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My Third Richard Carrier Interview

I'm really enjoying the Interview, but I can't help but think the Lounge is not the best place to post a very interesting philosophical discussion covering topics like evil, free will, morality, and so forth. It would probably get more eyeballs and comments in the Philosophy or Religion forums. For example, someone like @Marvin Edwards, who loves to host threads on free will and compatibilism over in the Philosophy forums, might not peruse the Lounge that much.
 
Copernicus said:
I'm really enjoying the Interview, but I can't help but think the Lounge is not the best place to post a very interesting philosophical discussion covering topics like evil, free will, morality, and so forth. It would probably get more eyeballs and comments in the Philosophy or Religion forums. For example, someone like @Marvin Edwards, who loves to host threads on free will and compatibilism over in the Philosophy forums, might not peruse the Lounge that much.
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I posted it in a more proper forum. Thanks!
 
I took Richard Carrier's on-line course on free will...twice. It's an excellent course, except for having to read Sam Harris's book. Carrier provides a lot of useful supplemental information, like free will in the justice system, etc.

Free will is a secular issue, and I believe it was kidnapped by religion to give God a "get-out-of-jail free card". But a Being that is omniscient and omnipotent would also be "omni-responsible", so it doesn't really work. As to God's own free will, it would be identical to ours (after all, we created him in our own image). Free will is a choice we make for ourselves that is free of coercion and other forms of undue influence that might reasonably be said to remove our control of our choices or actions (e.g., a significant mental illness). Being omnipotent, God could never be effectively coerced. Being omniscient, he could never be unduly influenced. But, we, of course, can be coerced and unduly influenced, which is why being free to decide for ourselves what we will do is so important to us.

I was happy to hear Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs brought up. It provides a nice description of human motivation. And it also lays the groundwork for a theory of morality. We call something "good" if it meets a real need that we have as a person, as a society, or as a species.

I enjoyed Edouard's example of choosing the lesser desire: hitting his hand with a hammer to defeat causal determinism. I went through a similar thought experiment in the public library when I first read about deterministic inevitability robbing me of my freedom. I described it this way in my blog:

The idea that my choices were inevitable bothered me, so I considered how I might escape what seemed like an external control. It struck me that all I needed to do was to wait till I had a decision to make, between A and B, and if I felt myself leaning heavily toward A, I would simply choose B instead. So easy! But then it occurred to me that my desire to thwart inevitability had caused B to become the inevitable choice, so I would have to switch back to A again, but then … it was an infinite loop!

No matter which I chose, inevitability would continue to switch to match my choice! Hmm. So, who was controlling the choice, me or inevitability?

Well, the concern that was driving my thought process was my own. Inevitability was not some entity driving this process for its own reasons. And I imagined that if inevitability were such an entity, it would be sitting there in the library laughing at me, because it made me go through these gyrations without doing anything at all, except for me thinking about it.

My choice may be a deterministic event, but it was an event where I was actually the one doing the choosing. And that is what free will is really about: is it me or is someone or something else making the decision. It was always really me.
 
I learned some new things from that discussion, especially Edouard's argument from dispositions as it applies to theodicy. Very nice.
 
@Marvin Edwards I'm fundamentally of a disagreement that creation of any self-contained object implies responsibility of the sort offered.

I also disagree that being a creation in some kind of self-contained object blunts the responsibilities those creations have as regards their behavior in relation to each other.

Each of these things in it's own way is a genetic fallacy.

I would love to have a conversation on the topic but perhaps this is not the thread for it.
 
Jarhyn said:
@Marvin Edwards I'm fundamentally of a disagreement that creation of any self-contained object implies responsibility of the sort offered.
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Responsibility does not exist within the object. Responsibility is assigned to the object by a society that has an interest in the causes of good and bad events. To say that I am "responsible" for paying for the salad that I ordered means that the waiter will bring me the bill. It says that I was the most meaningful and relevant cause of the salad order.

Jarhyn said:
I also disagree that being a creation in some kind of self-contained object blunts the responsibilities those creations have as regards their behavior in relation to each other.
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I'm guessing that you're referring to the computer programmed Urist character in your simulation. As a programmer, you are responsible for how these characters behave.

Jarhyn said:
Each of these things in it's own way is a genetic fallacy.
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I had to look that up. I'm guessing that you are saying that it would be mistaken not to view Urist as a responsible agent.

Jarhyn said:
I would love to have a conversation on the topic but perhaps this is not the thread for it.
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You know how to start a thread. But I'm not sure my brain is qualified to address the issue with you.
 
