First of all, notice how all the talk about predestination and fate doesn’t change anything in our decision making process.
- Your honour, I may have killed all these kids but, I was to do it due to the laws of the universe! It’s unfair to punish me!
- Be it as it may, but I’m to sentence you to life in prison due to these laws of the universe. It’s useless to nag about it.
- But I was predestined to nag about it, so it’s useless to ask me not to nag!
- And I’m fated to ask you to shut up, also we’ve already exceed 3 levels of recursion, so take this man to prison!
I think it’s a good sign that we are trying to answer the wrong question. Can we correct it?
If you’ve read the answer to free will, than you know how “couldness” is reduced in deterministic framework. When we make a decision, we mark some outcomes as primitively reachable from our current position. Feeding forward through the decision tree we mark more and more outcomes as reachable, due to their conditions being reachable and so on.
We can reduce “shouldness” in a similar way. We start from the state of the world that corresponds to our goals and values and mark its causes as leading to it. Feeding backward through the decision tree, till we reach out current position we get a chain of things that lead to our prefered world state.
These “couldness” and “shouldness” properties are essential part of our decision making algorithm, without which it wouldn’t be able to work; and are meaningful under determinism. They are real in the same sense our decision making is real. People tend to mix these decision-making-couldness and shouldness with metaphysical couldness and shouldness and that’s where lots of confusion comes from. But as soon as we understand that it’s two completely different things, it all becomes clear.
If we didn’t have decision-making-couldness and shouldness, then indeed it would be unreasonable to apply ethical categories like guilt or blame to us it would be similar to blaming a rock. Rock can’t make decisions—it doesn’t execute any decision making algorithm. However, we can still notice when a rock doesn’t satisfy our needs or causes something we don’t like.
But why not treating people behaviour the same way? Why do we need to talk about blame, or shouldness at all, when we can just talk about causes and effects? Because it captures our values and allows us to dramatically improve our decision making in regards to them, saving lots of computing power.
- Your honour, I may have killed all these kids, but their parents have caused their deaths too! If they hadn’t let their children play in this particular playground, I wouldn’t have killed them! If they hadn’t given birth to these children in the first place, noone could have have killed them at all! If anything, it’s their parents who should be judged here! They had much more opportunities to prevent the death of their children then I did!
- Be it as it may, but our society values the right of people to have children, as well as freedom of movement of the citizens. But it doesn’t value killing random children, for no reason. That’s why it’s considered a crime and you are guilty of it and that’s why I’m sentencing you to a life in prison.
First of all, notice how all the talk about predestination and fate doesn’t change anything in our decision making process.
- Your honour, I may have killed all these kids but, I was to do it due to the laws of the universe! It’s unfair to punish me!
- Be it as it may, but I’m to sentence you to life in prison due to these laws of the universe. It’s useless to nag about it.
- But I was predestined to nag about it, so it’s useless to ask me not to nag!
- And I’m fated to ask you to shut up, also we’ve already exceed 3 levels of recursion, so take this man to prison!
I think it’s a good sign that we are trying to answer the wrong question. Can we correct it?
If you’ve read the answer to free will, than you know how “couldness” is reduced in deterministic framework. When we make a decision, we mark some outcomes as primitively reachable from our current position. Feeding forward through the decision tree we mark more and more outcomes as reachable, due to their conditions being reachable and so on.
We can reduce “shouldness” in a similar way. We start from the state of the world that corresponds to our goals and values and mark its causes as leading to it. Feeding backward through the decision tree, till we reach out current position we get a chain of things that lead to our prefered world state.
These “couldness” and “shouldness” properties are essential part of our decision making algorithm, without which it wouldn’t be able to work; and are meaningful under determinism. They are real in the same sense our decision making is real. People tend to mix these decision-making-couldness and shouldness with metaphysical couldness and shouldness and that’s where lots of confusion comes from. But as soon as we understand that it’s two completely different things, it all becomes clear.
If we didn’t have decision-making-couldness and shouldness, then indeed it would be unreasonable to apply ethical categories like guilt or blame to us it would be similar to blaming a rock. Rock can’t make decisions—it doesn’t execute any decision making algorithm. However, we can still notice when a rock doesn’t satisfy our needs or causes something we don’t like.
But why not treating people behaviour the same way? Why do we need to talk about blame, or shouldness at all, when we can just talk about causes and effects? Because it captures our values and allows us to dramatically improve our decision making in regards to them, saving lots of computing power.
- Your honour, I may have killed all these kids, but their parents have caused their deaths too! If they hadn’t let their children play in this particular playground, I wouldn’t have killed them! If they hadn’t given birth to these children in the first place, noone could have have killed them at all! If anything, it’s their parents who should be judged here! They had much more opportunities to prevent the death of their children then I did!
- Be it as it may, but our society values the right of people to have children, as well as freedom of movement of the citizens. But it doesn’t value killing random children, for no reason. That’s why it’s considered a crime and you are guilty of it and that’s why I’m sentencing you to a life in prison.