Rico Penguin

Over the next day or two I will be discussing the following topics (Update: Obviously its been more than a few days but I didn’t forget):
Formulating and Explaining: Determinism, Hard Determinism, Soft Determinism, Indeterminism, Volitional Indeterminism, The Theory of Agency, Fatalism, Theism, and Atheism.

Presenting, Explaining, and Evaluating: An Argument Against Moral Responsibility, The Kid Patriot Argument Against Soft Determinism, The Ernest Patriot Argument Against Simple Indeterminism, The Vera Patriot Argument Against Volitional Indeterminism, What I take to be the best argument against The Theory of Agency, The Argument for Fatalism, What I take to be the best argument for Theism, and What I take to be the best argument for Atheism.

Bolded parts can be found here. The Bolded AND Italicized parts can be found here.This may be a few days worth of material so I’ll continue to bold things and perhaps color them so its easy to find the parts relevant to visitors. I also realize that some of this has been stated before, but I will try to give new (I know fantastic) responses to them. Keeping in mind any story about Patriots is fabricated by my professors, I’m just trying to re-iterate them here to make sure I remember them .

Lets start with a story about Ernest Patriot, the cousin of Kid Patriot. Earnest Patriot wanted to be a secret service agent his whole life, not unlike Kid Patriot. Essentially all things between the stories are the same except no aliens come and screw around with Earnest Patriots brain. While protecting the president Earnest Patriot notices a piece of lint on his outfit. “Holy snipe!” He thinks and he decides he will dust it off. However, for reasons unknown, he pulls his gun and unloads a shell into the president. Immediately he panics unsure of why the hell it had just happened, perhaps a complex seizure…nobody will ever know because the other agents unloaded on the poor Earnest and dropped him within seconds.

The reason for this story has to do with a philosophy known as Simple Indeterminism which anyone who frequents my site has heard of before.

Simple Indeterminism
1) There are some undetermined actions.
2) People act freely whenever they perform undetermined actions.
3) People are morally responsible for their own undetermined actions.

I’d clarify this but for those curious you can read here. As for Ernest, his actions were indeed undetermined. In fact there was likely far less than a single percent change that what he did would have happened. However it did happen. But this action that was undetermined does not indeed feel like a free action and it most certainly is not fair to assume that someone should be morally responsible for such a deed. Unless we are to start punishing all seizure victims who are placed in a situation where they harm someone else unintentionally. The best I can come up with is that Earnest is morally responsible for placing himself in a position with the president after a previous family member had killed a president. But we’ll see a recurring theme with the patriots that stretch far beyond this second member.

For those who are interested the argument would look like this:

The Ernest Patriot Argument against Simple Indeterminism

(1) If Simple Indeterminism were true, Ernest patriot would be morally responsible.
(2) Ernest was not responsible.
—–
(3) Simple Indeterminism is False.

The justification for the above argument is outlined in the previous paragraphs (I hate redundancy but am generally caught being redundant).

The next magic word to be conjoined with Indeterminism is known as “Volition”.

Volition: The act of choosing, willing, or deciding to do something.

Pretty straightforward. So lets see how this applies to the idea of Volitional Indeterminism:

Volitional Indeterminism

(1) There are some undetermined volitions.
(2) People act freely when they act under undetermined volitions or else actions caused by their own undetermined volitions.
(3) People are morally responsible for their own undetermined volitions and actions caused by their own undetermined volitions.

As we always do lets begin with the reasoning behind the lines. Working from the theory of indeterminism not all actions are predetermined. These periods of freedom allow the person to make their own choice, IE an act of volition. That covers line one, moving on to line two it is relatively easy to see that when you are acting of your own choosing that you are acting freely. Finally if you are acting freely than it seems fair that you would be morally responsible for actions done under the realm of freedom. At first glance this does seem pretty obvious, but lets take another dab into the family of the patriots.

The following is the story of the cousin of Kid Patriot AND Daughter of Earnest Patriot, known to all since birth as Vera Patriot. Once again those damn dirty apes are back…er…martians. They’ve come and placed a chip in Vera much like Kid, this particular chip is not unlike Kids and what it does it makes you REALLY want to do something. It’s that kind of urge that causes people to do really stupid things that they regret greatly later. The story pans out much the same and she becomes the presidents secret service agent. The aliens slap the machine to “super-ultra-mega 99.99999999999999999999998%-mega-death-kill.” indeed she gets this nearly overwhelming urge and blasts the president. They turn off the machine and she is mortified but much like her two siblings she is dropped hard. (Again disclaimer these aren’t my stories).

