Can determinists be trusted?
I’ve argued that retrospective regret is irrational for any determinist who holds typical values (such as preferring that humans exist rather than not). I can see how one might worry, then, that those who accept determinism will be unreliable or even dangerous. How can we trust people who never regret anything they’ve done?
But that worry is misguided. If you give up retrospective regret on the basis of determinism, that doesn’t mean you don’t care whether you’ll harm someone. Nor does it mean that you can’t or won’t learn from your mistakes. Sure, we ought to keep our distance from psychopaths and incorrigibles, but accepting my reasoning about retrospective regret doesn’t put you in either of those categories.
Nor does my reasoning justify the fatalistic attitude “Any mistakes I end up making will have been necessitated by the past, so I needn’t bother trying to avoid them.” On the contrary, determinism is the opposite of the idea that trying to avoid mistakes will make no difference to whether you end up avoiding them.
So, yes, determinists can be trusted. At any rate, their attitude toward retrospective regret is no reason not to trust them.
