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bogdugg, 1 year ago to asklemmy in What's the best response to someone who believes in hard determinism but also uses this to deny responsibility for any immoral actions they commit?

I believe consciousness is a result of processes of the brain, and the brain is a very complex machine. It’s hard to say anything too concretely beyond that because I don’t really understand how it works. I live as though the brain and my consciousness are in perfect sync, but I’m unsure how true that is.

There are, for example, experiments where it can be shown that decisions are made before we are consciously aware that we have made them. Others show that severing a nerve between the hemispheres of our brain can result in two independent consciousnesses. Who can say where I end and my brain begins?

bogdugg, 1 year ago to asklemmy in What's the best response to someone who believes in hard determinism but also uses this to deny responsibility for any immoral actions they commit?

What drives the thing that drives the hammer? What drives the thing that drives the thing that drives the hammer? What drives the thing that drives the thing that drives the thing that drives the hammer?

Physical processes out of our control.

bogdugg, 1 year ago to asklemmy in What's the best response to someone who believes in hard determinism but also uses this to deny responsibility for any immoral actions they commit?

Doesn’t that imply that people have the ability to change their behavior?

My answer changes depending on your meaning but:

Of course. My brain is constantly updating and improving itself. I’m just not ultimately in control of how that process happens. Though that does not mean that I should stop living. I can still experience and enjoy my life, and ‘choose’ to improve it. It’s just that the I that made that choice is a consequence of my brain calculating optimal paths based on a myriad of factors: genetics, culture, circumstance, biological drives, personal history, drugs, etc.

bogdugg, 1 year ago to asklemmy in What's the best response to someone who believes in hard determinism but also uses this to deny responsibility for any immoral actions they commit?

One interpretation would be Many Worlds; that is, every quantum possibility is real in its own multiversal branch. So, to assign moral agency you would need to show that I chose the world I’m in now, over some other version of my life in which different choices were made. Although, I’m not certain you even need to go that far: I have no idea to what degree quantum randomness can actually affect our choices. But, in any case, that too would be out of our control.