/lit/ - Literature

>>21552265
it's deranged

>>21552265
logic's never been his strong suit
come to think of it i don't think he has a strong suit
he needs a new tailor

>>21552265
He's a neuroscientist trying to talk about philosophy. That sums it up.

>>21552277
He's not actually a neuroscientist. He is a fraud.

Not up on Harris in particular, but I hope you don't generally mean that God is necessary for good behavior.
If God is the only reason you don't rape and steal, you are simply a low quality human.

159. The relationship between necessity and desire mirrors that between determinism and free will. The best move (and indeed EVERY move) is necessary when regarded at the level of the universe, but from the perspective of the individual who'll perform it (and from those of all his allies and adversaries who are going to feel its effects) it's not necessary at all, but merely what he has chosen and wants to do.

http://orgyofthewill.net

Just because you didn't choose to be shit doesn't mean you're somehow not shit

even if something "will" be, that doesn't make you not-a-criminal or not-a-bad-person. anyone who thinks determinism justifies their bad choices is a retard who should be removed from the gene pool.

>>21552277
>He's a neuroscientist
no

>>21552289
>If God is the only reason you don't rape and steal
Don't be ridiculous, anon.
I don't rape or steal because it is wrong.
God is the reason that they are wrong, though.

>>21552289
>you are simply a low quality human.
According to whom? God doesn't exist, so there is no such thing as a low quality or high quality human. There are only humans doing what humans do.

>>21552301
So my post applies to you.

>>21552289
Based retard cannot comprehend what OP is talking about.
>>21552293
>>21552295
Also retards.

Here is the dilemma: if you have no free will, you cannot (in conventional moral belief systems) be morally culpable for your actions, since you cannot have done otherwise. This is why severely mentally ill people are not considered morally responsible for their crimes. You might be bad 'evaluatively' -- "he's a bad person" -- but if you had no choice, you wouldn't have incurred moral desert for your action. You wouldn't "deserve" to be punished, in the moral sense.

>>21552305
Indeed. Rape away.

>>21552265
Just think of him as a Kantian who finds it very difficult to articulate himself and you'll basically be able to understand what Harris means.

>>21552309
>Based retard
I literally said I'm not up on Harris lmao.

>>21552317
but your post was completely irrelevant to OP's

>>21552309
>Here is the dilemma: if you have no free will, you cannot (in conventional moral belief systems) be morally culpable for your actions, since you cannot have done otherwise. This is why severely mentally ill people are not considered morally responsible for their crimes. You might be bad 'evaluatively' -- "he's a bad person" -- but if you had no choice, you wouldn't have incurred moral desert for your action. You wouldn't "deserve" to be punished, in the moral sense.
This dilemma was already refuted by Plato in the Laws. Corporal punishment is still fully justifiable even if all actions are involuntary.

>>21552320
Was it though?
I took at stab at divining OP's more general beliefs from his post, and judging by the responses I got, it seemed a reasonable guess.

>>21552323
Justifiable in purely utilitarian terms (i.e. to train, act as deterrent, etc.)? or in a way that can be reconciled with our conventional moral beliefs that we only punish those who deserve it

>>21552301
>>21552305

>>14504480

>>21552309
The real reason is that 99% of people are too uncomfortable with the actual implications of this conversation to want to have it, they are only interested in the entire discussion of free will insofar as it can be used to support whatever other nonsense they believe.

>>21552301
>>21552305

>>>/his/14504480

>>21552309
what does "culpable" even mean if we have no free will? you don't consider determinism at the level of deciding guilt because it has nothing to do with whether or not someone is a criminal or whatever you fucking dipshit.

>>21552337
what? the point would be that we would not be able to maintain traditional beliefs about moral responsibility if we assented to the proposition that people had no control over their actions.

>>21552265
I don't see the problem here. Lacking free will doesn't mean choices don't exist. It simply states that choice was determined by factors outside of an ethereal soul within the mind (your thoughts, biases, mood, etc). So yes, you (the human making choices) are responsible for choices you made.

>>21552329
Both. Those who reject the idea that there is objective good and refuse to be trained or educated on these grounds are those who deserve to be punished in the conventional sense, because they consciously and intellectually choose to reject the possibility of goodness. All other criminal classes are punished and threatened on terms conducive to their education (what you've incorrectly called utilitarian), because they are merely ignorant, but not willfully ignorant. The first class of criminal is simply being given what they themselves have argued for, so in a sense they are choosing their own punishment and woes even though, in the way modern physicalists argue, they may not be "free" (with respect to efficient causation). So they manifestly deserve their punishment according to their own assertions, thus according to their own nature, regardless of whether the will is free or not.

>>21552265
I'm not sure what he means by "still responsible for their actions." What is responsibility in a Godless world? If you changed that to "be held accountable (or rewarded/punished) for their actions, then it is all very logical

>>21552343
This conclusion seems to be the result of being deceived by language. There are several senses of the word responsibility. One of them is purely causal. "The storm was responsible for most of the damage." In that example we are not saying the storm is morally responsible for damaging city property. And we might use the word in the same sense when we say, objectively, "Dahmer was responsible the deaths of x number of people." The being called Dahmer was the proximate cause of those deaths. But when we say "Mr. Dahmer is responsible for his actions" we are asserting that we think Mr. Dahmer could have behaved differently. He is guilty. He did something wrong when he could have chosen not to. This is why we say, of an insane person or an animal, "he is not responsible for his actions", even though he is *causally* responsible. but he is not "responsible" in a sense that aligns with our intuitions about what moral responsibility entails.

