If you have a deterministic metaphysics of the world, whether people are aware of it or not, they have no "free choice" in the matter above and beyond doing what it is they have desires and beliefs and intentions to do. If you change everybody's desires and beliefs and intentions, and those(*) people want to live peaceful and good lives, how is it any different than us doing so in the same way? There is no more a lack of free will than we have
( ... )
Not quite. For the remainder of the comment, assume determinism is true.
Prior to the change, everybody had beliefs/intentions/desires such that having free will meant the capacity to do whatever it is they desired to do. So long as nobody was stopping them, that was as free as they could get. After the change, everybody had different beliefs/intentions/desires, but they still had the capacity to act on those beliefs/intentions/desires as nobody was stopping them either.
There is no abridgement of free will here. There is nothing that the people want to do that they are somehow stopped from doing. Their desires have changed. Since your actions are determined by your beliefs and desires (as well as other requisite physical facts about the world), their acts now are just as free as they were before.
Any idea that the act is morally wrong because people's "free will" was taken away in this circumstance is simply wrong. People are just as free now as they were then.
Imagine the following scenario: Everybody in the world goes to the Avatars and says "Look, we have these bad urges. None of us want them, but we're unable to reform ourselves completely. Can you please use your superpowers to fix us?" Then the Avatars change everybody's minds as implied above. It seems like then the Avatars are doing a good thing, wheras without the permission of the people it seems like the same act is bad
( ... )
Yes I really liked this point. The idea that a few decided to change it, and a few deicded they wanted it changed back. But yes how would you conduct such a poll. Would you want to seperate people? New people on terraformed mars old people left on earth. That would certainly make it a choice, and furthermore you would have the avatars watching over mars to prevent earth from interfearing. What if when someone was 'removed' they weren't killed by sent to a terraformed mars (i.e. a perment jail) would that be better? Or, and in my opinion here's the kicker, isn't this what we already do? The avatars just kind of do it better since they're all magic and stuff.
Well, I actually didn't notice that in this case the Avatars were killing people. I figured they magically changed everyone's beliefs and desires such that they just wanted to do good things. Then there are no bad people to remove, because nobody wants to do bad things. And if nobody wants to, nobody will (modulo being in very odd situations where it's necessitated, but I think we'd reasonably make exceptions there
( ... )
The idea used was that some people wouldn't be able to adept even after the change, i.e. it got some 99% of the pop but 1% is still large in 6bil (numbers are just being made up).
But yeah it's clear that in a metaphysical way it's impossible to say that people have lost their free will (compared to what they had before) which was the basis of the choice.
An odd point I can make now is that the demon was the one that saw things these way (well one of two main guys who saw it this way) i.e. the old way is better, of course since he'd be killed by the Avatars eventally of course he would think that. The basis was that sometimes good and evil must team up to thward some other thing. See X-Men 2. But with this thought in mind it's as if the demon tricked them into this idea. Makes me wonder if there is a different point to be made by the episodes.
It's more interesting philosophically if they don't have to murder people. But even so, the acts of culling the people who don't work out in society is a different act than the act of changing everybody's minds.
Besides, why didn't they just make it so that those people are put in jails or forced labor camps for being detrimental to society? Put it in the laws of the new utopian society.
Clearly we have laws such that we can remove undesirables from our society, so those laws don't seem too much worse, especially if the laws are based on action and not just thinking the wrong things.
I have no idea what your odd point is supposed to be. The philosophy of the situation seems to have little to do with the fact that good guys and bad guys have to team up. I don't know what different point you are trying to suggest.
The normal decisions about what is acceptable and what is forbidden by a society tends to be made, on the whole, by the society. However, in many instances throughout history, individuals for one reason or another were able to dominate those societies for very short periods of time (historically even 100 years seems an incredibly short period of time
( ... )
Re: Point ThreedasheiffNovember 17 2005, 01:48:38 UTC
So this the episode a matter of our heros, not liking how the avatars were ruling and so changed it? To the point did they do it logicly/rationally/good?
Comments 16
Reply
Reply
Prior to the change, everybody had beliefs/intentions/desires such that having free will meant the capacity to do whatever it is they desired to do. So long as nobody was stopping them, that was as free as they could get.
After the change, everybody had different beliefs/intentions/desires, but they still had the capacity to act on those beliefs/intentions/desires as nobody was stopping them either.
There is no abridgement of free will here. There is nothing that the people want to do that they are somehow stopped from doing. Their desires have changed. Since your actions are determined by your beliefs and desires (as well as other requisite physical facts about the world), their acts now are just as free as they were before.
Any idea that the act is morally wrong because people's "free will" was taken away in this circumstance is simply wrong. People are just as free now as they were then.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
But yeah it's clear that in a metaphysical way it's impossible to say that people have lost their free will (compared to what they had before) which was the basis of the choice.
An odd point I can make now is that the demon was the one that saw things these way (well one of two main guys who saw it this way) i.e. the old way is better, of course since he'd be killed by the Avatars eventally of course he would think that. The basis was that sometimes good and evil must team up to thward some other thing. See X-Men 2. But with this thought in mind it's as if the demon tricked them into this idea. Makes me wonder if there is a different point to be made by the episodes.
Reply
Besides, why didn't they just make it so that those people are put in jails or forced labor camps for being detrimental to society? Put it in the laws of the new utopian society.
Clearly we have laws such that we can remove undesirables from our society, so those laws don't seem too much worse, especially if the laws are based on action and not just thinking the wrong things.
I have no idea what your odd point is supposed to be. The philosophy of the situation seems to have little to do with the fact that good guys and bad guys have to team up. I don't know what different point you are trying to suggest.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment