NationStates Jolt Archive

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Refute.

Agree.

we have choice in our reactions. Ergo, free will exists, although, we do not have choice of circumstance.

Our reactions are still our own.

Not everything is action response.

For example; a friend's grandfather was abusive, his father was also abusive.

He made a conscious effort to not repeat that "life style"

Not everything is action response.

For example; a friend's grandfather was abusive, his father was also abusive.

He made a conscious effort to not repeat that "life style"

But that response was a reaction.

What I was about to say.

we have choice in our reactions. Ergo, free will exists, although, we do not have choice of circumstance.

Our reactions are still our own.

How do we have a choice if our environment shapes every decision we make?

But that response was a reaction.

By simple reaction he would have continued the life style of being an abuser since he was raised in that environment as his father and probably his grandfather was raised.

By simple reaction he would have continued the life style of being an abuser since he was raised in that environment as his father and probably his grandfather was raised.

I never said it was a simple reaction. This case is a complex reaction to the circumstances which he was born into. Acting against something is still acting according to it.

I never said it was a simple reaction. This case is a complex reaction to the circumstances which he was born into. Acting against something is still acting according to it.

Ok then I am not following your arguement.

He was raised in an abusive family. So was the father and grandfather. Abusive households tend to create abusive children.

What was the reaction that made him not do it?

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Refute.

determinism is false (or at least unproven and unnecessary). but the apparent truth of determinism was the only source of doubt about free will. without that component, then we have no reason to discount our powerful and immediate sense of freedom.

Ok then I am not following your arguement.

He was raised in an abusive family. So was the father and grandfather. Abusive households tend to create abusive children.

What was the reaction that made him not do it?

He reacted to his abusive environment with a decision to not replicate it. I'm not agreeing with the OP's premise but deciding not to replicate his abusive upbringing IS a reaction.

Ok then I am not following your arguement.

He was raised in an abusive family. So was the father and grandfather. Abusive households tend to create abusive children.

What was the reaction that made him not do it?

His "decision" to not be abusive was a direct result of the fact that his father was abusive.
Were his father not abusive, who knows how he would have turned out?
His actions were based on the actions of his father, over which he had no control.

His actions were based on the actions of his father, over which he had no control.

based on but not determined by

He reacted to his abusive environment with a decision to not replicate it. I'm not agreeing with the OP's premise but deciding not to replicate his abusive upbringing IS a reaction.

Ah but the fact that abuse is generational, the reaction is to follow his upbringing.

His choice was to not be one.

determinism is false (or at least unproven and unnecessary). but the apparent truth of determinism was the only source of doubt about free will. without that component, then we have no reason to discount our powerful and immediate sense of freedom.

But our environment is predetermined.
If all of our actions are based upon reaction to said environment, how can we have free will?

Free will is an illusion.

based on but not determined by

The basis of his actions were not determined by him.

In a chess game, your move is based upon your opponent's.
If your opponent had moved somewhere else, you would have as well.
We act in accordance to the circumstances to whice we are subjected to.
We do not control these circumstances.
How is that not determinism?

Ah but the fact that abuse is generational, the reaction is to follow his upbringing.

His choice was to not be one.

His "choice" was a reaction to the generational tendency for abuse.
The basis for his choice was his circumstances.
These circumstances were beyond his control.

His "choice" was a reaction to the generational tendency for abuse.
The basis for his choice was his circumstances.
These circumstances were beyond his control.

If his circumstances were beyond his control; then his reaction would be to follow his upbringing.

The basis of his actions were not determined by him.

In a chess game, your move is based upon your opponent's.
If your opponent had moved somewhere else, you would have as well.
We act in accordance to the circumstances to whice we are subjected to.
We do not control these circumstances.
How is that not determinism?

because you could have done otherwise

If his circumstances were beyond his control; then his reaction would be to follow his upbringing.

A reaction can be both positive or negative.
One possible reaction would be to continue the tradition.
Another would be to break the cyle.
Each is done in accordance to the environment in which the subject is raised.
Regardless of which "choice" is made, it was made due to a combination of physiology, psychology, and sociology, each of which are beyond the control of the individual.
If all of these factors are known down to a subatomic level, the "choice" would be able to be predicted.
Humans are nothing more than complex supercomputers.
Once you understand the algorithm, you can predict the outcome of any situation.

because you could have done otherwise

Or we simply think we could have done otherwise.
If all of the factors which could shape our decision were known, so would the decision.
Just because we do not fully understand all of these factors does not rule them out as the determination for our behavior.

Or we simply think we could have done otherwise.

no. in your chess game, we could have made any number of different moves. the fact that your opponent's moves make some moves better than others changes nothing. so we quite literally could have done otherwise. which is all we need.

no. in your chess game, we could have made any number of different moves. the fact that your opponent's moves make some moves better than others changes nothing. so we quite literally could have done otherwise. which is all we need.

The fact that we could have made other moves is irrelevant.
The sole factor in determining which move to make were the actions which occured beforehand.
In the simplified chess example, this includes the previous moves and our current mental state.
Each of these was determined by previous actions.
Each is beyond our control.

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Refute.

The only thing you have to do is die. Technically speaking, everything else is a decision. I could drop out of college now and become a hobo if I wanted. Of course, that brings up the point that most of these choices involve at least one option that hardly anybody in their right mind would choose, but it's still a choice. Technically.

In terms of actual practicality, that is correct. Free will is quite limited, as in many situations there is only one reasonable option. Our lives are fraught with uncertainty and we have to react to unexpected events all the time, which often requires setting aside our best hopes and plans.

determinism is false (or at least unproven and unnecessary). but the apparent truth of determinism was the only source of doubt about free will. without that component, then we have no reason to discount our powerful and immediate sense of freedom.

But our environment is predetermined.
If all of our actions are based upon reaction to said environment, how can we have free will?

Free will is an illusion.

Even if it is... why does it matter? If determinism was proven. There are too many variables for it to be applied. Sure we would have proven that people aren't responsible for their actions. But it wouldn't change the fact that they are murdering psychos that deserve to be locked up.

To react is not necessarily to not choose.
Free will is quite simply the capacity humans have to self-reflect, to form opinions in regards to their self-reflection and to intentionally alter themselves as a result.

It is a skill, a capacity that is varied not only between individuals, but in the instance of an individual, over time (one can be better adept at employing free will at some time than they are at some other time). Like most skills and capacities it is possible to develop or allow free will to atrophy or even to have one's free will diminished by others.

http://www.busydizzys.com/temp/stupid/domo_gives_a_fuck.jpg

I guess where I'm coming from is a materialistic point of view.
If all that exists is matter, energy, and void, and if the exact configuration of each is known, the future positions of each can be determined as well.
This can be applied to the level of human consciousness.

However, even if one believes in god and souls, the same is still true.
If god created all of the matter, souls, etc. then their course of action has been created and set as well.

I'm not sure if I'm articulating this very well.
Either way, it's 4:30, and I'm going to bed.
I'll try to clear this up if the thread's still around later.

But our environment is predetermined.
If all of our actions are based upon reaction to said environment, how can we have free will?

Free will is an illusion.
well, I think it is a dangerous idea to see free will as illusion as this basically means that you can get away with anything. Also, due to atom-level reactions in the brain which are within Heisenbergs uncertainty, the reaction is never deterministic.

Posi, If you dont give a fuck about the topic of thread you could try not posting in the thread, especially since unlike spam, not posting isnt against the rules of the forum.....just a thought.

Dyslexia, even if you can determine a future position from the current that doesnt negate free will. Rather the current position might mandate free will. If you go with some mystic definition of free will, then I guess you might expect that where ever someone cannot act in contravention of the laws of the universe they have no free will. But if you go with free will as a normal skill, specifically the ability to self-reflect and to change what one is, based on their interpretation of their self-reflection, then I dont see how any normal human being can deny that they both have and utilise free will.

If all that exists is matter, energy, and void, and if the exact configuration of each is known, the future positions of each can be determined as well.

no they can't. quantum mechanics explicitly says otherwise. determinism is false.

no they can't. quantum mechanics explicitly says otherwise. determinism is false.
It does?

It does?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Refute.

As far as I've understood, the definition of free will is the ability to
1) make conscious decisions
2) without outside coercion.

However, a person's entire personality is formed to some extent by the environment. Therefore, if you count the environment as outside coercion, you also count the person himself outside coercion.

I claim that because the environment plays such a big part in raising us, it doesn't count as outside coercion. It is just as much part of us, as we are of it.

However, a person's entire personality is formed to some extent by the environment. Therefore, if you count the environment as outside coercion, you also count the person himself outside coercion.

I claim that because the environment plays such a big part in raising us, it doesn't count as outside coercion. It is just as much part of us, as we are of it.

Environment is no coercion. the way you see the environment is also determined on yourself. The way you percieve the environment however depends nondeterministically on your environment.

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.
The human decision making process is part of the environment that the actions are based on. There is a closed feedback loop within us that determines our responses and behaviours. Choice (whether you call it "free" or otherwise) is a very real phenomenon within this framework; people can pick what to do because how they decide is a part of this chain of causality.

Take the scenario of what I had for lunch yesterday. I picked a turkey sandwich rather than a ham sandwich because, while both options were available, I felt more in favour of the former. Now, the process by which this favour was resolved was a mechanical one, but it was nonetheless an internal one. It was me that felt like the turkey sandwich. Had I "felt" like doing something otherwise (ie, my internal mechanisms made me more predisposed towards ham), I could have, since the mechanical processes that governed how I chose at the time would have worked in a different way to reflect that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
Yeah, thanks. Now I'm 0% the wiser.

Yeah, thanks. Now I'm 0% the wiser.

Ok, i'll try to put in it into layman's terms. The more accurately you know the position of a particle, the less accurately you know where its is going; and vice versa.

Which does disprove determinism somewhat ;)


Ok lets take a step back, you walk into a sweet store. You are free to pick any sweet you wish. Your sense of taste is determined irrelevant of your upbringing, however it will affect what you don't choose to eat, but it still your choice on what you like apart from a few limitations.

For example, my family HATE Branston Pickle, and i love it. I didn't make a concious descision of "hmm, i'll try to like branston pickle then" I just did like it.

Yeah, thanks. Now I'm 0% the wiser.It's a pretty simple concept, it's just difficult to wrap your mind around because it's so alien to our percieved reality.In its simplest form, it applies to the position and momentum of any object and implies that if we continue increasing the accuracy with which one of these is measured (or defined), the other will be measured (or defined) with less and less accuracyThink of it this way: if you threw a quantum-size brick, it would either have a random speed (not moving, for example) or it'd go in a random direction (hitting you in the face, for example). It's pretty counter intuitive.

But the HUP isn't the only things shooting holes in deterministic causality. As long as things are small enough, and/or massless, they're pretty much unbound by the natural forces responsible for the deterministic order of the universe. Light can travel faster than light, for example, meaning some outcomes can precede the events that caused them - in effect the opposite of determinism.

Think of it this way: if you threw a quantum-size brick, it would either have a random speed (not moving, for example) or it'd go in a random direction (hitting you in the face, for example). It's pretty counter intuitive.
I always say: If you try to walk through a wall often enough, eventually you'll pass straight through it.

Though it may take a while. :p

I always say: If you try to walk through a wall often enough, eventually you'll pass straight through it.

Though it may take a while. :p

what would be terrible is if only part of you made it through

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

and quantum indeterminism more generally.

it should also be noted that this uncertainty and indeterminism are not epistemological problems - they aren't limits on our knowledge. they are ontological issues.

it should also be noted that this uncertainty and indeterminism are not epistemological problems - they aren't limits on our knowledge. they are ontological issues.Doesn't that depend rather a lot on how you define your criteria?

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Refute.

See, now, I think humans do have a control over the environment. For example, climate change. Like it or lump it, we are causing global warming - if not entirely, at least to an extent - and we control how much emissions we put into the atmosphere. More emissions means more climate change, less emissions means vice versa. See?
And with control over our environment, we have free will.
However, assuming we don't have control over our environment, we still have free will. We may not have control over the cause of the reactions, but more often than not we have a range of reactions we can choose from. The ability to choose these reactions means we have free will.

It's a pretty simple concept, it's just difficult to wrap your mind around because it's so alien to our percieved reality.
I have no idea whether or not I can wrap my mind around what is conveyed on the page in question because I frankly cannot determine what is meant. The sheer volume of jargon involved goes well beyond the extent of my knowledge of such jargon.

Think of it this way: if you threw a quantum-size brick, it would either have a random speed (not moving, for example) or it'd go in a random direction (hitting you in the face, for example). It's pretty counter intuitive.
Now this is the kind of language in which one ought to attempt to impart information to lay-folk. I still have no understanding of why what you are stating is believed to be the case, but I do understand what you are stating, which all in all is a step in the right direction.

But the HUP isn't the only things shooting holes in deterministic causality. As long as things are small enough, and/or massless, they're pretty much unbound by the natural forces responsible for the deterministic order of the universe. Light can travel faster than light, for example, meaning some outcomes can precede the events that caused them - in effect the opposite of determinism.
None of this actually makes the issue any clearer to me, although I do appreciate your effort in trying to explain.

I'm wondering if it's something that can be conveyed to a lay-person. The amount of jargon I encounter when I try to figure this stuff out might be indictive of something other than thoughtlessness or exclusionism - maybe unless you know the concepts the jargon communicates, you dont have much hope of understanding the overarching concept being conveyed.

Unfortunately I really dont understand enough to figure out if I understand enough to understand.....if you understand what I mean.;)

The Free will given by Jesus relates to your choice of excepting him as your saviour or not.

we have choice in our reactions. Ergo, free will exists, although, we do not have choice of circumstance.

Our reactions are still our own.

Agreed.

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Refute.

Easily. You do not have to post here but you do anyway. You have free will to not post here but you are using free will to post here.

How do we have a choice if our environment shapes every decision we make?

It does? I have alcoholics in my family. Does that mean, I'll be one? No. I have the choice to drink or not to drink. I drink very very rarely. Not because of the environment but because I just do not want to.

But our environment is predetermined.

Based on what?

Free will is an illusion.

based on what?

The basis of his actions were not determined by him.

In a chess game, your move is based upon your opponent's.
If your opponent had moved somewhere else, you would have as well.
We act in accordance to the circumstances to whice we are subjected to.
We do not control these circumstances.
How is that not determinism?

Bad example chess is to use in a discussion about free will.

The fact that we could have made other moves is irrelevant.

And here you lose the debate. For your example, it is NOT irrelevant that other moves could have been made. It is very relevant to the discussion at hand. Congratulations. OWNED by your own words.

I guess where I'm coming from is a materialistic point of view.
If all that exists is matter, energy, and void, and if the exact configuration of each is known, the future positions of each can be determined as well.
This can be applied to the level of human consciousness.

HAHAHA!!! Oh I would love to see how you can think it can be applied to the Human Consciousness when we do not even understand the Human Brain.

However, even if one believes in god and souls, the same is still true.
If god created all of the matter, souls, etc. then their course of action has been created and set as well.

It is written that God does not interfer in the lives of men.

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.
Our actions are based on the decisions we make in accordance to a situation given by our environment.

I cannot see how one person, if repeating a moment in his life would not arrive at the same action as he had before.

To say that a person, when acting, has a choice of viable actions implies that the person possesses two or more sets of values and desires, and that those values and desires are arbitrary to him or her. Otherwise, he or she is bound to choosing the action which he or she feels will most satisfy the preferences set by their values, and that cannot be avoided.

Unfortunately for our free will, the idea of two sets of values and desires do not make a whole lot of sense to me.

I have no idea whether or not I can wrap my mind around what is conveyed on the page in question because I frankly cannot determine what is meant. The sheer volume of jargon involved goes well beyond the extent of my knowledge of such jargon.It'd be no different for me, if I had to rely on the wiki in this case. Fortunately I don't.Now this is the kind of language in which one ought to attempt to impart information to lay-folk. I still have no understanding of why what you are stating is believed to be the case, but I do understand what you are stating, which all in all is a step in the right direction.Yes, well. My girlfriend just happens to be a physicist (not a high energy one though), so trust me; I'm intimately familliar with technobabble.

As FS mentioned, it's believed to be the case, because it's what appears to be the state of things. When in the world of the incredibly small, there's a certain degree of randomness to all things, and it's not only a matter of us not being able to look at things properly.None of this actually makes the issue any clearer to me, although I do appreciate your effort in trying to explain. I'll try, but as you've yourself hit on, it's not really possible. I can only convey you with an impression of how it works.

But consider, if you will, that you're sitting in your chair, in front of your computer, and have a paperclip at hand. Now because you've got nothing better to do, you're gonna anticipate what'll happen if you pick up the paperclip and drop it on your table. Chances are you'll have a relatively clear idea of how fast it'll travel from your hand to the table, and just where on the table it'll impact. In other words, you're able to anticipate both relative speed and direction of the paperclip. And if you wanted to, you could calculate both with near-infinite accuracy.

Now consider you do all this, but that you, office, paperclip and all, are quantum-sized. What'll happen will be completely counter intuitive, because if your paperclip was a quantum particle, it would insist on retaining some random characteristics. In practice, it means the paperclip might stick to your fingers like glue, fall through the table, or the cieling, or pop out of existence only to reappear between your teeth. There's no explanation for why this is, but is it how it is.

If you, for example, were a blind person, and only insisted on calculating where the paperclip would impact or how fast it'd be travelling - not both - your prediction would have been correct. But the paperclip still might not have fallen towards the tabletop, or it might have taken days to do so.

In essence, there's always a random element, and while it's possible to predict what the random element will be, it's not possible to eliminate it.I'm wondering if it's something that can be conveyed to a lay-person. The amount of jargon I encounter when I try to figure this stuff out might be indictive of something other than thoughtlessness or exclusionism - maybe unless you know the concepts the jargon communicates, you dont have much hope of understanding the overarching concept being conveyed. You're right, but it's no different from most things these days. I'm sure you have good faith when competent professionals tell you that "this is how it is" about something you lack the background to thoroughly understand. If I, for example, told you that you'd have to make some modifications to the design of your new kitchen you'd come up with, you'd probably take it on good faith that I know how to go about building a legal and functional kitchen, since I am, in fact, a trained professional. This isn't any different ;) Unfortunately I really dont understand enough to figure out if I understand enough to understand.....if you understand what I mean.;)Err... Right :p

Our actions are based on the decisions we make in accordance to a situation given by our environment.

