• camus-enthusiast
    3
    If determinism were true, to what extent would it dismiss blame/responsibility?

    Personally, I believe it wouldn't infringe on any responsibility or accompanying consequence, but that might just be because I don't believe in punitive consequences, anyway.
  • VagabondSpectre
    1.9k
    Yes it dismisses a kind of hard moral guilt, but it leaves practical responsibility intact.

    The killer might not have hard free will, but we still need to lock them up (for our safety) and try to rehabilitate them (if we're kind). Because we do have the capacity to make decisions, sometimes we need to be held accountable, in practice, for decisions we make without significant or abnormal coercion. (the question really is how should we intervene to reduce some kind of harm or potential harm? If a person commits a crime because they were manipulated or extorted into doing so, we might not hold them accountable; if we suspect that someone is likely to commit more crime in the future, we're morally motivated to somehow intervene.
  • ZhouBoTong
    837
    Yes it dismisses a kind of hard moral guilt, but it leaves practical responsibility intact.

    The killer might not have hard free will, but we still need to lock them up (for our safety) and try to rehabilitate them (if we're kind). Because we do have the capacity to make decisions, sometimes we need to be held accountable, in practice, for decisions we make without significant or abnormal coercion. (the question really is how should we intervene to reduce some kind of harm or potential harm? If a person commits a crime because they were manipulated or extorted into doing so, we might not hold them accountable; if we suspect that someone is likely to commit more crime in the future, we're morally motivated to somehow intervene.
    VagabondSpectre

    Nailed it. I really like that thoughts like this seem much more common on these philosophy sites (it seems @camus-enthusiast would agree with you, but I can't say for sure). If you bring up crime and punishment in the regular world all you hear is a bunch of whining about how harsher penalties deter crime and the criminals must be punished for the sake of their victims (the first has evidence against it, while the second is too ridiculous to even be tested). Maybe I just need to expand my social circles
  • wax
    301
    If determinism were true, to what extent would it dismiss blame/responsibility?camus-enthusiast

    depends what is meant by 'determinism'.....

    Ok, if you made the statement 'if it were true that a system/model is basically mechanical, like a clockwork machine, to what extent would it dismiss blame/responsibility?"
    I would say how could a machine be to blame for its workings, or responsible for anything, however it behaved?
    Would you blame the cuckoo on a cuckoo clock for making too much noise?

    As for determinism, I think the word doesn't have much meaning in terms of how life and the universe work, as there is no way to stand outside reality, and view it as a machine, or as a non machine.
  • I like sushi
    4.3k


    You beat me to it! :D

    “it depends” ;)
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