A revolution in thought

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I understand your objection. Stop patronizing me.

You have no potential excuse and no potential justification. You're lost.

You can't use this as an excuse. This is what you're not getting and you're not going to tell me that I'm wrong and you're right because Spacemonkey says so.

That is not the justification at all.

The potential excuse works against blame? What potential excuse? And what excuse doesn't work in the first context against conscience? You're confused.

What potential justification works to maintain a guilty conscience? Give me specific examples because I can't even follow your reasoning in terms of this equation. We don't blame others because will is not free. This gobbledegook you are putting forth in your defense for compatibilism is a logical nightmare.

There are no excuses or justifications in either context that you can object to if determinism is true (which it is).

No Spacemonkey. You are putting the cart before the horse again. If someone hurts me, I am entitled to feel bad, but this law prevents someone from hurting me so I don't have to feel bad.

You do not understand the most important aspect of this knowledge. If I am prevented from hurting you, then you don't have to retaliate, which would be justified.

This is not a potential excuse against blaming others. It's a logical result of knowing the true nature of man. It does not relieve any possibility of a guilty conscience, it does the exact opposite. This shows me, once again, how utterly confused you are.

No Spacemonkey. The potential for a guilty conscience due to a hurtful action not yet performed is what prevents the action from being performed, but this in no way means that we judge others as worthy of blame when man's will is not free. The potential to feel guilty for hurting someone is not about blameworthiness; it is about using one's conscience to prevent that which we would feel guilty about. That is the function of conscience. It is that small whisper that lets us know when we are about to do something that could lead to someone getting hurt.

If you say that this is a non-discovery or a non-equation again, I'm not going to converse with you anymore.

Your reasoning is so convoluted, I am not going to even try to disentangle it.

How would you not know if the person was you? You are so confused I'm not going to continue answering you with this strange logic you think is sound reasoning.

That is not what he is saying.

You've lost the equation completely. How can someone have a guilty conscience if they never perform an action that justifies this feeling of guilt? Is it possible? Answer yes or no.

What the hell was that? You've just gone through fragmenting my post and inserting hysterical and nonsensical interjections after each part without once even bothering to try to understand what you were replying to.

READ the post first. ALL of it. BEFORE beginning your reply. Try to understand what is being said BEFORE trying to raise objections against it. THEN begin your reply by trying to address the actual argument being made.

You have not done this. You haven't made any attempt at all to understand or properly address my post. I don't believe you have the faintest idea what it was that I was arguing. Prove me wrong. Explain to me in your own words what the objection was that I was raising and presenting. If you can't do that, then I'm just going to bump the previous post again until you can calm down enough to read it properly and attempt a coherent and at least half-way rational and reasoned reply.

[koan]

oh ffs,

Let us accept the black and white universe that Lessans and peacegirl inhabit for a moment. Either there is free will or there isn't = Either you can change things or you can't. If you can't change the past you can't change the future. If you can't change the future there is no point promoting a book that is unpopular. The fact that something has or hasn't happened yet (the first blow) is irrelevant to the black and white fact that it will happen or it won't. If it doesn't then it wasn't predetermined. If it does then it was predetermined. You can't have black and white simultaneously because you can't be alive and dead at the same time. (If she gets to use that argument then I get to use it too.) Nobody, Lessans included, gets to change the course of the future if there is no free will. Anyone trying to take credit for such an seemingly synchronised event as changing the future is an egotistical arse who can't see that alive people aren't dead.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I understand your objection. Stop patronizing me.

You have no potential excuse and no potential justification. You're lost.

You can't use this as an excuse. This is what you're not getting and you're not going to tell me that I'm wrong and you're right because Spacemonkey says so.

That is not the justification at all.

The potential excuse works against blame? What potential excuse? And what excuse doesn't work in the first context against conscience? You're confused.

What potential justification works to maintain a guilty conscience? Give me specific examples because I can't even follow your reasoning in terms of this equation. We don't blame others because will is not free. This gobbledegook you are putting forth in your defense for compatibilism is a logical nightmare.

There are no excuses or justifications in either context that you can object to if determinism is true (which it is).

