Justification is overrated. People go digging around in metaphysics (moral realism + free will) instead of discussing given feelings and the factual or experiential consequences of actions and other feelings. That’s all that matters, and that’s exactly why the negligible question of free will has no practical significance whatsoever, and the gentleman whose words were presented here and rejected with a trowelful of nonsense is very much right. In my processing system, terms like “grounding” or “granting validity” are perceived as conceptual sensory-blurring, and the Lord protects the simple.

To Do Not Make Yourselves Abominable:
If all that matters is factual consequences (and experiential facts are also facts), then there’s no point discussing anything at all, no? Why even try to reconcile causality with personal responsibility? People act in a certain way, and that’s it. Psychological-physiological-sociological analysis. It could be that this is really what Strawson was trying to argue — don’t worry, people have always acted on the assumption of responsibility, and that’s how it will continue. A given fact. But then — why does that arouse concern at all? Why is it interesting? And where is there a problem in the first place?

(Indeed, experiential facts are also facts, but I thought it would be clearer to refer to them explicitly.)
Why is there no point in discussing anything, and why is that connected specifically to factual consequences? On the contrary: why are you interested in whether somewhere out there a morally charged fact is floating around, and whether you yourself “decided” freely to take the right-hand lane? It simply interests you to deal with that and to clarify the truth about the world, and it interests me too.
Before I try to loosen anything up, allow me to describe the structure that I understand you are proposing, and please tell me in your goodness whether I described it correctly: you are proposing that “the objectively right thing” is that in a certain situation in which someone chose a particular decision, “responsibility falls upon that person,” and therefore it is “just” that he feel responsibility. That is, one must assume moral realism regarding the object of “responsibility,” assume free choice, assume that this object kindly settles upon the person only as a result of decisions made through that person’s free choice, and then assume that the resting of such an object upon a person obligates him to behave in a certain way or to feel certain feelings. Did I correctly describe the four assumptions?

Yes, it seems to me you described it correctly. Meaning, a materialist view of the world denies the existence of that object (= moral obligation) and therefore its imposition on the person. Are you basically saying that a view like Strawson’s is actually based on a denial of moral realism?

I don’t know Strawson and can only state my own opinion, based on what you wrote here. One can assume moral realism and still be a determinist (I was like that for a while, though to my sorrow it seems to me that I probably never managed to grasp it in the way actual realists experience it; I’m no longer there, but I still think it’s a coherent and possible position), it’s just that the imposition doesn’t depend on whether the person “decided” freely or unfreely. Because (a) there is no problem at all with the imposition being imposed even without a free decision; (b) such a strange free decision doesn’t help the imposition get imposed-ified (a new verb form I now happen to like).

“Get imposed-ified” is excellent.
So basically, you’re saying: I feel that X owes me a moral obligation, and therefore he owes it. And that’s where the discussion ends. Or did I miss something?

Me personally (without moral realism and without free choice), or the position in my previous message (with moral realism and without free choice)? In the previous message I presented a position unrelated to feelings, dealing only with the mechanism of operation of realist morality. And I myself (also not a realist) think that in a given situation I feel that I must do such-and-such, or that X should do such-and-such and feel such-and-such, and that’s all. Without the “and therefore he owes it.” [The concept of “obligation” is not realist; it’s simply the word in language used to describe a certain feeling.]

Do Not Make Yourselves Abominable,
I’m trying to understand your “earlier version.”
What, in your opinion, is “moral obligation/responsibility”?

What is this “earlier version” and “later version” stuff?
Explain to me what such an obligation is in your opinion, and I’ll say whether and how that differs, in my opinion, across various strange and stranger doctrines.

“Earlier version” = your previous position.
In my view, moral obligation is something transcendent, which can apply only to a transcendent free “I.” We can know only the consequences of these concepts: that the feeling of moral obligation is real; that we indeed have a good reason to be moral; that we should not be fatalists, as the determinist position would seemingly require.
You can claim that this is ridiculous, and that’s perfectly fine. I am not claiming that all these transcendent things actually exist, only that only if there is something to this formula can one speak at all about moral obligation.

The position of moral realism together with determinism? I probably don’t grasp in the depths of my heart that realism and the way the moral imperative is perceived among realists, but I don’t see any problem here at all. One can delve into realism itself (which is also, in my opinion, an unnecessary metaphysical scaffold), and maybe we’ll get to that, but please explain why this abstract something can apply only to a free self. I don’t see any connection. Interesting that it didn’t decide to apply only to redheads.
Maybe what you meant is that only a free self can choose to obey this abstract thing, whereas a non-free self may merely behave according to that imperative, and in your eyes that has no “value”?

Indeed, I meant what you wrote in the last two lines.

So the feeling of moral obligation is real and there is a very good reason to be moral, and the process is, as usual, the consciousness responding to the imperative. So what remains to be clarified? In my eyes that has excellent “value,” and surely a weird process like free choice does not add even the tiniest grain of value to anything.

