Comment on Separate morality from free will

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 16:19:15 GMT

Whether an agent is moral and whether an action is moral are fundamentally different questions, operating on different types.

They're not as different as the majority view makes them out to be. A moral agent is one that uses decision processes that systematically produce moral actions. Period. Whereas the majority view is that a moral agent is not one whose decision processes are structured to produce moral actions, but one who has a virtuous free will. A rational extension of this view would be to say that someone who has a decision process that consistently produces immoral actions can still be moral if their free will is very strong and very virtuous, and manages to counterbalance their decision process.

The example above about a mind control ray has to do with changing the locus of intentionality controlling a person. It doesn't have to do with the philosophical problem of free will. Does Dr. Evil have free will? It doesn't matter, for the purposes of determining whether his cognitive processes consistently produce immoral actions.

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