RE: A thing about religious (and other) people and the illusion of free will
November 9, 2023 at 7:35 am
(November 9, 2023 at 5:17 am)FrustratedFool Wrote: If our behaviours are determined then not only is moral responsibility/morality as most understand it now a redundant conceptAll we were saying is that we still have the anxiety of making decisions, knowing what society considers acceptable behavior. Even if we reject the idea of free will, we still would teach kids what constitutes ethical behavior, expect people to abide by their promises and honor their contracts, etc. Advocates of the no-free-will idea like Sabine Hossenfelder are careful to make a distinction between determinism and fatalism; our choices are part of the process or algorithm or whatever, so we're still obliged to treat decisions like they matter.
And even if we reject the idea of free will, we don't just allow people to murder and rape without consequences. I assume there would be some method of dealing with destructive behavior that doesn't rely on religious moralism, but it would still broadly resemble punishment.
Quote:if we simply build a big enough computer and get enough information about the present we can with 100% accuracy know the entire past and predict the entire future."Simply"? Sounds like sci-fi fantasy to me.
Quote: free from the cause-effect chain of physics.I figure if we're looking at physics to tell us about ethical decision-making, we already know what answers we consider acceptable.