Actually, upon thinking about it, even if you have aseity you are still constrained by the laws of nature - you cannot perform actions that are physically impossible according to the laws of physics. Thus, the conclusion to the aseity argument is not an argument for aseity.

Actually, upon thinking about it, even if you have aseity you are still constrained by the laws of nature - you cannot perform actions that are physically impossible according to the laws of physics. Thus, the conclusion to the aseity argument becomes false if it is modified in the way above.

Correction: the aseity argument conclusion changes because "if we have come into existence we do not have free will" becomes: "Therefore, if we have come into existence, and we are the products of our environment and the laws of nature, then we do not have free will."

The conclusion becomes: "Therefore we have not come into existence and and we are not the products of our environment or the laws of nature."

This contradicts your earlier premises that we are the products of our environments and the laws of nature.

I don't believe that you read my entire reply. You make the claim:

I) Therefore, if we have come into existence, we do not have free will. — Bartricks

To support the premise:

1. If we have free will, we exist with aseity. — Bartricks

The "if we have free will, we have aseity" is presumably arrived at by this argument (I'll call it the "aseity argument"):

1. If we have come into existence, we do not have free will.
2. We have free will. (premise (2))
3. Therefore we have not come into existence (we exist with aseity).

This argument only applies if you leave out the constraints to free will you acknowledge in this premise:

F) If we have come into existence, then everything we do is a product of initial character, environment and laws of nature, none of which we are in any way morally responsible for — Bartricks

Furthermore, coming into existence only affects initial character you claim here:

If we have been caused by external events, then we are not morally responsible for our initial character — Bartricks

You add the environmental constraints and the constraints due to the laws of nature and then promptly discard them so as to have a premise that can be used as the basis for the aseity argument:

G)Therefore, if we have come into existence, we are not morally responsible for anything we do — Bartricks

This should be: "Therefore, if we have come into existence, and we are the products of our environment and the laws of nature, then we are not morally responsible for anything we do."

*see correction

Unless you are making a distinction between "caused by external events" and "come into existence", which could be two separate things, but when applied to the beginning of a life I don't see how.

It appears to me you are packing some sort of soft determinism into this conclusion:

Therefore, if we have come into existence, we are not morally responsible for anything we do — Bartricks

The conclusion does not follow because you must specify that external factors such as environment and laws of nature, as you do in an earlier premise, also contribute to a lack of moral responsibility. The conclusion should be: "Therefore, if we have come into existence and our decisions are constrained by both environment and the laws of nature, then we are not morally responsible for anything we do".

It then follows that this conclusion must also be altered:

I) Therefore, if we have come into existence, we do not have free will. — Bartricks

To: "Therefore, if we have come into existence and our decisions are constrained by environment and the laws of nature, we do not have free will." Furthermore, you cannot simply negate "if we have come into existence" to mean "we exist with aseity" if the conclusion in support of

If we have free will, we exist with aseity. — Bartricks

must be altered as above; there are two separate phrases modifying the assertion that we lack free will. If the soft determinism cannot be negated then said doctrine contradicts premise (2) that we have free will, which you use to prove that we have aseity.

But surely there must be a distinction between moral acts and other acts? And if there is a distinction, then you must admit that there is a special quality to moral acts that makes them moral, it seems to me, as moral acts are presumably a subset of non-moral acts.

1. If we have free will, we exist with aseity. — Bartricks

I have an issue with this; one could not be self-originated yet have free will. They just aren't responsible for their coming into existence. They can still be the ultimate source of their own actions without aseity:

You make these claims:

if everything we do is a product of matters for which we are not morally responsible, then we are not morally responsible for anything we do — Bartricks

If we have been caused by external events, then we are not morally responsible for our initial character — Bartricks

Initial character might constrain one's choices insofar as it limits what choices are available to one, but one could still be free to choose between all of the alternatives available to them in an unconditional sense. And a lack of aseity only means that one is not responsible for their initial character, nothing else.

If we have come into existence, then everything we do is a product of initial character, environment and laws of nature, none of which we are in any way morally responsible for — Bartricks

Whether or not one comes into existence (or lacks aseity) has nothing to do with the laws of nature or the environment, but merely initial character, something you do indeed acknowledge here:

A) If we have come into existence, then we have been caused to come into existence by events external to ourselves
B) If we have been caused by external events, then we are not morally responsible for our initial character — Bartricks

It then follows from what I have written above that having free will does not mean one must exist with aseity. Thus, premise (1) is unsupported.

That argument is unsound. Premise 1 is false. If we exist with aseity then we did have power over facts of the past, for there was never a time when we did not exist. — Bartricks

Maybe you did have power over the facts of the past, but you do not have power over the facts of the past in the present, which is what that means.

You appear to be having having an emotional reaction.

