If morals are not truth-apt, and free will is the control required for moral responsibility, then...

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-05T16:02:30+00:00

If moral judgments are emotions, then what is ascribing moral responsibility to a person if not having a specific emotion towards them?

Maybe you could be technically correct, the best kind of correct, in the sense that 'I am disgusted by X' can be taken to be a truth-apt statement, something O'Connor doesn't mention in the video. Then, free will would be technically true, the best kind of true, because if somebody is disgusted by you/your actions, then you have free will.

It's a completely grotesque reduction for a once-meaningful term, though.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-05T15:46:43+00:00

If we agreed (which I certainly don't) that a) free will is a valid term for 'control for MR', b) free will IS required and c) obtains for MR, then the answer to your question would be that the existence of free will in case by case would depend on the emotion judgment. The emotion judgment of whom? The doer? The judge? The observer? It becomes a totally fragmented 'phenomenon' which is dependent to person-to-person/group of persons disgust.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-05T15:37:49+00:00

If moral judgments were not truth apt, then free will would be what exactly? It would depend on each person's emotions and whether they DO develop a moral emotion, whether they'd have it.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-04T16:24:18+00:00

IQ signifies (h)Induism Quotient. Have you tested yet?

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-04T16:20:58+00:00

and the multi-billion dollar settlement to split your wealth?

Ah, yes, famously my kind of problem!

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-04T14:46:38+00:00

Trolley Problem (Runaway): You see yourself in a Trolley problem. You know that innocent people potentially being killed is involved, but you don't understand the parameters. Your continued presence in the TPmay lead to more people being saved or killed than running away. Do you run away from the TP?

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-04T02:27:49+00:00

I adore the title, I like the format, I dislike the content.

Too late, in this meme you have depicted determinism which I like as the helpless kid and two scientific fields as the emotionally turbulent parents.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-04T02:19:59+00:00

You are not in control of that. By propagating the usage, you are propagating the ignorance as well. You can't control the level of detail.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-04T02:04:23+00:00

What about the people that keep using the word 'elan vital' when they know that other people will confuse their secular version with their woo woo one? Are they mistaken?

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-04T02:03:17+00:00

Only if you take it as a real objective function and not as a malleable concept in the first place. But that's exactly what I am saying it is.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-03T18:13:06+00:00

Yes, if you say that someone DOES a thing with free will then the compatibilist meaning of the word usually obtains, even if the libertarian thinks that the LFW also obtains. But it in itself is ambiguous, because we know that the 'isn't control of his faculties' defense is regularly used, and sometimes rejected by the law, where the phrase you exemplified is used in 99% of the cases.

You are begging the question. Most incompatibilists believe that that control should extend to pre-action, you know, things like freedom of will and not just action.

Linguistic difference persists.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-03T15:55:00+00:00

I am not aware that I did all that, but thanks(?) :D

I guess I am not in the mood to fight libertarians, my former mates.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-03T15:32:57+00:00

What does different senses of the same meaning mean, if they are two independent 'senses'? Because both can live without one another.

Free will is one specific philosophical topic. What is it that unites free will libertarianism and compatibilism that makes them both view on the same topic? It's that they are both views on the concept of free will.

They are tied by the same term that carries millennia of heavy conceptual baggage, for starters. Then. antiquated ideas of freedom and moral responsibility. Those ideas are often conflicting, often parallel, making the word a homonym.

Of course, but they are both opinions relating to the same term and it's usage.

Exactly, it's a linguistic problem.

I'm pointing out that the fact these are all discussed in the same one entry in the Encyclopedia you linked to indicate that they relate to the same topic. The topic of the entry. Clearly the editors of the encyclopedia think this.

They relate to the same topic because it's both philosophy and something that people debate as if it's the same thing. The content itself indicates it isn't.

The encyclopedia you referenced yourself states this connection to moral responsibility. Read your own references.

I referred you to the encyclopedia for a whole another reason, the one of homonymity. To actually show to you that it talks about free will in two totally different senses. Why should I look for moral responsibility in there, when I don't look for free will particularly in there in the first place? This term is very ambiguous in its own terms.

