Who cares whether we could have done otherwise? In real life we never actually experience the exact same circumstances twice, so why would whether or not we could do otherwise be causally related with us having the free will intuition, which is what we’re trying to explain?
In real life, we never experience having to divert a trolley to run over a fat man, either.
Trolley problems are useful as test cases of moral theories in unusual and cleanly-defined situations. They can help confirm or disprove a moral theory which we would then apply in the situations we do encounter in real life.
Experiencing the same circumstances twice, down to the level of large-scale physical determinism, is the only case free-will incompatibilists seem to be concerned with. If we could all agree that “free will doesn’t matter because even in a deterministic world we are never in the same situation twice”, then there would be no mystery of free will left to solve. Two-stage models are only necessary or useful because they introduce indeterminancy or randomness. If the circumstances never repeat exactly, you don’t need randomness or indeterminancy, you just need input-sensitivity.
It is a mistake to think that the exact repetition of circumstances is the only thing that could make CHDO matter. In the absence of FW, all decisions are equally inevitable, and the future happens as it must, so there is no criterion for identifying an important decisions. Given FW, different alternate futures pivot on decisions made at a point in time.
In real life, we never experience having to divert a trolley to run over a fat man, either.
Equivalents occur, for instance Churchill’s decision to destroy the French fleet to prevent it falling into German hands.
These two things are not the same.
Trolley problems are useful as test cases of moral theories in unusual and cleanly-defined situations. They can help confirm or disprove a moral theory which we would then apply in the situations we do encounter in real life.
Experiencing the same circumstances twice, down to the level of large-scale physical determinism, is the only case free-will incompatibilists seem to be concerned with. If we could all agree that “free will doesn’t matter because even in a deterministic world we are never in the same situation twice”, then there would be no mystery of free will left to solve. Two-stage models are only necessary or useful because they introduce indeterminancy or randomness. If the circumstances never repeat exactly, you don’t need randomness or indeterminancy, you just need input-sensitivity.
It is a mistake to think that the exact repetition of circumstances is the only thing that could make CHDO matter. In the absence of FW, all decisions are equally inevitable, and the future happens as it must, so there is no criterion for identifying an important decisions. Given FW, different alternate futures pivot on decisions made at a point in time.