So, in a way, _I_ am not responsible for my actions, yet the blame is put on _me_.
EDIT: grammar
So, in a way, _I_ am not responsible for my actions, yet the blame is put on _me_.
EDIT: grammar
If science would agree to this version of the theory, why isn't punishment or imprisonment getting banned? Isn't training and coaching (exposure to different ideas) a better way to "cure" people than executing them?
"Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant. Therefore, we can predict his future only within the large framework of a statistical survey referring to a whole group; the individual personality, however, remains essentially unpredictable"
- Viktor Frankl, Man's search for Meaning
The recent book on Free Will by Sam Harris: http://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Sam-Harris/dp/1451683405 is relevant here.
Other way to look on that is this. If _you_ are not responsible for your actions than _me_ will punish you since neither of us is responsible for their actions.
I see ideas as agents that change trajectories of free will.
These revelations make the common mystical use of the term "free will" rather meaningless. What could it possibly amount to? That you have a different mind living in your "soul" that makes your real decisions for you, while your physical brain is just some sort of fancy transceiver?
That's rather doubtful, if you ask me. On the other hand, the notion of "free will" that no one is holding a gun to your head still stands.
On the philosophical issue of whom to hold responsible for intelligent computer programs gone terribly wrong, I'm not sure that there is any real answer to that question. What should be clear, however, is that society has a right to defend itself against such rogue entities and to disincentivize such entities from doing bad things.
What should also be clear, however, is that there is no moral good to increasing the suffering of people (i.e., intelligent programs) just because they happened to get saddled with a bum program.
Other interpretations rely on probabilistic collapse of a "probability wave", but this amounts to nothing more than the cosmos rolling dice. It's hard to fathom how one is supposed to arrive at a mystical "free will" via the rolling of dice.