And our decisions are based on the values that we have built up from previous actions and environments. This development can be traced all of the way back to where we can probably say that we didn't have free will, at least not free will greater than simple animals.

And our decisions are based on the values that we have built up from previous actions and environments. This development can be traced all of the way back to where we can probably say that we didn't have free will, at least not free will greater than simple animals.If I ever kill someone, I'll be sure to make this my defence.


... Or not.

snippage
Thanks for that. Although it really just recaps what I do understand, I certainly appreciate your effort in typing it out for my benefit.


As for the professionals, to be entirely honest, I'm the kind of person that would make them step me through the reasons why my design needs reworking. It's not necessarily about disbelief so much as not being comfortable not understanding something that I am involved in. It's the same with quantum physics and what have you. It's not that I believe I have good cause (or even any cause at all) not to believe, it's that I'm not happy regardless what I believe when I lack comprehension about something.

Perhaps I'm just bloody nosy.:D

And here you lose the debate. For your example, it is NOT irrelevant that other moves could have been made. It is very relevant to the discussion at hand. Congratulations. OWNED by your own words.

It is true that men have many choices presented to them at all times, but the resolution of those choices occurs through the values which they have built over time, and furthermore can be extended to an external source. So, while choice is relevant, it does not show free will.

It is also notable that determinism is countered by randomness, which does not support free will.

This has probably already been said, but the OP hasn't defined what he means by free will.

Is it the freedom to make a decision regardless of your environment? That seems a little odd for a definition.

Or is it the freedom to make decisions free from coercion.

For instance, if a beggar asks me for money then it could be considered that I exercised free will in whether I gave the person the money or not. In contrast if a mugger demands money from me whilst threatening me with a knife then it can be said that I have no exercised free will if I hand over the money as I have been compelled to hand over the money through fear of physical injury.

It may be possible to determine which way I will react to both situations, but in the latter I am reacting to my environment, and not to my own personal feelings and reasoning. When I hand over the money to the beggar I am doing soprimarily for the sake of the beggar, but when I hand over the money to the mugger I am doing so primarily for my own sake.

It is true that men have many choices presented to them at all times, but the resolution of those choices occurs through the values which they have built over time, and furthermore can be extended to an external source. So, while choice is relevant, it does not show free will.
One doesnt have to accept their values. This is my understanding of the capacity referred to as free will - it is that capacity by which we can ascertain our values, reflect apon them and even choose to intentionally reject or alter them. It is this capacity that makes our choices 'free'. The fact that we not only have values but can be aware of those values, and can form opinions about the values is what is meant by free will.

You might think that because there are limitations to this feedback loop (in the form our opinions of our values being effected by our values) that free will therefore cannot exist. But that is to assume a mystic quality to free will. All our capacities come with limitations. We can run but not at any and every speed and some people are not able to run at all. We can talk, but not at any and every volume, and some people have more skills at the task while others lack even the capacity. That doesnt make running and talking things we cant do and neither do the limitations and functioning of free will make free will non-existent.

If you want to veiw free will as some mystic thing that unlike all other things we know of, is free of any kind of limitation and operates independently to any and all other phenomena, then ok, no such thing exists. But if instead you ask what is it people mean by free will, you find rather quickly that anyone making a claim to its existence is in almost every case refering ultimately to the human capacity to self-reflect, interperet that reflection, form an opinion on it and to intentionally alter ourselves if our opinion prompts us to do so. And that is in my understanding something that does exist.

To be free will it doesnt need to be utterly free of constraint, anymore than I am utterly free of constraint yet a free person none the less.

How do we have a choice if our environment shapes every decision we make?

You still have a choice between action A and action B.

even my cat has free will and she has a brain the size of a pecan.

even my cat has free will and she has a brain the size of a pecan.

Aha. But cat's rely on instinct. Is that free will? ;)

Thanks for that. Although it really just recaps what I do understand, I certainly appreciate your effort in typing it out for my benefit.You're welcome. My girl's here with me now, by the way. I'm sure she'd be happy to answer a question or two if you need.As for the professionals, to be entirely honest, I'm the kind of person that would make them step me through the reasons why my design needs reworking. It's not necessarily about disbelief so much as not being comfortable not understanding something that I am involved in. It's the same with quantum physics and what have you. It's not that I believe I have good cause (or even any cause at all) not to believe, it's that I'm not happy regardless what I believe when I lack comprehension about something.

Perhaps I'm just bloody nosy.:DI think most people - at least most people worth knowing - is build that way, but only up to a point. I'm pretty sure, for example, you wouldn't start quizzing me on why building code X is building code X (and I propably couldn't explain that either, hehe), or on the nature of the equations that enables me to suggest a certain type of insulation (though I could do that, given plenty of time, patience and beer). Or any of a million other minutiae. The simple fact is that if you want in-depth understanding of a specific field, you'll have learn it. And we humans just don't live long enough to do that with everything.

But I'll grant you it's frustrating. I'd love to have at least a degree in physics, and I'd love for my friends and lover to have my training and experience. If for no other reason than it'd be interesting to have real in-depth discussions about the shit we work with. But alas. The amount of special knowledge required is simply too great.

Aha. But cat's rely on instinct. Is that free will? ;)

yeah they do. but they also have a limited amount of choices that they freely make. the limited scope of a cat's free will makes it easier to see.

How can you not have free will? You may react to your environment but what that reaction may be is still your choice. To think otherwise is making humans out to be simple animals and that we only go by instinct.

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Refute.

So what action caused you to react and make this thread?


how is the decision that "i like strawberries" or "i like the colour blue" a reaction to matters over which we have no controll?

One doesnt have to accept their values.

Isn't acceptance a prerequisite for a value to become our value?

This is my understanding of the capacity referred to as free will - it is that capacity by which we can ascertain our values, reflect apon them and even choose to intentionally reject or alter them. It is this capacity that makes our choices 'free'. The fact that we not only have values but can be aware of those values, and can form opinions about the values is what is meant by free will.

In my first post in this thread I stated:

To say that a person, when acting, has a choice of viable actions implies that the person possesses two or more sets of values and desires, and that those values and desires are arbitrary to him or her. Otherwise, he or she is bound to choosing the action which he or she feels will most satisfy the preferences set by their values, and that cannot be avoided.

When you state that we "can form opinions about the values", you must also permit that someone has a second set of values by which to judge his first set of values.

To be free will it doesnt need to be utterly free of constraint, anymore than I am utterly free of constraint yet a free person none the less.

How can someone actually examine themselves and value their opinions without being free from constraint? You are practically proposing a mind that views the material through one-way glass.

Also, when I address free will, I speak of man's ability to choose. We may percieve a process of choosing, but it we establish external forces that mandated that choice, then men did not have the ability to choose, and therefore has no free will.

It may be possible to determine which way I will react to both situations

If it is possible to determine how you would act before you "made" a decision, then it can be established that it was not "your" decision, but the decision that the situation demanded.

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Refute.
If you declare this unwillingly, then why should we take it seriously?

Isn't acceptance a prerequisite for a value to become our value?
No, it isnt. In fact without free will there is no acceptance, merely a state of being. We dont necessarily have imput in the acquisition of a particular value, so we didnt necessarly accept it, rather than found ourselves with it. Further, acceptance at time 1 doesnt necessitate acceptance at all times. We might initially accept a value only to reject it (thus no longer accepting it) at some later time.



In my first post in this thread I stated:

To say that a person, when acting, has a choice of viable actions implies that the person possesses two or more sets of values and desires, and that those values and desires are arbitrary to him or her. Otherwise, he or she is bound to choosing the action which he or she feels will most satisfy the preferences set by their values, and that cannot be avoided.

When you state that we "can form opinions about the values", you must also permit that someone has a second set of values by which to judge his first set of values.
No I need not do that, but even if I did, what of it? I myself have reflected on and rejected values, intentionally altering my perception until the value not longer features as part of my perception. So either it doesnt require holding a secondary set of such values, or it is possible to hold a secondary set. Either way, since I've personally done it (and know many, many folk who claim to have done likewise) it can be done.


How can someone actually examine themselves and value their opinions without being free from constraint? You are practically proposing a mind that views the material through one-way glass.
I dont know what you mean by this. I know that I've examined values that I have held and have in some cases rejected or altered those values according to my opinion of them. I know that I can form opinions about the way I percieve things, about the values that I hold and I can alter these things in accordance with my preferences.

Also, when I address free will, I speak of man's ability to choose. We may percieve a process of choosing, but it we establish external forces that mandated that choice, then men did not have the ability to choose, and therefore has no free will.
But we have not established outside forces that mandate their choice, and trying to argue as though we have when that is actually the issue in dispute, is in effect, begging the question.

If you declare this unwillingly, then why should we take it seriously?

YEAH!

he probably only said it because the engrams told him to!

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Refute.

Erm... I'm not going to start a big theological debate, but... we can control the environment.
I mean, how can we not, a baby comes into the world, and it has already changed it. The mom takes some time off to look after the baby, we do change our environment.
Sorry if someone has said this already.

<Sniiiip>Isn't that just moving the goalposts? - Sort of like "God's watching over us from the sky.. Oh, no god in the sky? Then he's watching over us from somewhere else".

I'm back.
From what I've read so far, Vittos is doing a better job putting my thoughts into words.

Here's another bad analogy:
The brain is like a computor.
If we know all of the code and all of the input, we can determine the outcome.
(I am not saying that we do have all of this knowledge, just that the knowledge exists.)

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
True enough, at least for a few years.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Prove it.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Refute.

Don't make definite conclusions based on unproven ideas.

I'm back.
From what I've read so far, Vittos is doing a better job putting my thoughts into words.

Here's another bad analogy:
The brain is like a computor.
If we know all of the code and all of the input, we can determine the outcome.
(I am not saying that we do have all of this knowledge, just that the knowledge exists.)

So you are going to ignore the responses that refute you saying that there is no such thing as free will?

If it is possible to determine how you would act before you "made" a decision, then it can be established that it was not "your" decision, but the decision that the situation demanded.Not really, no.

If I decide I want to support a football team, and I want to go see them play live, and I want to cheer on my team whenever they score I do not think you can imply that that the striker makes the decision as to whether or not I cheer when he scores a goal. However, an accurate prediction can be made that I will cheer when my team scores a goal. I am not forced to show up to the match, I am not forced to support the team, I am not forced to cheer when a goal is scored. Hence I exercise free will when I cheer when my team scores.

In essence you are trying to claim that I only exercise free will when I take a decision that I believe will effect me in a way that I do not want to happen. Just because you can predict how someone will react, does not mean they are not exercising free will.

Free will is the ability to make a decision between various choices. If I am not given a free choice then I cannot be said be exercising free will.

I'm back.
From what I've read so far, Vittos is doing a better job putting my thoughts into words.

Here's another bad analogy:
The brain is like a computor.
If we know all of the code and all of the input, we can determine the outcome.
(I am not saying that we do have all of this knowledge, just that the knowledge exists.)OK. If I program a random number generator, you cannot predict which numbers it'll spit out, only the range in which they can come out. Similarly, humans don't have the choice to dispense with gravity, as it's not under our control. But it in no way prevents us from inventing methods for flying.

Your argument's stillborn, as it's self-evident there's a number of different things we can choose, after we've accounted for things like environment and upbringing.

Vitto's, I think, is not an argument at all, as he's concentrating on arguing that free will means something nobody else interprets it as. And in doing so, freely admit that a process of decision-making is indeed taking place, which in turn kills your own argument quite thoroughly.

If we know all of the code and all of the input, we can determine the outcome.
(I am not saying that we do have all of this knowledge, just that the knowledge exists.)
And what of the things that cannot be known? is that "knowledge that exists"?

I'm back.
From what I've read so far, Vittos is doing a better job putting my thoughts into words.

Here's another bad analogy:
The brain is like a computor.
If we know all of the code and all of the input, we can determine the outcome.
(I am not saying that we do have all of this knowledge, just that the knowledge exists.)

If the brain is like a computer then we're like a small child. We know it does stuff, important stuff, but for all we know it could have tiny little fairies making it all work.

Lets say there are three parallel universes.
Universe A and universe B are completely identical, but not linked.
Universe C has one aspect modified slightly, leading to a completely different set of circumstances.
A ball is dropped in universe A, and its final position is recorded.
Warp to universe B.
The "same" exact ball is placed in the "same" position.
It is then dropped in the exact way and at the exact time that it was in universe B.
Knowledge from universe A allows us to determine where the ball lands in universe B.

Now apply this to an animal.
It perceives it's environment, and it "decides" what to do.
It's decision would be the same in either universe.
It's the same on a human level.

The Fates control all.

So you are going to ignore the responses that refute you saying that there is no such thing as free will?

I can only read and type so fast. You'll have to excuse me for not replying instantaneously, as I just woke up.

Now apply this to an animal.
It perceives it's environment, and it "decides" what to do.
It's decision would be the same in either universe.
It's the same on a human level.

Now prove it. Oh wait you can't because humans do not work that way.

And here you lose the debate. For your example, it is NOT irrelevant that other moves could have been made. It is very relevant to the discussion at hand. Congratulations. OWNED by your own words.

The fact that a different outcome is hypothetically possible does not change the fact that if all of the previous circumstances were known, the outcome would be as well.

Knowledge from universe A allows us to determine where the ball lands in universe B.
Then there is no significant difference between Universe B and Universe A?

Now prove it. Oh wait you can't because humans do not work that way.

OK. But does this mean that you concede that the ball and the animal's actions were predetermined?

The Fates control all.

only the outcomes not the decisions themselves.

Now prove it. Oh wait you can't because humans do not work that way.

Instinct is a set of simple reactions to the environment.

Sentience is more complex, but it still ultimately works the same way, as a set of feedback loops as someone else said.
The fact that we believe that we are making a choice does not make it free.

The fact that a different outcome is hypothetically possible does not change the fact that if all of the previous circumstances were known, the outcome would be as well.

No you see, you still have free will to make other moves, Its a move and counter move. People can still make a move that maybe ill advised or make a move that your opponet did not see coming because of his move. That's why they call it chess. You are supposed to try to outsmart your opponet and that means taking risks once in a while that may not be considered wise.

You Dexlysia really need to learn that we all have choices to make. It does not depend on the environment though it does play a role in how we MIGHT act. I have free will to post here if I want. And I have free will NOT TO post here. That is free will. Able to make a choice between one option or another. You are saying that we do not have this choice. That is simple FALSE!

only the outcomes not the decisions themselves.

But the decisions themselves are outcomes.

OK. But does this mean that you concede that the ball and the animal's actions were predetermined?

A ball? A ball will go where it is thrown or rolled. I shoot a basketball to the hoop. The distance it'll travel depends on how much power I throw it. Its direction depends on how I throw it or roll it. A ball cannot make decisions so that's out.

As for animals, that is instinct. Some of what an animal does is predetermined. A bear hibernates in winter. A squirrel gathers nuts. that's all predetermined.

A human on the other hand is more complex than an animal. I have the choice to make whatever decisions I want to make and when I make those decisions, I have to live with the consequences if they are wrong.

Are you seeing this?

Instinct is a set of simple reactions to the environment.

Sentience is more complex, but it still ultimately works the same way, as a set of feedback loops as someone else said.
The fact that we believe that we are making a choice does not make it free.

I had a choice to travel to Philadelphia with my gf. I did not have to if I did not want to. I could choose not to and nothing would happen. I choose to travel though. Tell me, was that choice free?

But the decisions themselves are outcomes.

And consequences based on the decisions we as humans make.

No you see, you still have free will to make other moves, Its a move and counter move. People can still make a move that maybe ill advised or make a move that your opponet did not see coming because of his move. That's why they call it chess. You are supposed to try to outsmart your opponet and that means taking risks once in a while that may not be considered wise.

You Dexlysia really need to learn that we all have choices to make. It does not depend on the environment though it does play a role in how we MIGHT act. I have free will to post here if I want. And I have free will NOT TO post here. That is free will. Able to make a choice between one option or another. You are saying that we do not have this choice. That is simple FALSE!

Choice A: post this.
Choice B: don't post this.

Your previous posts have shaped my "decision to choose option A.
Likewise, your "choice" to post was shaped by the OP.
My decision to post this thread was a product of my biological circumstances, my psychology, and my environment.
Each of these things was ultimately shaped by the configuration of the environment.
I have had no role in creating this environment.
The environment created me.

I'm back.
From what I've read so far, Vittos is doing a better job putting my thoughts into words.

Here's another bad analogy:
The brain is like a computor.
If we know all of the code and all of the input, we can determine the outcome.
(I am not saying that we do have all of this knowledge, just that the knowledge exists.)Just because you know the 'code' of a human brain does not mean the 'system' isn't exercising free will.

If I know that on your coffee break you will always have white coffee in preference to black coffee, and I use this knowledge to remove all milk, cream and whiteners from where you work to get you to brink black coffee then you are still exercising free when you choose the black coffee (as I have not forced you to drink the coffee). You still have the choice as to whether to drink the coffee or not, and just because you choose to drink the coffee doesn't mean you are not exercising free will.

If I removed all coffee from your workplace then you would not be exercising free will by not drinking coffee as you did not have a choice.

There is a further situation where the area becomes grey. In political science it is refered to as 'preference shaping' or the third face of power. If I can present you with free a choice between black or white coffee, but modify your preferences so that you will take the black coffee, then are you still exercising free will?
eg. If I offer you coffee, but say that the milk has gone sour (when it is still fresh), then have you exercised free will by choosing black coffee. I gave you a free choice, but if you had known the full truth you would have chosen white coffee instead.

But the decisions themselves are outcomes.

doesnt matter, the fates still determine the outcome of your decision.

except in ancient times where the gods tended to to fuck with humans and make them do things they wouldnt otherwise have done. see "the iliad".

