I understand your argument. Two counterarguments are that it'd be a horribly inefficient and expensive way to deter crime and that it is ethical barbarism.

That's all well and good. If our torture response reduces murder by 99.9999%, it could well be a very +EV option. By this ignores our free will and criminal responsibility argument, i.e. this entire thread.

Psychopaths are, in some instances, biologically programmed to cause harm to others. Is it their fault they were born a psychopath? If we examine our great causal chain, is it your fault that you were born into Honduras and are simply statistically more likely to murder or be murdered based on something completely out of your control? What about the mentally insane?

If some people simply were simply wicked, wicked, evil people, you'd have an argument. But wicked and evil people do not exist. ISIS are not wicked, evil people. They think they're righteous. Psychopaths are not evil people - they're just going about life in a society that's not configured to deal with their predisposition.

Free wheel is gone when human race first invent a Fire

I understand your no free will, it's not really these peoples fault for committing the murders argument. I agree based on our free will theory. But that's not the point. We still punish people for wrong's when they break the laws.

So I'm not sure what your point is? Maybe some type of feminine morality? I don't want people to hurt, even though it may save so many more people's lives if they did.

Two counterarguments are that it'd be a horribly inefficient and expensive way to deter crime and that it is ethical barbarism.

Horribly inefficient: Maybe. I thought we were talking about ethics? It could be quite efficient. It could reach the point where we deterred so many more crimes than before, that the money saved on imprisoning these criminals more than pays for the extra man power needed to torture.

Ethical barbarism: I believe this to mean uncivilized ethics. How civilized would we be if we stopped progressing based on old morality laws?

The whole point is: can it be ethical to torture?

So if someone has a tumor pressing against their frontal lobe, causing rage and psychosis, driving someone to murder others, is it then fine to torture them?

A man enters into his nation, race, clan, gender etc..as planned prior to birth and in this he works for his and the world's betterment. To see these matters in "one and done" mode offers little for the differences are quite often moot.

And yes, man works through and within "free will" but its not an organ of the human body; not in the brain nor on the heart nor a notion of fantasy. It is a real to which each and every man is gaining.

Again; it is obvious that we are not totally "free" but to perform an act with understanding and a compassionate intellect is the realm of freedom and in this each and every one of us are in progress.

Love and the intellect or the compassionate creative freedom;

When the soul looks out onto a field of flowers and sees the beauty she is acting in sympathy with the beauty as such. Another may see the same field and be repelled as for example due to allergies and therefore acts within antipathy. Both are correct as the soul is immersed within sympathy / antipathy as exampled in this illustration.

Yet the spirit of man, his "Ego" looks out onto the field and notes the growth in spring, the blossom in the summer, the decompostion in the Fall and the return of the field of flowers to the mineral kingdom of the earth in Winter.

In this case the field of flowers "speaks for itself" and the human being through this spiritualized cognitive ability can speak to the laws of the field of flowers without respect to the sympathies/antipathies of the soul.

This is the world of "science" or "scientific endeavor" .The scientist , in ideal, sees the world without predilection or predisposition and in this, which is the cognitive act of "selfless cognition" he can and does manifest "Love". He lets the world "speak for itself".

It should be noted that the scientist is not the only one to practice the "sacrifice of thought" as it is part and parcel of the human condition, quite often not lived up to, and not as easy as it may sound , but none the less it is the p;ath to the spiritual inman, the responsibility of the scientist.

A Mother, in tears, sees her son as a the beautiful soul and thinks upon his great character and inherent beauty as he walks the road to the gallows for his heinous deed. She see the "best" in her son and it is true as we can see the same.

The "road to the heart is through the head". Mankind comes together through the "head" for in our feelings we are separate and this is frequently see in the mischief "feelings" display between nations. Also the individual man manifests through his "will" impulses as one builds a bridge and another may bake the bread.

Through the head we come to common truths as per example the " laws of the field of flowers" for truth is not dependent upon man but through thinking we experience ourselves united with the stream of cosmic existence. We, in effect, let the cosmos speak to ourselves in the cosmic progression.