>>21552305
>>21552355
Why do people get hung up on this weird tack?
Find even one atheist who isn't a criminal, and the argument now becomes- clearly the fear of God is not what motivates this guy's actions, so what is?

>>21552359
All of them are causal. You are confusing types of causes, namely, in this case, passive and active causes. Any cause that is determined by something outside of itself is passive and therefore only a cause in the passive sense. But there are beings in the world, and not only human beings, that are capable of actively transforming and even entirely negating external causes, thereby making them eminently active and capable of being uninfluenced (to varying degrees) by external sources. In aetiology, this is generally known as a "mask", which is a poor term for the phenomenon and does not fully illustrate it, but it would be worth investigating instead of playing the lowbrow "language games" card.

>>21552289
It's impossible to reason with people below 95 IQ. Only violence and force can change their behavior.

>>21552289
assuming god doesn't exist, why are rape and theft bad?

>>21552362
>so what is?
Fear of the police, social consequences, etc. These are not CAUSES of moral correctness though, they just enforce moral goodness (generally speaking, not always). God however is the eminent cause of moral correctness, and therefore accepting God as the source of all moral goodness is not the same at all as simply obeying the police. They are two entirely different causes. God is in a way coextensive with the Good, so understanding God as the source of the Good is completely different to just obeying more or less arbitrary laws laid down by a legal system.

>>21552362
>so what is?
fear of worldly punishment, usually internalized

>>21552295
That is the literal logical conclusion to determinism though. Since you have no choice you also have no responsibility for your actions, since they were going to happen anyway. Determinism is fucking retarded and there's a reason the Ancients never bothered to address it.

>>21552389
I see you there foucault, explain biopilitics to me right fucking now.

>>21552388
My friend, if God was somehow proven to not exist tommorow, you would not become a rape machine.
SIMILARLY, If the state was abolished tommorow, you would not become a rape machine.

>>21552389
I can agree to that. See above as well, though.

>>21552309
Nah you're the retard. It's a non sequitur.
It does not follow that because you "cannot have done otherwise" therefore you are "not culpable". This confusion probably comes from the Western understanding of retribution in legalistic terms. The Eastern karmic understanding reveals the lack of understanding people like you express.
Do bad thing get bad result, the result follows from the action and is deserved, not from whether or not there is a real agent that "chooses" which is only consequential in a human court of law.
Its only a problem if you make the Judeo-Christian assumptions morality that you have. No need to tie yourself to the West's view on morality.

>>21552378
>there are beings in the world, and not only human beings, that are capable of actively transforming and even entirely negating external causes, thereby making them eminently active and capable of being uninfluenced (to varying degrees) by external sources
The distinction between 'internal' and 'external' causes is apparent, rather than real, unless something like a soul or essence exists. Otherwise human 'self-movement' is identical, noumenally, to the 'self-movement' of elements and organic and mechanical systems. Is reactive and generative, pushing and pulling, but never causally independent.
>>21552392
>Determinism is fucking retarded and there's a reason the Ancients never bothered to address it.
Yes they did. This entire discussion is just going over problems brought up 2,000 years ago. Their worldview was much more fatalistic than ours.

This is a conversation between an American guy and a British guy. Both have read Borges, but only the American has read Pynchon and Barthelme. I thought Pynchon was popular in other English speaking countries. Do Europeans even read American postmodernists? Or do they mostly read their own contemporary writers?

>>21552405
Your point isn't entirely without merit, but the existence of the problem itself can't be attributed to a "western worldview", considering the ancient Indian Ajivika school of thought considered the non-existence of karma to be directly tied to the impossibility of free will and moral responsibility.

>>21552343
Oh I see then by changing my thoughts, biases, mood I can affect my choices. So I do have free will then.

>>21552396
>My friend, if God was somehow proven to not exist tommorow, you would not become a rape machine.
If God didn't exist, nothing would exist. I don't think you understand what is being argued, mainly because you did not even respond to my argument.

>>21552347
dumb christcuck

>>21552396
>If the state was abolished tommorow, you would not become a rape machine.
other "authorities" would arise almost immediately to stamp out my lanklet rape regime. if i didn't believe in god i still think i'd pick up a 14 year old while i could.

>>21552433
You cannot prove that God exists though. Especially, you cannot specially prove the God of The Bible.

>>21552440
Luckily, someone on a board with an "Adam Lanza was right" thread is not representative of the average person.

>>21552452
people are malleable, as before the average person has internalized their fear of punishment. this can go away in as little as a generation. honestly i'm not convinced god is even against rape of 14 year olds as long as you do right by them afterwards.

>>21552458
>i'm not convinced god is even against rape of 14 year olds
We're done here.

