easily get angry than if you suggest we don't have free will once they start thinking through the consequences (and some imagined ones...).

[WA]

If there is no free will, thoughts about free will are predetermined and so is punishment. The punishers don’t have agency either. You seem to say that punishers do have free will, but criminals don’t?

[vidarh]

I didn't say anything about whether free will exists or not, actually. The comment was specifically worded to explain why some people react to coming to believe there is no free will.

But, sure, I personally do not believe in free will. I'm saying there is no rational basis for thinking anyone has free will ever. I'm saying there is no evidence to suggest free will is possible. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that believing in free will is a religious belief with no support.

But that doesn't mean that events does not have effects on what happens next, just that we don't have agency. That an IF ... THEN ... ELSE ... statement is purely deterministic for deterministic inputs does not mean that changing the inputs won't affect the outputs.

If you "choose" to lay down and do nothing because you decide nothing matters because you don't have free will, you will still lose your job and starve. That it wasn't a "true" "free" choice does not change the fact that it has consequences.

One of the consequences of coming to accept that free will is an illusion is that you need to come to terms with what that means for your beliefs about a wide range of things.

Including that vengeance which might seem moral to some extent if the person who did something to you or others had agency suddenly become immoral. But we still have the feelings and impulses. Reconciling that is hard for a lot of people, and so a lot of people in my experience when faced with a claim like the one I made above that we have no free will tend to react emotionally to the idea of the consequences of it.

[dmbche]

Are there deterministic solutions to the three body problem? Or the double pendulum? Or can you tell the t° at any point on earth for say, a millisecond in, say, 6h (feel free to chose a prefered point and time)? And what precision could you realistically produce in that?

If there are non deterministic processes that can be proven to exist, and those interact with deterministic processes, doesn't it follow that the deterministic process becomes non deterministic (since the result of the interaction is necessarily non deterministic), and that it is not continually deterministic.

So - can you see how nothing can be deterministic other than in isolation (or thought experiment really)?

Edit0: typo

[Retric]

There are deterministic solutions to the three body problem or the double pendulum in Newtonian mechanics.

We can’t measure things to arbitrary precision due to quantum mechanics, but Philosophy isn’t bound by the actual physical universe we inhabit. Arbitrary physical models allow for the possibility of infinite precision in measurement and calculation resulting in perfect prediction of future states forever. Alternatively, you could have a universe of finite precision (think Minecraft) which also allows for perfect calculation of all future states from initial starting conditions.

[dmbche]

I agree, and indeed there are solutions to chaotic systems - the problem being precision as you mentionned. To me the precision problem it is important : it reframes the "mechanical universe" as being way out of our grasp not because of our understanding but because of it's structure. You got me!

Not certain that philosophy is not bound by our universe - is that something you could elaborate (or lend a link) on?

To apply these hypotheticals to our universe implies (from my understanding) that the density of information present at any and all times since it's inception was present (while compressed) at it's creation/whatever - which I imagine I can find some proof of theoretical maximum information density and information compression compare that to the first state of the universe we can measure to have a better idea if it tracks.

[Retric]

> Not certain that philosophy is not bound by our universe - is that something you could elaborate (or lend a link) on?

I simply mean it’s happy to assume perfect information, perfect clones, etc. The trolly problem generally ignores the possibility that choosing a different track could with some probability result in derailment because the inherent question is simplified by design. We don’t need for the possibility of perfect cloning to exist to consider the ramifications of such etc.

[Retric]

That’s more effective as an argument to get rid of the most extreme forms of punishment (eg drawn and quartered) not all forms of retribution.

In a world without free will crimes of passion are simply the result of the situation which means that person would always chose murder in that situation. People who would respond with murder in an unacceptably wide range of situations is an edge case worth consideration without free will. Alternatively if we want nobody to respond with murder in a crime of passion situation evolutionary pressure could eventually work even without free will.

> E.g. punishment might still be justified from the point of view of reducing offending and reoffending rates, but if that is the goal then it is only justified to the extent that it actually achieves those goals, and that has emotionally difficult consequences. For example, for non-premeditated murders carried out out of passion rather than e.g. gang crimes, the odds of someone carrying out another is extremely low and the odds that the fear of a long prison sentence is an actual deterrence is generally low, and and so long prison terms are hard to justify once vengeance is off the table.

That’s assuming absolute certainty about what happened. Punishments may make sense as a logical argument even if it’s only useful in a subset of cases if you can’t be absolutely sure which case something happened to be.

Uncertainty does a lot to align emotional heuristics and logical actions.

[zzo38computer]

Whether or not you have free will is not relevant, as I had described in other comments.

