The “trainability” of an individual does not suggest anything about their freedom of choice. It only tells you that they are programmable.
Most higher organisms have the capacity to learn. But that doesn’t mean their decision-making isn’t fundamentally based on a predictable algorithm. And it certainly doesn’t tell us anything about their “character”.
Why don’t you start a thread on rehabilitation, I don’t see many here. Great topic!
Yes, I’m counting the feelings too. The shame and guilt we feel when we do “wrong” arise from our programming.
Those are speculations, though. You really don’t know for a fact that your “goodness” stems from your desire to feel like a good guy, or whether they arise from fear of getting in trouble. At any rate, assuming you’re right, you haven’t chosen to be the kind of person who wants to feel like a good guy, and there’s no way for us to know if most people share your kind of programming (the desire to be good), or whether they share the kind of programming I suspect I have (the fear of being bad) without conducting a massive experiment. All we can say is that punishment probably works for some fraction of the population in getting them to “behave”, while incentives are probably more effective for others. I think we need both approaches for society to function well. However, the approach that I don’t think works well is not providing either incentive or disincentive and just trusting that people will make the right decision all on their own. I think our hands need to be forced somehow for the “right” decisions to be easier to make.
In the spirit of my OP, I will say this: I feel a sense of Free Will, even if I can cognitively break it down, as monstro does. As I and others have said upthread, Free Will may be illusory, but I feel it. Now what?
I see it as a reminder that I (feel like I) have a choice. So I am a bit more inclined to stop and think before I act. And I increase the odds, a tiny bit, that I’ll feel better about the decisions I make as they age. All of that may be happening within deterministic bounds, but it has proven effective for me as I try to engage my day.
I don’t believe anyone is denying that our decisions are a function of inputs and neurology. (What the hell else is there?)
What I, at least, am denying is that our decisions are a function of inputs alone, i.e., that my decision whether or not to have a candy bar is “outside of my control,” or “made for me by circumstances,” etc.
Once you allow “my neurology” to participate in the decision, I’m good. That means I am, to a certain degree, participating in the choice. I only gripe at the claim that “my neurology” doesn’t play a role.
Well firstly I was objecting to the implication that most of us would become criminals if it wasn’t for “fines and prisons”. If you’re pulling back from that idea, then we don’t have any major disagreement. There are still a couple of things I want to add though.
We are a social species, and feelings like guilt and empathy are as natural to us as envy and spite.
Modern society makes use of these instincts, but I think it’s misleading to call it “programming”. For example, we have built in feelings of embarrassment and shame when we do something the group would heavily disapprove of. But essentially, all society has to do is type in a text box what actions are disapproved but the “program” is already there.
And this is not to imply that all morality is arbitrarily set by society, only some of it.
Ok but like I say, there are countless actions that I consider immoral that I could get away with every day. And when I help out a stranger there is little to no incentive to me.
I find it genuinely disturbing that some believe that the only thing stopping me from raping some pretty lady is “Oh shucks, there’s a cop over there. I’ll just smile at her and pretend I’m a regular friendly guy. Next time…”
How is this consistent with your agreement just now that empathy, shame, guilt etc are major motivating factors?
These things are neither carrot nor stick, unless you’re defining incentives and disincentives so broadly as to include all my internal make-up / wiring.
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I’m not advocating such an approach.
There is no inconsistency in saying that I think the reason we’re law-abiding is much more complex than fear of getting caught and that society needs penalties for certain behaviours.
I’ll use an analogy. Consider the workplace.
At first sight we might say people are just motivated by fear of getting fired and hope of getting promoted. But if you actually watch someone over the course of their day, particularly someone experienced in their job, they will do countless things that will never make any difference to their status with the boss. It’s part of how we’re wired that if you give someone a role, an identity, that becomes an important part of their psychology. And most of their time, their focus is just on doing a good job.
However, that’s not to say that the workplace doesn’t need incentives and disincentives. And of course sometimes people need to be fired.
