Libertarian Use of Punishment to Show Free Will - Essay Example

Libertarianism is the view that we have free will. Free will is an act based on a reason that an agent takes to choose an action from a range of alternatives (O’Connor, 2011). How choices transpire made at times of differing motives might agree with the increase of quantum indeterminism in individuals’ brains. Following my first premise, libertarians deem that we may hold individuals morally accountable only if they exercise free will, a person can freely choose to take an action, making them responsible, morally.

This makes that person free and ethically responsible because they have taken a choice that is undetermined. Regardless of the undetermined choices they put forward, few libertarians will assert to offer an episteme justification that persons did take that kind of choices.  Libertarians decide the degree of harshness that is assigned to a individual whose moral responsibility has been established to the acceptable standards of the society. However, they to agree that assigning those difficult characteristic of moral responsibility to individuals who does not believe in libertarian free will is to take action wrongly.

Hence justifying my premise that punishment bestowed by free willed libertarian can only be done to a believer of the same, in order to be deemed right. The second premise argues that that majority of libertarians deem that we should hold individuals morally responsible. Holding an individual morally responsible take account of a range of behaviours; that may be either positive or negative. Examples include: verbal accusation, praise and blame and retributive penalty. Libertarians differ among themselves over deciding how much of that assortment moral responsibility comprise.

However, due to the fact that even the smallest of undesirable behaviour harms people, libertarians use the obligation of moral responsibility as a justification to turns otherwise immoral behaviour into punishable action (Double). Some libertarians however have more to their thoughts on punishment. Mark Balaguer (1999) argues that there is enough grounds for believing alternative are undetermined as we do for supposing they are determined. He argues that nobody knows exactly how the human brain works.

But his argument fails to give reason to establish that brains make undermined choices gives room to believe we do make choices based our free will. Robert Kane (1996, 1999) takes an alternative view other libertarians stating that Kanian free choosers may only have partial control over their choices. His implies that they are only, to some degree, morally responsible for their deeds. Because Kane’s theory makes indeterministic choices rely upon a indeterminate quantum actions, he concede that Kanian free individuals lack control over what they choose.

Kane’s view would not be shared by traditional libertarians precisely because his argument of having less control over actions taken fails to support the responsibility that libertarians wish to assign. Doing this would make it difficult to give emphasize on the importance to libertarians of mitigating the practices of making a person responsible morally for his deeds.  The strongest argument raised against libertarian argument to use punishment to show free will is the proportionality rule.

The proportionality rule gives us how much penalty a claimant may exact to a wrong doer, and no more;