The Vera Patriot Argument against Volitional Indeterminism
(1) If Volitional Indeterminism were true then Vera Patriot would be morally responsible.
(2) Vera Patriot is not Morally Responsible.
—
(3) Volitional Indeterminism is False

The justification for line one is that it was not a 100% chance and thusly it was an act of volitional indeterminism. The justification for line two is that Vera was a victim of the aliens and not morally responsible. I know…not the worlds most thrilling stuff. But thankfully you only have to see one more argument with a Patriot in it…tomorrow. After that we move on to more interesting stuff. (Lord knows I’ll mix this all up on the exam day since its pretty nonsensical).

Over the next day or two I will be discussing the following topics:
Formulating and Explaining: Determinism, Hard Determinism, Soft Determinism, Indeterminism, Volitional Indeterminism, The Theory of Agency, Fatalism, Theism, and Atheism.

Presenting, Explaining, and Evaluating: An Argument Against Moral Responsibility, The Kid Patriot Argument Against Soft Determinism, The Ernest Patriot Argument Against Simple Indeterminism, The Vera Patriot Argument Against Volitional Indeterminism, What I take to be the best argument against The Theory of Agency, The Argument for Fatalism, What I take to be the best argument for Theism, and What I take to be the best argument for Atheism.

Bolded parts can be found here. This may be a few days worth of material so I’ll continue to bold things and perhaps color them so its easy to find the parts relevant to visitors. I also realize that some of this has been stated before, but I will try to give new (I know fantastic) responses to them.

Hard Determinism

(1) Determinism is True
(2) People never act freely.
(3) People are never morally responsible for their actions.

Determinism was defined earlier and the this requires no further explanation. Hard determinists believe that determinism is true, just like gravity. If Determinism is true then one would be hard pressed to say that people act freely and likewise a hard determinist says just that, people do not act freely. Finally if people never act freely then they are never morally responsible, after all you wouldn’t judge a man forced to kill someone as you would someone who freely does so the same.

Soft Determinism

(1) Determinism is True
(2) People act freely when they commit unconstrained and voluntary actions.
(3) People are morally responsible only when they commit unconstrained and voluntary actions.

Again we are looking at the statement that determinism is true, again for the same reasons above. However we introduce two new ideas. The idea of unconstrained actions and the idea of voluntary actions. So lets clarify those two .

An action is unconstrained if it is an action that is if the agent were to decide to not do an action that it would in fact not do that action. Seizures for instance are not unconstrained as you will do them whether or not you want to (which is sad). However jumping is an unconstrained action as you don’t jump if you don’t want to and aren’t forced to. However no amount of hope keeps you from returning back to the Earth which is why falling is unconstrained . Hope that helps.

An action is voluntary if the agent decides to do the action. More specifically the action is voluntary if the organism doing the action decided that it wanted to. Sort of sounds the same but I believe there are subtle and appreciable differences (might be the coffee).

The basic idea here is that there are activities that people can do that do not conflict with Determinism and those particular actions are the ones you are responsible for as long as they are unconstrained and voluntary. However this raises a complaint that was labeled the “Kid Patriot Argument against Soft Determinism”.

The Kid Patriot Argument against Soft Determinism

(1) If Soft Determinism were true kid patriot would be morally responsible for shooting the president.
(2) Kid Patriot is not morally responsible.
—
(3) Soft Determinism is False.

Short sweet and to the point. However you might be asking yourself “Why the hell did kid patriot shoot the president?” Well here is the story in a nutshell. Lets say that there is a boy by the name Kid Patriot, as his last name would suggest he is absolutely obsessed with protecting the president. He spends his whole life getting the grades and experience required to become a secret service agent. Truly an example for us all. Well a group of Aliens who hate the American Way (or perhaps were bored) secretly implant a chip in Kid Patriots brain that essential tells him to do things (mind control). They could give him urges to eat pizza, slap nuns, or perhaps…shoot the president.

When he’s at the white house they flip the switch to “presi-kill” and indeed he puts a bullet into the president and with the precision of a surgeon kills him. The second its over they turn off the brainwash and he is mortified, the other agents gun him down and that is the end of Patriot. Poor kid.

Kid patriots action was unconstrained and it was voluntary. Now I personally was very hard pressed to accept these reasoning’s and in fact I’m likely forgetting the rationale. Because in this situation he is indeed not morally responsible it is argued that soft determinism is equally flawed. I warn you now these stories only get wackier from here.