But I was talking about actions that you can’t get away with. If you can get away with them, then the “fear of consequences” thing is kind of moot, right? But people avoid doing things that will get them in trouble. And these things may not necessarily overlap with their own sense of morality, so guilt and shame may not even be in the equation.
I’m not talking about merely immoral things, like being mean to someone. I’m talking about breaking laws we don’t agree with (and thus there is no feeling of goodness if when follow them). If there were no legal consequences to, say, speeding on the highway, then I suspect more of us would be speeders. I also think more people would lie on their taxes if the IRS stopped doing audits.
But yeah, I doubt most of us would turn into serial killers or bank robbers. I don’t think the prospect of prison is keeping most of us from going down that path. But I still think socialization is involved. If we grew up in a society where serial killing was acceptable behavior, I suspect we would see more serial killers. I don’t know why that’s such a controversial idea.
Right, and I’m saying even many actions I can get away with I don’t do, thus questioning the implication that it is only fear of punishment that keeps us in line.
Sure; we will do things we don’t even consider to be immoral if there’s no penalty, obviously. Why wouldn’t we? And certain crimes like tax avoidance don’t ping our instinctive wrongdoing instincts so well, true.
But I think these nuanced points are quite different from what you were originally saying: “It’s not our desire to be good for goodness’ sake keeping us on the straight and narrow, but rather our fear of consequence”. This is false for most people most of the time. It is not fear of getting caught that prevents me from raping some attractive woman but knowing the immense hurt and suffering I would cause to her (NB: I’m trying to rationalize it out for the sake of this thread, but of cause I’ve never considered such an action).
“Socialization is involved” isn’t such a controversial idea. It’s not what you were originally saying or what we were discussing however.
I didn’t say “us”. I said a “lot of us”. Meaning, I’m not necessarily talking about you or me or any specific individual.
And yes, I believe fear of punishment is keeping some of us from breaking at least one law on a regular basis. Think of how many freakin’ laws (including local ordinances) there are and tell me there has never been a time when you stopped yourself from breaking it solely because you knew you might get in trouble. Because it happens to me on a daily basis. There’s an intersection that I cross every day, and there’s a traffic cop parked there constantly. The only time I ever hesitate to jaywalk is at that intersection, and it has nothing to do with my fear of getting hit by cars and everything to do with the fact I’ve seen that cop issue citations to other jaywalkers. If you can’t relate to this experience, OK. But I would argue that a “lot of us” can. We want to double-park, but we don’t because we remember what happened to us the last time we made that choice. Or we are tempted to blow through a toll, but we don’t because we know there are cameras. My mother used to never slow down when she’d pass a police car on the shoulder on the expressway. But after she was issued a fine for $600, she learned. Take away that penalty, and you better believe she’d go back to her old ways.
Really, this seems so straightforward to me I’m starting to wonder if the disconnect is over the word “criminal”. In my mind, a criminal is someone who breaks any law. Perhaps you are using a different definition.
For many of us, yes.
For others, we are motivated out of a sense of reward for being virtuous. Perhaps we were programmed with cookies and gold stars whenever we did well as kids, and the training stuck into adulthood. But thinking back on my grammar schools years, I remember that cookies and gold stars didn’t work all that well for some of the kids. Some of the kids responded more to punishment than positive reinforcement. Whereas some kids needed a mix of both.
Why are you assuming I’m talking about rape? WTF. No wonder you’re reacting so strongly to what I said. I’m not talking about that kind of law-breaking, man. And there’s no need to personalize what I said to that degree.
How about this as an example. Do you think we’d see more or fewer instances of DUI if we weren’t constantly warned of the legal ramifications of getting caught? While I think many people are deterred from DUI because they are afraid of hurting someone or themselves, I think the same number or possibly more are simply afraid of losing their driving privileges and possibly going to prison. And/or the shame of being charged with DUI. Personally, I think we have to take a multi-pronged approach to prevent DUIs. We have to educate people on the dangers (PSAs). We have to make it harder for people to DUI (bartender “cut off” laws). And we also need to enact harsh penalities (fines, revoked privileges, prison time). The goody-two-shoes among us likely don’t need any of these approaches, but they aren’t the population I’m talking about anyway. I’m talking about people prone to commit DUI but for something external to them.