Marvin Edwards said:
I'm guessing that you are saying that it would be mistaken not to view Urist as a responsible agent.
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Yes I am. Look into the genetic fallacy, and then maybe understand that history is unimportant to the immediate objective fact of what something is now.

If I make a steel ball with a solar panel sheeted onto the outside of it that contains a heat generator such that its surface raises 1°c above environment...

And then make an apparently identical steel ball with a solar panel that contains a contains a whole universe of interacting beings as rich and capable as you or I, a very different, less trivial heat generator that also raises it's surface 1°c above environment...

I have done nothing of ethical impact to anyone. I have no responsibilities to the steel ball because the steel ball has no responsibilities or expectations or anything.

It's effectively an inert object.

Nothing I've done actually harms anyone or any thing that anyone anywhere cares about or has any stake in.

I have no responsibility to go in and fix any of the problems or issues or systems within it.

As it is, I didn't even decide on any of the particulars: I just set up a set of simple regular rules, presented a random number to it, welded the port shut, and put it under a lamp.

The only responsible agents here are the ones that exist inside said sphere, fucking up the environment I gave them.
 
I think that the issue with responsibility has something to do with control over current impulses in future actions. It is part of the process of learning how to control one's priorities. The idea is that we can never do anything other than what we most desire to do at the point of decision. So we lack free will at that point no matter how hard we may think there must be some way to act differently. However, the greatest desire is not the only desire. We have conflicting desires. How do we make sure that we make a different choice under similar circumstances in the future? Part of what it means to have free will is the process of learning to alter priorities governing future actions. Hence, we establish conscience-driven imperatives that exist to override impulses that conflict with the desired priority. A religious person reinforces those priorities with Divine Command Theory--a parental divinity that tells its child that an action is bad and to stop doing it.

So I look at volition as a kind of autopilot that automatically controls the actions of a machine--the body. Unless we do something to stop it, the autopilot is gonna do what it's gonna do. We are responsible for adjusting the autopilot, for making sure that it doesn't make us do something we felt in the past to have bad or wrong consequences. So Torquemada doesn't like to torture people, but his autopilot has been adjusted by a greater desire to fulfill the role that God gave him in life--to save souls by converting them to faithful servants of God. He could choose not to torture people, but only by adjusting the autopilot before, not when, he acts on the impulse to torture them. We may be born with certain dispositions, but growing up is a process of learning how to adjust them properly in preparation for life as an adult human being.

So, getting back to Edouard's argument about dispositions, the dilemma for the believer is that God controls the dispositions we are born with and the circumstances that will cause us to overcome wrongful dispositions. That is, God is ultimately responsible for his own actions and can learn to overcome wrongful dispositions--i.e. his own future choices. If God is a bad parent, he should be able to learn to be a better one by adjusting his own divine autopilot program, which shouldn't have been bad in the first place. So then the question of whether God is evil comes up, since God should be able to choose not to create people the inclination to do bad things. Normally, the only way out of that dilemma is to throw down the ineffability card, which trumps all the other cards, or get out of the game altogether--become a nonbeliever.
 
Mr. Board Member said:
Here is my short published paper, which is a Secular Web Library Piece: https://infidels.org/library/modern/edouard-tahmizian-cause-of-evil/
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One thought that occurred to me while reading was that God would have no understanding of disobedience, because no one was ever in a position to give God a command.

In the Christianity in which I was raised, salvation resulted in a conversion of one's motivations and desires. This conversion was sustained through Bible study, prayer, attending church, etc. In the Salvation Army, they had the concept called "sanctification", which was a state the convert eventually reached where they were immune to temptation.

The Adam and Eve story is a myth used to answer the question, "Why is there sin and suffering in God's creation?" It starts with the couple living in Eden, where all of their needs were met. They disobey God, and are expelled into the real world.

When you mentioned the good desires gone bad, it raised the question of the good desire behind picking the forbidden fruit. Picking fruit was a constantly rewarded desire, and the absence of such a desire would lead to starvation. So, the desire itself was good.

I like to distinguish a want or desire from a will. While we do not choose our wants and desires, we do get to choose which, when, where, how, and even whether we will satisfy them. The will, the specific deliberate intent that motivates and directs our actions, is chosen. And the notion of free will refers to us making that choice for ourselves, while free of coercion and other forms of undue influence.

Universal causal necessity/inevitability, also known as determinism, doesn't actually change anything. Everything happens precisely as it does. What we will inevitably do is exactly identical to us just being us, choosing to do what we choose to do. It is basically "what we would have done anyway". And that is not a meaningful or a relevant constraint. It is not something that we can, or need to be, free of.
 
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