Mand0s

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    Daniel Grosser
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  1. Michael, Thank you for your response. There is one statement you made which I don't think I've understood and in light of which I would like to elaborate a little on my own position. My misunderstanding comes from your use of the word 'automation'. I'm uncertain of what you mean by that and clarification would be greatly appreciated. Regarding my own position, I do not hold that 'good person' and 'bad person' are the only alternatives nor that they are alternatives one is likely to find. I presented them here as idealizations in an attempt to be as clear as possible. By 'good person' I mean a person who always makes a morally correct choice in the context of their knowledge at any particular moment and by a 'bad person' I mean a person who never makes a morally correct choice. I also think that redemption is possible, but my present position entails that no change can be made to the nature of a person's particular volitional faculty. Rather, I would say, approximately, that redemption changes a person's premises and thus that person's course of action without changing their particular volitional faculty's nature. -Mand0s
  2. First off, I should say that I'm uncertain of where to put this topic, as it seems to fall within the realm of several of the forums. Thus, I defer to whatever judgement the moderators may pass as to its proper placement. I should also apologize in advance if this specific question has been raised already. With that out of the way, my question is this: if a person has free will and thus each choice made by that person is a 'primary cause', why do we evaluate the person rather than merely the choice? To make my thinking and the motivation for the question a little more clear, I'll say a bit here about what my response would be and you all can hopefully tell me whether I'm on the right or wrong track--particularly as terms such as 'free will', 'choice', etc. were used by Rand and are used by Objectivists. So, my response to the question would be the following. Though it is true that a person is free to choose whatever that person wills in any particular circumstance, the particular choice must be in accordance with that person's specific nature. Thus, though both a 'good person' and a 'bad person' *can* make the same choices, the 'good person' *will* make 'good choices' and the 'bad person' *will* make 'bad choices', to put the matter simply. Thus, moral evaluation of the person is important because it tells us something about the choices that will be made by the person in the future. I've tried to be concise, which may have caused me to be unclear, but I hope the above is both concise and clear. If I have failed in my objective, I am more than happy to elaborate in order to clarify what I've written. Many thanks. - Mand0s PS Tolkien fans among you may recognize the appropriateness of my username. It was chosen in part to match this, my first topic, post, and introduction to this board.