No Spacemonkey. You are putting the cart before the horse again. If someone hurts me, I am entitled to feel bad, but this law prevents someone from hurting me so I don't have to feel bad.

You do not understand the most important aspect of this knowledge. If I am prevented from hurting you, then you don't have to retaliate, which would be justified.

This is not a potential excuse against blaming others. It's a logical result of knowing the true nature of man. It does not relieve any possibility of a guilty conscience, it does the exact opposite. This shows me, once again, how utterly confused you are.

No Spacemonkey. The potential for a guilty conscience due to a hurtful action not yet performed is what prevents the action from being performed, but this in no way means that we judge others as worthy of blame when man's will is not free. The potential to feel guilty for hurting someone is not about blameworthiness; it is about using one's conscience to prevent that which we would feel guilty about. That is the function of conscience. It is that small whisper that lets us know when we are about to do something that could lead to someone getting hurt.

If you say that this is a non-discovery or a non-equation again, I'm not going to converse with you anymore.

Your reasoning is so convoluted, I am not going to even try to disentangle it.

How would you not know if the person was you? You are so confused I'm not going to continue answering you with this strange logic you think is sound reasoning.

That is not what he is saying.

You've lost the equation completely. How can someone have a guilty conscience if they never perform an action that justifies this feeling of guilt? Is it possible? Answer yes or no.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

What the hell was that? You've just gone through fragmenting my post and inserting hysterical and nonsensical interjections after each part without once even bothering to try to understand what you were replying to.

That was my response to a bunch of faulty reasoning. I needed to interject because there were so many errors in your logic, I couldn't help myself.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

READ the post first. ALL of it. BEFORE beginning your reply. Try to understand what is being said BEFORE trying to raise objections against it. THEN begin your reply by trying to address the actual argument being made.

No, you try to explain what you mean and make it more clear because it's gobbledegook, and I refuse to spend this much time on showing you where your reasoning is inaccurate.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

You have not done this. You haven't made any attempt at all to understand or properly address my post. I don't believe you have the faintest idea what it was that I was arguing. Prove me wrong. Explain to me in your own words what the objection was that I was raising and presenting. If you can't do that, then I'm just going to bump the previous post again until you can calm down enough to read it properly and attempt a coherent and at least half-way rational and reasoned reply.

You are coming up with some distorted understanding of what he meant by "nothing can make me do anything against my will". You are interjecting this into the argument as if somehow this creates an excuse which involves blame. You are trying to reason why you are justified to blame others because you yourself are able to use certain excuses to do bad things (e.g., "My will is not free so I can feel good about hurting others because I had to do it," or this one..."I am not the agent so I can do what I want and not feel any responsibility for that action") that your conscience will accept. But your conscience would not accept these excuses, which means that you are misconstruing this equation and twisting it to seem like people could still hurt others, which would then mean they could blame others for the same thing, but this is false reasoning.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by koan

oh ffs,

Let us accept the black and white universe that Lessans and peacegirl inhabit for a moment. Either there is free will or there isn't = Either you can change things or you can't. If you can't change the past you can't change the future. If you can't change the future there is no point promoting a book that is unpopular. The fact that something has or hasn't happened yet (the first blow) is irrelevant to the black and white fact that it will happen or it won't. If it doesn't then it wasn't predetermined. If it does then it was predetermined. You can't have black and white simultaneously because you can't be alive and dead at the same time. (If she gets to use that argument then I get to use it too.) Nobody, Lessans included, gets to change the course of the future if there is no free will. Anyone trying to take credit for such an seemingly synchronised event as changing the future is an egotistical arse who can't see that alive people aren't dead.

You are very a very mean-spirited individual by saying the things you say. I can feel your resentment because you cannot believe this is a genuine discovery, which gives you the right to attack me. Your words will come back to bite you in the arse one day. You are getting confused over predeterminism and determinism. If you understood the first thing about Lessans' proof regarding "greater satisfaction," you wouldn't give this kind of response. You are offering a fatalistic view of the world where nothing can be changed, so why should we even try? This is true only after we have done everything possible to prevent a situation from occuring. Then we can say it was fate ordained. This ability to change what we can change in view of new antecendet conditions does not negate determinism. It is part of the process of determinism.

