Kaelik wrote:Thus, in an entirely deterministic universe, laws against murder make murder less common than the same universe without those laws.
In an entirely deterministic universe,
no other universe is possible. Really. If everything follows from the original inputs (be that the Big Bang or God's creation of the universe or whatever), then
there can never be any possibility of something happening other than what happened. To talk about
different entirely deterministic universes is like talking about a universe where 2 + 2 = 5. In order for two universes to be both different from each other and entirely deterministic, you have to either change the very beginning (big bang/god/whatever) or change the laws of physics. If our universe is entirely deterministic, then to talk about the past as if it could have been different (ie "if there were no laws against murder") is meaningless.
Quantumboost wrote:It also has nothing to do with the discussion whether an omnipotent, omniscient creator being is still fully responsible for your choice, because morality as we understand it is part of the system.
Well, seeing as we can't even agree what "morality" or "free will" means, I have no idea what you actually mean by this statement.
Quantumboost wrote:Uhm. No. That's wholly an artifact of how you're using "morality", and not of how anyone has ever reasonably used morality. All the worthwhile (I'm using this in a definitional sense) moral systems do not care whether there's predestination (a term which I'll be using, rather than using free will, since you're hopelessly confused about the latter).
That's just begging the question. "Proper moral systems don't care about predestination because any moral system that does care about predestination isn't a proper system."
Quantumboost wrote:Utilitarianism depends on your actions and their consequences.
And yet it still doesn't judge you over things you have no control over. Utilitarianism doesn't care about
intent, but it does care about
responsibility. If we are predetermined, we have no control over our actions (we can't do anything other than what we are predetermined to do). If we have no control over an action, then we are not responsible for it. Thus, if our actions are predetermined, utilitarianism cannot judge them.
Quantumboost wrote:Kantian philosophy depends on your intent
And yet it still doesn't judge you over things you have no control over. Kantian philosophy doesn't care about
results, but it does care about
responsibility. If we are predetermined, we have no control over our actions (we can't do anything other than what we are predetermined to do). If we have no control over an action, then we are not responsible for it. Thus, if our actions are predetermined, Kantian philosophy cannot judge them.
Quantumboost wrote:(which can be derived from looking at your neurons closely enough).
Whether you can determine thoughts from the physical state of your brain is an open question. While it's certainly true that the physical state of your brain affects your thoughts, the reverse is also true. For example, releasing serotonin into your brain makes you think happy thoughts, but thinking happy thoughts also releases serotonin into your brain. Serotonin in brain = happy thoughts, but that doesn't imply direct cause and effect. Yes, I realize that this example is oversimplified to the point of inaccuracy. I'm using it to illustrate a point, not teach neuroscience.
Quantumboost wrote:Both of these are part of the physical universe and don't care about predestination.
Except for the fact that neither system holds you responsible for things you have no control over, and in a predetermined universe, you have no control over your actions.
Quantumboost wrote:The same goes for any moral system where we, as humans, in time, can feasibly assess the morality of an action, within some bounds, at some present or future point in time.
What? One of the criticisms of utilitarianism is that you
can't feasibly assess the morality of an action. Killing a child would seem to cause more harm than good, but if that child was Adolf Hilter or Joseph Stalin, it would actually cause more good than harm. Of course, we couldn't
know that, but that doesn't change the facts. Kantian philosophy has similar issues; we can never really
know someone's intent, so we can't feasibly assess the morality of their actions. Neither moral system you use as an example fits the definition of moral systems you like.
Quantumboost wrote:Predestination does not preclude humans from being moral agents unless you're specifically taking an out-of-universe (and out-of-time) perspective, which is utterly worthless for anybody.
I completely and utterly fail to see the leap of logic that leads you to this statement. Utilitarianism condemns those who are responsible for causing harm (regardless of whether they intended to or not). Kantian ethics condemn those who choose to cause harm (whether they successfully accomplish that goal or not). But in a predetermined universe, you're not responsible for your own actions (you couldn't have done otherwise), and you cannot make any choices (there's never any alternative for you to choose).
Quantumboost wrote:I didn't call the Matrix comparison meaningless, or if I did that was a communication failure on my part. I meant to call the distinction between predestination and no predestination meaningless. Which it is.
How so? In a predetermined universe, we have no free will, we cannot choose our actions, and we are no responsible for the things that we do. The fact that we can't
tell whether our universe is predetermined or not doesn't change the fact that there's a huge difference between a predetermined universe and a free universe.
Quantumboost wrote:And as I've repeatedly been saying, choice doesn't fucking depend on whether future events are predestined. Choice is the ability to make a decision. It's a function of high-complexity systems. Stop conflating choice with non-predetermination.
Choice is, in short,
the ability to do otherwise. In a predetermined universe, you can never do otherwise. You have no choice. You will always do what you were predetermined to do. In a free universe, you could do otherwise. I could decide to drink Pepsi, or I could decide to drink Coke. My will determines which brand of soda I drink, not the mechanical interactions of the material universe.
Selecting a particular action based on a set of input values and a set of rules is not "choice" in the sense of free will. Your laptop can take a set of rules (a program) and some variables (inputs) and come up with an action from them, but that's not a choice because it couldn't have done otherwise. With the same program and the same inputs, the laptop will produce the same action every time. It has no free will. In a predetermined universe, you can take a set of rules (the laws of physics) and some variables (the situation as it relates to whatever you're considering -- which can be the big bang and the entire universe, if you want to go that far), and you will get a result from that. In a deterministic universe, the result from a given situation will be the same every time. You cannot do anything other than what you are predetermined to do.
Now, there's nothing wrong with believing that this is true. You can believe that the universe is predetermined and free will is an illusion and we're all just meat machines with consciousness as a strange byproduct of the electrochemical interactions of our brains. But
if you believe that, then you
cannot assign moral value to the actions of people, because they are not responsible for their own actions. What they do is merely the interactions of subatomic particles whizzing through the universe that happen to have interesting macro-level effects. A person deciding to give money to charity is no different than a planet revolving around a star -- they're both simply expressions of the laws of physics and the situation that that particular collection of matter and energy finds itself in. There's nothing "good" or "evil" about such interactions -- it simply
is.
