PHYSICAL PAIN and PHYSICAL PLEASURE
July 18th, 2006, search relatedRelated posts :: PHYSICAL PAIN and PHYSICAL PLEASURE :: PHYSICAL PAIN and PHYSICAL PLEASURE :: PHYSICAL PAIN and PHYSICAL PLEASURE :: PHYSICAL PAIN and PHYSICAL PLEASURE
Tags: free will
In article , Jan Straathof
writes
>But, as determinism
>holds, if there is no room nor necessity to postulate the phenomenon
>of the free will, then moral notions like accountability, responsability,
>guilt and punishment become pointless and meaningless.
But it is a common assumption that punishment for wrong-doing can act as
a deterrent. If we had free-will no deterrent would be effective.
–
Philip Baker
July 19th, 2006 at 12:45 am
I fail to see how free-will would make deterrents ineffective. Free will in any common conception does not free the person from all conceivable realities, only those of deterministic origins. As far as anything would make sense to a human, actions must be grounded in some conception of reality, and then the function of deterrents at the level of intelligibility would continue to be as effective as they ever could be. Because even if people have free will, the world is not completely random (or even random enough, as would be necessary to assume the ineffectiveness of deterrents), which therefore presupposes another medium through which examination of an idea such as deterrent is possible, and more effective.