[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by totoum

I didn't say anything the first time but since you say it again, "We" do that? Maybe people around you do, but I sure don't so this argument is completely lost on me. Hell,I'm surrounded by astrology and numerology fans as well.

Well, that's just me reflecting the weary bitterness that comes from defending religion and the necessity of religious belief in the often vitriolic religion thread of this forum. Often, the argument against religion is that people with religious belief are delusional, willing "victims" of an elaborate fairy tale or, worse, the stupid dupes of a millennia-old conspiracy to control the unthinking masses. Often, too, the argument is that if only people were more rational, they would shrug off the irrational demands of dogma and accept that the scientific method — being more logical, more rational — is the better way to conduct our lives.

The other argument that often surfaces is the idea that people with religious belief are overly emotional (hence, irrational). The idea is that we would all be living in a more utopian world if only people would not be so easily sidetracked by the emotional appeals to an "imaginary" moral authority that lives somewhere in the sky.

So now, the coin is flipped. As I've pointed out, there is increasingly compelling scientific evidence to suggest that free will is, like God, so much imaginary nonsense. We are not autonomous agents, but rather the slaves of our biology. What is the ultimate implication of such a "truth"? You think you are making an autonomous choice, but a brain scan and a computer could, in fact, predict your likely action split seconds before you could even articulate the thought.

Is it even meaningful, therefore, to think we are moral agents? I raise here another popular argument that comes up frequently in the such debates on this forum, the idea that our sense of "morality" evolved from our behaviour as social animals. The argument states that it is the need for us to coexist in tribes, to cooperate with each other to bring in the harvest or the hunt, that necessitated various moral and ethical codes to ensure harmonious behaviour within the group. Take this idea to its logical conclusion: What we consider "good" today is the result of evolution over thousands of years. What we "decide" today is the result of a process of natural selection over which we had absolutely no say, no control.

If we can't take credit for the many factors that make us who we biologically are today, to what extent then can we claim to be autonomous moral agents? Our behaviour is merely the result of nature. "Nurture" is an illusion all along, a pleasant fiction to let us believe we have ultimate control over our actions.

This is the brute "fact" that science presents. Thinkers like Harris would have you believe that while this seems like a horrible scenario, it is in fact a necessary truth to confront. Harris believes that the illusion of "free will" is not unlike the "illusion" presented by religion: it distracts people from thinking seriously about treating the root causes of many of the problems we face today in society. He believes that science is capable of helping people make moral decisions, free from the messy thinking process stemming from the desire to preserve the illusion of free choice.

To those who would worship science over God, cold calculation over emotional choices, would not the Sibyl System be the perfect utopia they envision?

As for where I actually stand in the debate over free will and determinism, I've made my arguments, quite strenuously, here: On the validity of free will. In short, I made the case that determinism sounds very compelling only if you trace behaviour backwards to its biological "causes", but it is phenomenally lousy at predicting what actual kinds of behaviour you would get at any instance, given the same set of data in the same environment. Determinism, quite simply, fails to adequately account for complexity.

But for argument's sake, because that is what the making of this anime, this story, is a good excuse for...

Originally Posted by totoum

I'm pretty darn sure that in a world with the Sibyl System she wouldn't have gotten that chance.

What are the likely implications of living in a fully deterministic ethical system? Given that we live in a world of scarce resources, which makes it necessary for us to aim to get maximum output from limited inputs, it is not implausible to think that the resources your stepmother spent on taking up a new career she wasn't naturally suited for could have been better spent on grooming someone who would make a Class A dancer. It could conceivably be argued that society as a whole became "poorer" from losing an exceptional lawyer in exchange for a just above-average dancer.

Here's another way to re-frame the scenario as it is presented in Psycho-Pass. Supposing that I believe myself to be a moral person, and that I feel an overriding responsibility to make good moral choices. If, after subjecting myself to Sibyl Judgment, it is discovered that I have the psychological profile of a potential criminal. What would be the moral choice? Should I bulldoze ahead on a normal track, heedless of the higher-than-normal risk I present to other people, if I should make a mistake and accidentally (or perhaps even deliberately, on a subconscious level) fail to take the medication I need to stay within normal limits?

In my desire to fulfil my own emotional needs, have I failed in my moral responsibility to other people, given the knowledge that the Sibyl System has presented to me? How much "choice" do I really have in this matter?