 Bertrand Russell Quotes 366 |
... No one says: It is useless to offer wages for work that you wish done, because people may prefer starvation. If free will were common, all social organization would be impossible, since there would be no way of influencing men’s actions.
While, therefore, as a philosopher I hold the principle of universal causation to be open to question, as a common-sense individual I hold that it is an indispensable postulate in the conduct of affairs. For practical purposes we must assume that our volitions have causes, and our ethics must be compatible with this assumption.
Source: Bertrand Russell: Human Society in Ethics and Politics, (1954), chapter 7：sin
More info.:https://russell-j.com/cool/47T-0712.htm
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
* Original text in Japanese, translated with Google translator
Crimes committed while in a state of insanity are not punished and are subject to treatment. In such cases, the person is said to have no "free will."
As a theoretical philosopher, Russell has doubts about the principle of universal causation (the idea that every phenomenon necessarily has a cause). However, as citizens with common sense, we lives our daily social lives on the ``assuming'' that the ``principle of cause and effect'' existing.
The issues of causality and free will involve quite difficult issues, so I will not discuss them here.