[Vivisectus]

You see Koan, deep down you are convinced by the wonderful clarity, elegant reasoning and above all those oh-so astute observations of the book. It is just that wonderful discoveries upset you. They send you into a frenzy of denial and defensiveness, making you viciously attack whatever is said about the wonderful discovery in any way possible.

It seems to be such a common mental affliction that it is amazing that we, as a species, ever managed to discover anything at all.

[LadyShea]

peacegirl, you have argued against the past causing the present, and then argued for it. You have argued both for and against the human ability to make choices. You have argued for and against various conceptions of determinism. You are unable to logically or empirically support any view you are claiming, before or after your flip flop

And you call Spacemonkey's consistent stance "gobbeldygook". What a weasel you are

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

peacegirl, you have argued against the past causing the present, and then argued for it. You have argued both for and against the human ability to make choices. You have argued for and against various conceptions of determinism. You are unable to logically or empirically support any view you are claiming, before or after your flip flop

And you call Spacemonkey's consistent stance "gobbeldygook". What a weasel you are

The past does cause the present, but this does not take away the agent. You are so extremely confused that it's no wonder you come back with such gusto, as if this excitement means something. But that's only because you have no basic understanding of these principles at all. NADA LADYSHEA, even though you think you understand this knowledge better than me and need no further instruction.

[LadyShea]

Nice weaseling via ad hom.

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

The past does cause the present, but this does not take away the agent. You are so extremely confused that it's no wonder you come back with such gusto, as if this excitement means something. But that's only because you have no basic understanding of these principles at all. NADA LADYSHEA, even though you think you understand this knowledge better than me and need no further instruction.

But if the past causes the present then something from the past can cause you to do something in the present?

[koan]

It's not like God would put all his eggs in one basketcase.

Surely if this is so important there is someone else writing a better book about it somewhere else in the world right now. Maybe in India.

[koan]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

But if the past causes the present then something from the past can cause you to do something in the present?

Also, if we can't be blamed for our actions then how can we take credit for them either?

Everyone should withhold blame for all the bad stuff Lessans might find himself compelled to do but they should lavish him with praise for writing a book even though he only wrote it because he was compelled to do it.

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

The past does cause the present

Then why have you repeatedly said the past can't cause the present?

[LarsMac]

So, I have to ask.
Is the point of this discussion to bring the world an astoundingly simple idea that will end all of our suffering, or is it to sell this book?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

You see Koan, deep down you are convinced by the wonderful clarity, elegant reasoning and above all those oh-so astute observations of the book. It is just that wonderful discoveries upset you. They send you into a frenzy of denial and defensiveness, making you viciously attack whatever is said about the wonderful discovery in any way possible.

It seems to be such a common mental affliction that it is amazing that we, as a species, ever managed to discover anything at all.

I have a right to retaliate against her accusations. For her to come off and say what she said is ignorant Vivisectus. So stop defending everyone that disagrees with Lessans without a morsel of objectivity.

Originally Posted by koan

Anyone trying to take credit for such an seemingly synchronised event as changing the future is an egotistical arse who can't see that alive people aren't dead.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

Then why have you repeatedly said the past can't cause the present?

You misunderstood me. Everything that leads up to our making a choice affects our decision in the present, which includes our predispositions, our heredity, our desires, experiences, and perspectives.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

peacegirl, you have argued against the past causing the present, and then argued for it. You have argued both for and against the human ability to make choices. You have argued for and against various conceptions of determinism. You are unable to logically or empirically support any view you are claiming, before or after your flip flop

And you call Spacemonkey's consistent stance "gobbeldygook". What a weasel you are

Our past experiences compel us to make certain choices, but the choices are made in the present. I have been very consistent.

p. 485 The past is simply the perception of a relation
between two points. As I move from here to there, the past is what I
leave behind while in motion; it is my ability to remember something
that happened. In actual reality you are not moving between two
points, a beginning and an end, you are in motion in the present. I
know that we were talking yesterday, and that I was talking a fraction
of a second ago, and that I am still talking.