That's question begging. There is a vast literature on how best to understand 'could have done otherwise'. There are conditional and unconditional interpretations. The conditional interpretation is compatible with determinism, the unconditional is not. If you just stipulate that you are assuming the truth of the unconditional reading, then you are just stipulating that compatibilism is false, which is question begging. — Bartricks

To this I would say: if one assumes that no one has power over the facts of the future if determinism is true, then determinism needs to be proven false because if it is true it negates even many compatibilist accounts of moral responsibility; no one could have acted differently in any way, and a number of compatibilists do indeed assume that moral responsibility requires different possibilities. And it seems to me even if some compatibilist doesn't, they need to give an account of how people have the power to choose not to bring about things they could have brought about - even if determinism is true. Unless this can be done, the PAP assumes nothing other than that compatibilism is unsound if determinism isn't false.

That's question begging. There is a vast literature on how best to understand 'could have done otherwise'. There are conditional and unconditional interpretations. The conditional interpretation is compatible with determinism, the unconditional is not. If you just stipulate that you are assuming the truth of the unconditional reading, then you are just stipulating that compatibilism is false, which is question begging. — Bartricks

It isn't question begging if the only way people can be held morally responsible is nested in an indeterministic view of free will, which many assert is the case. But I see what you mean.

1. If we have free will, we exist with aseity
2. We have free will
3. Therefore we exist with aseity — Bartricks

It seems to be a circular argument - attempting to prove that we do not come into existence by assuming we have free will, only to claim that because we don't come into existence we have free will.

What is plausible is the claim that if your decisions are 'wholly' the product of external causes, then one is not responsible. — Bartricks

Well, it seems to me that even if someone exists with aseity, and you have not proven that people do indeed exist with aseity without it being contingent on people having free will (you just assumed free will exists), they still have no power over the facts of the future, which includes the external factors that affect their wills. The argument for no one having power over the facts of the future is as follows (taken from the SEP):

1. No one has power over the facts of the past and the laws of nature.
2. No one has power over the fact that the facts of the past and the laws of nature entail every fact of the future (i.e., determinism is true).
3. Therefore, no one has power over the facts of the future.

If you have an issue with me assuming the truth of causal determinism then allow me to quote you:

Unless we exist with aseity everything we do will trace to external causes (a premise I take it you are sympathetic to) — Bartricks

It follows that if no one has power over the facts of the future, which includes one's will, no one has control over any of the factors that affect their decisions and they do not act freely - at least according to how I have defined determinism.

But imagine that we have not come into being but exist with aseity. We know already that some things that exist must have this status, else we will find ourselves having to posit an infinity of prior causes. So, that some things exist with aseity is certain. There is no incoherence, then, in supposing that we ourselves might have that status. — Bartricks

Supposing that we might have the status of aseity because aseity is possible for some things is different from demonstrating that people do not come into existence, and that they thus are the originators for everything they do. Furthermore, even if people did exist with aseity, external factors would still affect their decisions if determinism is true; perhaps you are the source of your actions insofar as the causes of them cannot be traced to the beginning of the universe, but your will is still subject to the laws of cause and effect. Thus, if determinism is true, you are not the ultimate source of your own actions, even if we ascribe aseity to ourselves.

re PAP: it's surely open to both compatibilist and incompatibilist readings. So, although it is highly plausible that free will does involve having alternative possibilities, this leaves open whether the alternatives need to be unconditional or conditional. So I do not think one can get to the incompatibilist conclusion in a non-question begging way by means of PAP. — Bartricks

It isn't plausible; it is how free will is defined according to an indeterminist view. And I say later in the OP that I am referring to free will in the indeterminist sense with PAP.

Sorry for being vulgar, but you are kind of derailing this thread. If you want to discuss moral indignation as a source of pleasure please make a different thread about that.

Except I have not assumed, but have instead proved. With your "if" you can have what you like, in "if'-land. But that's not where you are, is it? — tim wood

Actually it totally is where I am. I want moral responsibility to be a tangible thing. That would make me happy, but I try not to just work backwards to justify the assumptions and conclusions that make me happy. .

If you are referring to my own indignation I think it was justified. Seriously, though? Judgement is about power, not truth? What kind of shitty philosophy is that? Did you just read 1984 for the first time?

Then I suppose most people live a pretty sad existence. Maybe our government should just exert its power and put them out of their misery.

I still don't understand what your argument is; you've barely even addressed the OP directly.

Maybe for an authoritarian regime that murders people for speaking their minds.

How could an ultimate knower not know the outcome of someone's decisions unless free will exists? Even if they change their mind all of that would be known to the ultimate knower, unless they have free will. Your contention that the ultimate knower wouldn't know the outcomes of people's decisions rests on the assumption that they have free will, so to say that the ultimate knower wouldn't have knowledge because people have free will assumes the lack of existence of an ultimate knower. You are assuming that the ultimate knower does not exist by assuming that people have free will. I am contending that an ultimate knower, if people don't have free will, would know every action of every being.

