If you don't believe in free will, or if you believe in genetic determinism, I'm not sure there is any point in being proud of anything. You're tall ? That's just your genes and good nutrition you had. You're smart ? Well that's just a gift.
You've achieved something ? Well, you just had a favorable set of circumstances.
Everything is already predetermined, one will say, so pride has no rational justification, right ?
I thought I was compatibilist for a while, but lately I've adopted a more drastic approach : I don't think the world is deterministic, at least not from any subjective point of view.
I just don't see how it is logically possible for the world to be deterministic while at the same time having conscious, intelligent entities being part of it. Either we are not conscious, dumb, or the world as we experience it is not deterministic.
If the world was deterministic, we could predict our future. But that is not logically possible. Say for instance you want to know how you will die. You make all necessary computations and you conclude that you will die of a lung cancer due to smoking.
So you decide to quit smoking. No lung cancer. That's great, but now you don't know what you will die from. Your behavior was influenced by the prediction, which made the prediction wrong. In order to be accurate, a prediction must take into account the consequences of its knowledge from all people concerned by it.
It's a logical circularity, so it can only work if the prediction is actually pushing the behavior in some subtle way. Kind of as with ancient prophecies.
I believe this kind of margins of imperfections with determinism allows the concepts of "merit" or "pride" to make sense.
Imagine a prince visiting an oracle to know if he will become king. The Oracle realizes that if he tells the prince that he will become king, then the prince will just wait for his coronation quietly and it will happen, but if he tells the prince that he will not become king, then the prince will get bitter, his relationship with his king father will worsen and eventually the king will name an other heir.
Suddenly, the Oracle realizes he has the power to decide whether or not the prince will become king. He is then free to judge the prince's character and assess whether or not he would make a good king.
And so it is for moral values. For the concept of pride or merit. They make sense despite the overall deterministic nature of the world, because at least as far as behavior is concerned, the world can not logically be entirely deterministic.
You've achieved something ? Well, you just had a favorable set of circumstances.
Everything is already predetermined, one will say, so pride has no rational justification, right ?
I thought I was compatibilist for a while, but lately I've adopted a more drastic approach : I don't think the world is deterministic, at least not from any subjective point of view.
I just don't see how it is logically possible for the world to be deterministic while at the same time having conscious, intelligent entities being part of it. Either we are not conscious, dumb, or the world as we experience it is not deterministic.
If the world was deterministic, we could predict our future. But that is not logically possible. Say for instance you want to know how you will die. You make all necessary computations and you conclude that you will die of a lung cancer due to smoking.
So you decide to quit smoking. No lung cancer. That's great, but now you don't know what you will die from. Your behavior was influenced by the prediction, which made the prediction wrong. In order to be accurate, a prediction must take into account the consequences of its knowledge from all people concerned by it.
It's a logical circularity, so it can only work if the prediction is actually pushing the behavior in some subtle way. Kind of as with ancient prophecies.
I believe this kind of margins of imperfections with determinism allows the concepts of "merit" or "pride" to make sense.
Imagine a prince visiting an oracle to know if he will become king. The Oracle realizes that if he tells the prince that he will become king, then the prince will just wait for his coronation quietly and it will happen, but if he tells the prince that he will not become king, then the prince will get bitter, his relationship with his king father will worsen and eventually the king will name an other heir.
Suddenly, the Oracle realizes he has the power to decide whether or not the prince will become king. He is then free to judge the prince's character and assess whether or not he would make a good king.
And so it is for moral values. For the concept of pride or merit. They make sense despite the overall deterministic nature of the world, because at least as far as behavior is concerned, the world can not logically be entirely deterministic.
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