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Iustum. People have moral responsibility, but that might be more of a semantic difference between freedom and determinism.

Ferbalot. I took my definition of moral responsibility from here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-responsibility/ If you believe we do have moral responsibility in that sense, why? I think we don't have it because I believe we are forced by a mixture of deterministic and random elements (that are entirely outside of our control) to do everything that we do.

Iust. I was not saying there might be a difference in the semantic meaning of moral responsibility. I was saying there might be a difference in the definition of freedom between us. In what you linked, it also provided two definitions of freedom, at least from what I read: the ability to do otherwise and the ability to do as one wants. The former is not compatible with determinism, but the latter is, at least, what I would argue. If free will is the ability to do as we want, then a determinist is compatible with free will. You are a psychological hedonist, so of course, people do have wants and have the ability to satisfy wants. Under that understanding, we have a moral responsibility to exercise agency. If the other definition is true, I agree with your assessment that we have no free will and moral responsibility. However, I think that definition is flawed.

Ferb. "A largely unquestioned assumption was that free will is required for moral responsibility, and the central questions had to do with the ingredients of free will and with whether their possession is compatible with determinism. Recently, however, the literature on moral responsibility has addressed issues that are of interest independently of worries about determinism. Much of this entry will deal with these latter aspects of the moral responsibility debate." As implied here, moral responsibility does not necessarily follow from free will, and I didn't notice any mention of "free will" in the definition of moral responsibility. So I didn't think different definitions of freedom would matter here. Given the definition of "free will" you provided, I agree that we have it but believe it is insufficient for moral responsibility. Why do you believe we have moral responsibility to exercise agency given the definition you provided?

Iust. I am interpreting your question: How does moral responsibility require free will? Sorry if I misinterpreted your question. The question is faulty because it assumes I thought or claimed moral responsibility requires free will. I thought you were claiming that since your profile stated: "I believe we don't have free will/moral responsibility," conflating both issues. I thought we disagreed that free will excludes moral responsibility if moral responsibility requires free will. Especially since that usually conflicts with determinism, which you offered is the reason why you do not uphold free will: " I think we don't have it because I believe we are forced by a mixture of deterministic and random elements (that are entirely outside of our control) to do everything that we do." The section you mentioned also supports this idea: "...central questions had to do with the ingredients of free will and with whether their possession is compatible with determinism." If that is the case, my argument is then that an agent does an act that is assigned moral value. The assigned moral value comes from the act, and the act is traced from the agent: moral responsibility. Some things exclude and influence that general rule - such as intent, cognition, and so on.

Ferb. Ahh I see the issue, I think I misused the "/" in that statement on my profile. I meant that I believe we don't have free will or moral responsibility. So I didn't mean "How does moral responsibility require free will?", I just meant: "Why do you believe we have moral responsibility to exercise agency (given the definition of free will that you provided)?"

Iust. I am pretty sure that "/" does mean "or," but it heavily connects a relationship between two concepts. I still do not understand your question. The best-simplified version I can think of is: "Given the definition of free will, why do people have a moral responsibility to exercise agency?" The question implies a relationship between free will and moral responsibility, even though we agree they are independent concepts. "Why do people have a moral responsibility to exercise agency." People sometimes have a moral responsibility to exercise agency. People have a moral responsibility to exercise agency when acting under the most interpersonal social agreement that, if broken, would cause harm or indirectly harm a sentient entity not in the right state of mind. Is that what you are asking?

[12-Day Delay]

Ferb. I did not mean to imply a relationship between free will and moral responsibility, I meant to ask about a claim you made: "You are a psychological hedonist, so of course, people do have wants and have the ability to satisfy wants. Under that understanding, we have a moral responsibility to exercise agency." So I would now ask why you believe this: "People have a moral responsibility to exercise agency when acting under the most interpersonal social agreement that, if broken, would cause harm or indirectly harm a sentient entity not in the right state of mind."

Iust. I did some thinking and research, and I think the confusion we are having is not about people having moral responsibility but justifiable moral responsibility. Let there be Person A who commits an immoral action. What you are speaking about, if my understanding is correct, is if that person has justifiable moral responsibility. If Person A has their action pre-determined or coerced, they are justifiably not morally responsible. However, it can be equally correct that they are still morally responsible for the action they committed via condemnation or other means, even in a deterministic world. What makes someone justifiably morally responsible depends on the conditions allowing moral responsibility and the applicability of those conditions. I assert that the conditions that make agents justifiably morally responsible are morally informed, functionally voluntary, and a reasonably expected decisional-capacitated act with moral value placed upon them. However, you would—at least generally or closely, agree with that. The fundamental disagreement comes from the applicability of those conditions, which I would say are still applicable. You maintained previously that a deterministic world would make these conditions inapplicable. So, the discussion should center around counter-examples where actions, even if they are pre-determined, have the agent morally responsible with them. Does that make sense?