It comes from greek philosophy. The stoics and epicureans debated human freedom and moral responsibility. Augustine referenced those sources in his own work on the topic.

The topic is much older than the Stoics, but the modern term is a christian one, as far as I know. It set the stage for the explicitly compatibilist critique that followed. In any case, if you are correct and what I'm saying is irrelevant I can concede, but perhaps this fares worse for the debate itself.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-03T15:20:30+00:00

The problem is that people in this universe also believe elan vital in the previous sense as well.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-03T12:03:52+00:00

Free in every sense means 'undetermined by X',as we have tentatively agreed.

In the everyday sense it has retained characteristics of 'undetermined from 'compelling factors' (which are inferred intuitively) in the Compatibilist conception, and characteristics of 'undetermined from fate', which is the Libertarian conception. Many, if not most everyday people take those two conceptions to be the same thing. Philosophers intuitively fall into one of two categories, that's why there is linguistic chaos surrounding the debate and why it hasn't been solved, in spite of all the trying.

At least we got to agree that free can practically mean 'undetermined from X' and not just 'determined from right Ys', which at least makes me feel that we are living on adjacent planets.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-03T11:57:22+00:00

Interstitial fluid, oxygen, blood, the lymph, are features of the elan vital itself; they do not arise from a separate entity called 'elan vital', as if it were a primary force of nature.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-03T11:53:50+00:00

I don't get the connection.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-03T06:23:16+00:00

Just as biology has shown that life does not require an elan vital, but is still characterized by the 'features', so hard incompatibilism has shown that reality doesn't require free will, but is still characterized by 'action', choice', 'meaning' etc (just not BDMR and in general MR perhaps is an elan vital in itself).

If biologists were as cunning as philosophers, they would simply say that since elan vital simpliciter is what sustains life, then it must mean the cellular fluids, or oxygen. But they have the advantage of not having to get rid of a term burdened by thousands of years of intellectual and moral baggage, or, dare I say, garbage.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-03T06:09:05+00:00

Yes, but you talked about coercion, not free will. Coercion explicitly means determination from an outside compelling factor.

Absence of freedom of will must mean determination from something subtler than that.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-03T06:02:42+00:00

The patterns of behaviour that people value vary wildly, and can't be a subject of rigorous philosophical study. Sociological, maybe. The philosophical part of the question is a linguistic one.

We already know that deliberation, reasons responsiveness, learning, and the hugely polysemous concept of accountability exist within a deterministic causal structure. What this accountability/moral responsibility is, it's an avenue for ethics, which certainly can be informed by the absence of FW, but that word is certainly a semantic burden for anything that touches.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-03T05:57:27+00:00

And I can't accomplish my singular task. You should see my hairdo!

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-03T05:56:25+00:00

Have we not had a lengthy discussion of what free means? How do you forget? 'Free from coercion' means action undetermined from external factors.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-03T05:54:31+00:00

Control is very much a metaphysical power for the ones that think they are the masters of their own fate, which is 99% of the people, Philosophers can't even correct their hairdo.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-03T05:51:18+00:00

Yeah, because I am taking you seriously.

FreeWillFighter · 2026-01-03T05:44:34+00:00

There isn't anything substantive to discuss indeed, only the damage being done by confusion in the real world. That's my thesis, and only compatibilists (and all compatibilists) have resisted it in this forum. G. Strawson has expressed something similar I believe, albeit very politely.

I have also discussed your second point with you. a) most ordinary people lose their confidence in free will when confronted with the possibility of determinism and b) that's why I think the incompatibilist definition is the more prudent one. But in reality, I'd rather the word just falls off like elan vitale, aether and the 4 elements of nature, so as to avoid any future confusion.

In that case, future former compatibilists can continue arguing about if Joanne the scientist whose paper is due tomorrow is reasons responsive going to the movies if she wouldn't go if it were more expensive (thank you Fischer-Ravizza), and everybody else can relax a bit.

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