Like most arguments against free will, Harris’s is rhetorically incoherent, since he is “for” letting criminals off the hook when he discovers their actions are the result of determinism.
How can we make sense of our lives, and hold people accountable [emphasis mine] for their choices, given the unconscious origins of our conscious minds?
But if there’s no such thing as free will, then it’s impossible to be “for” or “against” anything, since our own actions are just as constrained as the criminal’s. What exists simply exists, no more, no less.
More importantly, his argument is fundamentally an argument from ignorance: I am not aware of any philosophy that coherently explains free will, therefore none exists. It would do to compare arguments against free will to Zeno’s Arrow Paradox regarding the impossibility of motion. Zeno argues that a arrow must be one of two things: in place, or moving, and hence it cannot be both at the same time. We now know that this is factually false and the reason why Zeno believed it is likely because humans are not mentally equipped to intuitively understand quantum physics.
But if there’s no such thing as free will, then it’s impossible to be “for” or “against” anything, since our own actions are just as constrained as the criminal’s. What exists simply exists, no more, no less.
Similarly:
“It’s my fate to steal,” pleaded the man who had been caught red-handed by Diogenes.
“Then it is also your fate to be beaten,” said Diogenes, hitting him across the head with his staff.
As far as accountability for criminal actions goes, OP says that Harris’s stance is consequentialist, but it seems to me that it’s not nearly consequentialist enough.
After all, surely the question is whether holding people accountable for their actions—that is, treating them as if they had free will—does, or does not, deter crime, and otherwise reduce the negative consequences of criminal behavior (by curbing incidence, severity, or both)?
If the answer is “yes”, then we should treat criminals as if they had free will. Otherwise, not. (Setting aside, for the moment, questions of the moral permissibility, or even imperative, of retribution per se.)
That would be the true consequentialist position, I think. Harris’s view, on the other hand, seems to be rooted in a sort of naive or folk-philosophical sense of fairness, where, if you’re not “responsible” for your actions, in some (again, naively conceived) sense of the word, then you shouldn’t be punished for them. But I don’t see that this should be an axiom of our approach to justice; at best, a desideratum…
If I were having a philosophical talk with a man I was going to have hanged … I should say, I don’t doubt that your act was inevitable for you but to make it more avoidable by others we propose to sacrifice you to the common good. You may regard yourself as a soldier dying for your country if you like. But the law must keep its promises.
He doesn’t go into this in the book, but I am fairly sure that Harris would agree with your consequentialist take of “acting as if they had free will”. I have heard him speak on this matter in a few of his podcasts around “the hard problem of consciousness” with Dennett, Chalmers and a neurosurgeon that I can’t find the name of (I remember him being british).
As I understand him, his view is to not view criminals (or anyone) as “morally bad” for whatever they have done, but to move directly on to figuring out the best possible way to avoid bad things happening again, to their future potential victims and to themselves. I think he sees this is as an important starting point in order to be able to be consequentialist about it at all.
For example, if the best way to avoid criminals re-offending turns out to be to put them into a cushy, luxurious rehabilitation program, then in order to even consider this as an option, we must remove our sense of needing to punish them for being morally reprehensible.
So long as it doesn’t increase the number of people committing crimes once to gain access to cushy luxurious rehabilitation programs, sure!
In my personal life, I do notice a tendency that when I do categorize people as being “morally wrong”, this is more normally associated with wanting them to become morally right than wanting them punished for being morally wrong. The latter seems just one (probably ineffective) way to achieve the former. I don’t seem to see this tendency in many other people around me, so I suspect I’m in a minority.
I don’t think this relies on any particular position in the free will discussion though. I’ve seen some people “punish” objects for adversely affecting them by yelling or striking at them, and certainly not for reasons of the object having free will. It seems more of an innate urge than any philosophical belief.
Like most arguments against free will, Harris’s is rhetorically incoherent, since he is “for” letting criminals off the hook when he discovers their actions are the result of determinism.
But if there’s no such thing as free will, then it’s impossible to be “for” or “against” anything, since our own actions are just as constrained as the criminal’s. What exists simply exists, no more, no less.
More importantly, his argument is fundamentally an argument from ignorance: I am not aware of any philosophy that coherently explains free will, therefore none exists. It would do to compare arguments against free will to Zeno’s Arrow Paradox regarding the impossibility of motion. Zeno argues that a arrow must be one of two things: in place, or moving, and hence it cannot be both at the same time. We now know that this is factually false and the reason why Zeno believed it is likely because humans are not mentally equipped to intuitively understand quantum physics.
Similarly:
(https://sofoarchon.com/the-philosophy-of-diogenes/)
As far as accountability for criminal actions goes, OP says that Harris’s stance is consequentialist, but it seems to me that it’s not nearly consequentialist enough.
After all, surely the question is whether holding people accountable for their actions—that is, treating them as if they had free will—does, or does not, deter crime, and otherwise reduce the negative consequences of criminal behavior (by curbing incidence, severity, or both)?
If the answer is “yes”, then we should treat criminals as if they had free will. Otherwise, not. (Setting aside, for the moment, questions of the moral permissibility, or even imperative, of retribution per se.)
That would be the true consequentialist position, I think. Harris’s view, on the other hand, seems to be rooted in a sort of naive or folk-philosophical sense of fairness, where, if you’re not “responsible” for your actions, in some (again, naively conceived) sense of the word, then you shouldn’t be punished for them. But I don’t see that this should be an axiom of our approach to justice; at best, a desideratum…
The famous Oliver Wendell Holmes quote on the matter:
He doesn’t go into this in the book, but I am fairly sure that Harris would agree with your consequentialist take of “acting as if they had free will”. I have heard him speak on this matter in a few of his podcasts around “the hard problem of consciousness” with Dennett, Chalmers and a neurosurgeon that I can’t find the name of (I remember him being british).
As I understand him, his view is to not view criminals (or anyone) as “morally bad” for whatever they have done, but to move directly on to figuring out the best possible way to avoid bad things happening again, to their future potential victims and to themselves. I think he sees this is as an important starting point in order to be able to be consequentialist about it at all.
For example, if the best way to avoid criminals re-offending turns out to be to put them into a cushy, luxurious rehabilitation program, then in order to even consider this as an option, we must remove our sense of needing to punish them for being morally reprehensible.
So long as it doesn’t increase the number of people committing crimes once to gain access to cushy luxurious rehabilitation programs, sure!
In my personal life, I do notice a tendency that when I do categorize people as being “morally wrong”, this is more normally associated with wanting them to become morally right than wanting them punished for being morally wrong. The latter seems just one (probably ineffective) way to achieve the former. I don’t seem to see this tendency in many other people around me, so I suspect I’m in a minority.
I don’t think this relies on any particular position in the free will discussion though. I’ve seen some people “punish” objects for adversely affecting them by yelling or striking at them, and certainly not for reasons of the object having free will. It seems more of an innate urge than any philosophical belief.