The word ‘past’ is
obviously the perception of a relation that appears undeniable because
it has reference to the revolution of the earth on its axis in relation to
the sun. You are conscious that it takes a certain length of time to do
something, and because you are also conscious of space you perceive
that as you traverse a point from here to there, what is left behind as
you travel is called the past and your destination is the future. Here
lies a great fallacy that was never completely understood, for how is it
humanly possible for there to be such a thing as the past and future
when in reality all we ever have is the present? Yet we have a word to
describe something that has no existence in the real world.

Socrates
didn’t live in the past — he lived in the present, although our
recollection of him allows us to think back to this time period. The
reason we say that Socrates lived in the past is because this particular
individual is no longer here. But is it possible for you to say that God
or the sun existed in the past? Does anyone ever sleep in the past;
does the sun ever shine in the past; is it possible for you to do
anything in the past? If you were sitting up on a high cloud these last
ten thousand years, never asleep, as is the sun, you would have
watched Socrates in the present, just as you are watching me write this
book in the present. In order for me to prove what seems impossible,
it is absolutely necessary that I de-confuse the mind of man so we can
communicate.

I have argued for, not against, the human ability to make choices. But it is assumed that if one is free to make choices (nothing is physically stopping him from making the choice, and he is not under the experienced compulsion that prevents him from making new choices given similar, not exact, antecedent conditions, then he has the kind of "free will" that is worthy of blame. This is the great fallacy because this does not mean he has free will in any sense of the word. I have been very consistent.

I have argued for determinism in contrast to free will. If determinism is true, free will is false. There's no getting around it. Every attempt to make free will seem compatible is a smokescreen, it's not real. It's just a way to settle the argument and to keep moral responsibility intact by the use of blame and punishment. I have been very consistent.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by koan

It's not like God would put all his eggs in one basketcase.

Surely if this is so important there is someone else writing a better book about it somewhere else in the world right now. Maybe in India.

I totally agree. Lessans always said if it wasn't him, it would be someone else because the knowledge is here. He didn't invent this knowledge, he observed it.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by koan

Also, if we can't be blamed for our actions then how can we take credit for them either?

Everyone should withhold blame for all the bad stuff Lessans might find himself compelled to do but they should lavish him with praise for writing a book even though he only wrote it because he was compelled to do it.

Lessans never took credit for making a discovery.

p. 543 My efforts to write the book, Decline and Fall of All Evil, are of
no greater importance than your efforts to play pool or do something
else because we are all following our nature which dictates that we
move in the direction of what is better for ourselves at any given
moment in time. I cannot take credit for removing the evil when my
will is not free, only for writing this book; there is a big difference.
Durant’s Story of Civilization, his Mansions of Philosophy, and all
the other books he wrote played just as important a role in this
discovery. My understanding of what it meant that man’s will is not
free was the end result of the knowledge given by everyone who ever
lived. Through the process of reading and studying I was privileged to
acquire information that led me to this answer.

All knowledge is a
gigantic accumulation of what everybody does in his motion towards
greater satisfaction. Just because I happen to be at the end of the line
when everybody pushes me or sets the stage that induces me to find
answers that were never before possible does not allow me to take the
credit, nor is an individual to blame when everybody pushes him
towards murder and war. I am only obeying a law that forces me to
move in this direction because it gives me greater satisfaction. God
deserves the credit, not me. Before long tears will be flowing in
abundance, but happy tears, and the whole world will thank God for
this wonderful new world. I am just a child of God, like everyone else.
None of us are given a free choice.

[koan]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I have a right to retaliate against her accusations. For her to come off and say what she said is ignorant Vivisectus. So stop defending everyone that disagrees with Lessans without a morsel of objectivity.

...Or you could just answer how we are supposed to award credit to people for things they do when we can't blame them.

You could also try expaining how removing the word ugly from the English language is going to fix anything unless you remove beautiful as well. eg)She is beautiful. You are not.

In your world we can never say "It was an ugly sky, full of evil omens. The town Lessans lived in never received warning before the tornado hit because they didn't understand ugly."

eta: Apparently a bunch of posts happened since my last refresh.

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

You misunderstood me.

Not at all. You did in fact say repeatedly that the past can't cause the present because the past doesn't exist or some such floo-flah. LadyShea, Vivisectus and Spacemonkey (perhaps others as well) spent quite a bit of time and effort pointing out the flaws in your analysis. Particularly entertaining were your claims about how the past "influences" our choices without causing them.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Everything that leads up to our making a choice affects our decision in the present, which includes our predispositions, our heredity, our desires, experiences, and perspectives.

