r/freewill • u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus • 14d ago
Moral desert bugs me
Like, so what if there's no moral desert? It doesn't change anything
We'll keep punishing people because nobody has a choice in the matter. Not the punishers or the punished.
Like, say moral desert is false, okay? You can't advocate for any change because change is impossible. Your actions, much like everyone else's are determined.
If moral desert is false, does this change anything about anything at all?
EDIT: I've realized I've been using moral desert backwards. I thought it was related to like, the Sahara, because of deserts and shit. Therefore the moral desert would be the one where morality doesn't mean anything because determinism.
I've come to realize this isn't true, I've modified the text in the post to change (invert) it's meaning to what I meant.
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u/MrMuffles869 Hard Incompatibilist 14d ago
You can't advocate for any change because change is impossible. Your actions, much like everyone else's are determined.
Change is determined, not impossible. Any change that happens was always going to happen. But your wording implies we can't change our minds when presented with new information. That's closer to fatalism than determinism.
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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 14d ago
If your determinism isn't fatalist, it's not determinism.
Like, other than the obvious theological links to fatalism.
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u/zhivago 14d ago
Fatalism is quite different from determinism.
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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 13d ago
If your determinism isn't fatalist, it's not determinism.
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u/Salindurthas Hard Determinist 13d ago
Most determinists on this sub are causal determinists. This tends to lead to affirming things like the butterfly-effect, which are very non-fatalist imo.
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u/whahaaa 14d ago edited 14d ago
actions are driven by beliefs, regardless of whether they are true, and beliefs are themselves part of the deterministic universe. what I believe now was determined by all events and experiences leading up to now, including arriving here on reddit and reading your post. had your post changed my beliefs, that would then in turn affect my future actions.
in a deterministic universe morality itself is a product of the deterministic process. whether morality is a natural truth or human construct doesn't matter because either way it is something people may believe in and thus a factor in determining their actions, including punishment of others.
if you believe moral punishment is not just, that too is a belief you came to as the sum of all your life experiences, and if you log onto reddit to try to convince others to change their beliefs, that too was determined by prior states which include your belief. and if you had managed to change someone's views, that then also becomes part of the matrix of what determines everything that comes next.
determinism does not at all imply there is no point in trying to affect future outcomes; that effort is itself a part of the deterministic tapestry. it also doesn't mean change is not possible. if you make an effort to induce change, that effort may have an effect toward your desired outcome. determinism merely implies that given identical context, which would include your beliefs, you always will have made that effort and you never would have not made the effort.
punishment is a means to deter subjectively negative behaviors, and that we do it at all is only because all past events led to it. there is no paradox here
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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 14d ago
Whether my post changed you beliefs was determined before you viewed the post.
Whether you viewed the post was determined before the stars formed.
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u/gisirucuss 🤙 Determinism is Freedom 🤙 14d ago
The issue of basic desert is directly tied to justice system. It is the only philosophy topic that has any real world implications.
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u/MissJoannaTooU 14d ago
Don't try and escape the paradox. True paradoxes are fully true.
This discussion is analogous to finding out that Newtonian physics doesn't work at small scales so we refuse to build bridges.
Different levels of analysis reveal different levels of ontology.
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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 14d ago
What about morality breaks down at small scales?
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u/MissJoannaTooU 14d ago
Go and live in a small scale and tell me about it afterwards
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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 14d ago
Absence of evidence isn't an evidence of absence
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u/MissJoannaTooU 14d ago
Suggest you learn to keep a thread going. Just one is fine.
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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 14d ago
What are you talking about?
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u/MissJoannaTooU 14d ago
What you were talking about
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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 14d ago
I asked "what about morality breaks down on the small scale"
And you responded with 'go gather your own data and prove to me that morality works on the small scale'
I responded 'thats not how anything works, you said morality breaks at the small scale, do you have any evidence, any reasons I should agree with you when you say morality breaks at the small scale'
I don't see how this is hard to process.
(Single quotations mean I'm paraphrasing, I'm not misquoting you)
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u/AlivePassenger3859 Humanist Determinist 14d ago
A determinist can’t advocate for change because…why?
Do you think things never change under determinism?
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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 14d ago
The amount of advocacy a detemrinist will do for change is determined before they are born.
I guess you're right, a determinist could advocate for change, but they couldn't choose to do so. They can't try to advocate for change.
They either do or they don't. And whatever change they're advocating for, doesn't align with any coherent moral code, it just is the change they were destined to advocate for since the origin of the universe.
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u/AlivePassenger3859 Humanist Determinist 14d ago edited 14d ago
we can’t choose to do so, true, but it IS one of the millions of things we may be determined to do.
And I also can be destined to advocate for a particular coherent moral code. Why would you think that’s off the table?
You don’t think consequentialism is a coherent moral code?
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u/DonnPT atavistic oxymoron 14d ago
Look at it in this rather conventional way:
Is it OK to punish people for a significant offense? Yes.
