Thomas_More
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Well, they, like Sade’s villains, might use Necessarianism as an excuse, were they ever brought to book, but they rarely are. In fact, as it is the poor who are mostly brought up before the beak, these have to face a judicial system that has inherited the dogma of free will, and is in fact based upon it. Our masters prefer this old dogma because it suits them to chastise the poor who rob and kill, whilst the rich do both with impunity.
Shelley:
” The doctrine of Necessity tends to introduce a great change into the established notions of morality, and utterly to destroy religion. Reward and punishment must be considered, by the Necessarian, merely as motives which he would employ in order to procure the adoption or abandonment of any given line of conduct. Desert, in the present sense of the word, would no longer have any meaning; and he who should inflict pain upon another for no better reason than that he deserved it, would only gratify his revenge under pretence of satisfying justice. It is not enough, says the advocate of free-will, that a criminal should be prevented from a repetition of his crime: he should feel pain, and his torments, when justly inflicted, ought precisely to be proportioned to his fault. But utility is morality; that which is incapable of producing happiness is useless; and though the crime of Damiens must be condemned, yet the frightful torments which revenge, under the name of justice, inflicted on this unhappy man cannot be supposed to have augmented, even at the long run, the stock of pleasurable sensation in the world. At the same time, the doctrine of Necessity does not in the least diminish our disapprobation of vice. The conviction which all feel that a viper is a poisonous animal, and that a tiger is constrained, by the inevitable condition of his existence, to devour men, does not induce us to avoid them less sedulously, or, even more, to hesitate in destroying them: but he would surely be of a hard heart who, meeting with a serpent on a desert island, or in a situation where it was incapable of injury, should wantonly deprive it of existence. A Necessarian is inconsequent to his own principles if he indulges in hatred or contempt; the compassion which he feels for the criminal is unmixed with a desire of injuring him: he looks with an elevated and dreadless composure upon the links of the universal chain as they pass before his eyes; whilst cowardice, curiosity, and inconsistency only assail him in proportion to the feebleness and indistinctness with which he has perceived and rejected the delusions of free-will.”
Shelley:
” Were the doctrine of Necessity false, the human mind would no longer be a legitimate object of science; from like causes it would be in vain that we should expect like effects; the strongest motive would no longer be paramount over the conduct; all knowledge would be vague and undeterminate; we could not predict with any certainty that we might not meet as an enemy to-morrow him with whom we have parted in friendship to-night; the most probable inducements and the clearest reasonings would lose the invariable influence they possess. The contrary of this is demonstrably the fact. Similar circumstances produce the same unvariable effects. The precise character and motives of any man on any occasion being given, the moral philosopher could predict his actions with as much certainty as the natural philosopher could predict the effects of the mixture of any particular chemical substances. Why is the aged husbandman more experienced than the young beginner? Because there is a uniform, undeniable necessity in the operations of the material universe. “
Well yes. The motive of fear of getting caught is heavier on your will than the pleasure of robbing.
Hobbes is however wrong regarding the death penalty. It would deter me from throttling a trophy hunter, but then so would the threat of life in prison too.
But, in the US today, statistics show that immediately following an execution, the murder rate increases. Also, the states which execute the most frequently have more murders than the states which have no death penalty. And there was never more crime in England than during the 18th century, when hanging was the punishment for almost everything.If i do something i am unhappy about, i know that philosophically i am not “responsible.” However, i do not use philosophy to justify what i did, or keep on doing it. That’s because i am not the type of person who would do that.
On the other hand, if something i did or neglected to do is causing me self-reproach, i would turn to philosophy to console myself (i e. when grieving: if i had done such and such, maybe my dog would not have died, etc. My philosophy tells me what did not happen could not happen, and that beating myself up about it is useless self-castigation).People like us who are motivated to behave in a responsible manner, are not likely to hide behind Necessarianism in order to justify bad behaviour. Those who would are not likely to think in philosophical terms in the first place; unless they are the fictional villains of De Sade’s novels. (And i don’t think your unrepentant rapist or street thug is that bright).
You want the malefactor to feel shame and guilt because you and I find his actions reprehensible. It is unlikely that you and I can change his will after many years have conditioned it in the direction he has taken. Perhaps a violent shock might work. Most likely not, since he is not shocked by what we find shocking, but probably enjoys it.
Remember that years have gone into producing both him and us, but in different directions.
