https://www.reddit.com/r/freewill/comments/1f04r6m/desert/
created by diogenesthehopeful on 24/08/2024 at 13:02 UTC*
2 upvotes, 7 top-level comments (showing 7)
A lot of posters deny moral responsibility but is this just as much about morality as it is responsibility? The so called disappearing agent could kill both possibilities if the agent doesn't even exist. Do you reject moral responsibility because you reject:
Edit: Now that this poll has been open for a few days, I see the hard determinists & the hard incompatibilists are severely under represented here. In another scenario the hard determinists and the hard incompatibilists would be heavily represented and the LFW would likely be overwhelmed, unless the sentiment of the sub is shifting for some reason. Only 7 hard determinists/hard incompatibilists weighed in and only 4 HDs
Comment by Training-Promotion71 at 24/08/2024 at 16:11 UTC
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Deserts are pretty much obvious normative facts. They involve persons P, some relation R and some fact about P symbolized as Q. It is not clear why would desert be questioned at all, generally speaking. So imagine having P and some fact about P which is: P is a serial killer. If you remove R which stands for some general mode of action towards P in virtue of Q, you get spectatorship. In other words, if you take no action towards P for the Q, you are sending the message that crime commited by P is acceptible, specifically, you are allowing murder. But deserts can be generally applied to the whole range of things in the domain of human affairs.
Take corporations. They are immortal persons, which have much greater rights than living persons, and which they aquired by judicial activity instead of legislation. I personally take them to be one of the greatest evils of the modern world, and I do have nuanced view about the topic. In europe, one of the evils is bureocracy comming from Brusselles, which decides about everything. America has much greater political freedoms, in the sense that people potentially, if they decide, can make political moves which will affect social structure in line with their goals. In Europe, you can forget about that. Nevertheless, there's PR industry, there are conglomerates who possess all those tools for moulding public opinion, dictating and setting up allowed space of discourse, typically instilling it with class wars type of backdrop, which will always end up making the real masters happy.
Now, corporations are illegitimate institutions which are hierarchically structured and unaccountable, typically dehumanizing people in all sorts of ways, so they can be seen as the greatest attack on human freedom in last century or so.
If corporation is an unnacountable closed system, which is violating human rights, using various states for collonization and expansion over the all possible places where they can set up their money-making schema, buying off resources that should be mutually possessed by native people, destroying nature, and potentially destroying the conditions for life, and I mean, organized life, then corporations and potentially even states which are playing their game, should be not only questioned, but immediatelly dismantled and prohibited, and in the case of states, restructured and put back into the hands of people, where they belong. I think people are generally aware of these inhuman activities perpetrated by given control systems, and systematic transformation of people into consumers which are intellectually and practically beaten down by propaganda(you cannot use direct force against people? Beat them down in indirect fashion).
They suceeded, no question about that. People are more concerned with what some celebrity ate for dinner, which football team won the championship, then what's in their immediate surround, and generally, what kind of life they live and what kind of world will be passed to future generations, if the world will even be in the state for sustaining life. Normative questions should target much greater range of affairs than "allowed". We need a global revolution, that's my take. Having no concept of desert? Seems like that one is crucial and people who act like they don't underatand basic conceotions of what we are, are pretending that they are conceptually impoverished, which means that they are beaten down with a people stick.
Comment by Ninja_Finga_9 at 25/08/2024 at 19:08 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
We can personally assume responsibility, but it is not morally justified to assign responsibility without consent. Consent is important to all of us subjectively, even if it is caused or manufactured.
Comment by Medical_Flower2568 at 27/08/2024 at 05:35 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Morality is a system of norms created in order to ensure peaceful resolutions to conflicts and to reduce conflict.
Morality therefore has an objectively correct solution to any situation and does not require free will.
Comment by [deleted] at 24/08/2024 at 15:46 UTC
1 upvotes, 2 direct replies
What do you mean by moral responsibility? Because not everyone agrees with your subjective definition, it means different things to different people. People who commit evil use moral responsibility as a justification to commit evil because they see it differently. Just take a look at any of the events going on like Israel-Palestine or any geopolitical issue. Nazis justified their actions using moral responsibility to uphold their tribe. If everyone had the same idea of moral responsibility, crime, genocide, or wars wouldn’t exist.
Comment by LokiJesus at 24/08/2024 at 19:17 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Rejecting moral desserts in a deterministic view rejects not just morality and responsibility (guilt) but also innocence as well. It is not true that everyone is innocent any more than it is true that everyone is responsible. Everyone is INVOLVED in everything in a fully causally connected cosmos.
Comment by mildmys at 24/08/2024 at 13:58 UTC
0 upvotes, 3 direct replies
You are an exact product of your circumstances, it's not fair to attribute your actions to you being 'good' or 'evil' when we know your actions are results of your formative years(your entire life is formative years)
I don't blame clay for being the shape it is moulded into.
I don't blame humans for having the traumas, childhood, genes etc that they have.
Comment by spgrk at 25/08/2024 at 10:31 UTC
0 upvotes, 1 direct replies
It is possible to accept the concept of moral responsibility but reject the concept of just deserts, which cannot be justified under any theory of free will, least of all libertarian free will. It is also possible to accept the concept of moral responsibility but deny that the moral that an agent is responsible for transgressing is valid, or deny that morals are anything more than social constructs.