In other words, there's a causal relationship. I'm glad to see that you're finally on board.

[koan]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I totally agree. Lessans always said if it wasn't him, it would be someone else because the knowledge is here. He didn't invent this knowledge, he observed it.

I just read thousands of posts wherein you tell us that he is a brilliant man who discovered something. If he didn't discover it, it was given to him by God, then God will have also made tons of evidence available to support what Lessans wrote... and yet you refuse to look for any other examples but the crappy ones Lessans uses in his book.

Why don't you trust God, peacegirl? Go look for better evidence and let us know what you find. We haven't found any evidence. All our evidence says he misquoted God or something because it doesn't work.

[Vivisectus]

[quote]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I have a right to retaliate against her accusations. For her to come off and say what she said is ignorant Vivisectus. So stop defending everyone that disagrees with Lessans without a morsel of objectivity.

Once again, pointing out the flaws in your book must mean the person either does not understand or has some ulterior motive. And yet oddly you have difficulty pointing out any flaws in their reasoning, which should be easy if they have such irrational motives for saying what they say.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

That was my response to a bunch of faulty reasoning. I needed to interject because there were so many errors in your logic, I couldn't help myself.

You couldn't possibly know if there were many errors in my post. You just admitted below to refusing to read the post first or to bother trying to understand what you were replying to. Most of your interjections were asking me what I meant by what I had just said. The rest was just flat denials of points you obviously had not understood.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

No, you try to explain what you mean and make it more clear because it's gobbledegook, and I refuse to spend this much time on showing you where your reasoning is inaccurate.

See what I mean? You flat out refuse to do me the common courtesy of reading my posts before replying to them, or of even trying to understand what I am saying before rejecting it. You are not being reasonable.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

You are coming up with some distorted understanding of what he meant by "nothing can make me do anything against my will". You are interjecting this into the argument as if somehow this creates an excuse which involves blame. You are trying to reason why you are justified to blame others because you yourself are able to use certain excuses to do bad things (e.g., "My will is not free so I can feel good about hurting others because I had to do it," or this one..."I am not the agent so I can do what I want and not feel any responsibility for that action") that your conscience will accept. But your conscience would not accept these excuses, which means that you are misconstruing this equation and twisting it to seem like people could still hurt others, which would then mean they could blame others for the same thing, but this is false reasoning.

See what I mean? You have no idea what any objection even was. You don't know what I was arguing because you launched into an irrational stream of denial and objections without bothering to first read the post or make any attempt to understand what I was saying.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I have a right to retaliate against her accusations. For her to come off and say what she said is ignorant Vivisectus. So stop defending everyone that disagrees with Lessans without a morsel of objectivity.

Originally Posted by koan

...Or you could just answer how we are supposed to award credit to people for things they do when we can't blame them.

That's true. Dishing out blame or giving credit are opposite sides of the coin, and both are being removed. This does not mean we can't feel good over our accomplishments, but it removes the pride that we did it of our own free will.

p. 542 Another reason Durant did not like Spencer was the fact that he
disagreed with the belief that man’s will is free. Since Spencer had
proclaimed that man’s will is not free, Durant employed fallacious
reasoning to twist the meaning of his words into something of a
‘mechanical nature’ which then made it impossible, according to this
philosopher, for man to be creative. This threatened Durant for he
believed that if man’s will is not free he could not take credit for the
books he was writing and therefore would not be able to consider
himself a genius.

He believed that to feel one is a genius it was
necessary to feel creative, and how was it possible for him to feel this
way unless he could prove that man’s will was free which would then
allow him to receive credit for his accomplishments and creativity.
But the word ‘genius’ is a word like beautiful, educated, cultured, etc.
which is designed to stratify certain differences by raising some people
up, consequently, lowering others.

