[FRIAM] alternative response

[Jon Zingale]

It seems that the subject of free will is completely bound
up in the subject of moral responsibility (especially
historically), and often more narrowly bound up with the
concept of *good-evil* dualism. While it may have been a
useful tool, in ancient times for developing ideas like a
criminal justice system, today it seems to me that more
sophisticated frames for *generative ethics* exist.

Historically, there have also been questions connecting
free will to *indeterminism* and Aristotle's *prime mover*.
Investigations here seem misaligned for investigating
questions of moral responsibility. It really does not
matter whether there is some phase space with cusps,
singularities, or any other symmetrically breakable
property. This seems to be where *sciencey* discussions
move to speak about things below the Planck scale or
something else equally stultifying and decidedly less
useful. Why do we want to import the technology of free
will, and to what application do we find it useful?

Like god, free will is a strikingly unnecessary idea that
is arguably responsible for the punish-reward perspective
that many of us use to naively understand ideas of justice.
A criminal justice system designed around free will constrains
interpretation to focus on who does good or who does evil,
in other frames we may not care whether or not Charles
Manson is evil, but rather whether or not we want him running
about with whatever agency the rest of us enjoy.
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