Posted by sinusoidallysane on March 16, 2009, 1:17 am, in reply to ""if we have no freedom, we cannot be held morally responsible for our actions""
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I would say that this makes sense, but only hypothetically. If you have absolutely no freedom (i.e. you simply cannot make any other choice) then it seems obvious that you can't be held responsible for the consequences. In reality tho, this doesn't really make any sense since as far as we know, some sort of mind control where you can't control what you do is not possible. Therefore, there is always some amount of freedom. If someone gives you a direct order (even if they threaten to kill anyone who disobeys), you still make the choice of whether to obey or not. In the Nuremberg (or wherever the Nazi trials were) trials, a popular defense was that they were "just following orders," so many people confronted with a situation in which they are ordered to do something they would rather not do because of moral objections may like to think that the fact that they were ordered to do something absolves them of guilt, but technically they still had a choice.
Also relevant is the Milgram (sp?) obedience experiment, where people believed they were being ordered to deliver painful shocks to another research participant. Milgram found that although they showed (rather severe) signs of stress and inner struggle, about 60% of people were willing to give the other participant (actually a confederate) a 450 volt shock (which would be lethal, if it were real)when ordered to by the experimenter ("you must continue; you have no other choice").
So, this tangent is kind of depressing insight on human nature. . .
Essentially:
-good people may do bad things if ordered to by an authority figure (but still may use their own judgment)
-there is nothing logically wrong with the quote, but only if "no freedom" *really* means absolutely "no freedom"
-because of the findings of the milgram experiment, there may be room for gray area (but be careful!)
sorry for the rambly-ness of this
hopefully it's somewhat coherent
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