Abstract
Closely connected with chap. 6, chap. 7 concentrates on the philosophical discussion around responsibility. However, whereas the possibility of executing free will can unambiguously be shown in the clustered-minds multiverse, responsibility will turn out to be a subtler issue. Short-term, i.e., in each singular decision, full responsibility of a certain version of an individual for his actions is difficult to justify since a complete removal of consciousness from non-preferred realities is not possible. The chapter therefore brings in Buddhist’ and Confucianist’ accounts of responsibility that help establishing the idea of a long-term responsibility in the clustered-minds multiverse. Another potential limit for responsibility to be looked at in chap. 7 are the many choices that are (partially) driven by unconscious motives. Chapter 7 contains one box discussing a pragmatic, economic approach to punishment (potentially replacing ‘moral’ responsibility with ‘deterrence’).
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Notes
- 1.
To avoid any confusion, I will not deal with the difference between a merit-based view and a consequentialist view of responsibility, here. I will only deal with the corresponding theoretical concepts, i.e. incompatibilism, often connected with the merit-based view, and compatibilism, often connected with the consequentialist view. For this distinction and further literature see Eshleman (2014). The exception I am going to deal with, the approach by Strawson, might be seen as a merit-based form of compatibilism (Eshleman 2014).
- 2.
A closely related limit to responsibility would arise from ‘pre-specified’ degrees of consciousness, based on mod squared amplitudes, a thought that was presented (and dismissed) in Chap. 4, within the implementation of the clustered-minds multiverse. Specifically, if not only the coupling between preferences and the degree of consciousness allocated to different realities would be indirect, but if free will could only partially adjust the pre-specified degrees of consciousness, then due to the sum of the two effects, responsibility would be even harder to justify. If one meets a version of an individual that, say, just committed a crime, how could we be sure that (a) this was not a reality with a large mod squared amplitude and (b) free will did just everything it could to reduce the degree of consciousness allocated to this reality?
- 3.
To be precise, in Schade-Strohm (2017), self-cultivation in connection with purposeful consciousness development makes you experience better realities (i.e., with more awareness).
- 4.
There is no perfect overlap, however, with ‘hard-problem’-type consciousness. This subtlety will be disregarded in the following discussion.
- 5.
See, for a general overview of the decision processes involved with large stakes, Kunreuther et al. (2002).
- 6.
Indeed, unexpected changes in the development of a minds cluster are probably one of the major reasons for reallocations of consciousness.
- 7.
And I have to admit that it might often be impossible to judge which are the respective conditions at hand, i.e., which of those situational determinants apply.
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Schade, C.D. (2018). Are We Responsible for Our Decisions?. In: Free Will and Consciousness in the Multiverse. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03583-9_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03583-9_7
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