But the point I made is that determinism must be proven false to justify moral accountability. I don't contend that it is true in the OP; my point is that judgement should be withheld until we find out if it is indeed false. No ultimate knower is even required, and your examples in favor of an ultimate knower not knowing anything specific assume the existence of free will, as far as I can tell.

I mean you didn't even quote the OP in your first post.

Btw, what is your argument? My side is that free will exists, and that moral responsibility finds a ground in it. — tim wood

Alright, to be honest I'm very confused by your line of argumentation. Are you saying that no ultimate knower is possible, and thus determinism is false? I still don't see why you brought up god.

If you could clearly lay out your argument and address the OP directly I would be able to clarify what my own argument is; I'm not sure what I'm arguing against.

As to any causative effect of knowing, how? Even just the physics of knowing the future are certainly problematic. The best we can do here is say that something will happen, and after it happens, that something did happen. — tim wood

Unless I'm mistaken we can model things like projectile motion or the elliptical orbit of moons with an accuracy that is sufficient to be in agreement with other models such that they are also accurate within certain (perhaps arbitrary) parameters. It seems to me that this is good enough to predict most of the events relevant to humans. Why wouldn't some ultimate knower be able to do things like that even better and predict the actions of people?

I don't think I need to prove that you cannot wiggle your finger freely, but rather you need to show why the laws of physics do not obtain wrt the choices made by humans.

Agreement (I think) until this. Predetermined subject to the parameters of predetermining - but this goes to the physics of things in time, itself a considerable problem to date. — tim wood

I don't see what the issue is with this assertion. If the universe is deterministic everything is predetermined. What you seem to be getting at is that the laws of physics could be determined and static, but people could generate new outcomes via their free choices. Is that what you are saying?

Hmm. I had already typed out a response, but then on closer reading of your OP saw that you had that covered. By determinism you must mean that someone knows something specific ahead of time. — tim wood

By determinism I mean that if one had knowledge of every state of the universe one could predict the actions of any being in it. Also, yes, on a more human level, the knowledge that some specific event will happen ahead of time.

Let's assume, then, a god knows. This would appear to crystalize the future in some causative sense. Perhaps, but the argument to hold must show that the knowledge is also specifically causative as to every possibility. — tim wood

Now, you might argue that a god always already knows what I will choose. But even if you do, then so what? The point being that I have free will in my own person. And having it establishes the existence of free will, and thus grounds the possibility of moral responsibility. — tim wood

If you had free will it would be undetermined what you would do it seems to me; you have the capacity to choose between multiple alternative actions unconstrained. You might say god could know all of the actions available to you, but he wouldn't know which one you would choose, otherwise your decisions would be constrained and/or predetermined; the only way god could predict every action of every being is if the universe is deterministic itself; the existence of the knowledge of the actions of every being would imply this. And while the knowledge might not be causative it does mean your actions would be predetermined.

Or maybe god isn't omniscient and is a bungler.

I still would like to see what you have to say.

Thank you!

I think the idea of free will is internally coherent, but it doesn't exist.

To argue that 'could have done otherwise' literally means to change the course of events from those which were determined begs the question. Indeterminism must be assumed before such a notion can be coherently spoken of. — Isaac

I don't see how this is the case. If one could have acted in a different way, altering the present, then this means that said person could have chosen between a number of possible alternatives, i.e. free will exists. However, if one assumes that no one has power over the facts of the future, then determinism must be proved false because if it is true it negates any sort of indeterministic account of moral responsibility. No where is indeterminism assumed except insofar as it is implied that if determinism were false and people could choose from different alternatives free will would exist and people could be held morally responsible.

(Clearer OP)

I will get this out of the way: this is primarily about the functioning of code law in terms of our moral principles; code law does not need an irrefutable philosophical underpinning to function, but it makes more sense in terms of moral culpability if we keep our laws open to interpretation, which is the main point of this post.

Some theories of moral culpability are predicated on the idea of freedom of choice, the idea that one could have both chosen otherwise and that one’s choice is unaffected by external causation. This idea of moral culpability based upon freedom of choice - both the ability to act freely and to act free of external causation - is at odds with determinism, which is Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace’s classic formulation that the present state of the universe is the effect of its previous state and the cause of the state that follows it. Furthermore, if a mind, at any given moment, could know all of the forces operating in nature and the respective positions of all its components, it would thereby know with certainty the future and the past of every entity, large or small.

