Moral Responsibility

Moral Responsibility

Introduction

It was Sunday morning when a policeman on his break came to the church to pray. As he walked in the church, he saw a man, lying on the floor, face down, blood around him. The police rushed to the dead man, it was the local priest, he then called his colleagues, and soon enough, the rest of the police came with an ambulance. The priest was already dead, but it’s not late to find out the killer. He was shot dead with a handgun, and after a good investigation, it was found that an extremist Islamist had killed him as a terror attack.

The case became a worldwide media sensation, and of course, the killer became one of the most hated person on earth. Many demanded the death sentence, even from the ulemas and the ustadzs. The person was condemned, cursed, ridiculed, and mocked by the entire world. In short, it’s quite a chaotic mess. Meanwhile, the evidence found that exposed the extremist was found by accident. A fellow priest was just walking around the altar when he found the critical evidence. The priest who found it was praised by people from around the world. Many gave him appreciation, and said he should be rewarded and commended.

This is a case of moral responsibility. Moral responsibility, is a concept which is still closely tied with the concept of Free Will. According to the idea, people can deserve praise or blame, reward or punishment for something they had done by their own conscience. In simpler words, anything we do that is Free Willed, is subject to moral responsibility. For example, the Islamist there clearly deserved the blame and punishment for that murder, it was clearly his own pure intentions. The priest who found that evidence did not deserve any praise, because it was an accident, he did not found it because he wanted it, he just did, it wasn’t his intentions to do so. Anyway, the priest who helped delivered justice, though by accident, was honored by the government, and the extremist was shot dead in a fire fight with the police.

This seems very fair, fine, and just, but is it? Ignoring the morality of this very concept, is it even logical in the first place? And that is where things start to go wrong. The concept of moral responsibility is the very basis of the legal system most countries have now. If you do something bad, you deserve to be punished, either by paying extravagant amounts of money or getting locked up in a cold prison cell for years. The idea of righteous anger, righteous vengeance, or the eye for an eye is not far from the concept of moral responsibility either. Surprisingly, while true that some have questioned Free Will, moral responsibility is questioned upon even less, perhaps partially because anyone who does is implying that we should discard the entire legal system and change it 180 degrees. Nevertheless, since it hinges upon Free Will, it will not stand long without its partner.

Refutations

As previously mentioned, human action is only subject to moral responsibility when it is caused by Free Will. But it can be rephrased into humans only deserve praise or blame for what they have done, if what they did is because they wanted to do it. In other short words, intention is key.

Intention, or want, or desire, is a human emotion, feeling that drives that human to do or reach something. A better way to simplify it is if someone wants to eat, they will walk to the kitchen, cook some food and eat it. The want, the intention, the desire of eating drives the human to cook, and eat food. But that’s not all, intention must also be realized by the human, the human must be aware that they want something, they have an intention, which means, it has to by their own Free Will.

An example that contrasts with genuine intention is a robot. The robot has been programmed to recharge itself to a power port if its battery is running low. Does that mean the robot has an intention to recharge itself? No, because it is only programmed to do so. Intention is an act of choice, you choose to want something, you can’t choose what you need, but you can choose what you want.

And from that elaboration alone, the pillars of moral responsibility can be demolished instantly. As explained in the previous essay, the concept of Free Will is straight out illogical and even unscientific. As a short review, Free Will means humans have the capabilities of making a choice that is purely from themselves, not influenced and not coerced. But the physical laws are against that idea, as we are merely a remix of every form of information our brain receives and also the brain itself, which is a combination of both a neural network and a computer. By that, Free Will is plain out false.

If Free Will is false, moral responsibility can not exist, as whenever someone does something, the choice to do so wasn’t purely from themselves. In fact it’s not from themselves at all, it’s merely the combination of the present external factors and internal factors, which again are just past external information mixed together. And intention itself is caused by Free Will. A person does not simply desire to do something, that desire comes because of a certain past they had. They want not because they chose to, but because their choice to want is caused by the past, and their brain. Why would you praise someone for something that they actually don’t have control of? And why would you blame someone for something that again, was never their fault in the first place?

Conclusion

Justice, is something longed by all in this world, but it may have been misunderstood by many, if not all. It was misunderstood to the point of creating unnecessary anger, hatred, suffering, and discrimination as a result of the concept known as moral responsibility. A concept which itself is tied to the concept of Free Will, and its ties never broke, as it is brought down along with its ideological partner. With this, moral responsibility is declared a baseless and illogical system of justice, and to be false.