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Originally Posted by davidm
Coyne responded by saying, in substance, that it is perfectly OK to blame and shame the denter of the car because by doing so, blame and shame enter the deterministic stream and therefore can deterministically influence the choices of others by modifying their behavior in a positive way.
And yet as I read that it occurred to me, is that not also what the compatibilist would say? Yet Coyne repudiates compatibilism.
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Ha! This remembers me about a 'science fiction story' I once wrote on CFI:
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A spaceship with omniscient aliens aboard appears above a planet I will call Earth-II. As omniscient species they see how everything is determined on the planet. Messages are exchanged between humanoids on the planet, and these are processed in a deterministic way.
Now they fly on and go to a planet I call Earth-I. They see exactly the same kind of humanoids, same hardware, but the messages somehow differ, and so does of course the behaviour of the humanoids, but all is of course also deterministic. The aliens put their best language interpreters on the case, and discover that the humanoids use words like “free”, “responsible”, “praise”, “blame” etc, which the humanoids on Earth-II did not use. Learning the language of these humanoids, and how they effect the humanoids’ behaviour, and then interacting with the humanoids, changed the species’ life forever… And happily they flew back to Earth-II, taught the new discourse elements to a few humanoids there. They did not tell some new scientific facts, just new language elements. From there the “joyful news” spread over Earth-II…
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As a joke I added following last remark:
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Some of those who directly learned the discourse from the aliens were crucified because some other humanoids did not want to understand what they were saying.
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(My romantic vision on Christianity. I know reality is much different...)
Thanks for the article! I printed it out, and will read it as soon as I have time.