Since he knew that it was
impossible to prove this theory he resorted to the next best thing —
criticizing those who thought otherwise, not realizing that it is
mathematically impossible to prove something false when the opposite
can never be proven true. Durant’s chest swelled with pride over his
masterpiece, The Story Of Civilization, and it annoyed him no end
to have someone like Spencer tell him that he did not create what he
spent years creating. He had already been bestowed the highest of
honors for his great achievement by those in his field and was
acclaimed the world over as a prolific writer.

This is another reason
why some people resent the thought that man’s will is not free, for
how is it humanly possible to be proud of anything they have done
unless they believe consciously or unconsciously in freedom of the
will? In actual reality no one is taking this achievement away from
Durant, for this is certainly a worthwhile accomplishment. The only
thing we are taking away is his pride that he did it of his own free will.
For the first time he is made to realize that God pushed him in this
direction, which is the truth.

Originally Posted by koan

You could also try explaining how removing the word ugly from the English language is going to fix anything unless you remove beautiful as well. eg)She is beautiful. You are not.

Both of these words are inaccurate representations, so both are being removed.

p. 126 Scientists,
believing that the eyes were a sense organ, unconsciously confirmed
what man saw with them because they were unaware that it was
possible to project a fallacious relation realistically. Consequently
everything in the external world will be distorted if the words through
which man looks at what he calls reality are inaccurate symbols or if
the relation which is photographed becomes, as in the five senses, an
inaccurate negative which is then projected realistically upon
undeniable substance. The word beautiful has absolutely no external
reality and yet because it is learned in association with a particular
physiognomy a beautiful girl is created, when no such person exists.
Obviously there is a difference between the shape and features of
individuals but to label one beautiful and another ugly only reveals
that you are conscious of a fallacious difference that is projected
through your eyes upon substance that cannot be denied — which
makes the projection appear real.

By having the words beautiful, ugly,
gorgeous, etc. as slides in a movie projector through which the brain
will look at the external world, a fallacious value is placed upon certain
specific differences only because of the words which is then confirmed
as a part of the real world since man will swear that he sees beautiful
women with his eyes, but in actual reality all he sees are different
shapes and different features. This so-called beautiful girl is not
striking his optic nerve which then allows him to see her beauty but
instead he projects the word onto these differences and then
photographs a fallacious relation.

The brain records all relations,
whether true or false, and since it was considered an indisputable fact
that man had five senses which were connected in some way with the
external world and since four of these were accurately described as
sense organs, that is, they receive and transmit external stimuli, it was
very easy for Aristotle to get confused and put a closure on further
investigation by including the eyes in the definition, which he did only
because he never understood their true function.

Originally Posted by koan

In your world we can never say "It was an ugly sky, full of evil omens. The town Lessans lived in never received warning before the tornado hit because they didn't understand ugly."

eta: Apparently a bunch of posts happened since my last refresh.

No, not at all. If someone says "this is a beautiful day", no one is hurt. But if someone next to this person says, "I don't think it's a beautiful day", the person who was the first to express his opinion may feel challenged and an argument could ensue. Using the word "beautiful" or "ugly" to describe certain physiognomies is an entirely different story. This is a form of conditioning which makes it appear as if this beauty or ugliness exists in the external world. It does not, and only when we remove these words will we see reality, not a distorted version.

eta: I refuse to get into a debate on whether the eyes are a sense organ, so I'm asking people not to bring this up again.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

You couldn't possibly know if there were many errors in my post. You just admitted below to refusing to read the post first or to bother trying to understand what you were replying to. Most of your interjections were asking me what I meant by what I had just said. The rest was just flat denials of points you obviously had not understood.

See what I mean? You flat out refuse to do me the common courtesy of reading my posts before replying to them, or of even trying to understand what I am saying before rejecting it. You are not being reasonable.

See what I mean? You have no idea what any objection even was. You don't know what I was arguing because you launched into an irrational stream of denial and objections without bothering to first read the post or make any attempt to understand what I was saying.

I actually read your post more than once. Your thinking is all messed up Spacemonkey. You believe that not being blamed will allow you to excuse bad behavior and feel good about it because you can always say, "I couldn't help myself; my will is not free." But this is not how it works. The rest of your analysis was completely off because it was based the idea that if conscience lets you hurt another under the changed condition, which would make you blameworthy, you can also blame others. This reasoning is misguided and I don't even care to break it down because it starts off wrong.