In Just deserts: debating free will, Dennett debates with the determinist Caruso, who proposes a public-health model to treat offenders. Dennett is known for his view that
we should make free will into something that is “worth wanting by a species that has a capacity for being rational and mature.” Caruso defines free will as “the control in
action required for attributions of desert in its basic form”, as do several other participants in the current debate. In the basic form of desert, someone who has acted wrongly
deserves to be blamed and perhaps punished just because s/he has acted for morally bad reasons, and someone who has acted rightly deserves credit or praise and perhaps
reward just because s/he has acted for morally good reasons. Such desert is basic because these desert claims are fundamental in their justification; they are not justified by further considerations, such as any anticipated good consequences of implementing them.”
Dennett uses a thought-experiment that is based on the work of Immanuel Kant, in which there are no good consequences to punishing a wrongdoer: “Consider that someone on an isolated island brutally murders everyone else on that island and that he is not capable of moral reform, due to his inner hatred and rage. Add that it is not possible for him to escape the island, and no one else will ever visit because it’s too remote. There is no longer a society on the island whose rules might be determined by a social contract aimed at good consequences, since the society has been disbanded. Do we have the intuition that this murderer still deserves to be punished? If so, then punishment would be basically deserved if the example in fact, does eliminate the options for non-basic desert, as it seems to.” Caruso frequently quotes Derk Pereboom, who, in his Living without free will, argues: “If, in order to protect society, we have the right to quarantine people who are carriers of severe communicable diseases, then we also have the right to isolate the criminally dangerous
to protect society.”
Photo: GreggCaruso.com
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