> In a world without free will crimes of passion are simply the result of the situation which means that person would always chose murder in that situation. People who would respond with murder in an unacceptably wide range of situations is an edge case worth consideration without free will.

This is a significant argument. However, there is also worth considering if that is actually accurate, and if such a situation will occur (in a case where whoever would be killed would not effectively protect themself from this).

> That’s assuming absolute certainty about what happened. Punishments may make sense as a logical argument even if it’s only useful in a subset of cases if you can’t be absolutely sure which case something happened to be.

It is true that you do not have absolute certainty, but neither should you arrest someone who is not guilty.

> Uncertainty does a lot to align emotional heuristics and logical actions.

In some cases, yes, but it is not always valid. But, even if it is, this does not mean that you should not consider it logically if you are able to do so.

[zzo38computer]

I think that whether or not you have free will is not so important when making these considerations.

Whether or not you have a choice and free will, you can influence and be influenced by other stuff, since that is how anything is doing.

> punishment might still be justified from the point of view of reducing offending and reoffending rates, but if that is the goal then it is only justified to the extent that it actually achieves those goals

I do agree with that, and I think that whether or not you have free will is not significant. Being emotionally difficult is not what makes it good or bad in this case (and it also does not seem to be so emotionally difficult to me, anyways). Reducing reoffending rates is what is important.

(Another issue is knowing if they are actually guilty (you shouldn't arrest people who are not actually guilty of murder); this is not always certain, either.)

I also think that it should mean that prisoners should not be treated badly and that prison sentences should not be too long. (Also, they shouldn't take up too much space by the prisons, since they should have free space for natural lands and for other buildings and purposes, but that is not quite the same issue, though.)

However, there may be cases where a fine might be appropriate, in order to pay for damages (although if someone else is willing to forgive them then such a fine may not be required). This does not justify a prison sentence or stuff like that, though.

Also, some people will just not like them anymore if they are accused of murder, even if they are not put in prison and not fined. This is not the issue for police and legal things; it is just what it will be. And, if it becomes known, people who disagree with the risk assessment can try to avoid someone.

And, if someone does commit a crime again and may have opportunity to do again in future, then this can be considered as being wrong the first time and this time hopefully you can know better.

[aleph_minus_one]

I don't find the consequences very hard to bear:

For example

> E.g. punishment for the sake of retribution is near impossible to morally justify if you don't believe in free will because it means you're punishing someone for something the had no agency over.

and

> E.g. punishment might still be justified from the point of view of reducing offending and reoffending rates, but if that is the goal then it is only justified to the extent that it actually achieves those goals

are simply logical to me (even without assuming any lack of free will).

So what is emotionally difficult about this, as you claim?

[zzo38computer]

I agree; they seem logical to me too, whether or not you have free will.

However, it would seem that not everyone believes that, though.

(It is not quite as simple as it might seem, because the situation is not necessarily always that clear, but other than that, I would agree that it is logical and reasonable, that punishment is only justified from the point of view of reducing offending and reoffending rates and only if it actually achieves those goals.)

[vidarh]

Then you're highly unusual (in a good way). Look at the amount of comments on social media with outcries over "too short" sentences for example, and the lack of political support for shortening sentences or improving prison standards.

I'm saying it's emotionally difficult to people because I've had this discussion many times over then last 30+ years and I've seen first hand how most people I have this conversation with tend to get angry and agitated over the prospect of not having moral cover for vengeance.

[aleph_minus_one]

> Then you're highly unusual (in a good way). Look at the amount of comments on social media with outcries over "too short" sentences for example, and the lack of political support for shortening sentences or improving prison standards.

I live in Germany.

When I observe the whole societal and political situation in the USA from the outside, it seems to me that it is rather "two blocks where in each of these there is somewhat an internal consensus regarding a quite some political positions. On the other hand, each of these two blocks is actively fighting the other one."

On the other hand, for Germany, I would claim that the opinions in society rather consist of "lots of very diverse stances (though in contrary to the USA less pronounced on the extreme ends) on a lot of topics that make it hard to reach a larger set of followers or some consensus in a larger group, i.e. in-fighting about all kinds of topics without these positions forming political camps (and the fractions for different opinions can easily change when the topic changes)."

Thus, in the given example, this means for a person out-crying "too short" sentences on social media, you will very likely find one who is out-crying the opposite position.

[mensetmanusman]

“ E.g. punishment for the sake of retribution is near impossible to morally justify if you don't believe in free will because it means you're punishing someone for something the had no agency over.”

False, the punisher also has no will, so it doesn’t matter.