Morality cannot be reasoned about mechanistically, as mechanistic explanations are backward-looking (inasmuch as they explain the present as something churned out of the past). Given the fact that I presently desire to attain X and want to know whether and how to attain it, it will do no good to explain how that desire originated in me from past events (be they of my own past or of my ancestry). Telling me how my desire is a result of the past: does not tell me whether I want to act on it here and now or how I am to bring about its satisfaction.
Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...
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