Free will, determinism and fate: Arthur M. Young

[Gnomefro]

Namely that responsibility is assigned by observers due to all kinds of considerations/inferences about motives and consequences. Punishments are applied because they raise the perceived cost of unwanted behaviors and limit future occurances. People are in essence punished for having natures that produce unwanted behaviors in situations that normally should not warrant them. Such as agents triggering rape behavior due to seeing a little girl in the park.

[Gnomefro]

The problem that occurs when you attempt to introduce "freedom" via randomness is that you have disconnected the nature of the agent and its knowledge of the situation from the actual decision being made. This is NOT a good thing. It means the decision was fundamentally independent of both of those elements. Which really calls into question why we would consider "decisions" important and connected to agents. Deterministic views, however, have a solid account of the why of responsibility.

[shlockofgod]

@Gnomefro "Deterministic views, however, have a solid account of the why of responsibility."

How? Unless you change the meaning of the word responsibility to remove any moral content there can be no responsibility. You might as well say a ball is responsible for rolling down a hill.

"Punishments are applied..."

That's unjust and irrational. They have no choice. How can you punish someone who has no choice? They'd have just as much right to punish you back.

[Gnomefro]

Very sad. Nobody has to "save face" by admitting that the law of entropy doesn't apply on all levels because nobody ever suggested it did. It applies to isolated systems. Plants are not isolated systems in exactly the same way that an electrical engine isn't.

And uncertainty no way provides a vehicle for "free will". It provides a vehicle for randomness and conceivably a way to show that agents really aren't responsible for their actions - as would be implied by deterministic views.