So we are left with the immediate utilitarian solution: forcing him to stop doing harm, since reasoning won’t work.
If you want to go further by wreaking punishment on him, then admit that that is to soothe the anger and hatred you feel and is about you, not him.It isn’t Necessarian ideas that cause most of the harmful behaviour in today’s world, both murderous and suicidal. It’s capitalism.
” Do you take moral responsibility for your actions? TM ‘Yes’.
A determinist and denier of free will would have to answer ‘no’ because he believes he has no control of his actions since they are all predetermined. ”So, Wez, you do not take responsibility for your actions, since you have said you reject free will too!😄
Our personalities are the result of successive antecedents throughout our lives. Our ideas and hence our moral views too. I am not someone misusing Necessarianism to justify harmful actions. One’s sense of good actions is as determined for you and me as is the harmful person’s indifference for him.
Are you saying because we avoid doing harm we must have free will? Otherwise we wouldn’t care?
No. Causation creates both caring people and unpleasant people.
You would have to prove that all those who deny the existence of will standing outside of and independent from cause and effect are conscienceless villains.
In fact, we are less prone to play the blame game and try to look at the possible reasons behind things which we find reprehensible.Those whose thought processes prioritise blame and culpability over analysis of the mind and society say to me (the leftist ones, that is), “We’ve got to kill the capitalists!” Conspiracists see everything in terms of free will: secret conclaves of arch-villains controlling destiny.
Free will is an innately Christian, shallow and unscientific way of viewing the world, in playground scenarios involving “goodies” and “baddies”, wherein confused and frustrated, and ignorant people all point at one another: “He started it, Miss!”
Yes. But not because i have “free will.”
If you look at the materialist philosophers who debunked free will, you will notice that they tended to be the most principled of people.
Whereas the free-willies (clerics, judges, hangmen, fire & brimstone preachers etc ) have been the cruellest and most vicious.Societies have different codes of morality.
The morality of capitalism expects the poor unemployed to feel shame. Most people will say you should be ashamed not to fight in a war.
In ancient Sparta the thief was honoured and the victim of theft punished. It was moral to expose infants who were weak and leave them to die.
As socialists we would expect one another to have a socialist morality.
In countries which have the death penalty, your neighbour may consider leading the police to an escapee from death row to be a moral and responsible thing to do. As a socialist, however, you would consider sheltering him to be the moral and responsible thing to do.Many other socialists do not share my morality when it comes to other animals. They may, like me, consider trophy hunting to be immoral, yet they would rather the lion die than the hunter. I would consider it my moral duty to kill the hunter and save the lion.
Morality is a social construct. The religious want the universe to be interested in the contemporary values of humans. They call it God and raise this anthropoid puppet of their desires to ruler of the cosmos.
No, Wez, i see no dilemma.
Malefactors are produced by the chain of antecedents within them; so are benefactors.
By responsibility, you want them to feel culpable. You want them to repent. We are again in religious, penitential, territory.
If they do feel ashamed, that too is within them, as is if they do not. Uf they are rendered powerless to do more harm, that should suffice. Some will be open to education and shame; others will not.
You want physical laws to accord wirh what you view as moral. Fair enough You and i agree war is immoral. Hence we strive to persuade the wills of others toward socialist revolution. That is our morality, but both we and the proponents of war are being nonsensical to graft our opposing moralities on the universe. We have to recognise that there is social philosophy and there is natural philosophy, and we only matter to us. So if we want the chain of cause and effect to go a certain way for us, then we strive to push it in that direction. This is what you would term our moral agency. But it is itself the result of personal and social antecedents, which push you in one way and another another way, because your experiences and reactions have made you a thinker in this way, and him in that way.Freedom to do what one wants. You are missing the point, and Hobbes would agree with me. Read his letter against free will.
You may do what you want to do should there be no impediment, but you are not free to want. You are not free to will. Your want has been produced. Your will has yielded to the strongest motive weighing upon you, even if its farthest antecedents are not known to you.Hobbes supported the death penalty whilst being a Necessarian and denying free will. He supported it on the grounds of deterrence, which we know does not work.
Knowing that the fear of execution does not deter murderers, necessarians cannot now support the death penalty.
Punishment can have no part in a knowledgeable and mature (socialist) society, only restraint. If you disagree, please say why punishment would be valid in a classless society.