I had a choice to travel to Philadelphia with my gf. I did not have to if I did not want to. I could choose not to and nothing would happen. I choose to travel though. Tell me, was that choice free?

No.
To you, it appears to be a free choice.
Whatever circumstances lead up to the decision were ultimately beyond your control.
Your birth, her's, the configuration of the earth, and the rules that govern it were all beyond your control.
If you were placed in the exact same position at the exact same point in time with the exact same frame of mind, you would make the exact same choice.

It's the same on a human level.
Non sequitur.
The fact that we believe that we are making a choice does not make it free.

Proof?

If you were placed in the exact same position at the exact same point in time with the exact same frame of mind, you would make the exact same choice.
And how do you know this?

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.True.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.How can you possibly know this? This is an assumption, certainly an unproven hypothesis, and as such your entire argument begs the question.
Therefore, we have no free will.This is not something we can know, because the epistemological position of the scientific method is one that relies on the concept of falsifiability. The hypothesis, "given sufficient knowledge, we could predict a person's every behavior" is inherently non-falsifiable.

Think about it. You believe that we are fundamentally determined. I ask you, on that basis, to predict what a given person is going to do next. He/she does something different, and I respond, "There, your hypothesis was falsified."

"No," you reply (as all determinists do), "clearly I just did not have enough information."

Is there any failed test that you will accept as a disproof of determinism? No?

Then you have just demonstrated that your position is fundamentally unscientific.

How do we have a choice if our environment shapes every decision we make?"Shaping" is not the same thing as "determining."

It is a truism that our environment shapes our reaction. It is an unprovable conjecture that our environment determines our behavior.

I never said it was a simple reaction. This case is a complex reaction to the circumstances which he was born into. Acting against something is still acting according to it.More evidence that yours is not a falsifiable claim.

Given any behavior that refutes the expectations of predictive science, you are willing to say, "Clearly this situation is more complex than I thought."

But there is no empirical evidence that you will ever accept as demonstrating that you simply cannot predict human behavior. Is there?

In a chess game, your move is based upon your opponent's.
If your opponent had moved somewhere else, you would have as well.Maybe... or maybe I'm not very good at chess.

In any case, chess is not a deterministic game. Given any move by my opponent, several competitive moves are available to me.

This is the reason that "optimum strategies" in chess remain entirely theoretical. Even given "ideal players" it is impossible to predict their moves.

Maybe... or maybe I'm not very good at chess.

In any case, chess is not a deterministic game. Given any move by my opponent, several competitive moves are available to me.

This is the reason that "optimum strategies" in chess remain entirely theoretical. Even given "ideal players" it is impossible to predict their moves.

chess is a bad example. after all, not only am i free to make a different decision, i am free to walk away from the game or tip the chessboard into the air and punch my opponent in the nose.

The sole factor in determining which move to make were the actions which occured beforehand.
In the simplified chess example, this includes the previous moves and our current mental state.
Each of these was determined by previous actions.
Each is beyond our control.You're still begging the question.

Yes, our opponent's moves are beyond our immediate control (though certainly we can take steps to influence them).
Our mental state, however, certainly appears to be within our control. I can decide to "calm down," or "concentrate," and so on.

You are arguing that my perception of control is inaccurate--that, in fact, my feelings are determined by conditions outside of my control.

This is a fine conjecture, and one that stimulates many fascinating philosophical questions. But it is not one that you are in a position to prove.

chess is a bad example. after all, not only am i free to make a different decision, i am free to walk away from the game or tip the chessboard into the air and punch my opponent in the nose.

http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q100/TheSteveslols/Thread.jpg

All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.

This is the crucial assumption in your argument - and its truth depends on what you mean by "based."

All (or at least a very large portion) of our actions are reactions to our environment, yes; they take into account our circumstances.

That said, they are not DETERMINED by our environment. There is no reason to suspect that two people put into identical life-circumstances would respond to them in exactly the same way.

Since we retain control over how we respond to our environment, the mere fact that we do not control our environment does not negate free will.

Even if it is... why does it matter? If determinism was proven.Well, there are a number of reasons.

First, from a philosophical point of view one can argue that it is our moral freedom that gives human beings a certain dignity that others can recognize and respect. While (as you point out) moral concepts such as blameworthiness may survive the conceptual defeat of free will, one could argue that the stronger sense of obligation mandated by, say, Kantian ethics (which explicitly relies on free will) would lose their most promising philosophical foundation.

Thus, we are obliged not to kill each other, but without free will we are not obliged to try to make the world a better place.

Second, the assumption of free will entails that human beings individually and collectively are not doomed to be what we are--we can decide to change, we can decide to create a better society. Giving up on free will tends to deflate arguments for social justice broadly defined.

Similar arguments can be made with respect to psychological therapy... and even aesthetics.

No, not really. We do react to external stimuli and are shaped by our environment, but we as sapients are still capable of consciously allowing or vetoing a given action before it happens. Free will does exist in the sense that we have the power to control our actions; being shaped by our environment does not entail that we are controlled by it.

Human "decisions" are the result of three factors: physiology, sociology, and psychology.

The physiological aspect is beyond our control.
We have all been born into this world as a result of circumstances beyond our control.
We did not choose our physical makeup.

The sociological factors (the environment) is nothing but circumstances beyond our control.

Our psychology is based upon a combination of our physiology and the sociological environment we were born into.
Each of these was beyond our control.

When a fork in the road is presented, these factors determine our decision.

I guess where I'm coming from is a materialistic point of view.That's obvious enough.
If all that exists is matter, energy, and void, and if the exact configuration of each is known, the future positions of each can be determined as well.This is an assumption with which even many physicists would disagree. More importantly, our knowledge of predictable behaviors in matter and energy depends very explicitly on experimental data the external validity of which is open to question--especially when we are talking about the extremely complex interactions going on inside the human brain.

The problem here is that you have a very profound misunderstanding of what scientific knowledge is, how it is obtained, and how confident scientists can be that it describes the universe in every possible configuration.

Ultimately, scientific epistemology cannot tolerate a "logical" argument from the fact that particles are predictable in an accelerator to the notion that human behaviors are equally predictable. While this may suggest the hypothesis that human beings are determined creatures, it does not give us a method to test that hypothesis.

Human "decisions" are the result of three factors: physiology, sociology, and psychology.

The physiological aspect is beyond our control.
We have all been born into this world as a result of circumstances beyond our control.
We did not choose our physical makeup.

The sociological factors (the environment) is nothing but circumstances beyond our control.

Our psychology is based upon a combination of our physiology and the sociological environment we were born into.
Each of these was beyond our control.

When a fork in the road is presented, these factors determine our decision.

Explain to me a theoretical circumstance in which entities would possess free will by your definition.

Human "decisions" are the result of three factors: physiology, sociology, and psychology.

Prove it.

i do not belive preferences in your enviroment can be said to be a forced reaction by your enviroment.

that is something that i belive happens inside one self and thus is the start of the free will. how would the enviroment force you to prefere the colour blue rather then yellow/red/green or even lighter shade of blue? also afaik we cant determine why people like bananas over apples. that could be an indication of free will. even if you say we areeffected by the enviroment in every decision we make things like preferences (that we dont know where they come from) play their part as well and will in the end ammount to a free will. I choose strawberry icecream because i like strawberries.

2 ppl given equal and identical situations may still react differently.

chess is in my opinion a bad metaphore since the game is shaped like that. most of the time you emidietly have to react to your opponents move. there are japanese games like go (and chinese chess?) where your opponents moves has less impact and therefor gives you a bigger freedom to choose your own move.

also what if you change your mind. wouldnt makeing a move in chess and then changeing your mind before your oponent makes his move indicate a free will? however that is against the rules of chess and all chess players learn to never change their minds but adapt their stretegys to incorrect moves.



but hypothetically even if free will is an illusion, does it matter? if the illusion is so complete doesnt it stop to be an illusion? :headbang:

there still wont be anyone else making our decisions for us then ourselves.




btw. i asked before "So what action caused you to react and make this thread?"

without getting an answer... i would very much like one.

Human "decisions" are the result of three factors: physiology, sociology, and psychology.

The physiological aspect is beyond our control.
We have all been born into this world as a result of circumstances beyond our control.
We did not choose our physical makeup.

The sociological factors (the environment) is nothing but circumstances beyond our control.

Our psychology is based upon a combination of our physiology and the sociological environment we were born into.
Each of these was beyond our control.

When a fork in the road is presented, these factors determine our decision.

so the fact that decisions are determined at least partially by us (unless you think your psychology isn't you) doesn't scream free will to you? i have no idea what you think free will requires at this point.

Human "decisions" are the result of three factors: physiology, sociology, and psychology.

The physiological aspect is beyond our control.
We have all been born into this world as a result of circumstances beyond our control.

We did not choose our physical makeup.

The sociological factors (the environment) is nothing but circumstances beyond our control.

Our psychology is based upon a combination of our physiology and the sociological environment we were born into.
Each of these was beyond our control.

When a fork in the road is presented, these factors determine our decision.

But I can consciously decide to do something else; I'm not likely to, but it is possible for me to do so. We do have some evidence that intent to do an action happens in the brain before it occurs, but it is possible for us to stop ourselves from doing that action literally milliseconds before it would have occurred.

At the same time, however, those factors are not entirely beyond our control; we can shape our own environment once we've reached a mature enough age to do so, we can change or will be capable of changing our physical makeup, be it through cosmetic surgery and things like that meant to enhance our sense of self-image or through outright manipulation of our genetic code and through biological or mechanical enhancement.

And, of course our psychology is completely shapable; if it weren't we would be incapable of treating mental disorders through psychotherapy, even though that does happen all the time.

This is the crucial assumption in your argument - and its truth depends on what you mean by "based."

All (or at least a very large portion) of our actions are reactions to our environment, yes; they take into account our circumstances.

That said, they are not DETERMINED by our environment. There is no reason to suspect that two people put into identical life-circumstances would respond to them in exactly the same way.

Since we retain control over how we respond to our environment, the mere fact that we do not control our environment does not negate free will.

That is because their physiology is different.
Even identical twins and clones are not truly identical.
Hell, we are not identical to ourselves a fraction of a second apart in time.

If the exact same physical structure (ie. a person) is placed in the exact same environment, both situations would yield the same results.

The "control" we have over our responses is simply an illusion.

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Refute.

We can choose our reactions, therefore, there is free will.

Why are human beings free to the extent that they are unpredictable?

I cannot predict random events, but they are hardly possessed of free will.

I can predict the behavior of my close friends very well, and can even make broad predictions about human behavior in general that very rarely, if ever, do not hold - but this hardly means that my friends or humans in general do not have free will.

Maybe... or maybe I'm not very good at chess.

In any case, chess is not a deterministic game. Given any move by my opponent, several competitive moves are available to me.

This is the reason that "optimum strategies" in chess remain entirely theoretical. Even given "ideal players" it is impossible to predict their moves.Chess is deterministic Just like tic-tac-toe is. It is just so incredibly complicated that it is impossible under current conditions to figure out the ideal game of chess. Consider that there 400 possible combinations of moves within the first two moves of the game (one move for each player). Whereas for tic-tac-toe there are a mere 13.

Now consider that there are 32 playing pieces on a board with 64 squares in a game of chess. That generates 400 combinations of moves within the first two moves. Now in the brain there are over 100 billion neurons... It wouldn't be an easy task figuring out how they all interact.

If the exact same physical structure (ie. a person) is placed in the exact same environment, both situations would yield the same results.

So?

All that means is that our behavior isn't random, that it does, in fact, depend on US - which, if anything, strengthens the case for free will instead of weakening it.

If the exact same physical structure (ie. a person) is placed in the exact same environment, both situations would yield the same results.

The "control" we have over our responses is simply an illusion.

There is no empirical evidence of that because it would require complete and utter control over every aspect of that environment; we're nowhere near capable of that yet, and if we were I would say that we do have free will since we are capable of completely controlling and determining an environment.

I cannot see how one person, if repeating a moment in his life would not arrive at the same action as he had before.That is a nice logical position to take, but it remains fundamentally unscientific.

Unless, of course, you can manage to construct a scientific test in which you get a person to repeat a moment in his life. Then we'd have to see.

To say that a person, when acting, has a choice of viable actions implies that the person possesses two or more sets of values and desires, and that those values and desires are arbitrary to him or her.It says no such thing.

Otherwise, he or she is bound to choosing the action which he or she feels will most satisfy the preferences set by their values, and that cannot be avoided.This unreasonably assumes both a neatly ordered hierarchy of preferences and a set of choices that are unambiguously related to those preferences.

For your information, psychologists do not believe that human preferences can be neatly ordered. It is a useful assumption for economists and political scientists, but not a very realistic one.

Human "decisions" are the result of three factors: physiology, sociology, and psychology. If we accept this as true, then there's no such thing as determinism.The physiological aspect is beyond our control. And more importantly; it isn't deterministic. It is falisfiable, and has been falsified. Welcome to the 20th century, only one more to go before you catch up ;) The sociological factors (the environment) is nothing but circumstances beyond our control.Not true. There's plenty of well known instances of individuals changing their society in fundamental and far-reaching ways.Our psychology is based upon a combination of our physiology and the sociological environment we were born into.Then how can we go against them?Each of these was beyond our control.And yet we do plenty of things to prove you wrong. Our societies exist in a constant state of change. The entire biosphere of this planet is now completely and utterly in our control, to do with as we please.When a fork in the road is presented, these factors determine our decision.It's nothing but unsubstantiated bollocks, nicely wrapped in so much vagueness, it's near meaningless.

I'd be nicer about it, but you consequently fail to respond to any and all criticisms of your baseless conjecture, so screw the nicities.

And our decisions are based on the values that we have built up from previous actions and environments. This development can be traced all of the way back to where we can probably say that we didn't have free will, at least not free will greater than simple animals.A nice theory, but how do you prove it?

Better yet, for scientific purposes, how would you disprove it?

That is because their physiology is different.
Even identical twins and clones are not truly identical.
Hell, we are not identical to ourselves a fraction of a second apart in time.

If the exact same physical structure (ie. a person) is placed in the exact same environment, both situations would yield the same results.

in other words, the outcome of a decision is up to us. that is free will.

what made you decide to post this thread?

how would anyone ever have sufficient information to determine if im gullible enough to belive the OP statement or not.

is preferences in such areas as taste and colour a direct influence of our enviroment or is that something very personal?


can you determine love? or wouldnt that be a perfect example of how you base decitions on other things then your enviroment?


isnt this just some advanced form of the chaos theory?

say that we dont have free will and it is just an illusion. wouldnt we still have to be held responsible for our actions? if someone goes out and murders someone just because he belives that he is not in controll hasnt he still done something wrong? there was still 2 options availeble to him: 1) to not belive that every action/desition is predetermined and 2) not to murder that person.
the knowledge or belif in knowledge affects the action. (not exactly schrödingers cat, but still interesting to consider the cat in the context)

when an illusion is so complete as you claim free will is, doesnt it stop to be an illusion?

This has probably already been said, but the OP hasn't defined what he means by free will.Well, I don't know about the OP, but in my work on incompatiblism I have defined freedom of the will as "the capacity to defy the best objective knowledge about one's self."

tangential point - i find the attention this thread is getting from the nsg anarchist population to be interesting and noteworthy

so the fact that decisions are determined at least partially by us (unless you think your psychology isn't you) doesn't scream free will to you? i have no idea what you think free will requires at this point.

Psychology is ultimately determined by our physical makeup and the physical makeup of our environment.
Both of these were not decided by us.

So?

All that means is that our behavior isn't random, that it does, in fact, depend on US - which, if anything, strengthens the case for free will instead of weakening it.

How so?
If there is no random fluctuation, then knowledge of the configuration of everything in the universe at any point in time would allow us to determine the configuration at any other point in time.*

*except before the existence of time, pre-big bang, etc.

Well, I don't know about the OP, but in my work on incompatiblism I have defined freedom of the will as "the capacity to defy the best objective knowledge about one's self."Buh? :confused:

So an example of free will would be that if I know I'm aracnophobic, but allow a spider to be placed on my hand?

Well, I don't know about the OP, but in my work on incompatiblism I have defined freedom of the will as "the capacity to defy the best objective knowledge about one's self."

That's a very convenient definition for an Incompatibalist to use.

As usual with Incompatibalist definitions of freedom, I fail to see what it has to do with freedom. An action that "def[ies] the best objective knowledge about one's self" necessarily must be based on nothing of the self - that is, it would be arbitrary, not free.

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Refute.

Our environment is a consequence of the exertion of our will.

Thus, we sculpt the environment that in turn sculpts our reaction.

The cyclical nature of your premise refutes the very premise itself. Ultimately, will is the dominant aspect; choice is the catalyst, and the environment is merely a consequence that, in turn, influences our reaction of will.

Done. :)

Isn't acceptance a prerequisite for a value to become our value?Not at all.

People desire things, believe things, get frustrated... react all the time without understanding what unconscious values and preferences enter into their behavior. (Is it ironic that I'm the one defending freedom of the will? No, because I believe we are both subject and object, and gaining knowledge about ourselves--and our hidden preferences--is a critical step in freeing ourselves in fact.)

When you state that we "can form opinions about the values", you must also permit that someone has a second set of values by which to judge his first set of values.No.

You presume (again) that values only make sense in (ordered) "sets." But the fact of the matter is that we can use some of our values to judge others, we can decide which are more valid or worthwhile, etc.

For instance, suppose my friends and I all go to see a movie. They love the film, but I don't like it... I can't quite put into words what bothers me about it, I just don't like it. They want to go see another film by the same filmmaker, which gets very good reviews, but I am reluctant.

Let's say that on self-examination I discover that I am most uncomfortable with the homosexual subtext of the film... and in that realization I come to understand that I had unconscious homophobic feelings of which I was not aware.

I think to myself, "Philosophically I cannot defend homophobia, and in fact I think people should consciously attempt to be more accepting of same-sex relationships. Therefore, I'm going to work on this unconscious preference of mine. I'm going to try to have a more open mind."

I go back to the first movie, and I consciously attempt to focus on the artistic aspects of the film. I focus as well on the genuine love between these same-sex couples, and I work on teaching myself that they are valuable, respectable... even beautiful.