Ferb. What do you mean when you say "they are still morally responsible for the action they committed via condemnation or other means"? Are you referring to moral desert (genuine blame-/credit-worthiness) or causal responsibility (justifiable expectations of them acting in a similar way in the future, and consequences based on that for reasons unrelated to blame/credit), or something else? Based on the requirements I'm guessing you're talking about moral desert, in which case I would tentatively agree that that is the concept I intended to refer to. And I do maintain that a deterministic world makes those conditions inapplicable, as long as "functionally voluntary" means something like "has libertarian free will". Otherwise I would likely argue that something like libertarian free will is required and that otherwise, being "functional voluntary" is not sufficient. I do hold that moral desert is not compatible with determinism, but I also think moral desert is incompatible with a partially deterministic and partially random world. And I believe it's logically provable that there can be nothing but determination, randomness and metaphysically "necessary" events. I don't think we can be such necessary events because to have any sort of recognizable will, it seems like it must be a heavily causal system. So I tentatively believe that moral desert is logically impossible.

Iust. I think your guess was correct. Are you saying a deterministic world would not apply to moral responsibility since these actions need a libertarian free will? If so, could you tell me what specifically about determinism would contradict libertarian free will? I am primarily asking this out of clarity.

Ferb. Yes, I believe that moral responsibility couldn't exist in a deterministic world because moral responsibility requires LFW. LFW is broadly defined as a kind of free will that is incompatible with determinism, because it requires that it is possible for a will to genuinely cause a different course of action. But I believe it's also generally taken to require the will itself to be the thing that's free in the relevant sense. A will rolling a pair of truly random dice and being determined to act in accordance with the result would not count as LFW by most definitions, I think.

Iust. From my understanding, you are saying determinism contradicts LFW because determinism would necessarily mean a will cannot be when there is a genuine possibility of taking another course of action. Let there be Person A and Person B. These two people are in a hypothetical scenario: Person A must do something immoral or moral (exclusive or). Person B will make Person A do that immoral thing in all cases successfully. However, Person A has no prior interaction or knowledge of that fact. Even without determinism, is Person A deprived of the genuine possibility of taking another action?

Ferb. Yes, I would say that person A is deprived of the genuine possibility of taking another action in that scenario.

Iust. Even though Person A has no prior interaction or knowledge of their deprived genuine possibility of taking another action, they still commits the conventionally immoral action. Without considering determinism, is Person A morally responsible?

Ferb. I don't think person A can be morally responsible even without considering determinism, because I believe the only alternatives to deterministic causation are randomness and uncaused "just is" things. For cases where we are randomly caused to do something or where our decision is randomly altered, I don't see how that can make us morally responsible. By definition it is impossible to control randomness. Any sort of deliberation, decision-making, reflection, consideration, etc. must involve some sort of logic where causal inputs are accepted and different outputs are given based on those inputs using some kind of at-least-partially-deterministic logic. Uncaused causes cannot be caused, so they cannot be a part of this kind of deliberation process. So it wouldn't be an agent doing something when they could have done something differently (in a non-random way), it would be an agent who's forced to do something (when they could have been forced to do something differently in a non-random way) by an uncaused cause. An example might be someone forced by gravity to fall onto a pressure plate that kills someone. They made no to fall, they just happened to be in a situation where they couldn't stop themselves from falling due to gravity. If the laws which fundamentally govern gravity are taken to be uncaused, this would be an example of such a thing changing our course of action.

Iust. So, without an internal causative factor in decision-making, what a person does is how things are merely—as in untraceable to a mind. And when untraceable back to an agent, it cannot be said they are held morally culpable. Is that correct?

Ferb. [What do] you mean by "internal causative factor"?

Iust. What I mean by causative internal factor is the internal interactive deliberation of the mind that causes decision-making to an action.

Ferb. I believe so, yes.

[22-Day Delay]

Iust. Sure, I will amend the scenario so that determinism is not absent. Instead, determinism is present so far that the action is traceable for moral culpability. Could you answer the question again?