From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Sun Mar 12 2000 - 14:57:37 MST
'What is your name?' 'GBurch1@aol.com.' 'Do you deny having written the
following?':
> I agree that a rigorous determinist has to give up the notion of personal
> moral responsibility. If I were a classical determinist, I suppose I would
> come to that conclusion - and promptly become an existentialist nihilist (a
> conclusion to which much of Western culture came in the 20th century). But
> I'm not, so I don't.
Speaking as a classical determinist who hasn't embraced nihilism, I don't
think that's a valid argument. Determinism does not imply that moral
responsibility is out the window. It's easy to think so because the
indeterminists have held the moral philosophical audience captive on sort
of language I'm allowed to phrase my moral questions in, especially by
defining what constitutes a moral choice, namely, a action made Freely, of
your own Will, etc. On that picture, if there's no Free Will, there are
no choices. How could there be moral responsibility, then,if there are no
Choices?
Well, the answer, planly and simply, is that there are choices, just not
Choices. The fact that you were determined to commit a wrong doesn't
mean that you aren't morally liable for the choice you were determined to
make. (Where, on this view, a choice is simply an internal resolution to
perform a given action, which is not considered free if it is performed in
the face of human coercion.) I can tell a number of different stories
about why that might be: I might simply be deontologically required to
perform action X while fated to perform action Y. Alternately, others
might be deontologically required to blame me for my action, regardless of
whether or not I was fated to do it. Similarly, performing action X might
not be characteristic of a Good sort of person, making me morally liable
whether or not I am fated to actually BE good. Pretty much any
foundational theory of ethics can be translated into this language while
still preserving all of its force.
One fact you need to keep in mind is that this picture is easily
misinterpreted as making moral censure epipheenomenal, of having no causal
weight. I might morally blame you, one might imagine, but you'd still be
fated to perform whatever action you were going to perform. But this
argument is clearly false. My choosing to blame you morally can and does
have a causal effect on your future behavior. My choices, in turn, are
determined by me, even if I'm determined by other forces as well.
The real distinction here is in our models of "can" and "Causal." On my
picture, one *can* perform action X if there's a relevant possible world
in which you perform action X. Similarly, A causes B implies that, in all
relevant possible worlds,if A doesn't happen, B doesn't happen either.
Determinism should not be taken to be asserting that there are no
counterfactual possible worlds, but simply to be emphasiszing that such
worlds are *coutnerfactual*, that the "actual" world is itself determined
by the actual worlds which precede it. This allows me to get around such
objections as "ought implies can", etc. OF course ought implies can.
I'm just talking about a different can than the indeterminist is talking
about.
Normally when I make a move like this, somebody makes some charge of
redefining the terms to suit my ownarguments. However, I'm not really
sure what to make of this claim, except to say that I think the
determinist has ALREADY done this, and that I'm simply reclaiming the
terms for determinism, restoring "can" to something meaningful instead of
"is available to the Free WIll" In short, if you're dead set on one of
the terms I need meaning something other than what I've taken them to
mean, then you'll be dead set on determinism. But in my mind that just
means that the meanings of those terms are WITHIN the scope of debate,
since they themselves are the subjects of contest.
> That is what I meant. But I've come to the tentative conclusion that it's
> not just an accident of our current state of knowledge that we have to use
> imperfect models and moral heuristics to guide our actions. I think it's a
> fundamental fact of life for complex minds: They can't model themselves or
> other such minds completely (much less GROUPS of such minds), so there will
> always be an irreducible core of activity that will be within what we now
> call the realm of moral philosophy and ethics. Thus, as the complexity of a
> system to be treated as a potential moral object increases (relative to the
> moral SUBJECT'S ability to accurately emulate and model it), the more that
> system MUST be treated as a moral object.
I more or less agree with your tenative conclusion (wich emphasis on the
*such* in reference to such minds -- I take it that a mind can come to
predict vastly simpler minds than its own). However, I disagree that the
unpredicatbility of complex systems is what makes them moral agents. I'd
like to think that I'm a moral object even if there's some far away
Jupiter brain right now that could, if it ever wanted to, predict my every
move. I'd also be way of the idea that being a moral object is relative to
the size of the brain of the person considering the questino. Similarly,
I'm nowhere near ready to predict the behavior of a chicken, yet I don't
take chickens, cows, etc. to be moral objects/agents.
Anyway, there are other perfectly good reasons to treat someone like a
moral object EVEN if you can predict their every choice. You might have
something to gain by doing so. They'd probably have something to gain by
your doing so. That alone should suffice for treating someone like a
moral object, whether you believe they are one or not, espiecially as it
becomes easier to perform intelligence enhancement on other beings.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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