My modern philosophy title: On the Fair Moral Praise and Blame of Pure Subjects
1) If we are pure subjects, then we have no free will.
2) We are pure subjects.
3) Therefore, we have no free will.
Why think (2)? Because it fits with our intuitions:
Define the soul / self / person / you / me as the pure subject. Pure subjects have many things without being those things. I have hands (here is one, and here is another), I have a face, a brain, a body, thoughts, memories, feelings, beliefs, a worldview, dispositions, desires, second-order desires, intelligence, subconsciousness, memories, emotions, experiences, a first-person perspective, a field of vision, perceptions, powers, traumas, a psychology (a psychoanalytic story), a causal history, mental illnesses, values, convictions, virtues, vices, habits, hopes, dreams, successes, failures, fears, possessions, and on and on and on and on. I have these things, but I am not these things. I am not the sum of these things nor any combination of these things. I am me, a pure subject who experiences having all these things.
Separate out consciousness from the subject, who has conscious experiences, but is not the same thing as the quality of their consciousness. If your consciousness is dim, such as when you are half asleep, or drunk, or in an altered state through medication or psychedelics, the subjectivity remains. Your consciousness, and everything else, is something that happens to you. You are the subject of your consciousness.
Imagine a man who is very good at math. There is a quality (the suchness or what-it-is-like-ness) to this man's consciousness. When he does math, the phenomenal quality is different compared to the phenomenal quality of an average person doing math.
Now imagine this man getting into an accident and sustaining brain damage. He can no longer do math. The quality of his consciousness has changed, but his subjectivity remains. He remains. So subjectivity and consciousness come apart.
Another example: With dementia patients, the subject remains the same, but the quality of the phenomenal consciousness changes, and declines.
Why think (1)? We can identify the following kinds of blame:
Causal blame = X caused Y. X is to blame for Y.
Maybe the pure subject causes its thoughts and choices. If not, then automatism is true and the feeling of choice is an illusion. Our brain chooses and our brain generates misleading thoughts of us having made a choice, when all we are doing is witnessing our brain make choices.
I'll assume automatism is false and we do in fact cause our choices. It doesn't matter, because we don't cause anything in any morally relevant way.
Moral blame = X caused Y in such a way that X's causing Y says something morally meaningful about X. X is to blame for Y and this is morally significant.
To see the difference, imagine an infant knocking over a vase and causing it to break. The infant is to blame for breaking the vase, but this is not morally significant. When the dog bites, when the bee stings, or when the python crushes its prey, these things are to blame for the events they cause, but there is nothing morally interesting about this.
I'm convinced of rationalism, which says morality is intimately connected to reason and rationality. Things that lack rationality will lack morality.
Now imagine an adult breaking a vase in a fit of rage. Now the human is to blame for breaking the vase in a morally significant way. It says something about their character, namely that they cannot recognize the reasons for not letting their temper get the best for them. Or, they do recognize these reasons and disregard them.
However, this is morally significant in one sense, but not another. It's morally significant in the sense that we see the virtue of the person, which answers the question "What kind of person is he?" Because morality is intimately connected to rationality, that which reveals someone's rationality, or their virtue (or lack thereof) is morally significant in the sense of the moral quality of this person. But the subject, the person per se, is not to blame for causing this quality in themselves. They are a victim of their quality. Moral qualities are like qualities of rationality, intelligence, skin color, and what have you -- not up to the person.
Just deserts blame = X deserves to be punished for causing Y.
When we say something is at fault or responsible for a crime, we immediately follow that up with they should be punished (assuming we agree with the law). But there are wrongs for which we morally blame the perpetrator but do not necessarily think state-sponsored punishment is appropriate. Adultery, for example. We might think that someone ought to be socially punished for adultery, which is often what happens. We can give a consequentialist analysis of justice that does not depend on natural rights.
Criticizing blame = X has poor quality.
Morality comes from rationality, and rationality is a matter of quality. So morality is a quality. A good person is like an attractive person, a tall person, or a smart person. No one chooses their genetics or intelligence, and no one chooses to be morally good or bad. They just are that way. So it's not exactly the case that there is no moral evil, it's just that moral evil is a kind of natural evil like ignorance or stupidity.
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