Now I have learned to enjoy this great work of art, along with my friends. Indeed, now I can go to the second film and expand my horizons even further.

Preferences are not the simple matter that economists make them out to be.

How so?
If there is no random fluctuation, then knowledge of the configuration of everything in the universe at any point in time would allow us to determine the configuration at any other point in time.

Let's say this is true (though it doesn't appear to be, at least on the quantum level.)

Why does it mean that we do not have free will? If I know a person perfectly, I may be able to predict their actions perfectly too - does this mean that they are not free?

Here's another bad analogy:You're right. It is a very, very bad analogy.
The brain is like a computor.Okay, so we have problems already. First, in what way do you want to claim that a brain is like a computer? Second, how do you know? Or is this just a nice little guess, a philosophical exercise?

The central problem in this thread, to my mind, is that some people are mistaking interesting philosophical exercises--the "what if" games that philosophers love to play--for actual philosophical or scientific arguments.

The second problem is that too few people seem to understand the scientific standard of falsifiability.

If we know all of the code and all of the input, we can determine the outcome.And heeeeere's that pesky problem of falsifiability. How do you know when you have "all" of the code and "all" of the input? How could that even be possible when it comes to human behaviors?

tangential point - i find the attention this thread is getting from the nsg anarchist population to be interesting and noteworthy

Interesting indeed.

I guess where I'm coming from is a materialistic point of view.Heh, I just noticed this. Hadn't read the first few pages. Dex, if you were taking a materialistic approach to this, you'd be arguing the opposite, as - at least on the quantum level - a degree of uncertainty is demonstrably inherent to this universe - just like oxygen is demonstrably a small part of this planet's atmosphere.tangential point - i find the attention this thread is getting from the nsg anarchist population to be interesting and noteworthyWhy? I'm pretty sure the concept of free will, and the materialistic world view, is very close to the hearts of most anarchists. That's how this one feels, anyway :p

If there is no random fluctuation, then knowledge of the configuration of everything in the universe at any point in time would allow us to determine the configuration at any other point in time.*

*except before the existence of time, pre-big bang, etc.That information doesn't exist. It's not a matter of us not having it, or not knowing how to access it, the information itself isn't there. It's nothing but superstition on your part. And on a side note, you should look up the concept of time.

Let's say this is true (though it doesn't appear to be, at least on the quantum level.)

Why does it mean that we do not have free will? If I know a person perfectly, I may be able to predict their actions perfectly too - does this mean that they are not free?

That's what I'm arguing.
If you know everything, including the "choice" that will be made, the person is not free to make an alternative choice.

Lets say there are three parallel universes.
Universe A and universe B are completely identical, but not linked.Then how did you get from one to the other?

A ball is dropped in universe A, and its final position is recorded.
Warp to universe B.
The "same" exact ball is placed in the "same" position.
It is then dropped in the exact way and at the exact time that it was in universe B.
Knowledge from universe A allows us to determine where the ball lands in universe B.First of all, Universe A and Universe B cannot possibly be identical.

Universe A has you in it, not knowing where the ball is going to land.
Universe B has you in it, knowing where the ball is going to land.

But this is just nitpicking at your example, since we're not concerned here with the predictability of balls, we're concerned with the predictability of human beings.

That's what I'm arguing.
If you know everything, including the "choice" that will be made, the person is not free to make an alternative choice.

Do you know any omniscient beings?

The fact that a different outcome is hypothetically possible does not change the fact that if all of the previous circumstances were known, the outcome would be as well.No, what doesn't change is the fact that "if all of the previous circumstances were known, the outcome would be as well" is an inherently unfalsifiable claim.

How the hell would you go about testing that conjecture?

That's what I'm arguing.
If you know everything, including the "choice" that will be made, the person is not free to make an alternative choice.

Sure she is. She just WON'T - because she doesn't WANT to.

You know this. All that means is that you know the person very well - not that she is unfree.

chess is a bad example. after all, not only am i free to make a different decision, i am free to walk away from the game or tip the chessboard into the air and punch my opponent in the nose.*ouch*

;)

How the hell would you go about testing that conjecture?Being a good little materialist, he'd take it on faith :p

If we accept this as true, then there's no such thing as determinism.
How so?
And more importantly; it isn't deterministic. It is falisfiable, and has been falsified. Welcome to the 20th century, only one more to go before you catch up ;)
:confused:
Not true. There's plenty of well known instances of individuals changing their society in fundamental and far-reaching ways.
I was ultimately referring to the environment which existed before we were born. After we are born, we do change it. However, this is done in accordance to its current state.
Then how can we go against them?
Our psychology? We can’t.
And yet we do plenty of things to prove you wrong. Our societies exist in a constant state of change. The entire biosphere of this planet is now completely and utterly in our control, to do with as we please.
How we “choose” to alter our environment is determined by its current state and our psychology.
It's nothing but unsubstantiated bollocks, nicely wrapped in so much vagueness, it's near meaningless.

I'd be nicer about it, but you consequently fail to respond to any and all criticisms of your baseless conjecture, so screw the nicities.
Umm… It’s kind of hard to keep up. I’m trying to beat off ten posters at once, and I have not even had a chance to read all the posts since I went to bed.
Forgive me for not being able to post ten times faster.
But no offense taken.

That is because their physiology is different.
Even identical twins and clones are not truly identical.
Hell, we are not identical to ourselves a fraction of a second apart in time.Now you're really setting yourself up to evade that falsification problem...

If the exact same physical structure (ie. a person) is placed in the exact same environment, both situations would yield the same results.Okay...

So, first you argue that human beings and their circumstances are so unique, so perfectly non-identical to each other, that we could never possibly have the exact same circumstances for a test of predictability...

Then you set your standard of predictability to be that very circumstance of identity that you declared to be impossible!!

Thus, you have effectively set your argument outside the bounds of scientific falsifiability. You have declared--quite explicitly--that no test whatsoever will convince you that you are wrong.

Now convince me that there is any point in arguing with you. Because I am beginning to wonder.

The "control" we have over our responses is simply an illusion.Why do you want to believe this? And you must want to believe this, because there is utterly no empirical basis for it, and it flies in the face of the evidence of actual human experience.

What is the basis for your faith?

Do you know any omniscient beings?
No.
Are you a nihilist?
The hypothetical possibility of having supreme knowledge is sufficient to make my point.

Chess is deterministic Just like tic-tac-toe is. It is just so incredibly complicated that it is impossible under current conditions to figure out the ideal game of chess. Consider that there 400 possible combinations of moves within the first two moves of the game (one move for each player). Whereas for tic-tac-toe there are a mere 13.

Now consider that there are 32 playing pieces on a board with 64 squares in a game of chess. That generates 400 combinations of moves within the first two moves. Now in the brain there are over 100 billion neurons... It wouldn't be an easy task figuring out how they all interact.Yes, I know all that.

But the real problem in the mathematics of the ideal game is that for each individual position there is no single ideal move that would follow. The ideal strategies in themselves, even in theory, are not "perfect," because they invariably depend on what your opponent will do next just as much as they depend on what he did last.

Buh? :confused:

So an example of free will would be that if I know I'm aracnophobic, but allow a spider to be placed on my hand?Possibly. ;)

That's a very convenient definition for an Incompatibalist to use.

As usual with Incompatibalist definitions of freedom, I fail to see what it has to do with freedom. An action that "def[ies] the best objective knowledge about one's self" necessarily must be based on nothing of the self - that is, it would be arbitrary, not free.That's true only if you fail to make a distinction between objective and subjective knowledge.

The problem with determinism is that it attempts (and fails) to reduce the subjective to the objective.

Incompatiblists retain the subjective as a meaningful form of knowledge.

Umm… It’s kind of hard to keep up. I’m trying to beat off ten posters at once, and I have not even had a chance to read all the posts since I went to bed.
Forgive me for not being able to post ten times faster.
But no offense taken.It's not your speed I'm grunting about, it's your lack of response to the arguments being levelled against your superstition.

How so? Because the very first third of your trinity, isn't deterministic.:confused: In the last century, it was discovered that the world of the very small isn't deterministic. It's falsifiably true, and has been repeatedly, in part because it's pretty mindblowing.I was ultimately referring to the environment which existed before we were born. After we are born, we do change it. However, this is done in accordance to its current state.Our psychology? We can’t. Then I'd say you're both drawing an unfalsifiable and unsubstantiated conclusion, or being superstitious, if you prefer, as well as moving the goalposts.
How do you get from us being unable to change ourt psychology (and what about people with disorders who gets cured?), and social norms, to us going against the grain and challenging or changing social norms?How we “choose” to alter our environment is determined by its current state and our psychology. How do you prove/disprove that? What's the basis for your conclusion, if any?

Sounds like you're invoking god in a new tux. But as I already said, I'll be sure to use this as my defence if I ever murder someone. I'm sure I'll at least get off on insanity :p

That's true only if you fail to make a distinction between objective and subjective knowledge.

"Objective" and "subjective" knowledge of what?

If there is SOMETHING that determines the choice actually made, then I fail to see how this is meaningfully different from determinism - our choice is still determined by something else. Our preferences are not self-causing.

If there isn't (say, if the random behavior of particles is responsible for human choices), then there is no freedom.

The hypothetical possibility of having supreme knowledge is sufficient to make my point.But it isn't a hypothetical possibility in this universe! For F's sake man... Will it help if I bombard you with wiki links? I mean, someone else did it already (FS?), but apparently you just ignored those.

There's a reason I'm calling you superstitious, you know. You imagine things that patently aren't true, as the foundation of an argument that can't be falsified. It's... Just total bollocks. Argh...

It's like talking to a roadsign. Keeps saying the same shit over and over, even if it's readily apparent that Midton St.'s nowhere near my wall, or even in this damn country.

Now you're really setting yourself up to evade that falsification problem...

So, first you argue that human beings and their circumstances are so unique, so perfectly non-identical to each other, that we could never possibly have the exact same circumstances for a test of predictability...

Then you set your standard of predictability to be that very circumstance of identity that you declared to be impossible!!

Thus, you have effectively set your argument outside the bounds of scientific falsifiability. You have declared--quite explicitly--that no test whatsoever will convince you that you are wrong.


Now convince me that there is any point in arguing with you. Because I am beginning to wonder.

Why do you want to believe this? And you must want to believe this, because there is utterly no empirical basis for it, and it flies in the face of the evidence of actual human experience.

What is the basis for your faith?

Well, this is not meant to be a scientific theory, but a philosophical one.
Philosophies are inherently difficult to falsify (if it's even possible).
I am not submitting this to a scientific journal.
I don't think its possible to "prove" or "disprove" the existence or nonexistence of free will.
*shrug*
If you wish to scientifically prove that we have free will, I'm listening.

"Objective" and "subjective" knowledge of what?The self, of course.

If there is SOMETHING that determines the choice actually made, then I fail to see how this is meaningfully different from determinism - our choice is still determined by something else. Our preferences are not self-causing.The essence of incompatiblism is the decision to live with a paradox: we are both determined and free, depending on our perspective--yet these perspectives remain perfectly incompatible with one another.

It is possible to make a great deal of sense out of this, but only once you accept one very critical proposition: there are limits to human knowledge.

Obviously the original inspiration for this perspective comes from Kant, and it continues through critical theory.

From the perspective of the philosophy of science, Quine goes a long way toward explaining how we can work through the paradox. Certain social scientists (especially anthropologists and sociologists) have also taken various stabs at attempting to describe a social science that accepts the inherent contradiction between subjective and objective knowledge--and the fact that neither can be reduced to the other.

But a paradox it remains.

My Ph.D. dissertation, incidentally, does two things:

1) I lay out the real stakes of the compatiblism/incompatiblism debate, arguing that if we actually give up on free will we "lose" a lot of what we can say ethically, politically, psychologically, aesthetically...
2) I argue that the determinist claim, as well as the pure libertarian claim, are fundamentally unfalsifiable in the terms of modern science. Thus, whether or not we are--in a metaphysical sense--free or determined is a question that is simply beyond the limits of objective human knowledge.

This re-opens the space, of course, for incompatiblism.

But it isn't a hypothetical possibility in this universe! For F's sake man... Will it help if I bombard you with wiki links? I mean, someone else did it already (FS?), but apparently you just ignored those.

There's a reason I'm calling you superstitious, you know. You imagine things that patently aren't true, as the foundation of an argument that can't be falsified. It's... Just total bollocks. Argh...

It's like talking to a roadsign. Keeps saying the same shit over and over, even if it's readily apparent that Midton St.'s nowhere near my wall, or even in this damn country.

How is a hypothetical situation impossible? It's hypothetical.

I haven't been responding to the Heisenberg stuff because I know very little about it, and I'm trying to respond as quickly as possible, so I've been picking the posts that have been easiest for me to formulate a response to.

Well, this is not meant to be a scientific theory, but a philosophical one.Well, then you should have stated it more as a "what if" rather than an argument that we are, in fact, wholly determined.

I don't think its possible to "prove" or "disprove" the existence or nonexistence of free will.
*shrug*That admission is all I've really been looking for.

If you wish to scientifically prove that we have free will, I'm listening.I do not. Much like the existence or non-existence of God, I do not think human knowledge is capable of answering this question.

(I am, by the way, an atheist.)

As far as quantum mechanics go, is the principle that scientist cannot determine it's position and its spin concurrently?
Or is it that it is impossible for a (hypothetical) omniscient being to know both?
Or, is it saying that particles have positions, and they have spin, but not both at the same time?

Please clarify, as I am truly ignorant of this subject.
*Anticipates smartass one-liners followed by ;) in response*

Ah but the fact that abuse is generational, the reaction is to follow his upbringing.

His choice was to not be one.

You are assuming that only one reaction to a given stimuli is possible. I can show subject A a picture that will make him laugh uncontrollably, yet it causes subject B to burst into tears.

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Refute.

I could refute this, but I don't want to.


QED

If the brain is like a computer then we're like a small child. We know it does stuff, important stuff, but for all we know it could have tiny little fairies making it all work.

Everyone knows that computers don't work on faeries, they work on magic smoke.

But a paradox it remains.

The "paradox" being that it seems, looking at human action objectively, that our choices are determined by something else, but looking at our own actions subjectively, that they involve (sometimes, anyway) conscious volition?

I don't see this as paradoxical. They cohere as soon as we acknowledge that our free choices ARE determined by something - our preferences (and this is true both from an objective perspective and a subjective one. Even subjectively, the reason you don't jump off a bridge is that you don't want to.)

Certainly, as you pointed out to Vittos, we can choose to consciously alter our preferences - but this choice, like any other, is also determined by preferences. I don't see how it could be otherwise - unless our choices were random, which is hardly any better for free will.

I return to my earlier question, then - why is a willed action necessarily undetermined?

That is to say, why need I have, in order to be free, the capacity to defy objective knowledge of the self, when such defiance necessarily means doing something I have no inclination (because inclinations are objectively knowable) to do?

As far as quantum mechanics go, is the principle that scientist cannot determine it's position and its spin concurrently?
Or is it that it is impossible for a (hypothetical) omniscient being to know both?
Or, is it saying that particles have positions, and they have spin, but not both at the same time?

Please clarify, as I am truly ignorant of this subject.[/COLOR]It's almost the latter, but not entirely.

It helps if you think of objects as having a certain amount of parameters, and these parameters can be a certain range of things. The ranges themselves are sometimes determinable, and sometimes not - depends on the specifics - but at no time does a concrete value exist for any parameter. They are indeterminable. The information doesn't exist. It simply is not there.

The HUP is only indirectly relevant, but to be brutally simple about it, it states that the as you define one range, another ceases to be defined. As mentioned earlier, you can think of it as throwing a brick. If you try to determine the general direction, the velocity changes. If you try to determine the general velocity, the direction changes. The information simply stops existing.

Choice A: post this.
Choice B: don't post this.

Your previous posts have shaped my "decision to choose option A.

You forgot about Choice C which is not post at all.

Likewise, your "choice" to post was shaped by the OP.

My choice to post in this thread was to refute the fact that you said that Free will was BS. Guess what? You were proven wrong on many counts here but for some reason, you just do not want to admit it.

My decision to post this thread was a product of my biological circumstances, my psychology, and my environment.

All of which has the ability to help us choose BUT it does not decide what actions we as humans want to take. I have gone against my Psycology, my environment, and my biological circumstances (whatever the hell that means), and still choose what I wanted to choose and had to live with the Consequences of said decisions.

Each of these things was ultimately shaped by the configuration of the environment. I have had no role in creating this environment.
The environment created me.

Your parents created you, not the environment.

Choice A: post this.
Choice B: don't post this.

Your previous posts have shaped my "decision to choose option A.

You forgot about Choice C which is not post at all.

Likewise, your "choice" to post was shaped by the OP.

My choice to post in this thread was to refute the fact that you said that Free will was BS. Guess what? You were proven wrong on many counts here but for some reason, you just do not want to admit it.

My decision to post this thread was a product of my biological circumstances, my psychology, and my environment.

All of which has the ability to help us choose BUT it does not decide what actions we as humans want to take. I have gone against my Psycology, my environment, and my biological circumstances (whatever the hell that means), and still choose what I wanted to choose and had to live with the Consequences of said decisions.

Each of these things was ultimately shaped by the configuration of the environment. I have had no role in creating this environment.
The environment created me.

Your parents created you, not the environment.

No.

Yes it was. I was not coerced into going. I went because I choose to.

To you, it appears to be a free choice.
Whatever circumstances lead up to the decision were ultimately beyond your control.

Really? Prove it.

Your birth, her's, the configuration of the earth, and the rules that govern it were all beyond your control.

PRove it.

If you were placed in the exact same position at the exact same point in time with the exact same frame of mind, you would make the exact same choice.

Prove it.

The "paradox" being that it seems, looking at human action objectively, that our choices are determined by something else, but looking at our own actions subjectively, that they involve (sometimes, anyway) conscious volition?Something like that. It is important to note, however, that the objective perspective only works after the fact, and as such it evades falsifiability.

