Psychohistorian comments on Separate morality from free will - Less Wrong

6 Post author: PhilGoetz 10 April 2011 02:35AM

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Comment author: Psychohistorian 10 April 2011 05:57:24PM 4 points [-]

Ultimately, your claim appears to be, "The punitive part of morality is inappropriate. It is based on free will. Therefore, free will is irrelevant to morality." I admit you don't phrase it that way, but with your only concern being lack of literal coercion and likelihood of reoffense, your sense of morality seems to be inconsistent with people's actual beliefs.

You will find very few people who will say that a soldier acting in response to PTSD deserves the exact same sentence as a sociopath acting out of a sadistic desire to kill, even if each is equally likely to reoffend. Unless I misunderstand you, and you don't get that result, it seems like a serious problem for your morality.

On that note, the law recognizes 5 levels of intent (deliberate, grossly reckless, reckless, grossly negligent, negligent). So you may have erred in reducing intent to a binary. These levels make sense even without "philosophical" free will, which I think is basically a red herring in its entirety, though I still believe in diminished culpability.