Until immorality vanishes, acting as if there is free will even if we do not accept it’s existance is the preferable course.

I would put it differently. There are no uncaused decisions, which depending on your definition may mean there’s no free will. One of the “causes” (or “influences”) of a decision is the surrounding incentive structure. So, we should set up the incentive structure to minimize people doing bad things. As you say, punishment acts as a deterrent. It does this, in fact, because there is no free will.

We tend to see coercion as a “subversion of free will” because we clearly observe a causal mechanism influencing the decision. But in fact there is always some causal mechanism that influences the decision, it’s just usually much murkier to us than coercion.

Society’s role should be to embrace this (let’s be happy that human actions are not uncaused) and design incentive structures to minimize bad things happening. This social engineering literally is morality, it is not that we should pine for the days when humans will never have incentive to do bad things to each other.

Until immorality vanishes, acting as if there is free will even if we do not accept it’s existance is the preferable course.

I would put it differently. There are no uncaused decisions, which depending on your definition may mean there’s no free will. One of the “causes” (or “influences”) of a decision is the surrounding incentive structure. So, we should set up the incentive structure to minimize people doing bad things. As you say, punishment acts as a deterrent. It does this, in fact, because there is no free will.

We tend to see coercion as a “subversion of free will” because we clearly observe a causal mechanism influencing the decision. But in fact there is always some causal mechanism that influences the decision, it’s just usually much murkier to us than coercion.

Society’s role should be to embrace this (let’s be happy that human actions are not uncaused) and design incentive structures to minimize bad things happening. This social engineering literally is morality, it is not that we should pine for the days when humans will never have incentive to do bad things to each other.

Even if it were possible to perfectly rehabilitate wrongdoers without punishing them, and to perfectly ascertain the causitive factors that led to the wrong doing, society could still conceivably be served by punishing the wrongdoer for their actions. Punishment would still act as a deterrent. Otherwise, the anti-social man of the far future could think, “OK, I’ll kill my wife, take the rehabilitation pill and marry my mistress. That’s a good deal for me!”

Until immorality vanishes, acting as if there is free will even if we do not accept it’s existance is the preferable course.

Even if it were possible to perfectly rehabilitate wrongdoers without punishing them, and to perfectly ascertain the causitive factors that led to the wrong doing, society could still conceivably be served by punishing the wrongdoer for their actions. Punishment would still act as a deterrent. Otherwise, the anti-social man of the far future could think, “OK, I’ll kill my wife, take the rehabilitation pill and marry my mistress. That’s a good deal for me!”

Until immorality vanishes, acting as if there is free will even if we do not accept it’s existance is the preferable course.

I hate to rain on your parade because I fear doing so will feed the trolls (Sorry, but I’ve just called anyone who carries on to the effect that freedom, goodness, etc… requires God a troll), but there’s something epistemically questionable about what you’re suggesting.

Let’s suppose you know we have freedom on the basis of e. You then learn that the universe is made of what it’s made of. However, we’re assuming this isn’t a tautology b/c otherwise you knew it all along. Rather, we learn what the universe is made of. Surely what you learn, when combined with e could in principle lead to lowering the probability that you had free will even if you initially knew you had free will on the basis of e alone.

To deny this is a possibility out of hand, it seems you’d have to deny that you could have knowledge on the basis of uncertain evidence. Surely, however, we don’t have certain evidence that we’re free, in which case even if you denied that we could have knowledge on less than certain grounds, we’d not know we’re free.

I hate to rain on your parade because I fear doing so will feed the trolls (Sorry, but I’ve just called anyone who carries on to the effect that freedom, goodness, etc… requires God a troll), but there’s something epistemically questionable about what you’re suggesting.

Let’s suppose you know we have freedom on the basis of e. You then learn that the universe is made of what it’s made of. However, we’re assuming this isn’t a tautology b/c otherwise you knew it all along. Rather, we learn what the universe is made of. Surely what you learn, when combined with e could in principle lead to lowering the probability that you had free will even if you initially knew you had free will on the basis of e alone.

To deny this is a possibility out of hand, it seems you’d have to deny that you could have knowledge on the basis of uncertain evidence. Surely, however, we don’t have certain evidence that we’re free, in which case even if you denied that we could have knowledge on less than certain grounds, we’d not know we’re free.

The scenario I posed (use science to model/predict human behavior, use this model to assess punishment to maximize expected utility) is indeed fanciful by today’s standards.

But we can use the same principles to set up a consequentialist justice system, even today. If we don’t know most of the causes, oh well, that means that the punishment is mostly focused on the perpetrator (that’s already the case today). It would still change the game to focus explicitly on minimizing the number of crimes*, rather than on some more abstract notion of morality.

Then, as scientific capacity to accurately model human behavior ramps up, our justice system won’t be faced with a “human deliberation is a result of external causes” crisis– instead, we’ll have a mechanism in place to assign blame and punishment to the external causes (the human ones, anyway).

(* “Minimizing the # crimes” is too specific. You have to take into account the reduction in utility from the penalties themselves– otherwise simply executing all criminals might seem the best policy)

The scenario I posed (use science to model/predict human behavior, use this model to assess punishment to maximize expected utility) is indeed fanciful by today’s standards.

But we can use the same principles to set up a consequentialist justice system, even today. If we don’t know most of the causes, oh well, that means that the punishment is mostly focused on the perpetrator (that’s already the case today). It would still change the game to focus explicitly on minimizing the number of crimes*, rather than on some more abstract notion of morality.

Then, as scientific capacity to accurately model human behavior ramps up, our justice system won’t be faced with a “human deliberation is a result of external causes” crisis– instead, we’ll have a mechanism in place to assign blame and punishment to the external causes (the human ones, anyway).

(* “Minimizing the # crimes” is too specific. You have to take into account the reduction in utility from the penalties themselves– otherwise simply executing all criminals might seem the best policy)