Of course that’s what I was saying. You have been reading things into what I said that I wasn’t saying, that’s all.
This is a thread about Determinism and free will. You made the statement “It’s not our desire to be good for goodness’ sake keeping us on the straight and narrow, but rather our fear of consequence”. The simplest interpretation is of course that you are making a general point about all criminal behaviour.
If you’re now trying to make some nuanced point that penalties keep some people in line some of the time, then…who would disagree with that? And why did you even raise it?
No assumption is being made; it’s an extreme example to illustrate the point.
I’ve been in discussions with people who have bitten the bullet on this, btw, and maintained that, yes, we’d all be raping and killing if it weren’t for the threat of being caught by cops or god.
Because you re-opened the thread and quoted DSeid asking about how personal responsibility jibes with determinism? And I wanted to address this question by talking about how operant conditioning–which sits in opposition to free will–is quite effective at keeping us “responsible”? And I mentioned “fear of consequence” because this is what motivates a lot of people to “behave”, IMHO? And then you disagreed with my point by talking about yourself and what motivates you to be “good”, and then I wanted to respond to you? Since I like to argue on IMHO?
I’m very confused right now. Hence, all the question marks.
I didn’t say a single thing about god or rape, so you’re inserting an argument into my posts that I didn’t make, to illustrate a point that didn’t need illustrating. I don’t think “all of us” would be raping and killing if we closed all the prisons. But yes, I do think a “lot of us” would be law-breakers. Pick any piddly law you want, if you can’t go there with violent crimes. Sheesh.
I didn’t reopen the thread. So you begin with a false statement and the rest of your questions are based on similar incorrect premises.
I took exception to your point of “It’s not our desire to be good for goodness’ sake keeping us on the straight and narrow, but rather our fear of consequence”. If you’re unable or unwilling to defend this statement then we have nothing to discuss.
It would be really nice if you wouldn’t lift that sentence out of context like that. Makes it really hard to take you seriously right now. I said “a lot of us” are motivated out of fear. You obviously don’t think this includes you or the people you know, but that doesn’t argue against the point I was making.
You can’t refute a generalization that may apply to a “lot of us” by pointing to yourself. Because I didn’t say all of us. I didn’t say most of us. I said “a lot”, which could be any proportion of the total population you can conceive of.
So you haven’t refuted my argument. You’ve attempted to exaggerate it to score points, though. I think this is disingenuous, so I’m not going to engage you any further in this thread.
Just in case:
Bolding mine.
I don’t know what proportion of the population makes decisions out of fear of legal consequence at any given time. But I’m guessing it’s a non-trivial amount…enough for “a lot” to be an adequate descriptor. I welcome anyone to challenge this argument. But I don’t appreciate having an argument I didn’t make being attributed to me.
I would agree with you, once our moral code is well established the fear issue has less to do with it but still remains non trivial for many of us. I remember in my 40’s right after a divorce, business was failing and I was broke. I was very tempted at that point to make some quick money and fear of jail was likely the only thing that stopped me. As a youngster fear of letting my parents down did more to keep me in line that fear of jail. My ex often jokes that fear of jail was the only thing that kept her from murdering me many times. She was not joking.
Like I say, it’s a fair reading that you were generalizing about what prevents us from committing crimes because otherwise there is little relevance to the thread. Who would argue against the proposition that threat of penalties keep at least some people in line some of the time?
The fact that you use “a lot” once in that paragraph doesn’t prove much, since people often use “a lot” or “many” when making generalizing statements (since “every” can usually be refuted immediately).
But I will agree with you that this back and forth has been a spectacular waste of time for both of us.