> if people are determined by outside forces, so are judges and prison guards,
false equivalency. people are determined by very different outside forces, and thats precisely why some people aren't deserving of the same levels of "moral judgement".
false equivalency. people are determined by very different outside forces, and thats precisely why some people aren't deserving of the same levels of "moral judgement".
(This will probably be a controversial point on HN so to expand a little: I think consciousness is both non-mystical and non-material - the mind is entirely natural, mind and matter interact, but the mind is not the same as the brain, and is not made of atoms. Qualia and the binding problem [1] cannot be explained in material terms. Furthermore, if our thoughts are merely deterministic neurons firing, then we don't have any reliable knowledge of reality, making any debate meaningless).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_problem#The_combinatio...
In reality we have free will. If every action was predetermined, there'd be no point judging people.