What's the best response to someone who believes in hard determinism but also uses this to deny responsibility for any immoral actions they commit? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by PlogLod@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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That is, they think all of their decisions were preordained, and then use this to claim that they can't be held responsible for anything they do.

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[-] Susaga@ttrpg.network 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There's an episode of the Good Place where they discuss this exact thing (well, replace "immoral" with "romantic", but still), and I'm pretty sure the motivations are the same. They don't actually believe in determinism as much as they claim, but they don't want to be responsible for their actions and determinism is a good excuse they can use. You can't use logic to get them out of this belief, because it wasn't logic that made them believe it to begin with.

this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023

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