Response to Katie's question on whether moral status can be lowered

I think that moral status once determined is unchanging unless someone’s mental capacity changes. If I went into a coma tomorrow then my moral status would change because I would not longer be able to make decisions as a moral agent. I would also lose the ability to suffer and to reason which are qualities that would make me a moral patient. It is possible that people in a coma, especially if they are not expected to come out of it, do not have moral status. They did when they were conscious, but they have lost it. Children’s moral status also changes. They begin as moral patients because they are unable to make choices for themselves, but they become moral agents as they mature and can handle personal responsibility. Somebody with a mental illness that incapacitates them could change their status if they went on drugs that allowed them to control their condition better. I think that unless one’s ability to suffer or to reason changes their moral status will not change. I am reluctant to say that one’s moral status changes if they commit a crime. Our respect for them changes as do their rights and freedoms but this is due to consequences of actions. A moral agent has a responsibility to act morally. We would not say that a child or non-human should be punished for actions in the same way as an adult human because they are not moral agents.

Should people in a coma that are not expected to recover have moral status?

Reasoning for free will

                It is easy to say that one can make a choice that is relatively free or one can be forced (say at gunpoint) to make a decision. The latter act is clearly not free, but could an act not be free that we make ourselves. For example, if someone is a kleptomaniac and they steal then they are acting so out of their own choice, but a choice they have little or no control over. They are making the choice because nobody else is telling them to, but they are obviously less free then someone who does not suffer this disorder. It seems logical that if something is forced on you then it is forced on you by somebody. Compulsions are less clear. Then we get Freud’s idea of the unconscious. We may act in a way that we are unaware of and we cannot control things that we do not know are impacting us. In Freud’s theory though we have the ability to learn what impacts our unconscious by analyzing it and/or seeking help. If we do not seek this help, then that is a choice we make. Not making this choice means we are choosing to be unaware of unconscious influences making us choose to act in unconscious ways. Although this is convoluted, it would mean that even with the unconscious we still have free will.

Since every choice we make has at least two options, it would follow that everyone has free will. Even in the case of someone pointing a gun to my head, I could choose to disobey them and get shot. If everyone has choices and is making them constantly it would follow that everyone has free will. (Obvious exceptions to this would be people in comas because they do not have the mental capacity to make any choices). People choose to act and that means they are free. This would restrict free will to humans for the most part because they are able to think over the decisions they make. Some animals may be able to do so, but most non-humans would not be free because they are acting on instinct instead of reasoning through actions.

Does acting on instinct mean that one is not utilizing free will or can one choose to act on instinct?     

Free will, determinism and morality

If what we do is determined by biology and experience, then one could argue that morality is not a person’s responsibility. They have been born and raised a certain way and cannot overpower that, nor would they know where to begin. One flaw in this argument is that people get experience from multiple sources and they can choose which sources of information to utilize. The weight of these choices in your mind has to come from biology or experience though, because where else could it come from? People cannot separate themselves from their minds or their experience. This might lead one to believe that people cannot be considered responsible in a moral sense because they are making unavoidable choices. This might lead one to mean that we should not enforce moral choices, but people base choices on consequences. If murder is illegal, then people will do so much less because they will not want to face the consequences. People also need to experience the world as a moral place in order to learn to be moral. The experience towards morality needs to come from somewhere. Since society could change the way people act, as in morality, by teaching different methods and society is made up of people, then people must be able to change behavior. This might mean that society is a method to influence people in predictable ways and could be used to create people that act in a positive way. It could in turn work negatively and create a society with negative consequences.

This argument means that everything comes from a knowable source but we would not say that everything that comes from a source is caused. Just because a teacher assigns homework I do not have to do it but I might say that the reason I did it was because it was assigned. This would mean that every act can be justified but that does not make it lack free will.

If we choose to act in a certain way based on justifications that we may not be aware of does the lack of awareness prevent it from being called a free choice?   

If humans are predictable does that mean they don't have free will?

Assuming that there is no God, people are made consisting of a set biological structure and develop because of this and their experience without a “divine spark.” If this is the case then knowing exactly how that biology works and exactly what that person’s experience is should allow one to accurately predict the choices that a person will make. This would mean that free will is not as simple as it sounds. People would be like computers with different input. The variations in structure and the input would change their behavior rather than something uniquely them. Each person is different in their experiences and biology though, so nobody is entirely predictable even to themselves. We also do make choices. These choices are determined by predictable factors and could perhaps be explained if some omniscient force or ultimate were to do so. That does not change that the person makes the choices. Our consciousness may be determined by known factors, but that does not change that it is ours. It would also be strange to say that our choices are not our own because they are determined by our biology and experience. These are the things that make up our self identity and so it is natural that our choices follow from them. We are still a self making choices based on options and even if these choices could be predicted we are still the ones making them. That means that we have some form of free will. We do not immediately know when presented with a choice which we will choose and we do not act in a certain way because of forces that are outside of our self. Outside forces can influence us, but it is the aspects that make up ourselves that determine our choices.

If someone knew everything about a person and could use that to accurately predict that person’s choices would that person would then be acting in a way that discounts free will or would it simply mean that humans are not capable of complete spontaneity?