In seeing your enemy the way to rapprochement is through the head which becomes the creative love of the heart, a work of sacrifice.

Noting the degenerative practices of another does not imply that one should agree with him but the expression of love is to see the best and of course the foibles of another can have a wide range of difficulty, within one's self as well as the other man. "Judge not" is appropriate in the workings of man to man.

Would a deterrent be able to effect this person from committing murder? I'm sure you're not questioning whether deterrents are a reasonable response to people committing crimes. If you are questing that deterrents work at all, that might be interesting.

In the case of the person with the tumor, if we know about this, and a deterrent wouldn't change this person's behavior, I see know reason to punish said person. Maybe execution would be better, remove the threat from society instead of building a deterrent for other's to be aware of that may follow this person's behavior.

That's not a problem. You may not be able to tell from whatever posts you have read, but I don't exclude information as i find that approach is counter-philosophical.

Which is why I don't fault you for having as paradigm of which you find appeal. That is independent of the characterizations I provided. Which are a reflection of the appeal of individuals having the only real perspective of their own observable features and this is replicate in individuals. From there it's a matter of asking how diverse are the appeals people may find when considering and expressing their own experiences and complementing that information with available social information?

So it remains free will is a feature of people, according to people and at least the observation of whether or not the opportunity for free will is available and so free will remains a feature of people's ecosystem, which may be called the universe.

Who or what wrote this ?.........

I think he means that the only logical process in inducing that thought (that he's aware of ) was: who is a celebrity I know.

The thought process wasn't: Who's a celebrity I know, I want to choose a women because, I want a good looking one because, I want a movie star because.

The brain is interesting. You frame the mind to give you the name of a celebrity, and it does.

Trying to rationalize why you thought of that particular one is difficult.

It's not really a free will question. It's a question about the brain. He's questioning the causation of what just went on here.

If he wants to talk about consciousness that way (which I'm not sure I would) it's pretty clear what went on. He gave an input to the brain, pick a celebrity, and he received.

I wasn't referring to the content of Jennifer Aniston at all; who/what wrote that paragraph ? It would be better if he answered the question .

I wrote it. But not by means of a faculty for free will. Not sure what point you're alluding to with this. Robots write stuff too but they (much more clearly) don't have free will.

I think he's implying that you're an idiot for how you're responding in this thread. Not exactly sure though.

How does a robot have less free will then you?

Is this "I" what exactly ?

Ego/self/whatever abstraction you like to refer to myself as an entity. This seems to be more of a matter of personal identity though.

Looks some people here have no free will and it looks like some of us, like Howard Beale and myself, do have free will. I feel sorry that some of you are unable to think and reason for yourself. I feel sorry that your beliefs are constrained as much as those of grizzly bears, computer programs, or rocks. I hope none of the other posters who know that they have free will don't look down on our constrained brethren. They have no choice in what they think. Fear not though. The rest of us free thinking humans will carry on by using the gifts of reasoning, creativity, imagination, and free will with which we we were born.

^ Apparently in perfect ignorance to the fact that free will is illusory.

Agreed. His belief sure makes himself feel good though. Questing his belief probably isn't good for him. People tend to believe whatever is good for them. Hence why it is so hard to move people off their religious beliefs even though it seems so clear to some of us how foolish their reasoning is. It's not good for them to question the existence of their god.

Meale: Any interest in continuing our discussion on this statement you made, I find this topic interesting:

In regards to our torture, deterrent thoughts:

Because it in no way contributes to a reduction in suffering but rather the direct antithesis.

You lack the authority to determine that as you can't achieve the required perspective to observe and decide for that person.

Free will isn't a belief, will is a faculty of individuals.
How one faculty like will interacts with other faculty, like feelings, is individual and diverse.

Maybe you can't assume this because your perspective on the topic isn't desirable? Meale makes sense to me.