Given anything I've done, it is possible for me to look back and construct a very plausible, perhaps convincing, argument about why I behaved the way I did... which may include "external" stimuli as well as unconscious thoughts and feelings, and which may belie the reasons for which I believed I was acting when I did.

It never gets me to the point of decision, however. It can never tell me what I'm going to do next.

Indeed, even if you calculated every last detail of my history, if you were to tell me what I'm going to do next, I might do differently just to fuck with you.

I don't see this as paradoxical. They cohere as soon as we acknowledge that our free choices ARE determined by something - our preferences (and this is true both from an objective perspective and a subjective one. Even subjectively, the reason you don't jump off a bridge is that you don't want to.)"Preferences" is a nice word that means a whole lot to economists and to political scientists... but some day you ask a psychologist if she can provide a definition for the term, and you'll both have some work ahead of you. First you'll have to explain what you mean (do you include subconscious preferences or not?), and then she'll have to figure out how to separate "preferences" from unconscious fears, guilt feelings, shame, etc. Chances are, she'll refuse to reduce these things to preferences even when you want to play the semantic game, "But guilt feelings can be translated into a desire NOT to feel guilty." Sounds good, but doesn't tell us a whole lot about how guilt actually works.

I return to my earlier question, then - why is a willed action necessarily undetermined?Who said a willed action is necessarily undetermined? We have been saying that a freely willed action is necessarily undetermined, which should be obvious by definition.

You're missing the point.

I am not denying the naturalness or the usefulness of the deterministic assumption from the objective perspective--that is, the perspective that treats the human being as just another object in the universe. Within reasonable limits, people looking at me as an object can predict my behavior... but, never perfectly. There is no such thing as perfect objective knowledge. Thus, there is a range of behavior that will not be predictable from an objective perspective.

Does this mean that this behavior is "random" or simply "indeterminate"? When my behavior is not successfully predicted, did I behave so "for no reason"?

Not at all, but I think you knew that. After the fact, I may come up with objective reasons--but only after the fact, which is important to the problem of falsifiability.

On the other hand, the objective perspective does nothing for me as a subjective individual when I get to the point of decision. Looking back over my life, I may be able to explain everything I've ever done in objective terms. I may even be able to say, "Based on my past behavior, and based on my range of preferences, I am likely to do X next." Maybe I have a history of alcoholism, and there is a drink sitting in front of me. Everything I know about myself says that I will pick it up and drink. Everything anyone else knows about me says that I will pick it up and drink.

But I don't drink. I defy not only others' knowledge about myself, but perhaps even my own.

Now, after the fact I can say that this or that influence (friends, family perhaps) won out over my desire for drink. And I would be right.

On the other hand, the subjective fact of the matter is that I decided that good relations with my family, or my health, or some other matter, was more important to me than drink. Nothing could have predicted that decision. Nothing could have told me that these priorities were strong enough--indeed, everything anyone knew about me said the exact opposite.

In that sense, I am free. And my freedom is incompatible with the idea that I am determined. Yet, the two coexist, but from different perspectives.

The subjective perspective is always the perspective of decision. Nothing I know about myself can tell me what I am going to do next. I can only decide.

I'd like to sum up this thread for all the late-comers:
Free will is an illusion, all "decisions" are dictated by one's psychology, physiology and sociology
Prove it
All "decisions" are dictated by one's psychology, physiology and sociology, free will is an illusion
Prove it

Repeat for 12 pages.

I could refute this, but I don't want to.


QED

nice. sort of analogous to g.e. moore's "here is a hand" argument.

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Refute.

Humans/humanity have/has shaped the environment that we live in today. So we clearly have at least a minimal control over our environment.

"All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment."
Yes, quite. However, we can choose how to react to the environment.

We do have free will in the sense that we freely choose how to react to various circumstances that may come to us out of our control.

-snip-
Most of what you just posted was already addressed.

I said that I cannot "prove" my philosophy, and doubt that anyone can prove theirs.
I don't think that it is possible to prove or disprove the existence of free will.

If you would like to prove that free will exists, here's your chance.

Your birth, her's, the configuration of the earth, and the rules that govern it were all beyond your control.
PRove it.
I LOL'd.
You want me to prove that you are not god?

Most of what you just posted was already addressed.

No it wasn't. You circumvented the entire argument. Which what people who are losing love to do. Circumvent it and claim a victory.

I said that I cannot "prove" my philosophy, and doubt that anyone can prove theirs.

Indeed. HOwever, I was not telling you to prove your philosophy.

I don't think that it is possible to prove or disprove the existence of free will.

Then why the hell are you saying that Free will=BS. You are in essence saying that we do not have free will. You just got owned by your own words there.

If you would like to prove that free will exists, here's your chance.

All ready have more than once. You failed to recognize it nor did you respond to it. Free will has been proven by alot of people here and you seem to ignore them.

I LOL'd.
You want me to prove that you are not god?

I already know I am not God. That was not why I said prove it.

I'd like to sum up this thread for all the late-comers:





Repeat for 12 pages.Nice.

Except that I don't even want them to prove determinism. I would be satisfied if they could tell me what evidence they would accept as disproof.

Most of what you just posted was already addressed.

I said that I cannot "prove" my philosophy, and doubt that anyone can prove theirs.
I don't think that it is possible to prove or disprove the existence of free will.

Okay.

Let's accept that your argument was not intended to be an objective demonstration that people are, in fact, determined. You were merely stating a philosophy. (The fact that your original post ended with the challenge, "Refute," tends to belie this assertion, but let's go with it.)

Now tell us what difference it makes that you are determined. If this is a "philosophy," there must be some point. So, what's the point? How does it help your living to know that you are determined? Or to believe that you are?

No it wasn't. You circumvented the entire argument. Which what people who are losing love to do. Circumvent it and claim a victory.

Point to the post in which I claimed victory.

Indeed. HOwever, I was not telling you to prove your philosophy.

Then what do you want me to prove?
That we don't control the circumstances that we are born into?
Do clarify.

Then why the hell are you saying that Free will=BS. You are in essence saying that we do not have free will. You just got owned by your own words there.

That is my opinion.
I am not claiming that I have definative proof of this.
I have been attempting to explain why I believe this.
I don't honestly expect anyone to be swayed.

ll ready have more than once. You failed to recognize it nor did you respond to it. Free will has been proven by alot of people here and you seem to ignore them.

How has it been proven?
Because we think that we could have done something else in a situation?
My main point has been that a decision, when broken down completly, is the result of factors which are beyond our control.

If you are talking about the Heisenberg's, I have admitted my ignorance on the subject already.
I have avoided responding to those posts because I don't know shit about quantum physics.
However, if you want to take the debate there, I have my doubts about HUP.

I already know I am not God. That was not why I said prove it.

Do go on.

Do go on.

I"m going to exercise free will and say no.

I"m going to exercise free will and say no.

See, that doesn't prove anything.
That's like me saying that I was predetermined to post this response, and therefore the fact that I posted it proves determinism.

It's a cyclical argument.

If you assume free will, it follows that free will exists.
If you assume that free will does not exist, it follows that it does not.

Thus, my conclusion that you cannot prove it either way.

Something like that. It is important to note, however, that the objective perspective only works after the fact, and as such it evades falsifiability.

Hardly. I can predict the behavior of others with a good deal of accuracy. So can anyone.

Certainly I cannot say "This is precisely what this particular person will do in this particular circumstance", and I'll admit that there is no scientific way to prove that this would ever be possible. But I can certainly exclude some actions from the range of plausibility.

(Not necessarily POSSIBILITY - but so what? If willed behavior is predictable AT ALL, then it must be predicated on something.)

Indeed, even if you calculated every last detail of my history, if you were to tell me what I'm going to do next, I might do differently just to fuck with you.

But, then, this is a predictable aspect of human behavior, too. ;)

"Preferences" is a nice word that means a whole lot to economists and to political scientists... but some day you ask a psychologist if she can provide a definition for the term, and you'll both have some work ahead of you. First you'll have to explain what you mean (do you include subconscious preferences or not?), and then she'll have to figure out how to separate "preferences" from unconscious fears, guilt feelings, shame, etc. Chances are, she'll refuse to reduce these things to preferences even when you want to play the semantic game, "But guilt feelings can be translated into a desire NOT to feel guilty." Sounds good, but doesn't tell us a whole lot about how guilt actually works.

It really makes little difference whether you want to use "preferences" or "psychology" or something to that effect, as long as it is something that is meaningfully OURS and meaningfully connected to WHAT WE WANT.

Indeed, you could even separate (and for a really good definition of free will, you'd probably have to separate) "free" psychological causes from "unfree" psychological causes - an instinctive action is not as free as a considered one, for instance. (The standard here would be something to the effect of "actually corresponding to what we want.")

Who said a willed action is necessarily undetermined? We have been saying that a freely willed action is necessarily undetermined, which should be obvious by definition.

I fail to see how.

There is no such thing as perfect objective knowledge. Thus, there is a range of behavior that will not be predictable from an objective perspective.

Of course. But "unpredictable" does not at all mean "free."

The behavior of microscopic particles may be unpredictable, but the particles are certainly not autonomous. And even a perfect capacity to predict behavior would not preclude freedom of the will, as long as the "predictions" were predicated on causes that actually allowed for freedom (like, "I do x because I want to do x" instead of "I do x because someone else is controlling my movements.")

Does this mean that this behavior is "random" or simply "indeterminate"? When my behavior is not successfully predicted, did I behave so "for no reason"?

Not at all, but I think you knew that. After the fact, I may come up with objective reasons--but only after the fact, which is important to the problem of falsifiability.

This is a matter of lack of knowledge, not (necessarily) impossibility of knowledge.

On the other hand, the objective perspective does nothing for me as a subjective individual when I get to the point of decision. Looking back over my life, I may be able to explain everything I've ever done in objective terms. I may even be able to say, "Based on my past behavior, and based on my range of preferences, I am likely to do X next." Maybe I have a history of alcoholism, and there is a drink sitting in front of me. Everything I know about myself says that I will pick it up and drink. Everything anyone else knows about me says that I will pick it up and drink.

But I don't drink. I defy not only others' knowledge about myself, but perhaps even my own.

Now, after the fact I can say that this or that influence (friends, family perhaps) won out over my desire for drink. And I would be right.

Then can't you say that "this or that influence" DETERMINED your decision?

And would not someone who knew you as close to perfectly as objectively possible be able to predict, knowing the degree to which "this or that influence" affected your decisions, that you would not take the drink?

On the other hand, the subjective fact of the matter is that I decided that good relations with my family, or my health, or some other matter, was more important to me than drink. Nothing could have predicted that decision. Nothing could have told me that these priorities were strong enough--indeed, everything anyone knew about me said the exact opposite.

On what basis do you make this decision?

Either your choice must have a basis (in which case it is determined) or lack one (in which case it is arbitrary.)

Either the explanation "after the fact" you refer to was the ACTUAL reason for your action even "before the fact" (in which case it was predictable), or it is just self-delusion (because in reality your decision was baseless and arbitrary).

The distinction of "after the fact"/"before the fact" seems to me to either be indicative of a lack of knowledge before the fact (rather than a lack of the POSSIBILITY of knowledge) or of a basic random element to human action, with the "after the fact" explanation being false.

Earlier you avoided the accusation that "free" action as you define it is arbitrary and random by stating that it had reasons, but only post-decision reasons - but with that defense, you have merely shifted the problem from the action to the choice. Perhaps the ACTION is indeed based on your desire for good relations with your family, but why would the choice be?

You're portraying the choice as a choice between priorities - either the action is based on the alcoholism, or it is based on the influence of family and friends. In making this decision, you must either have some basis to decide between the two - a basis that is the DETERMINING factor, and is knowable objectively (even if you must use another basis to decide between that basis and others, and so on) - or your decision is, definitionally, baseless (and therefore arbitrary.)

Okay.

Let's accept that your argument was not intended to be an objective demonstration that people are, in fact, determined. You were merely stating a philosophy. (The fact that your original post ended with the challenge, "Refute," tends to belie this assertion, but let's go with it.)
Apologies all around; I am quite the inarticulate bastard, especially in text format.

Now tell us what difference it makes that you are determined. If this is a "philosophy," there must be some point. So, what's the point? How does it help your living to know that you are determined? Or to believe that you are?

If we are not ultimately responsible for our actions, how can we, as individuals, be held accountable for them?

See, that doesn't prove anything.
That's like me saying that I was predetermined to post this response, and therefore the fact that I posted it proves determinism.

It proves that I no longer want to debate this with someone who cannot look at what others have posted that disagrees with your assertions. I am exercising free choice to leave a debate.

It's a cyclical argument.

Yours are, mine aren't.

If you assume free will, it follows that free will exists.
If you assume that free will does not exist, it follows that it does not.

Thus, my conclusion that you cannot prove it either way.

Except for all the posts to you saying that it does exist with proof that it does exist, including mine. Farewell.

I don't know if I have to say this, but allow me to clarify my intent/tone.

I am not saying "This is how it is, and it is true regardless of whether you accept it, assholes."
I am throwing this out there to entice an open discussion.
I am not trying to force my theories on anyone.

I only say this because it seems that this is how I am being interpreted, though I may be mistaken.

Thus, my conclusion that you cannot prove it either way.

Until now it's appeared that you've been arguing that there is and can be no free will.

You could have said something earlier.

Certainly I cannot say "This is precisely what this particular person will do in this particular circumstance", and I'll admit that there is no scientific way to prove that this would ever be possible. But I can certainly exclude some actions from the range of plausibility.So?

If willed behavior is predictable AT ALL, then it must be predicated on something.)Yes, but it need not be predicated on material phenomena.

This is the reason that theorists like Kant and Rousseau talk about a "Law of Reason." They believe that ethical behavior really would be law-like, but not determined by the laws of physics.

But "unpredictable" does not at all mean "free."No, it does not. But it's a start, from an epistemological point of view.

And even a perfect capacity to predict behavior would not preclude freedom of the will, as long as the "predictions" were predicated on causes that actually allowed for freedom (like, "I do x because I want to do x" instead of "I do x because someone else is controlling my movements.")Precisely. But "I do x because I want to do x" is a subjective statement that cannot be reduced to objective phenomena.

And the difference is all too obvious at the point of decision. At the point of decision, everything I have been is potentially irrelevant to what I decide to be.

Then can't you say that "this or that influence" DETERMINED your decision?Yes. Absolutely.

But only from an objective perspective that is available only after the fact. This perspective determines nothing before I actually make a decision.

And would not someone who knew you as close to perfectly as objectively possible be able to predict, knowing the degree to which "this or that influence" affected your decisions, that you would not take the drink?That is another form of the unfalsifiable hypothesis around which we keep circling.

On what basis do you make this decision?An ethical one, perhaps?

Either your choice must have a basis (in which case it is determined) or lack one (in which case it is arbitrary.)This is not only a false dichotomy, but you make the unreasonable assumption that to have a basis is to be determined.

A basis is a foundation, a start. Yes, every decision (except those made by the insane) has a basis. That does not mean it is wholly determined.

Either the explanation "after the fact" you refer to was the ACTUAL reason for your action even "before the fact" (in which case it was predictable), or it is just self-delusion (because in reality your decision was baseless and arbitrary).You are privileging a certain kind of knowledge (objective) as "correct" even though it is the less useful from the perspective of the person making the decision.

More importantly, the after-the-fact explanation is inherently unfalsifiable. You form a theory about what caused my behavior, but you have no way to test it unless you can actually recreate those precise conditions again... and without some sort of alternate universe or time-travel device, that puts you into a real epistemological pickle.

Explanation is NOT identical with prediction, and prediction is the basis for scientific epistemology. I can come up with a plausible explanation for anything, and I can generally provide multiple explanations that are equally plausible for any given event. But unless I can test them, I cannot make a claim to truth in the scientific sense.

The fundamental problem here, I will reiterate, is a set of casual assumptions about science, how science produces "knowledge," and how far we can generalize that knowledge.

It is a confusion between explanation and prediction. It is also a conflation of subjective and objective.

Get those sorted out, and you'll start to realize why "paradoxical sense" is the best sense we can make out of this problem.

From one perspective (after the fact, explanatory), deterministic assumptions help us to understand ourselves--which, in the long run, is the first step in really freeing ourselves from phenomenal causes.

From another perspective (before the fact, predictive/decisional), an assumption of freedom helps us to make sense out of our choices--which, ultimately, is how we can decide to be determined by ethical laws rather than physical/psychological/social laws.

But neither can make a defensible claim to "truth."

I only say this because it seems that this is how I am being interpreted, though I may be mistaken.You're not, but it's duely noted. Fucking strange way of going about it though.

Anyhow, what is the basis for your idea? If it's that you thought nothing but deterministic causality had ever been observed, then you know better now (or should, at any rate). So why? I can't think of anything that'd lead you to this idea.

Until now it's appeared that you've been arguing that there is and can be no free will.

You could have said something earlier.

My bad.
But the point really wasn't what I actually believe.
I was putting some (apparantly very unpopular) ideas out there for consideration.
I like to play DA a lot just to challenge beliefs.
Anyone can just repeat the standard assumptions, but it is much more interesting when there are diverse opinions out there to clash with our beliefs.

Would this have worked better if I created a puppet troll and stayed in character the whole time?

If we are not ultimately responsible for our actions, how can we, as individuals, be held accountable for them?Aha, and now we get to the real issue!!

There are plenty of "compatiblists" out there who will tell you how we can still be held blameworthy even if we couldn't have chosen otherwise. I'll let you seek them out on your own.

But allow me to present the ethical dilemma from the perspective of objective knowledge about yourself.

Suppose you face some ethical decision. Let's make it something very, very minor... so as not to cloud the argument with overblown consequences.

Suppose your mother has made brownies for the whole family. She sets them out to cool, and you find them just when they're at that perfect, warm-but-not-too-warm temperature, ready to eat. No one else is around.

Suppose you have a history of being a glutton. You tend to eat what you can get, and you've never been particularly concerned with leaving some for others.

Moreover, as it happens you are very, very hungry.

Judging yourself objectively, you should probably come to the conclusion that you will eat the brownies--you are hungry, you don't particularly care what other people think of you, and (for the sake of argument) you don't particularly care about "doing the right thing."