The argument itself is valid, if kid patriot is indeed supposed to be morally responsible for the presidents death according to soft determinism than we have a conundrum because it would appear he is a victim in the situation like the president. The second premise is true because it seems relatively reasonable to say that he was not morally responsible. The argument also appears to be sound for the same reasons that it is valid.

I would argue personally if you want to make Soft Determinism more appropriate you would perhaps replace voluntary with desired.

Desired Actions would be defined as “Any action done in sound mind that the agent finds the most appetitive.” The idea being that whenever an agent acts in the interest of itself with full faculties that it is acting to its desires. Introductions of great distress, ultimatums, and brain control devices negate the sound mind feature of the definition so I ‘think’ that it is relatively solid.

Indeterminism: Not every event that occurs is completely determined by previous events.

Indeterminism finds strength in not making a universal statement (in the conventional sense). It leaves room open for human naivety. Much like soft determinism it essentially establishes that the entire timeline has not already been determined and played out (and consequently boring). There is nothing about natural law that dictates that it has complete domain over thoughts and decisions (which is something that determinism never seems to address).

To be Continued Tomorrow . (Slowly but surely folks expect other updates with these too. I’m feeling spunky.)

  Dipping back into the wonderful world of Determinism we have a slightly different take on the idea. We’ll begin by defining Indeterminism:

Indeterminism: Not every event that occurs is completely determined by previous conditions.

  Now you might be saying “Well that’s obvious Captain Jack.” To which I’d remind you I’m not Jack, regardless we’ll continue. The next important thing to know is what it means for something to be undetermined.

e is undetermined =df e is not completely determined by previous conditions.

  This is important because it leads us into what becomes of Indeterminism. It’s a fascinating philosophy because as with other philosophies it gets taken to some very unusual extremes. One such extreme is called “simple determinism” which looks as follows:

Simple Indeterminism
1) There are some undetermined actions.
2) People act freely whenever they perform undetermined actions.
3) People are morally responsible for their own undetermined actions.

    At first glance this appeared to be a pretty reasonable setup. The first tenet says that there are ’some’ undetermined actions. It is difficult to say that something never happens, so its safe to say that there are ’some’ undetermined actions. Likewise it comes out to feeling common sense when you look back on your life. Some events did not move along because of the flowing of the wind or the force of gravity.

  Likewise tenet two is making a general statement that seems difficult to argue with. A person is acting freely when they are performing an action that is undetermined. In essence they had options A) and B) (at the very least) and decided to go with one or the other. That choice was their freedom in action.

  Finally the third tenet states that when you act freely you are morally responsible. The idea being that if you choose to murder someone then you are responsible for that activity. However there is a large loophole that this particular version of Indeterminism has and it has to do with the global nature of the third tenet. A seizure is indeed an undetermined action, during that particular moment before the seizure you had the event you desired and the possibility of a seizure. However if you killed someone while having seizures many would be hard pressed to file charges against you. There are more complicated examples but this simple situation puts us in the place of either denouncing Simple Indeterminism or deciding that indeed a seizure victim is fully responsible for the repercussions of their seizure.

  If we were to make some minor modifications to Simple Indeterminism we could clean up most situations.

Rico’s Indeterminism
1) There are some undetermined actions.
2) People act freely whenever they perform undetermined and desired actions.
3) People are morally responsible for their own undetermined and desired actions.

  The introduction of desired to the pre mentioned “undetermined” situations fixes the issue of involuntary problems. In this case when presented with (for simplicities sake) two options if you choose to do one but you are unable because of uncontrollable variables (IE. Seizures or similar situations) then the resulting act is not something you are morally responsible to.

  Now this philosophy has the possibility for abuse but only in the judgement of the person by other persons. If we are to accept morality as something of a natural law (which it isn’t but bear with me) then the person IS morally responsible it’s just that they are attempting to mask the fact that they are. Likewise the action of lying about it being their desired action is also another situation of being responsible.

  Morality is certainly a discussion for another day, however when taken into context of the idea of Indeterminism I feel it’s somewhat self explanatory. Likewise I’m relatively hard pressed to think of a situation where your desired action is not one you are morally responsible for or even one that isn’t an act of freedom. However anyone feeling frisky can take a shot at providing a situation where you are acting out in a desired fashion and are not morally responsible (or even should not be).