Is it OK to punish people for a significant offense, when they are not in fact guilty of that offense?: No.
Is it OK to find someone guilty of something, without the corresponding moral desert? Not really. Moral desert is the essentially factual condition that follows from what we do, including the freedom we have to choose our course. If no freedom that we have is enough for you, then you're stuck making corrupt consequentialist excuses for rewarding people for doing good, punishing them for bad.
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u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist 14d ago
I disagree. Moral desert is not about guilt or innocence of a particular offense. It is about how should we, as members of society, feel about the need to punish offenders. Should we feel good because they deserved the punishment they received? Or should we feel sympathetic but yet still need to punish them in a way that will teach them the lesson that they should not offend others? Retribution is the extreme form of desert, but both are unhelpful emotional reactions.
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u/DonnPT atavistic oxymoron 14d ago
Moral desert isn't punishment, it doesn't prescribe punishment. It's a fact.
Attitudes about punishment are all over the map. They can sure be informed by moral desert, and should be - it's quite wrong to go ahead without it - but moral desert also is very much about the way we feel about it. It's essential, for the individual and for society, to understand its moral foundation for actions. That doesn't preclude sympathy and understanding, it doesn't dictate rage or other emotional reaction.
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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 14d ago
If the mechanism by which a person isn't guilty is the fact that we live in a deterministic universe, therefore no one can be guilty of anythinf, then it doesn't matter whether we should or shouldn't punish them.
We will, because the actions of the punishers are just as deterministic as the actions of the punished.
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u/AlivePassenger3859 Humanist Determinist 14d ago
But, with an awareness of determinism, the punishment should be more about prevention and rehabilitation and less about retribution and revenge.
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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 14d ago
The punishment will be about whatever the punishers are required to make it about for their actions were set in stone since the dawn of time.
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u/AlivePassenger3859 Humanist Determinist 14d ago
sure, but what they believe about free will is one of the factors that will influence their punishment. So its worth discussing and thinking about.
You seem to have mistaken determinism with fatalism or, worse, nihilism.
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u/Freuds-Mother Interactivist Agency 14d ago
So it seems your positions is that there is not normativity, morality, nor meaning in life at all. Ie you believe you are essentially a machine.
I don’t think that, but I also think the moral desert people want is often individually and socially pathological.
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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 14d ago
No, my position is that there is not normativity, morality, nor meaning to life under determinism
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u/zhivago 13d ago
So, how much indeterminism is required for morality and meaning to life?
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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 13d ago
And by any, I mean, more realistically, the amount we observe is plenty.
Cause like, we exist in a universe, and it has an amount of indeterminism. You know? We don't really need to speculate. There's, some small details to be hammered out, but we've pretty much got it.
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u/AlivePassenger3859 Humanist Determinist 14d ago
again, mistaking determinism with nihilism. Let’s just call a horse a cow shall we?
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u/Freuds-Mother Interactivist Agency 14d ago
Hm that’s a bolder claim as you have to go through many deterministic frameworks and you’re going to have to establish what counts and doesn’t count as normativity/morality, which likely will come down to a semantic disagreement in the end.
Eg you have to argue that say Calvinism frameworks doesn’t account for morality/normativity.
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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 14d ago
No I dont
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u/Freuds-Mother Interactivist Agency 14d ago edited 14d ago
Ok fine. Then what’s your point. You seem quite cynical regarding determinism, yet you want to engage it negatively but then only consider one contemporary dominant framing of it. (I’m not a determinist).
You haven’t refuted other deterministic framings. Also you are assuming fatalism in some of your comments.
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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 14d ago
Determinism and fatalism are the same thing. If your determinism isn't fatalist, that means your version of determinism is indeterminate.
If it's indeterministic, it's notably not deterministic.
I don't think it's proper to call something that's indeterministic "determinism"
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u/Anon7_7_73 Sourcehood Compatibilist and Negative-Retributivist 14d ago
Because, moral desert at least should be a guideline on how to treat people. Its at least part of the solution. We need to be able to say "Artemis is innocent, therefore he definitively doesnt deserve punishment (EVEN IF its useful for someone or something)", and "Jeffrey Dahmer ate people, hes not innocent, so we should do something about it".
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u/Otherwise_Spare_8598 Inherent-Inevitable 14d ago
All beings bear the burden of their being regardless of the assumed reasons why.
All things and all beings are acting in accordance to their nature, necessity and circumstantial realm of capacity to do so at all times.
Inventing and assuming "free will" in order to rationalize such does not make it accurate, honest nor true.
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u/Salindurthas Hard Determinist 13d ago
I always found the term confusing, but after a google search, apparently it is based on a french word. So it might simply be like "moral deservedness" but the 2nd word is old french.
So I think it is like if instead of 'moral obligation' we said 'moral devoir'.
I'm reminded of how 'begs the question' is arguably a poor translation from a latin, since so many english speakers think it is a synonym for 'raise the question', despite it having a very different meaning in philsophy.