Determinism and freedom of choice have heavy implications for code law, which is a set of very specific laws. The conditions for a very specific law to be broken are mostly distinct from other very specific laws - they are very specific. Thus, one’s actions, and thus choices, are mostly what determines if they are broken. Well, if one believes in free choice the breaking of these laws is the result of a self-contained causal chain beginning with the free choice. This implies that there is nothing affecting the choice other than whatever it is that is inherent to free actions that is free.

This quality is not a cause in and of itself except insofar as it causes free actions to be free. Thus, there are no original, external causes for the very specific law to be broken. There are proximate causes, but if the cause is taken to be the action, then the law being broken is a function of something that couldn't have been otherwise; the free choice causing the action is not taken into account.

Therefore, the proximate cause must be the free choice, which, as a function of cause and effect, satisfies the conditions for the very specific law being broken. Thus, if code law is to be predicated on free choice, there is no room for external causation; the choices resulting in the conditions for the law being broken are externally uncaused.

I now bring up the idea of PAP (possible alternate possibilities) from the Frankfurt Cases presented by Harry Frankfurt. It dictates that:
(1) PAP: An agent is responsible for an action only if said agent could have done otherwise.
(2) An agent could have done otherwise only if causal determinism is false.
(3) Therefore, an agent is responsible for an action only if causal determinism is false.

The PAP will become relevant in a moment.

Since code law, if predicated upon free choice, leaves no room for external causation, there is a contradiction; there are without a doubt mostly or wholly unfree choices that result in very specific laws being broken. Thus, in terms of moral culpability, the application of very specific laws must either necessarily preclude genuine free choice or take into account proximate, external causes for non-arbitrary, non-random choices. If it precludes freedom of choice then, assuming determinism is true, the PAP apply, and no one is morally culpable.

The escape hatch is to assert that only the freedom to act exists, but, even then, genuine free choice is precluded; external, proximate factors affecting the choice would remain.

Thus, if determinism is true, our intuitions with respect to moral culpability make little sense, especially in terms of rules that are broken mostly as a result of actions.

I think modern law already takes this into consideration. That's why we have degrees of murder, for example - from involuntary manslaughter, second degree, first degree etc... — 8livesleft

Whether or not something is manslaughter, first degree murder, etc. is dependent upon interpretation of law and circumstances, and is not specific enough to be broken only according to an action. Thus, such things have little to do with my conclusion, which says that if someone does not make a free choice in selecting to break a very specific law, they should not be held accountable for their actions at all.

How does this accord with the judicial "Ignorance of the law is no excuse"? — jgill

You could stipulate that arbitrarily, but it doesn't follow from anything having to do with free choice.

edit: even if you stipulate it arbitrarily it comes into contact with free choice I think

Okay, here is an example: a deranged philosophy forum poster goes on a sexist tirade. They should only be held responsible if they were making a free choice. If they are so sexist that they are just acting in accordance with their nature, and made no free choice, they shouldn't be held responsible. They should still be banned for being a sexist piece of crap, but they shouldn't be blamed for the tirade per se.

edit: better example incoming but I don't want to chain post

You were active twelve minutes ago and posted that comment seven minutes ago. You spent five minutes reading. You could try a little harder.

Is it that difficult to understand?

Perhaps herein a distinction between law and justice. — tim wood

I suppose for actions that are considered absolutely free and incredibly selfish justice might be more relevant; a cogent, mentally healthy person who murdered someone because they wanted their wallet should be treated differently than someone who was speeding and hit a mentally ill person who jumped in front of their car. For the first case a severe punishment would be desired, but for the latter, a lot of counseling; they were a victim themselves. Laws could also dictate behavior yet include no content that regards whether or not justice should be served and in what way.

I think that even with the more substantive view, however, the "something" is ontologically different from the potential original cause that can satisfy the conditions that dictate that the meta-rule should be applied. .

the choice just happens and the man must not have been able to choose otherwise; the man is absolved of wrongdoing. — ToothyMaw

I thought about it: I suppose the action is being viewed as an accident of free choice, and that I'm not engaging with the fact that it is, on a substantive level, caused by something inherent to a free choice that can cause causal chains. But I still don't see what could possibly be the "something".

And yet it seems to me that Law at its base acknowledges and must acknowledge free choice - although what exactly that means is here left undefined - because, e.g., whoever is punished either for gravity or violating gravity? Or for breathing, or for any other thing where free choice does not apply. Further, there is a general saying that necessity knows no law, implying that free choice must be present. Not a part of any actual code, but (imo) informing justice. — tim wood

I think laws should exist only insofar as they create social cohesion, human flourishing, animal flourishing, etc. I think that compassion should inform our laws more than a desire to see justice done - as satisfying as justice is. But I definitely see where you are coming from; our current legal system is indeed informed by the idea of free choice.

You represented it well. Wish I could read a post on the fly and understand it like that.

Well, I wrote this, but it took quite a bit of thought. Had to do a lot of googling.