You know eating the brownies will be "wrong," but you don't care about right and wrong. Uh-oh... that's a problem, or at least it should be. You know what the right decision is, but you're not going to do it? You're going to say that you had no choice, that you could not have done otherwise than eat the brownies?

But you can do otherwise. All you have to do is NOT eat them. And you know that's the right thing to do... so doesn't that make your inclination to eat them wrong?

How do you resolve this riddle?

If you assume you have no choice, that tends to deflate the ethical argument. You can do it, and after the fact you can tell yourself, "I couldn't have done otherwise."

If you assume you have a choice, that tends to privilege the ethical--because you have a choice, you have a responsibility; and because you have a responsibility, you should be bound to the ethical decision. You should feel both guilty and ashamed (whereas without free will you can only feel guilty).

Perhaps as a result of this line of thinking, you decide not to eat the brownies (or you decide only to eat your fair share). Everything you knew about yourself--and everything anyone else would have guessed about you--must be subsumed under this idea of "right," no matter how hard it is.

That sense of struggle is very much a part of the "sense" of free will. Vittos and others have argued that free will demands a "second set" of preferences in order to question a given set. In a certain sense, this is true. The assumption of free will reflects the curious experience of "being at war with ourselves," to paraphrase Shakespeare.

It is because we can never know what we will do next that we are responsible for choosing rightly. No other decision can be defended from a subjective perspective.

we are part of the environment, we can shape it just as it shapes us, therefore the question of free will remains undetermined. Science can answer this question, perhaps one day, philosophy cannot.

You're not, but it's duely noted. Fucking strange way of going about it though.

Anyhow, what is the basis for your idea? If it's that you thought nothing but deterministic causality had ever been observed, then you know better now (or should, at any rate). So why? I can't think of anything that'd lead you to this idea.

Again, it appears that my social ineptitude has bled through.

I've probably said it before, but here goes.
As far as the basis for determinism, the basic reasoning is that hypothetically, if we could observe the entirety of the universe near the very beginning, and had complete knowledge of the positions and velocities of everything, and we had the means to calculate all of this data, we could determine the positions and velocities of everything at any time thereafter.

I don't believe in souls, so I believe this extends to human consciousness as well.

Again, I don't really understand quantum physics, so my doubts of HUP are fairly inconsequential.

No, it isnt. In fact without free will there is no acceptance, merely a state of being. We dont necessarily have imput in the acquisition of a particular value, so we didnt necessarly accept it, rather than found ourselves with it. Further, acceptance at time 1 doesnt necessitate acceptance at all times. We might initially accept a value only to reject it (thus no longer accepting it) at some later time.

This is all true, but I was not advocating free will.

There must be some values or desires motivating a person to act, and those must be the person's own values for it to be the person's will. So how can someone exert their will while rejecting their own values?

No I need not do that, but even if I did, what of it? I myself have reflected on and rejected values, intentionally altering my perception until the value not longer features as part of my perception. So either it doesnt require holding a secondary set of such values, or it is possible to hold a secondary set. Either way, since I've personally done it (and know many, many folk who claim to have done likewise) it can be done.

You may have changed your values, desires, wants, what have you, but you have never acted counter to them.

I dont know what you mean by this. I know that I've examined values that I have held and have in some cases rejected or altered those values according to my opinion of them. I know that I can form opinions about the way I percieve things, about the values that I hold and I can alter these things in accordance with my preferences.

You are stating that we can choose free of our own desires, and I want to know how that is possible.

But we have not established outside forces that mandate their choice, and trying to argue as though we have when that is actually the issue in dispute, is in effect, begging the question.

Either I could map out all of the biological and environmental factors that leads to a certain behavior, or you could show that magical power humans have that detach them from the processes of the material world. Which is a more reasonable goal?

Isn't that just moving the goalposts? - Sort of like "God's watching over us from the sky.. Oh, no god in the sky? Then he's watching over us from somewhere else".

There is only important form of free will: that which establishes moral responsibility.

Otherwise, I don't know what you mean.

Vitto's, I think, is not an argument at all, as he's concentrating on arguing that free will means something nobody else interprets it as. And in doing so, freely admit that a process of decision-making is indeed taking place, which in turn kills your own argument quite thoroughly.

Not really, no.

If I decide I want to support a football team, and I want to go see them play live, and I want to cheer on my team whenever they score I do not think you can imply that that the striker makes the decision as to whether or not I cheer when he scores a goal. However, an accurate prediction can be made that I will cheer when my team scores a goal. I am not forced to show up to the match, I am not forced to support the team, I am not forced to cheer when a goal is scored. Hence I exercise free will when I cheer when my team scores.

In essence you are trying to claim that I only exercise free will when I take a decision that I believe will effect me in a way that I do not want to happen. Just because you can predict how someone will react, does not mean they are not exercising free will.

Free will is the ability to make a decision between various choices. If I am not given a free choice then I cannot be said be exercising free will.

I guess this is what you mean.

Simply deciding does not consitute free will, it only constitutes a will. Only if the person is the ultimate cause for the resulting decision can he have free will. If there is some external forces that cause the person to make the decision he made, he is not free, he is a slave to his situation.

I think I may be failing adequately to capture the inherent contradiction between subjective and objective perspectives.

Objectively, you may know me well enough to predict what I will do next.

Subjectively, I can never know what I will do next until I decide to do it.

Suppose you share your objective knowledge with me. Once I understand what I was about to do and why I was about to do it, I may change my mind. Indeed, this may be the very reason that you tell me.

Of course, this is the very reason that science attempts to separate the two, because as soon as you start talking to people as subjects rather than objects of knowledge, their predictability tends to break down. This is why psychologists never tell people the purpose of an experiment--if they did, the test subjects would be subjects indeed, and the experiment would not produce any objective information about them. It would provide plenty of information about how they want to behave--about, subjectively, how they see themselves--but that's not what scientists want in most experiments.

There is a necessary tension between the two, and a dialectical relationship that can, treated properly, make us all the more free. The better we know ourselves objectively, the better we can decide whether that is or is not who we really want to be--subjectively.

Permit me an example.

For the first year or so that I dated my girlfriend, I had this horrible habit of biting my lip--really, really hard. Really, my mouth was always bloody and full of sores.

At some point, I realized that I was about to bite my lip, but I caught myself. This gave me an opportunity to analyze carefully how I felt when I was about to bite myself... and I realized at that point that my girlfriend had just said something really stupid to which I was inclined to reply--but I held myself back to avoid a confrontation. The symptom of biting my lip was intimately bound up in the unconscious psychology of this relation.

Since then, I have been able to deal with these feelings consciously, and thus I have decided not to bite my lip. The process of becoming free is a process of constantly asserting the subjective (moral) perspective over the history of the objective (material) cause.

This basic perspective, gleaned primarily from psychoanalysis, is something that should be adopted in other social sciences as well.

I am a political scientist. To the extent that political scientists treat people as objects, we figure out why this or that demographic votes one way or another. Indeed, we can produce very reliable objective data about how people are likely to vote.

Of course, if the people in question get wind of the results, it is always possible that they will evaluate themselves and think, "Well, that's not a very good reason to vote for a person at all. I think I'll change my vote to correspond with better reasons."

But, people who know themselves and vote ethically are, of course, harder to control... and the organizations (governments, lobbyists) funding social science research generally do so because they want to figure out how to control people, or at least how to predict their reactions sufficiently well to bend them to a private interest. Thus, there is not much motivation for political scientists to take the results of our research into our objects of study back to those very people--treating them, in this way, as the knowers rather than the known, as subjects rather than objects.

Yes, but it need not be predicated on material phenomena.

This is the reason that theorists like Kant and Rousseau talk about a "Law of Reason." They believe that ethical behavior really would be law-like, but not determined by the laws of physics.

It would be absurd to claim that patterns of human behavior stem from adherence to some categorical imperative.

They are matters of human psychology - of our biological makeup. I need not read or understand Kant's argument for treating humanity as an end-in-itself, nor come up with it by myself, to have instincts for survival and mutual aid.

And crucially for any argument for an objective form of practical reason, in order for any "Law of Reason" to actually hold I need to CARE about it - I must WANT to obey it, and that "wanting" is an objective fact about me. If I don't, your detailed argumentation might as well be directed to a rock.

Precisely. But "I do x because I want to do x" is a subjective statement that cannot be reduced to objective phenomena.

Unless "I want to do x" is a chemical and biological phenomenon that expresses itself as me actually doing x.

(Obviously, there are other "wants" that may interfere - but these are other chemical and biological factors. Not purely subjective phenomena.)

And the difference is all too obvious at the point of decision. At the point of decision, everything I have been is potentially irrelevant to what I decide to be.

Again, I fail to see how this can possibly be true without the decision being arbitrary.

That is another form of the unfalsifiable hypothesis around which we keep circling.

Standing on its own, yes.

But I connected it to my other statement that "this or that influence" must have DETERMINED your choice.

An ethical one, perhaps?

Ethics are biological.

This is not only a false dichotomy,

What alternative exists that I've ignored?

but you make the unreasonable assumption that to have a basis is to be determined.

More precisely, to have a "basis" as the crucial deciding factor is to be determined.

And to NOT have such a basis is to reach a decision baselessly - arbitrarily.

More importantly, the after-the-fact explanation is inherently unfalsifiable.

Of course it is. So what?

I'm not saying "determinism is true." I'm saying that determinism is compatible with free will - or, at least, that if it isn't, the prospects for free will being compatible with indeterminism are no better.

Explanation is NOT identical with prediction,

If y fully explains x, then y and its implications caused x.

It follows that knowledge of the truth or falsity of y would have enabled us to predict x.

I can come up with a plausible explanation for anything,

Yes, but the question here is if you can come up with a TRUE explanation.

If after-the-fact explanations enable you to evade the "baseless" accusation, then there must be some truth to after-the-fact explanations, at least sometimes.

And if your explanation is actually true, then the reason you provide is a cause - a cause that could theoretically (even if it were not actually) known beforehand.

The only way this would not be the case is if it were NOT actually a cause before whatever it is said to have caused took place - in which case I see no reason it would qualify as a cause after the fact.

It is also a conflation of subjective and objective.

I don't see how.

It says no such thing.

If you accept that a person acts always according to his values, then multiple possible choices can only be dictated by multiple sets of values.

This unreasonably assumes both a neatly ordered hierarchy of preferences and a set of choices that are unambiguously related to those preferences.

For your information, psychologists do not believe that human preferences can be neatly ordered. It is a useful assumption for economists and political scientists, but not a very realistic one.

I wouldn't see why I would have to assume that.

A nice theory, but how do you prove it?

Better yet, for scientific purposes, how would you disprove it?

I do not know just how science can figure into this debate other than showing the undeniable amount of external forces that contribute to our behavior, but even that could never show the absense of free will.

EDIT: Science can prove free will by solving the "hard problem" of consciousness: showing that there exists a subjective that is not just a rare combination of materialistic objective functions. It is doing an absolutely terrible job of that.

This is a fairly commonplace observation, my philosophy degree convinced me that I hate arguing about this stuff. Isn't it weird how people who spout stuff like "what's meant to be is meant to be" and other cliches to that effect also tend to believe in free will (massive unverifiable generalisation, sue me)? How do they sleep at night??

Objectively, you may know me well enough to predict what I will do next.

Subjectively, I can never know what I will do next until I decide to do it.

Suppose you share your objective knowledge with me. Once I understand what I was about to do and why I was about to do it, I may change my mind. Indeed, this may be the very reason that you tell me.

Meaning that any subjective prediction of my action will be uncertain, so I must always approach a decision not knowing how I will decide?

Even if this is the case, there may still be a decision that, with certainty, I WIL make - a decision that may be predictable by another being with perfect objective knowledge of me. If there were, would I remain free?

The process of becoming free is a process of constantly asserting the subjective (moral) perspective over the history of the objective (material) cause.

But isn't the "subjective (moral) perspective" still bound up in material causes?

A person is moral because he or she WANTS to be moral - and that desire is founded materially, or at least phenomenally.

Of course, if the people in question get wind of the results, it is always possible that they will evaluate themselves and think, "Well, that's not a very good reason to vote for a person at all. I think I'll change my vote to correspond with better reasons."

They might - but then, they will do so only for other OBJECTIVE reasons.

You have merely made them aware of a preference they wish to suppress - with other preferences.

It would be absurd to claim that patterns of human behavior stem from adherence to some categorical imperative."Patterns of human behavior" refer to the objective perspective.

The categorical imperative is inherently subjective.

So yes, that would be absurd.

They are matters of human psychology - of our biological makeup. I need not read or understand Kant's argument for treating humanity as an end-in-itself, nor come up with it by myself, to have instincts for survival and mutual aid.No, but it might help to read and understand his argument in order to work on those prickly moments (and there are far too many) when survival and mutual aid conflict with one another, or when biological inclination is at odds with the ethical.

And crucially for any argument for an objective form of practical reason, in order for any "Law of Reason" to actually hold I need to CARE about it - I must WANT to obey it, and that "wanting" is an objective fact about me.No, right is right whether you care or not. Whether or not you care is a factor in determining whether you will actually do the right thing, but it has absolutely nothing to do with what the Law of Reason actually is.

If I don't, your detailed argumentation might as well be directed to a rock.The difference between you and a rock is that you can decide to care.

Unless "I want to do x" is a chemical and biological phenomenon that expresses itself as me actually doing x.To play this out would take a very careful examination of the word "to want" and how it gets twisted by determinists to be identical with "I do." The simple and obvious fact of the matter is that people do many things they do not want to do, indeed we do so most of the time.

I don't want to write careful comments on my students papers, but I feel I am ethically obliged to do so. I choose to act in accordance with that obligation rather than my desire.

(Obviously, there are other "wants" that may interfere - but these are other chemical and biological factors. Not purely subjective phenomena.)Yes, there is a correspondence between feelings, mental states, etc. and chemical and biological factors.

Yes, that means that from an objective perspective I can explain any behavior in terms of these things.

No, that is not any immediate help to me when I need to actually make a decision.

You're the one who wants to talk about "purely" subjective and "purely" objective phenomena. My whole point is that this dualism is perverse and useless. The two exist in a dialectical--which is to say both contrary and inseparable--relation.

Again, I fail to see how this can possibly be true without the decision being arbitrary.Then you fail to understand what I mean by a Law of Reason.

If I obey natural laws, then I am bound to decisions determined by the phenomenal causes ruling my chemistry and biology. I am "just" an animal, and I am determined as such.

If, however, I recognize that certain "rules" or laws of reason dictate a "right" or a "just" response, I can choose to obey those rules. I can choose to be free from deterministic causes.

Being "free" does not mean acting in an arbitrary way. It means acting in a way that I choose for myself, based on ends that I choose for myself. It means acting ethically... and, of course, it may be possible to predict the behaviors of an ethical person if you also understand the ethical rules that they apply.

But I connected it to my other statement that "this or that influence" must have DETERMINED your choice.Tell me what evidence you would accept to the contrary.

You believe that physical, chemical causes "must have" determined my decisions. Tell me what I could do to prove otherwise. Tell me what experiment we could run that would test this hypothesis. Tell me what experimental result would cause you to say, "Oh, I guess I was wrong. Your behaviors are not determined after all."

If you cannot answer that question, your hypothesis is simply unfalsifiable.

Ethics are biological.While I am fascinated by the evidence that the basis for human ethics has biological origins, and I am even more interested in the fact that many non-human animals exhibit ethical behavior, I see no reason to believe that ethics as we know them today are simply reducible to biological mechanisms.

Considering that biologically we are all nearly identical, the thesis that "ethics are biological" fails to explain why people disagree so profoundly about just what constitutes a proper ethical conclusion. Is a fetus a life, or not? Is the death penalty wrong, or not? Should the United States leave Iraq, or not? I fail to see how biology is going to answer these questions for us.

What alternative exists that I've ignored?The dialectical one that I have been explaining.

I'm not saying "determinism is true." I'm saying that determinism is compatible with free will - or, at least, that if it isn't, the prospects for free will being compatible with indeterminism are no better.Determinism can only be compatible with free will if, in making a decision, it is possible for me to know what I will do before I decide to do it.

Also, you seem to think that the options are:

1) People are determined, and free will must be compatible with this.
2) People are indeterminate (random), and free will must be compatible with this.

Given these options, (1) is much preferable to (2).

But I have been arguing for:

3) We can never know whether people are determined or free; posited determinism is preferable from an objective point of view, while posited freedom is preferable from a subjective point of view; we cannot dispense with either subjectivity or objectivity; therefore, we must live in the paradoxical condition that we are both free and determined according to necessary perspectives that are not compatible with each other.

If y fully explains x, then y and its implications caused x.This is not how science works.

For any given phenomenon, I can propose multiple internally consistent explanations. Indeed, according to Quine's excellent version of epistemic holism, I can (in theory) supply an infinite number of internally consistent explanations.

Clearly, they cannot ALL be the "real" cause of x.

It follows that knowledge of the truth or falsity of y would have enabled us to predict x.This is a hypothesis.

Given x, after the fact I can come up with explanation y. Other people may come up with competing explanations w and z. To test my hypothesis, I might go looking for y to happen again, and where it does I would predict that x happens also.

If it does, then I can make a reasonable truth-claim that y causes x. If it does not, then my claim that y causes x has been falsified.

The problem with determinism of the will as a scientific claim is that it does not pick out particular x's and y's. It is stated in such a way that y="the whole set of material phenomena, down to the minutiae of particle positions, that preceded x."

But, by definition, we will never see this y again. And if we pick out any particular y's as the determining factor, we find all too many cases in which x does NOT follow y. To which the faithful determinist responds, "Well, but if we DID have exactly the same variables, it would work out. I know it would."

He just can't prove it, because he won't admit of circumstances under which it could be falsified.

Yes, but the question here is if you can come up with a TRUE explanation.Define "true."

If after-the-fact explanations enable you to evade the "baseless" accusation, then there must be some truth to after-the-fact explanations, at least sometimes.There is a "usefulness" to them, which is why we cannot (should not) dispense with them. But scientifically truth relies on falsifiability, and after-the-fact explanations can only be falsified by predictive tests. (Which need not entail predicting the future... it may be that you look for the same circumstances elsewhere in the past.)

