As to the “cash value” I think there are some. First, if Libertarianism is true, then I think we have to take seriously the irreducibility of the agent. (I’m convinced that there’s no way to make it work without some kind of ontologically irreducible agent) As such it is probably on par with zombie arguments about consciousness. (Not quite, since one could argue there is consciousness as a property without arguing for irreducible agency – but most arguing for some sort of dualism believe in agents)

An other one is the issue of punishments and rewards. While one can, of course, reject Libertarianism while accepting responsibility, they are typically related. Certainly even the semi-compatibilists engage the same arguments. If there isn’t this kind of responsibility then our very intuitions of punishment are wrong and we should probably switch to thinking of ‘repair’ or ‘treatments’ rather than punishment.

From a religious context the issue is important as well. Calvinism is false if Libertarianism is true, for instance. There are plenty of theological implications of Libertarianism (as Blake has sketched out for Mormonism). At a minimum there is no foreknowledge.

Rich

If what I sketched out is correct, why do we need the concepts of Free Will and Determinism. What question do they attempt to answer?

Rich

Both semi-compatibilists and Libertarians would agree with what say.

Sociopaths, for example don’t seem to be able to do this. First of all they lack the ability to judge their own behavior in a social environment. This is simply another way of saying they lack empathy. Empathy is the ability to project other feelings as your own. Empathy is like a feedback loop which allows us to judge our actions in terms of what how we feel the other person feels. Mirror neurons seem to be at the center of this ability. Nevertheless, empathy is a trained ability. Given cold distant care givers, the ability to empathize never grows. This is called Associative Disorder, the extreme wing of which is Sociopathy. (All this is predicated upon a normal brain.)

Are we moral agents. We would have to say yes, under normal circumstances. That is, if we grow up in a nurturing environment with nurturing care givers and a normal brain so that we can establish new behavior through the development of new affectively based memories. With a cold non-nurturing environment it becomes more difficult to establish affectively based alternative futures, a prerequisite for change. By the way, reason, in this process, is the means by which we evaluate and choose alternative affectively based futures.

Rich

I laid out my own points in the context of LDS epistemology and Peirce.

“Now I ask again, can humans really know anything? Does the experience come from God, or do we merely interpret it to be experienced as coming from God? I’m going to deal with the strongest arguments that I know.”

“Now I’m going to make a suggestion. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, even our most rigorous reasoning rests, at bottom, upon human intuition. For reasoning, including formal logic and mathematics, cannot proceed without at least some basic axioms and assumptions: derivation procedures, formation transference rules, and rules of inference that cannot be proven by the same rigorous reasoning. These facets of reasoning can be justified only as basic givens which have the property of just seeming right or that lead to explanation and consistency of a range of experience and data.”