>>21552467

Everyday I thank science I am not Sam Harris.

>>21552468
>image post 13 seconds later
You'd certainly have no trouble catching those quick little teenagers I'll give ya that son

>>21552407
>The distinction between 'internal' and 'external' causes is apparent, rather than real,
No, even if a soul as such doesn't exist, the distinction is still real. This is because it applies even in the case of so-called non-ensouled beings, which is why I specifically made the point that this idea does not apply solely to human beings, and why I brought up the aetiological example of a "mask" (which need not have an essence). On the other hand, it is quite clear that essences do exist according to the traditional definition, in that there are beings which are self-oriented and which form aggregates of otherwise extraneous and inert matter into organic wholes which are linked by a single principle. But this is again extraneous to the distinction as such between activity and passivity. This distinction is still applicable even in physics where there are no such things (at least explicitly) as essences (ignoring the fact of course that physicists regularly work with essences in the form of "atoms", and other qualitative variables which are not reducible to quantitative or purely efficient notions).
>Otherwise human 'self-movement' is identical, noumenally, to the 'self-movement' of elements and organic and mechanical systems.
I just told you that human, biological, and some inorganic self-movement is identical, in terms of the distinction between activity and passivity. The critical distinction between humans and other organisms and world-systems is not one of activity and passivity, however. You have for some reason assumed I was defining the soul of a human being with this distinction, when I expressly stated I was not doing this. In other words, your reading comprehension is lacking.

>>21552435
Great argument, and I'm not even a Christian.
>>21552446
It's already been proven more than rigorously enough. If you are still ignorant in this day and age, with previously unheard of access to learning material and information, the fault lay on you for still remaining ignorant.

>>21552425
Yeah of course it's just loose generalizations. Many points of view in Indian thought prefigure later Western developments, the use of the words Western and Eastern is meant to describe general mentalities, not all encompassing definitions. Your point is extremely pedantic.

>>21552478
>It's already been proven more than rigorously enough.
I accept your concession.

>>21552362
The difference between the Christian and the atheist is that the former is good because it is good, and worships God because it is good to hold him sacred, the latter because they fear worldly punishment.

>>21552499
The God of The Bible has not been proven to exist.

>>21552503
Christ is logically necessary

>>21552503
Neither has determinism.

>>21552506
nah

>>21552510
>Neither has
At least somebody admits it.

>>21552503
So what? Abrahamic God might not be real, but there is still a logical creator that must exist in some form or another. Something cannot be created by nothing.

>>21552407
>Yes they did.
Can you provide some source material as to where? The only thing I can recall is Democritus introducing atomic swerve to explain human freedom. The problem of future contingents was more to do with chance than determinism vs. freedom.

>>21552540
>Abrahamic God might not be real
As long as we've established this then we gucci honestly.
>but there is still a logical creator that must exist in some form or another. Something cannot be created by nothing.
I personally remain unconvinced of this, but the arguments for it are at least interesting.

>>21552556
What makes you unconvinced? To me it seems obvious that there is some creator/divinity/god/whatever that created everything, though it may not necessarily be the Abrahamic God.

>program a robot to be evil
>it has no choice, it never decided to be evil, it could never be anything but
>it does evil things
>capture the robot
>punish it with various mechanical forms of suffering
>this is just
This is what the posters ITT actually believe…

>>21552579
>What makes you unconvinced?
The fact that I've had and seen plenty of debates both here and elsewhere and didn't find them convincing.

If you want what sure is to be a bump limit-reaching, hours-taking debate into the specifics of that, then you may accept my concession, because I'm not in the mood for that.

>>21552579
>>21552601
Is sure*

>>21552587
The only punishment required would be the immediate execution of the robot. It's not very difficult to comprehend at all.

>>21552265
I don't know what his exact position is but I generally agree we can't let bad apples do what they want. So yes, they're still responsible, free-will or not. It has to be that way, doesn't it?

>>21552601
Well, I was more interested in what specifically lead you to that belief, but I guess we can leave it there.

>>21552430
>by changing my thoughts, biases, mood
good luck sweety

>>21552289
The most fundamental good and most important morally good thing is faith in God, if you dont have faith every supposed good deed even if its more than bad deeds wont save you from eternal damnation. All your good actions should be in service of God. Without faith in God they lose all meaning. The issue is not that "good people" cant exist without faith in God, the problem has always been the fact that the skepticism used to deny belief in God is not applied to conventional morality by atheists, which makes them come across as hypocritical. The entire thing doesnt feel like search of truth but rather wish fulfillment, pick and chose ideas from the conventional moral frameworks and thats how we ended up here. Ofc we do avoid certain bad stuff despite disbelief in God, because we have been indoctrinated with those morals.

>>21552770
>The issue is not that "good people" cant exist without faith in God, the problem has always been the fact that the skepticism used to deny belief in God is not applied to conventional morality by atheists, which makes them come across as hypocritical
This is such bullshit my man.
>if I disregard religion, I MUST be an asshole to my fellow man.
No.

>>21552770
A good deed conducted in "service" of some external agency is thereby robbed of meaning and ceases to be good.