If you accept that a person acts always according to his values, then multiple possible choices can only be dictated by multiple sets of values.Not true.

I prefer A to B.
I prefer B to C.
I prefer C to A.

Predict my choice between A, B, and C.

I wouldn't see why I would have to assume that.See above.

Not at all.

People desire things, believe things, get frustrated... react all the time without understanding what unconscious values and preferences enter into their behavior. (Is it ironic that I'm the one defending freedom of the will? No, because I believe we are both subject and object, and gaining knowledge about ourselves--and our hidden preferences--is a critical step in freeing ourselves in fact.)

Acceptance can be conscious or unconscious itself, and barring a priori values, it is necessary for anyone to hold a value. Can someone seriously hold a value while at the same time rejecting it?

No.

You presume (again) that values only make sense in (ordered) "sets." But the fact of the matter is that we can use some of our values to judge others, we can decide which are more valid or worthwhile, etc.

For instance, suppose my friends and I all go to see a movie. They love the film, but I don't like it... I can't quite put into words what bothers me about it, I just don't like it. They want to go see another film by the same filmmaker, which gets very good reviews, but I am reluctant.

Let's say that on self-examination I discover that I am most uncomfortable with the homosexual subtext of the film... and in that realization I come to understand that I had unconscious homophobic feelings of which I was not aware.

I think to myself, "Philosophically I cannot defend homophobia, and in fact I think people should consciously attempt to be more accepting of same-sex relationships. Therefore, I'm going to work on this unconscious preference of mine. I'm going to try to have a more open mind."

I go back to the first movie, and I consciously attempt to focus on the artistic aspects of the film. I focus as well on the genuine love between these same-sex couples, and I work on teaching myself that they are valuable, respectable... even beautiful.

Now I have learned to enjoy this great work of art, along with my friends. Indeed, now I can go to the second film and expand my horizons even further.

Preferences are not the simple matter that economists make them out to be.

Judgement requires a basis in value, and to judge one's own values, one must separate themselves from said values. However, the eliminates the basis for judgement and makes it impossible.

It is entirely true that one can examine certain values that may lead to action and deem them unsuitable, but they can only do this through another of their values (probably one that is more important to them). This is not a negation of my argument, however, as I said that decisions are a product of a set of values, not individual values. If a decision is to be a product of the person, either they must be the source of their values, or they must have the ability to choose between sets of values.

I do not know just how science can figure into this debate other than showing the undeniable amount of external forces that contribute to our behavior, but even that could never show the absense of free will.Very true.

Science can prove free will by solving the "hard problem" of consciousness: showing that there exists a subjective that is not just a rare combination of materialistic objective functions. It is doing an absolutely terrible job of that.Yes, that's true.

But, of course, science can never prove that there is no subjective that is more than a rare combination of materialistic objective functions.

Again, that troubling problem of falsifiability.

The question is not falsifiable either way: people who believe in a transcendent subjectivity will always insist that it must exist in the inevitable "beyond" of scientific knowledge, and people who believe there is no such thing will always insist that the holes in their knowledge (the "beyond") cannot possibly hold what their opponents want it to.

Then you have people like me, who insist we can just never know the answers to these questions.

Meaning that any subjective prediction of my action will be uncertain, so I must always approach a decision not knowing how I will decide?More or less. Because your decision is not simply a "given" to you, you have a responsibility to decide rightly. You have no excuse for deciding any other way.

Even if this is the case, there may still be a decision that, with certainty, I WIL makeSounds to me like you've already decided, no?

But isn't the "subjective (moral) perspective" still bound up in material causes?Yes. I'm not trying to separate the two. I maintain they are inseparable but nevertheless contradictory.

A person is moral because he or she WANTS to be moral - and that desire is founded materially, or at least phenomenally.Yes. But the question is whether, given a desire to behave ethically, the phenomenal world can dictate the ethical decision to us. I maintain that it cannot. Thinking about what is moral, about what is right, requires a subjective thought process, thinking about decisions, not about facts.

They might - but then, they will do so only for other OBJECTIVE reasons.That's right. And from an objective perspective, they most certainly do.

But from a subjective perspective, there is nothing to guide them but their own judgment. If they become aware of additional objective reasons, they will be free to evaluate them in the same way they have others.

In a sense, free will is the residue at the end of an iterative chain of reflection.

You have merely made them aware of a preference they wish to suppress - with other preferences.Objectively speaking, yes.

Subjectively, from their perspective, they have a decision to make.

determinism is false (or at least unproven and unnecessary). but the apparent truth of determinism was the only source of doubt about free will. without that component, then we have no reason to discount our powerful and immediate sense of freedom.
Incompatibilist determinism. Otherwise, I agree.

Acceptance can be conscious or unconscious itself, and barring a priori values, it is necessary for anyone to hold a value. Can someone seriously hold a value while at the same time rejecting it?Can someone love a person while at the same time hating her?

Economists say no, psychology says yes. I'm siding with psychology on this one.

Human beings are not blessed with "rational" preference schemes, modes of identification, or any other easy way to sort out the complex of our unconscious life.

Judgement requires a basis in value, and to judge one's own values, one must separate themselves from said values. However, the eliminates the basis for judgement and makes it impossible.Semantically, that sounds very nice.

But I think it is all too obvious that people judge their own preferences.

It is entirely true that one can examine certain values that may lead to action and deem them unsuitable, but they can only do this through another of their values (probably one that is more important to them). This is not a negation of my argument, however, as I said that decisions are a product of a set of values, not individual values.And how is judging one value against another operationally different from judging one value against another set of values, judging a set of values against one other value, or judging one set of values against another?

Your definition of "set" seems to be lacking. It seems that you think people have individual values, then the "set" of all these values considered collectively. But I see no reason that there cannot be coherent or semi-coherent subsets within this larger set. Why is only the universal set acceptable to you as such?

No, but it might help to read and understand his argument in order to work on those prickly moments (and there are far too many) when survival and mutual aid conflict with one another, or when biological inclination is at odds with the ethical.

I'm not suggesting that reading and understanding Kant is useless, far from it.

All I'm saying is that patterns of human behavior (like the instinct towards survival and mutual aid) indicate not that the will is predicated on some "Law of Reason", but rather that it is predicated on our biological makeup.

No, right is right whether you care or not. Whether or not you care is a factor in determining whether you will actually do the right thing, but it has absolutely nothing to do with what the Law of Reason actually is.

In what sense is someone who doesn't care about the "Law of Reason" obliged to obey it?

The difference between you and a rock is that you can decide to care.

Of course. But you will only convince me to care by persuading me that I SHOULD care - which means that you must cite some reason that I care about, and we return to square one.

To play this out would take a very careful examination of the word "to want" and how it gets twisted by determinists to be identical with "I do." The simple and obvious fact of the matter is that people do many things they do not want to do, indeed we do so most of the time.

Because we must, to satisfy other "wants."

I don't want to write careful comments on my students papers, but I feel I am ethically obliged to do so. I choose to act in accordance with that obligation rather than my desire.

You also desire to adhere by some ethical norm, which is why you feel obligated to abide by it.

Indeed, you acknowledged this above. The person who doesn't care to fulfill an obligation WILL NEVER DO SO. Duty can never be a sole basis for an action; we must CARE about it first.

Yes, there is a correspondence between feelings, mental states, etc. and chemical and biological factors.

Yes, that means that from an objective perspective I can explain any behavior in terms of these things.

No, that is not any immediate help to me when I need to actually make a decision.

No, it's actually pretty irrelevant. Which is my whole point. The fact that our decisions are determined need not affect our perception of the decision-making process; it remains free.

Then you fail to understand what I mean by a Law of Reason.

If I obey natural laws, then I am bound to decisions determined by the phenomenal causes ruling my chemistry and biology. I am "just" an animal, and I am determined as such.

If, however, I recognize that certain "rules" or laws of reason dictate a "right" or a "just" response, I can choose to obey those rules. I can choose to be free from deterministic causes.

But this decision is just as much caused deterministically as the others are; it's just caused by a different preference.

Being "free" does not mean acting in an arbitrary way. It means acting in a way that I choose for myself, based on ends that I choose for myself.

Freely choosing ends for yourself is impossible.

You cannot make a free choice unless you already possess ends upon which to base it.

It means acting ethically... and, of course, it may be possible to predict the behaviors of an ethical person if you also understand the ethical rules that they apply.

Yes, the actions of a person who makes the given "free" choice you have explained may have a basis, and as such be predictable. But as I said in my last post, this merely shifts the problem from the actions to the choice itself. Perhaps the actions have a basis, but if the choice of basis doesn't, this hardly escapes the problem of arbitrariness.

Tell me what evidence you would accept to the contrary.

You believe that physical, chemical causes "must have" determined my decisions.

If, in fact, "this or that influence" serves as a TRUE explanation of your action, yes.

Otherwise, no. It could have been a result for the random behavior of particles on the quantum level for all I know. I fail to see what that has to do with freedom, though.

While I am fascinated by the evidence that the basis for human ethics has biological origins, and I am even more interested in the fact that many non-human animals exhibit ethical behavior, I see no reason to believe that ethics as we know them today are simply reducible to biological mechanisms.

Considering that biologically we are all nearly identical, the thesis that "ethics are biological" fails to explain why people disagree so profoundly about just what constitutes a proper ethical conclusion.

Quite simply, they don't. How many people think murder in ordinary circumstances is acceptable? How many wouldn't object morally to the torture of children?

Is a fetus a life, or not? Is the death penalty wrong, or not? Should the United States leave Iraq, or not? I fail to see how biology is going to answer these questions for us.

The basis for ethics is biological. Our extrapolation from our biologically- and culturally-founded moral intuitions to ethical conclusions about complex subjects is not biological, but rational.

The dialectical one that I have been explaining.

Determinism can only be compatible with free will if, in making a decision, it is possible for me to know what I will do before I decide to do it.

Why is that the case?

I can never know, BECAUSE MY KNOWLEDGE IS NECESSARILY INCOMPLETE - as soon as I know what my action will be, the factors have changed, and my action may as well. And the foundational premise of determinism requires COMPLETE knowledge.

Another person is still theoretically capable of predicting my actions with complete certainty, meaning that determinism can be true anyway.

Also, you seem to think that the options are:

1) People are determined, and free will must be compatible with this.
2) People are indeterminate (random), and free will must be compatible with this.

I think people must be determined, indeterminate, or somewhere in between (and I don't know which one it is) - and I think the case for free will is much stronger the more determined we are.

But I have been arguing for:

3) We can never know whether people are determined or free;

I agree that we cannot know whether or not people are determined, and I also agree that we cannot know whether or not people are free (though the second claim is, I think, more questionable.)

As a Compatibilist, of course, I do not oppose them as you have.

posited determinism is preferable from an objective point of view, while posited freedom is preferable from a subjective point of view;

Because I reject the distinction between the two ("posited determinism" and "posited freedom", not "objective" and "subjective"), I see no need to make this distinction.

This is not how science works.

For any given phenomenon, I can propose multiple internally consistent explanations. Indeed, according to Quine's excellent version of epistemic holism, I can (in theory) supply an infinite number of internally consistent explanations.

Clearly, they cannot ALL be the "real" cause of x.

Hmm, fair enough. I should have specified that the explanation actually holds - it is actually the real reason I committed the action.

I do later on, anyway.

He just can't prove it, because he won't admit of circumstances under which it could be falsified.

Look, I agree that determinism isn't falsifiable. I haven't ever made the claim that determinism is actually true.

My argument is simply that IF we are free, THEN our choices must be determined - and a notion of freedom that REQUIRES that our choices NOT be determined ultimately fails to take into account the fact that arbitrary decisions are not free.

As such, I argued that IF y is actually the reason for x, which is your solution to the accusation of arbitrariness, THEN y must have caused x, even before the fact... and thus, since y is knowable, as determinism predicts your action was theoretically predictable. Even before the fact.

I am speaking in hypotheticals. At no point do I insist that determinism is true.

Define "true."

A "true" explanation being one that actually provides the reason for the action.

There is a "usefulness" to them, which is why we cannot (should not) dispense with them. But scientifically truth relies on falsifiability, and after-the-fact explanations can only be falsified by predictive tests. (Which need not entail predicting the future... it may be that you look for the same circumstances elsewhere in the past.)

For something to actually be the reason for something else, it need not be KNOWABLY so.

Sounds to me like you've already decided, no?

No. I have not yet decided. But say someone else knows me so perfectly that they can predict my decision perfectly.

Does that mean that I lack free will, or not?

Yes. But the question is whether, given a desire to behave ethically, the phenomenal world can dictate the ethical decision to us.

That depends on how far we want to extend the assumption of "a desire to behave ethically."

If "a desire to behave ethically" means, specifically, "a desire to behave according to a specific moral code that I have already thought about and intepreted extensively", then not really - all we need do is apply. (But then, all the content of that desire is phenomenally-based.)

If "a desire to behave ethically" means, loosely, "a desire to behave according to whatever my moral obligation is," then of course the phenomenal world is going to determine exactly what I decide my moral obligation in a particular circumstance is.

I maintain that it cannot. Thinking about what is moral, about what is right, requires a subjective thought process, thinking about decisions, not about facts.

Of course. But the BASES upon which we decide between decisions are rooted in phenomenal causes.

But from a subjective perspective, there is nothing to guide them but their own judgment.

And their judgment, too, is phenomenally caused.

If they become aware of additional objective reasons, they will be free to evaluate them in the same way they have others.

It's true that "objective reasons" insofar as we perceive them subjectively don't provide us with necessary actions; we can still make judgments about them, and choose what to do.

I guess I just don't see how this notion of decision-making, however interesting its ethical implications may be, necessarily contradicts the objective perspective of humans acting on deterministic causes. The gap here is not one of mutual incompatibility, but simply of lack of knowledge. The subject can never know all the objective causes, because that very knowledge changes them.

This is all true, but I was not advocating free will.
I realise you were not.

There must be some values or desires motivating a person to act, and those must be the person's own values for it to be the person's will. So how can someone exert their will while rejecting their own values?
Because our values are not all one goobly gobbly mess of stucky undifferentiatedness. Neither are all our values necessarily consistent with each other. Nowhere have I stated that we reject all values at any one time.

You may have changed your values, desires, wants, what have you, but you have never acted counter to them.
So what? How does not acting contrary to what constitutes my will, disprove free will. I rather expect it does the opposite.

You are stating that we can choose free of our own desires, and I want to know how that is possible.
No I am not. I do say that we can make choices contrary to our desires and further we can intentionally alter our desires.

Either I could map out all of the biological and environmental factors that leads to a certain behavior, or you could show that magical power humans have that detach them from the processes of the material world. Which is a more reasonable goal?
False dilema.
I've already stated very clearly that I dont believe in 'mystic free will'. I have stated clearly that free will refers in my understanding to a particular capacity enjoyed by humans. I dont for a moment believe the capacity is magically detached from processes of the material world. On the contrary, I believe it is the state of the material in the world (specifically human physiology) that makes the capacity for free will in human beings, an inevitability. Nothing you've said establises that there either must be magic or no free will. Nothing you have said proves that free will isnt an inevitable result of our biology. All you seem to be doing is defining free will in such a way that you beg the question.

Only if the person is the ultimate cause for the resulting decision can he have free will.
Right, which is to define free will in a way that begs the question. The concept free will arose from observations, do you really think the observation that initiated the concept was 'ooh look, I'm the ultimate cause of my decisions even though to be that I'd have to be the ultimate cause of the universe itself'? Seriously is that what you really think we mean when we claim free will exists? You must have a very low opinion of the intelligence of everyone except yourself if you really think we are that daft.

I dont for a moment believe that anyone who advocates free will means any such ridiculous thing. It's very convinient to ignore what is meant and intended and substitute it with some impossible thing that no one was arguing in favour of in the first place, and use that to say 'see it's not real'. I could claim to disprove the existence of television by defining it as something that is black, grey, square, round, intensely hot and intensely cold, all over all at one time. But I wouldnt really be proving anything about television because the referent of the word intended by everyone else is contrary to the referent I invented. Much as is the case with your definition of free will. You are not arguing against free will, you are arguing against the notion that we are all omnipotent creators, a strawman on a monumental scale.

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Refute.

Free will is the ability to think independently. We get to choose how to react to the environment most of the time. If a tree fell on someone's house you could choose whether or not to help him. So what if our actions are based on an environment? We still get to choose how to act in that environment, you can choose to do something that would get you killed or screwed, choose to do something that would make you successful, choose to do whats right even though it would cost you a promotion or do whats wrong for money ect, ect.

Free will is like food at a restraunt and the menu is the environment.

Not true.

I prefer A to B.
I prefer B to C.
I prefer C to A.

Predict my choice between A, B, and C.

I assume, where A, B, and C are substitutes, there also exists a preference between the three, and that the person will not consider the three as you have dictated them.

Either way, though, it is irrelevant. Even though I may not be able to pick their choice, it will still be based in their values and for someone to act against their values, they must be assumed to have a second set of values.

Now, I guess I cannot show that there isn't choice when two options are indistinguishable in value, but then again that is a matter of randomness, which is not a measure of free will.

I'm not suggesting that reading and understanding Kant is useless, far from it.Well, that's nice.

All I'm saying is that patterns of human behavior (like the instinct towards survival and mutual aid) indicate not that the will is predicated on some "Law of Reason", but rather that it is predicated on our biological makeup.And Kant would agree with you, to a point. But he would say, and I would agree with him, that we are only free when we choose to live by the Law of Reason rather than the Law of Nature.

I would argue that it is our recognition of the Law of Reason that compels us to, as societies, choose to forego torture even when every biological demand for self-preservation presses us to do such unethical things.

You might be able to argue that natural social laws ultimately result in societies that will not torture their own people (who may have obtained a measure of self-rule), but the same does not hold for the refusal to torture others, to torture people among whom we would never count ourselves. We refuse to torture people in these cases because we have learned to find such things distasteful as a moral matter.

