I have been thinking about the concept of free will in relation to our understanding of time. Because time for humans is linear we base our understanding of freedom and choice off of it. Your actions influence the world around you and have consequences. Your decision might have been influenced by outside forces, however, you still made the choice and must live with it. On the other hand, what if we did live in a determinist universe? Would we still be able to hold people accountable for their actions if they never truly had a choice? Beyond that, considering that (and I am using broad strokes here) we all base our morality on the fact that we do have freedom to choose. What would we use as the basis for a "good person", or is trying to define such a thing an exercise in futility. Since in this hypothetical, all choices where predetermined, would all action suddenly lose value? Would the moral weight be lifted knowing that the actions you took where the only you ever could? How would we even define ourselves without choice? TLDR: my sleeping meds are kicking in and making me extra existential tonight (: Edit: I just wanted to clarify where how I sorta feel about a lot of this since 3am was a not really focused on that. I do believe that our actions do have value, by the very nature of how our world works. Our actions ripple out in thousands of different ways, effecting people in ways we could never even think of. Beyond that, the 4th dimension is that of time. We are strangle little noodles moving through the universe, interlacing and changing. Even if everything has a set point, isn't there still value in following a set path? In watching a movie despite knowing the ending? Despite that I am still very tired so who knows TTLDR: I am even more tired than yesterday but have no interest in keeping my half baked ideas to myself (edited)

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Kelly

ENFP

I believe we're in a determinist universe because I haven't seen any evidence otherwise. But we can't prove or disprove that without being able to see the future, so how much does determinism matter to present actions? I don't think it does. Therefore we still need to hold people accountable. There's no way to predict the future even if it's completely set in stone. The only way we know to influence people's actions is via incentives, and holding people accountable is an effective way to incentivize good behavior. When it comes to judging the moral weight held by others, personally I feel that's a metaphysical concept that's hard to define. I think that each of us needs to take responsibility for taking moral actions, and we need to have a society/culture that instills that personal responsibility in every person. The idea of morals and personal accountability are helpful for making decisions in the present and the future. But when it comes to looking at the past, I do think there's comfort in knowing it couldn't have been any other way. And I think it helps reduce feelings of anger to realize someone was likely destined from the beginning of time to act that way.

rhys

ENTP

Virgo

- we may not be accountable for our actions, but that isn't going to stop people from holding others accountable for their actions, regardless. - i don't think there should be a basis for a good person, when no one can agree on what exactly a good person is; it makes the entire concept meaningless. - no one's actions are valuable, period. everybody dies, and everything goes extinct. all of our choices will ultimately be forgotten when the last human takes their last breath. you can only imagine your own meaning in the actions you take, it can only matter to you as long as you live. whether or not your actions are influenced or made by freedom of choice should not affect their value. the influence or freedom of choice in and of themselves make the action valuable to you either way.

Kurson

INFJ

Aries

The simple answer/response to this post is that the concept of morality by in large is flawed when observed in nature. No one particularly* cares about a "good" person, but will fight tooth and nail to punish a "bad" one. This dichotomy is important to recognize because it shows that there is no incentive to be a good person at all except perhaps fear of punishment (prison/death/hell(?) ). Since fear, and in general, negative-reinforcement is the biggest reason to be "good", one can conclude that morality, regardless of free-will, really matters to society as a whole. On the other hand, to the individual, observing good people doing good things (in person or otherwise) makes us feel good and that dopaminergic response is a subconscious positive-reinforcement mechanism that classically-conditions us to like good people because they make us feel good and also this motivates us to also be good people. Although I only mentioned 2 factors that goes into the sociology (fear) and psychology (intrinsic value) of morality, my point is that society doesn't nearly value morality as much as the individual does. As a result, and finally the response you've been waiting for, even in a deterministic universe I would argue that if what I said was a scientific law then society would deterministically punish the bad and the individual will feel good about the good regardless of free-will and choice. This makes sense to me, because even in a deterministic universe, the universe itself still operates within the laws of physics and thus, imo, society and the individual will also operate within the confines of its own laws. Now the other big question is: How "real" is the concept of free-will and autonomy? Hopefully I didn't completely miss your intentions and/or didn't quite meet your expectations in terms of getting a valuable/relevant response 😇

Paul

INTJ

Aries

see compatibilism

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