|
> A compatibilist view, to me, is usually immoral, because it seems to maintain the pretence of agency while admitting it's an illusion, and so persist in accepting treating people as if they have agency. Is thermodynamics immoral? You see, there is nothing fundamental about pressure or temperature, they are just statistical averages, they are all in imagination, it is an illusion. But we still pretend that pressure and temperature exist. Or what about biological species? If you look into it, you'll see that there is no clear way to define what species are, all the definitions are imperfect projections of our high-level illusions onto the underlying biology and biochemistry. But we (and biologists also, who much more aware of the issues) still pretend that species exist. Are biologists immoral? Nothing wrong with it. Nothing immoral, it is just a regular mental tool. You see, the question is what does it mean for thing to exist. Some things are easy: like there is a car, we can see it, we can touch it, we can drive it, therefore we agree that the car exists. But some things are not so easy, especially when we talk about immaterial things. But to make things even more interesting, some things seem to exist on some level, and do not exist on other levels. Like life for example. There is no life in an atom of carbon or hydrogen or nitrogen, but the bunch of such atoms connected just right can be alive. And it normally don't make people jumpy. At the some time some people have issues with the idea that free will exists on some levels but not others. > People who at least genuinely believe in free will and agency has an excuse if they e.g. support punishment that is not strictly aimed at minimising harm including to the perpetrator. A compatibilist has no excuse. Yea. I don't believe in free will and agency "genuinely", so I have no excuse. But I believe that any such excuses are borderline immoral. If anyone allows their emotions and animal instincts to take over them and act against the greater good of a society, it is immoral. I mean, if they do it for their own gain, it may be not immoral, there is a tradeoff between interests of a society and interests of an individual, and sometimes we should prefer the former and sometimes the latter. So going against the society interests is not inherently bad. But doing it because of uncontrollable emotions and animal instincts is bad. It still counts as an excuse, but I'm not sure if it is a good thing. I should believe that this is a good thing, because I don't know how to test it experimentally without risking to harm people even more. But still while I can accepts excuses of others, I don't accept such excuses from me. I just don't let myself to let emotions drive without any oversight from me (whatever this "me" is: this is one more interesting question without any good answers). The point is: my "non-genuine" belief in free will make me much more free willed than a genuine belief. If I succumbed to my emotions and didn't control myself for three seconds, I'd see it as my personal failure. In my head I'm in control, not someone or something else. > It is of course possible to hold a compatibilist view and still argue we should restructure society to treat people as if they do not have agency No point in it. It is like arguing "lets forget thermodynamics and resort to pure QM because it is closer to fundamental laws of the Universe". We need the idea of free will, even if it doesn't hold on fundamental level. |