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Notes -
There's a branch in the tree of argumentation around free will that goes to "even if we are automations that can't prevent them, we are still responsible for our nature".
I believe the tie between responsibility and agency is a novelty of the modern era brought about by the focus on logic and individualism.
We can no longer kill murderers because they are murderers and that's the proper thing you do to such people, now we have to be compassionate if they had no other choice but murder. This is, whatever one thinks of it, completely destructive of standards. Every single issue becomes a race for sophistry that justifies indulgence of any kind.
And the issue is, Liberalism only seems to work by combining high standards with individual freedom. This containing the seeds of its own destruction: standards become impossible to maintain because they can't be justified under the auspices of individual freedom. They become arbitrary prejudices and we slowly forget that those are load bearing.
I'm afraid most of the philosophers that noticed this problem also argued it was essentially impossible to solve and that civilizations that reach this stage are doomed because that burst of freedom is their peak.
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