Why are we better off behaving that way? Under that outlook, it seems like free will is a trap to hold people accountable for things they wouldn’t actually be responsible for.
If you’re a complex machine whose action could be perfectly predicted (with full knowledge of everything you ever experienced) it’s still reasonable to punish you for breaking rules - the risk of punishment goes into your programming as part of the (deterministic) calculation of what action to take
Because one of the many inputs to people’s actions, if we assume that their actions are deterministic, is their knowledge of how other people will respond, and how they have responded to similar things in the past.
It’s also very often used as an argument against rehabilitation in prisons:
If free will exists, then crime is a choice. If you choose crime, you are a bad person, and punishment is the only way forward.
If you commit the crime again, it’s because the punishment didn’t work, and/or because the person is simply bad, so a longer punishment is needed, and infinitum.
It’s also used to justify the death penalty, which would not make any sense in a deterministic universe.
Why are we better off behaving that way? Under that outlook, it seems like free will is a trap to hold people accountable for things they wouldn’t actually be responsible for.
If you’re a complex machine whose action could be perfectly predicted (with full knowledge of everything you ever experienced) it’s still reasonable to punish you for breaking rules - the risk of punishment goes into your programming as part of the (deterministic) calculation of what action to take
Because one of the many inputs to people’s actions, if we assume that their actions are deterministic, is their knowledge of how other people will respond, and how they have responded to similar things in the past.
It’s also very often used as an argument against rehabilitation in prisons:
If free will exists, then crime is a choice. If you choose crime, you are a bad person, and punishment is the only way forward.
If you commit the crime again, it’s because the punishment didn’t work, and/or because the person is simply bad, so a longer punishment is needed, and infinitum.
It’s also used to justify the death penalty, which would not make any sense in a deterministic universe.