If the “consciousness responding to the imperative” is just another dry material process like everything else that happens here in the world, then why does it have more value than scarfing down falafel, for example?
And you still didn’t explain what the “very good reason” is to be moral. The fact that there is a process of “consciousness responding to the imperative” is a factual description and nothing more.

Why, in your view, does the choice to respond to the imperative have more value than the choice to scarf down falafel (in the picture where choice is operating in the decision to eat)?
In that position (the one that holds by realism), the reason to be moral is precisely because there is an objective obligation.

Because in my view there is an Idea of the Good, which defines morality as valuable and scarfing down falafel as valueless (because that is how I feel, and I assume my feeling describes objective reality, just as my other senses describe reality and are not mere hallucination).
According to your view (in the position under discussion), if the “reason to be moral” is that there is an “objective obligation,” then the problem just moves to the concept of obligation. What is an “objective obligation,” and what does it mean when it is imposed on an automatic machine, however sophisticated?

(According to my view, the human being is not a machine but a creature built in such a way that imposing obligation on him is meaningful.)

There is an Idea of the Good that defines morality as valuable, all well and good. Exactly the same also if consciousness does not use some obscure mechanism of free choice but is compelled. The meaning of objective obligation when imposed on an automatic consciousness is exactly the same meaning it has when imposed on a choosing consciousness: you are obligated to do such-and-such. When you give me some clue for thinking why “meaning” and “value” and all the rest of that whole business have anything to do with the question of what drives consciousness to cause the body to perform actions, I’ll try to pull on that carrot.

Do Not Make Yourselves Abominable,
Does the objective obligation also apply to cats, bells, walls? Can one say that the tectonic plates whose movement caused the tsunami violated their moral duty?

A realist determinist would say that the obligation applies to consciousnesses that identify it and are capable of performing actions because of it and in response to it (I am very, very much not a materialist). Truthfully, I don’t understand these objections.

It seems that you think there is no concept of “value” at all. Is that so?
As I understand it, value is whatever I see as valuable. There is no need to explain why it is valuable, and it is also impossible to explain; I simply feel that way, and I assume my feeling reflects reality.
Please explain what “value” is in your opinion, if there is such a concept at all.

It depends on what assumptions we’re discussing under. As I understand it, if there is realism then value is exactly what you also understand it to be, and I don’t see what that has to do with whether there is free choice or not. Without realism there are only various feelings, which in practice probably converge with the situations in which you see value, but simply without the metaphysical construction and the characteristic contortions that accompany the matter. In any case, that’s how I see it, and I still haven’t had the privilege of witnessing any problem that is actually connected to poor determinism, long may it live.

Is your realism naturalistic or transcendent?

Mine was transcendent, but I don’t see what difference that makes. And if you want us to use a professional term, I’d be happy if you clarified what you mean by it so I don’t start groping around among shades and their in-betweens.

So that is the difference between us: you see transcendent value in the mechanism of an automatic machine, and I cannot manage to see transcendent value in a material mechanism.
I think my position is a bit more coherent.

A non-material mechanism, yes, but still automatic. I can’t see any contribution of free choice to this issue, and certainly no coherence advantage.

So now you’ll need to explain what “materiality” is and what “transcendence” is, and why an automatic mechanism is defined by you as “non-material.”

Do Not Make Yourselves Abominable, where are you?

(Because I don’t understand the discussion. What does determinism have to do with the question of materiality? I’m worried that at the next stage I’ll also be asked to explain what matrix multiplication is or what apple pie tastes like. As I understand it, determinism has neither tail nor sword and is orthogonal to every interesting philosophical question. We’ve also gone on at great length, I also have nothing to add, and I also don’t think I’ll be able, from this thread, to change my mind. So time to bow out.)

If you do not wish to continue the discussion, that wish of yours is your honor.

The “connection between determinism and the question of materiality” lies in the fact that we both agree on two assumptions: 1. Moral realism must be non-material; 2. Non-material value cannot “apply” to a material mechanism. We disagree on whether an automatic mechanism is material or not, and therefore (in accordance with assumption 2) whether moral obligation can apply to it.
And since the purpose of the discussion is to clarify whether the automatic machine called “man” can synchronize with non-material moral obligation, it is necessary to clarify whether an automatic machine is material or not.

As stated, if despite this you do not wish to continue the discussion — I will respect that.

Give me a few days to think about it; maybe I’ll manage to grasp the point you’re pressing about the connection between automation and materiality (I simply can’t understand what the connection is. But I’ll reflect some more). Maybe we should wait for an opportunity if one day the topic of free choice itself comes up here in some column, and then perhaps it will be easier to discuss (presumably there all the definitions and clarifications will already be there and we won’t have to do all the work here by ourselves), and not on the margins of a pickled thread on someone else’s website. Peace be within your walls and tranquility in Israel.

Amen

(By the way, in the future too, in every column and on every platform whatsoever, the discussion about the connection between automation and materiality must begin from defining the concept of “materiality.”)

(And if at some point you want to continue the discussion, I don’t mind being the one who has to explain how he defines “materiality.” It’s just that I think my definition is the simpler one, as any child understands, and so I assumed you had a different definition and asked to know it.)