Before epilepsy was understood to be a neurological condition, people believed it was caused by the moon, or by phlegm in the brain. They condemned seizures as evidence of witchcraft or demonic possession, and killed or castrated sufferers to prevent them from passing tainted blood to a new generation.
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Punitive justice may not make sense without free will, but restorative and preventative justice still does.
At which point (if any) does someone deserve writing off as an asshole?
Wouldn’t it require an act of free will to decide that the murderer had no free will and therefore shouldn’t be jailed? If we have no free will and are always acting in response to that complex array of dominos, then the judge and jury sending the murderer to prison have the same amount of choice as the murderer.
That would be correct, the judge and jury have no more choice than the murderer, which is none. Hypothetically, the appearance of choice doesn’t mean there is choice or free will. As a slightly tortured analogy, like “perfect” loaded dice, which appear that they could be anything but always give the same result.
Time to make a dice which gives a specific result based on time
I definitely agree there, as most philosophical subjects don’t really matter in a real sense. To me, though, this has some real implications regarding (pretty far in the future) AI development. If we were to say/prove humans have free will, that would be a potential bar to clear for when an “entity” is entitled to rights. It’s all largely arbitrary, though, as (at least in the US) we aren’t super rigorous to which animals are entitled to which rights. For instance, the Animal Welfare, which regulates when you have to use anesthesia, defines animals as