What exactly did you mean by that? My interpretation: that one human can think free will doesn't exist, but he can't assume free will does not exist for another human.

Mind elaborating on this?

Lets turn around and reefer to your grizzly bear/dna/gene stuff ala Harris.

If the source of our actions is genetic/programming then "you" the "abstraction" you referred to is your genetic self. All of what you wrote is contained within your genes.

Likewise the Beethoven piano sonatas were preprogrammed within Beethoven and that's that. Likewise the Bernoulli family of mathematicians were preprogrammed from the start in "this march of the genes" which might inspire one to compose a catchy tune but of course because he is preprogrammed.

As the above displays, if the murderer is programmed to do his heinous deed so likewise was Beethoven.

You should never say "I" but somehow manage to say the "gene did it" as I mentioned in the "devil made me do it" quote. You might say "my brain did it" but never the "I".

There is something referable to this in the age prior to the genetic code or genes when some scientists and religious stated that its all about "heredity". they stated that the Bernoulli's and Beethoven family "inherited" their abilities. It was and still is a strong point which morphed into "genes" in our age.

According to these hereditaryians/gene geniuses there must be a factor which allows for change not in the hereditaryian stream and "chance" and "nurture" presented themselves to the scientific soul.

A major point which repels "heredity' and "genes" is the fact that if the talents and creative abilities of families of genius were there initially then we would not often see the greatest of the family present himself at the end of the family line. We should see this genius at the beginning of the line.

Yes, there is a tendency of the Bach family to musical genius as the evolutionary process here is that the spirit/soul being the real person incarnates into the family line that has a good physical "ear", that which is necessary to be a good musician.

The talents of the new born Goethe were not given by his parents but brought with him into this new life. That which makes the new born Goethe an individual, that which his parents can never give to him is his "I", not an abstraction but a reality of the spirit and soul of man.

Now, I really haven't spoken to "free will" as you might like it as I have attempted to display the nature of the Harris fallacy which you advocate. I have spoken to "freedom/free will" in my previous posts but as I said have spoken to Harris to which you are advocating.

If I throw a rock , letting it fly in the manner of Spinoza he would state: man is like such a rock, not capable of seeing the fact that we are predestined to our destiny. Likewise we are like babies who do not understand that we follow our impulses .

But who's to say that we can be compared to a crying baby or a traveling rock for as we travel we can quite comprehend what we are doing and acting within knowledge. We are "knowing doers" and in this we are within the realm of "free will".

We have many questions of life and primary is the understanding of the human being and his position in the cosmos. The beginning of understanding the cosmic warp and woof is the knowledge of man as being of soul and spirit.

I've been toying w/ approaching the free will debate using probability in which I'm going to make a guess:

Tolstoy sits down to write War and Peace, considered one of the GOAT and very long. By some manner he has created the plot and characters and the words appear on his paper through the commands of his mind (or brain if you insist). He gets through a few paragraphs, looks them over, maybe makes some changes/maybe not depending on whether or not they suit him. This continues until the book is finished. Off it goes to the publisher whose staff reads it, sends back comments and finally, after an unguessable number of discussions and revisions, the book is published.

Which would be more likely? That a chain of causality starting some 13.72 billion years ago caused War and Peace to come into existence or that someone showed up to a Sam Harris presentation dressed as Bozo the Clown? Does anybody know if someone's shown up to see Sam Harris speak dressed as Bozo the Clown?

I can't bring myself to believe that one occurred before the other, it's just too extreme, if everything is the simple result of one atom bumping into another in just the 'right' way. Something else has to be going on.

It's similar to metaphoric caution "never let somebody sell you your own watch". Or how can some else know you better than you? Something one can know simply oneself gives primacy of knowledge within individual being. The best "evidence" of free will is experience. An experience of there being no freedom of will is still an opportunity to personally test that using faculty to determine what free will is exactly imagined if you didn't have the experience of no free will. Diversity.

And there is more than one way to change the world because there is the way of every individual who dares.

Or a rose by another name is still a pretty flower.