Indeed, human beings often do things for moral reasons that completely fly in the face of their own preservation, or even the preservation of their friends and associates. Take pacifism, for example. There are people who believe so strongly that it is ethically wrong to use violent means that they will not use violence to save themselves, they will not use violence to save others--indeed, according to some pacifists, they would not use violence to save the human race.

While such sentiments may be "rooted" or "based" in biological facts, it would be absurd to say that the human will has not transformed such positions far beyond their biological usefulness.

In what sense is someone who doesn't care about the "Law of Reason" obliged to obey it?That is a question for another thread, because we can hardly stay on topic while giving it a full treatment here. Briefly, on a proper understanding of the Law of Reason, to understand the Law of Reason is to understand that it asserts a moral obligation. To the extent that this can be translated into more conventional terms of motivation, it relies on the sense of shame. If someone is utterly lacking in a sense of shame, then it is true that they will have no reason to comply; but on very basic assumptions of what it means to have self-hood and to be a reflective (that is, rational) creature, the sense of shame is virtually unavoidable. It can be repressed, but not destroyed.

But this is, of course, beside the point.

We always have a choice whether to obey the moral law or not. We are free to the extent that we choose to obey the moral law.

Of course. But you will only convince me to care by persuading me that I SHOULD care - which means that you must cite some reason that I care about, and we return to square one.This is a very old argument, and a very boring one. I tend to hear it from people who have never read Kant, but who know that he bases his theory in a concept of "duty." They then manage to critique a concept of duty that is not Kant's at all.

As an addendum to the above explanation, Kant's moral duty follows from the fact of recognizing my own freedom... which is very relevant to this debate, indeed. The only way I can pretend that I am unaffected by the moral law is to insist that I am not free at all. As soon as I assume that I am free, I take responsibility for my actions, and that taking of responsibility amounts to an acceptance of moral law.

But again, a very long discussion. That's why he had to right hundreds of pages, and I suppose that's why no one bothers to read him anymore. The "sound bite" version is good enough... or not.

Because we must, to satisfy other "wants."See, even you need to put "wants" in quotation marks... to indicate that you don't really mean wants at all.

You also desire to adhere by some ethical norm, which is why you feel obligated to abide by it.No.

Often enough, I wish I could ignore ethical claims. I wish I could do what I want. But I feel obliged--as you put it--and feeling obliged is very, very different than feeling desirous. The only way you can ignore this is by abstracting from actual psychology, substituting "wants" for wants.

Ironic, considering that you are the one claiming to remain close to the material.

If, in fact, "this or that influence" serves as a TRUE explanation of your action, yes.And so we're back to epistemology, which is where I'm on my strongest ground.

How do you know that this explanation is the "true" one? What do you mean by "true"? Scientific epistemology has entirely given up on asserting a relation to the "really real," taking falsifiable positivism as its base instead. But within this epistemological framework, I cannot even begin to talk about the "true" until I can submit it to a test. And I cannot simply do that after-the-fact.

That is operationally identical to what we social scientists call "data-mining."


The basis for ethics is biological. Our extrapolation from our biologically- and culturally-founded moral intuitions to ethical conclusions about complex subjects is not biological, but rational.

I can never know, BECAUSE MY KNOWLEDGE IS NECESSARILY INCOMPLETE - as soon as I know what my action will be, the factors have changed, and my action may as well.[QUOTE]Exactly. Hence, the paradox. [QUOTE]And the foundational premise of determinism requires COMPLETE knowledge.Yes, and this is PRECISELY what makes it non-falsifiable. Because if I ever manage to produce a negative test, the inevitable response from the determinist will be, "Well, I just didn't know enough."

It is an assumption, not a proven theory. It is a useful assumption, but an assumption nevertheless.

Another person is still theoretically capable of predicting my actions with complete certainty, meaning that determinism can be true anyway.First: "theoretically"--again suggesting the problem of falsifiability. Secondly: I admit that others may be able to predict my behavior objectively. That does not change the fact that subjectively I can only view myself as free, and my subjective perspective is not reducible to an objective one. I have no way to view myself in a purely objective fashion.

I agree that we cannot know whether or not people are determined, and I also agree that we cannot know whether or not people are free (though the second claim is, I think, more questionable.)Only more questionable because you have been raised in a society that accepts science as "fact" in a very ideological fashion. But the reality is that modern science does not ground itself on an epistemology of "facts," of the "real." Science grounds itself on an epistemology of falsifiable posits that does not, in the purest sense, make a claim to "truth." It much more nearly makes a claim to being "useful."

And in that sense, the determinist assumption is very useful indeed for the pursuit of objective scientific knowledge about human behavior.

Its usefulness is significantly more constrained when it comes to the separate project of attempting to make a decision. Indeed, ultimately we inevitably reject determinism when we decide--some philosophers just don't like to admit it.

Hmm, fair enough. I should have specified that the explanation actually holds - it is actually the real reason I committed the action.But then you have to face the epistemological problem head-on: how do you know it is the "real" reason? The problem doesn't just go away by asserting that somehow you magically know the real reason you did something.

Look, I agree that determinism isn't falsifiable. I haven't ever made the claim that determinism is actually true.Okay, then we're making more progress than I'd thought. So at least you understand that there is no empirical reason that freedom must be reducible to determinate causes.

My argument is simply that IF we are free, THEN our choices must be determined - and a notion of freedom that REQUIRES that our choices NOT be determined ultimately fails to take into account the fact that arbitrary decisions are not free.We're closer here than you think.

I agree that arbitrary decisions are not free decisions, at least not in a very useful or meaningful sense.

Where we disagree is that you think this means free decisions must be determined by natural law. Thus, you are a compatiblist.

I hold that if our decisions are determined by natural law, then we are still not really free--because we are simply determined parts of the natural universe. We need not regard ourselves as morally autonomous, because we must admit that we could not have done otherwise--we are both free and determined, and these do not conflict.

I hold instead that as rational creatures we are capable of recognizing the difference between morally "right" and morally "wrong" behaviors. When we choose rightly, we submit ourselves to the moral law--and our behavior does, in fact, remain law-like, "determined" in the sense that they are prescribed by a rule. When we choose wrongly, the explanation for our behavior lies in the realm of natural law: we lie because we're afraid of punishment, we steal brownies because we're hungry, etc.

It's what follows the "because" of our actions that determines whether we act freely. If the "because" is nothing more than a biological function, then we remain bound to the natural law.

If the "because" is, rather "it was the right thing to do," then we are free because we live according to a rule that we prescribe to ourselves. (And we do prescribe it to ourselves--no one else can tell us what is right.)

A "true" explanation being one that actually provides the reason for the action.You're behind the times. Epistemology gave up on that one over a century ago.

For something to actually be the reason for something else, it need not be KNOWABLY so.Fine. But then we can never know that we are determined, no matter how badly you want us to be.

No. I have not yet decided. But say someone else knows me so perfectly that they can predict my decision perfectly.

Does that mean that I lack free will, or not?Objectively, yes. Subjectively, no.

I guess I just don't see how this notion of decision-making, however interesting its ethical implications may be, necessarily contradicts the objective perspective of humans acting on deterministic causes.The problem is that the perspectives themselves are contradictory. They don't speak the same language.

When I view myself objectively--as a phenomenal object--I view myself very differently than when I view myself subjectively--as a deciding subject. I can move dialectically between the two, but I cannot translate one into the other.

Think of it this way: when I treat myself as an object, I must take up a position "outside" myself, "watching" my behavior, as it were. When I think myself subjectively, I am the doer rather than the watcher.

The subject can never know all the objective causes, because that very knowledge changes them.Yes, and the observer can never know all of the subjective factors, all the feelings and inclinations and thoughts moving in the will of the doer.

If there is an "uncertainty principle" of the social sciences, it is that the better we know someone objectively, the less well we know him subjectively--and vice versa.

Yes, that's true.

But, of course, science can never prove that there is no subjective that is more than a rare combination of materialistic objective functions.

Again, that troubling problem of falsifiability.

The question is not falsifiable either way: people who believe in a transcendent subjectivity will always insist that it must exist in the inevitable "beyond" of scientific knowledge, and people who believe there is no such thing will always insist that the holes in their knowledge (the "beyond") cannot possibly hold what their opponents want it to.

Then you have people like me, who insist we can just never know the answers to these questions.

I tend to be in your camp, but I am of the opinion that it is up to someone to prove free will rather than simply accepting it as a given.

For example, we can point to organisms that we share a common ancestor with who we would not say possess free will. So at what point in our evolutionary development did we obtain this mystical quality?

Fate/determinisim Vs. Free Will.


I realise that saying Determinism is just another way of saying Fate, so I'll just use Fate in place of determinism.

I reached an answer to this a few years ago. It works for me, maybe not anyone else, but it suits me just fine.

Fate, everything is predetermined, you have no choice in life.

Free Will. Nothing is predetermined, you do have a choice.

Which one is correct? Fate? Free Will? there are certainly precedents for both. You can think up your own examples, you don't need me to do it for you. I've concluded niether are correct and free of the need of each other.

I mean, I have yet to see any proof that we can choose what circumstances we are born in to, thus, that part of life is predetermined.
Yet, beyond the circumstances of birth, we have the choice of what to do with out lives. Sure, the environment has influences on us, but we still have choices to make.

So, taking just the life of a single person, he has a decison to make should he do this, should he do that. Lets say he's dirt poor, and just needs 2000 dollars to get his life back on track. He's at a pawn shop, looking around.

Making this simple, he reaches a point where he has three decisions to make.

A) He can rob the place later, and pawn the stuff to other shops around the city.

B) He can fill out an Application. This store happens to be hiring.

c) Do nothing, walk out. maybe some other oppurtunity will present itself later.

Its his free will, his choice of what to do, even if he doesn't quite realise any of his options.

so, A) he cases the place, comes back later, robs them blind.
Obviously, every thing in life has an equal and opposite reaction, thus for human choices, consequences. By having made his choice, his consequences become his fate. Sure, there's a chance he might get away with it, but very few criminals are that good. He forgot to wear gloves Police catch him, he goes to jail. Eventually, he gets out of jail

B) He fills out an application. His fate becomes as follows, he gets hired, earns seven bucks an hour. It takes a few months, but everything works out. Eventually, he becomes manager.

c) He does nothing and walks out. His fate, his consequences? Nothing happens. His life stagnates. He becomes really lazy. Eventually he becomes known as the laziest man alive.

As you can see, fate really depnds on our own free will. But, its not just one human and a world full of really clever robots. There's over 6 billion people on Earth, each of us with our own free will, and our own choices to make. As we make these choices, our consequences effect not only us, but others as well, making fate really complicated. I mean really hyper complicated like a spiders web.

So, lets go back over these same three choices again.

A, Rob the place.

One possible fate was already mentioned, and during that jail time, his mother was depending on him for moral support. she becomes depressed, and in her disapointment in her son, moves away, emotionally, and physicly. Later, when he gets out. He's all alone, in a world full of people.

Another possibility, is that he does get away with it, and goes on to become a career criminal. Eventually makes it onto The FBI's most wanted list. Not a list you want to be on.

With everyone else in the world, just by chance, someone catches him in the act of robbing the original store. They turn him in, or a Drunk driver kills him. Or he wins the lottery, or even meets a woman and becomes a house husband.


b) Gets a job there. Well, he gets his life on track, goes to school gets a better job, eventually becomes rich. Maybe someone else robs the place, oh the irony in such a fate. That's its own set of choices an consequences.

C) Does nothing. His life stagnates. Nobody cares. Eventually enlists in the army. Comes out a changed man.

No matter the situation, theres always a set of choices to make, and a set of consequences that become your fate, and effect the choices of others. Its not just Fate or determinisim, nor is it entirely free will.

It is The Fate of Free Will.

Like I said, it works for me, but may not satisfy others. However that is the explaination of it.

A reaction can be both positive or negative.
One possible reaction would be to continue the tradition.
Another would be to break the cyle.
Each is done in accordance to the environment in which the subject is raised.
Regardless of which "choice" is made, it was made due to a combination of physiology, psychology, and sociology, each of which are beyond the control of the individual.
If all of these factors are known down to a subatomic level, the "choice" would be able to be predicted.
Humans are nothing more than complex supercomputers.
Once you understand the algorithm, you can predict the outcome of any situation.

You can not predict the behaviour of sub atomic particles. It's the basis of Quantum Theory. Read Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen_paradox

"The EPR paradox draws on a phenomenon predicted by quantum mechanics, known as quantum entanglement, to show that measurements performed on spatially separated parts of a quantum system can apparently have an instantaneous influence on one another. This effect is now known as "nonlocal behavior" (or colloquially as "quantum weirdness"). "

And Quantum entanglement

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

Quantum entanglement is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which the quantum states of two or more objects have to be described with reference to each other, even though the individual objects may be spatially separated. This leads to correlations between observable physical properties of the systems. For example, it is possible to prepare two particles in a single quantum state such that when one is observed to be spin-up, the other one will always be observed to be spin-down and vice versa, this despite the fact that it is impossible to predict, according to quantum mechanics, which set of measurements will be observed. As a result, measurements performed on one system seem to be instantaneously influencing other systems entangled with it. But quantum entanglement does not enable the transmission of classical information faster than the speed of light (see discussion in next section below).

That being said, yes, environment affects us. But only to a degree. We have still choices, options and may even cheat our way out....

Edit: Also read Uncertainty principle while you are at it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

The OP is right.

To paraphrase Scott Adams, the brain is a mechanism just like any other, and just like any other mechanism it will undertake certain actions in certain environments with certain inputs.
There is no ghost in the mechanism; we are the mechanism.

Just because the activity of a mechanism is unpredictable or even random, that does not mean that the mechanism has any control over the activity.

I tend to be in your camp, but I am of the opinion that it is up to someone to prove free will rather than simply accepting it as a given.I think free will can neither be proven nor disproven. Likewise (obviously) determinism.

Thus, since we can never know in an epistemologically rigorous sense what is "really real" about our will, the key is to identify the standpoints most useful to us as human beings.

Considered objectively, knowledge about human beings is advanced scientifically by assuming determinism--by assuming, that is, that we can find reliable explanations for people's behavior. In many cases, we certainly can.

Considered subjectively, the problem for the self is one of figuring out what to do, how to behave. I argue that it is very useful to think of one's self as "free"--as capable of deciding any way one wants--in order to make reflective, rational decisions. Indeed, it is somewhat more than useful--it accords very well with how we actually go about the business of deciding.

Of course, I maintain that the two perspectives persist in a dialectical relationship with each other. By gaining objective knowledge about why we have behaved the way we do, we can give ourselves a leg up in deciding to behave otherwise.

For instance, suppose we discover objectively, scientifically, that the desire to overeat is often related to stress.

Now, people have been overeating for a long time, and many feel like they have no control over the impulse. They try to diet; they fail. They try to exercise; it never seems to be enough.

One day an overweight person reads an article suggesting that overeating may be due to stress. The next time this person has the urge to eat, he recognizes that he is feeling stressed, or something stressful has just occurred. Recognizing that he's not really hungry--he's stressed--he chooses not to eat, but to do something else to relieve his stress. Maybe he goes outside, maybe he does a crossword, maybe he seeks counseling. But he is staring to take control of his life.


That is an important distinction to make in the midst of all these questions of what "want" means. Often, we want to behave differently than we do behave. We may try very hard to behave differently. But somehow, we cannot seem to take control. We may, in fact, feel very determined.

This is one prong of the dialectic. When we feel very determined, in all likelihood we are... subjectively we have not been able to assert ourselves as doers, and so we just follow along in our own history.

But ironically, the better we know ourselves objectively, the freer we are to be ourselves subjectively--that is, to be the people we want ourselves to be.

For example, we can point to organisms that we share a common ancestor with who we would not say possess free will. So at what point in our evolutionary development did we obtain this mystical quality?That's a more complicated question. One cop-out is to say that this objective question does not bear on my incompatiblism. But I'll do one better and say that I do not think there is a "line" where creatures are either "free" or "not free."

Non-human animals display a wide range of ethical behaviors, from elephants saving hippos to dogs and cats running cross-country to find their lost families. Personally, I don't exclude them entirely from the register of moral subjectivity.

Can someone love a person while at the same time hating her?

Economists say no, psychology says yes. I'm siding with psychology on this one.

Human beings are not blessed with "rational" preference schemes, modes of identification, or any other easy way to sort out the complex of our unconscious life.

Hate does not equal the absense of love. Rejecting a value does mean not holding the value.

I do understand that humans hold values that provide contradictory sentiments and emotions.

To extend your example, a man rotates between wanting to kill his wife and wanting to make love to her. He makes plans to kill her as soon as she retires for the evening, and as she ascends the stairs towards their bedroom he retrieves a knife from the kitchen. Upon entering the room he sees the face that he fell in love with and immediately goes back to place the knife back in the kitchen. (Even more apt to your argument would be his recognition of blind hate in himself, acknowledging that it is bad, and fighting the urge)

While it is entirely true that he made a decision and that he rejected a certain value, but it does not establish his free will. He does not simply negate the hatred, but rather suppresses it for another of his values. It is still the same composite set of values at work here, and this composite set of values is (I am presuming) is not a product of his self.

Semantically, that sounds very nice.

But I think it is all too obvious that people judge their own preferences.

This malleability of the self was central to Daniel Dennett's argument for free will, and I didn't buy it then.

I do not doubt that people analyze their own preferences, and I do not doubt that a person's values change over time, but it is impossible for a person to analyze their composite value set. If a person analyzes and changes a value, it is done on its relation to a more basic or important value.

It is impossible to judge in the absense of values, and I see no reason to believe that we can set our own values, so I cannot see the purposeful change of values as an example of free will.

And how is judging one value against another operationally different from judging one value against another set of values, judging a set of values against one other value, or judging one set of values against another?

The set of values that I speak of is comprised by all of the values a person possesses (or all those values that are pertinent to the situation), so maybe I have made the argument impossible. I still like it though. :p

Your definition of "set" seems to be lacking. It seems that you think people have individual values, then the "set" of all these values considered collectively. But I see no reason that there cannot be coherent or semi-coherent subsets within this larger set. Why is only the universal set acceptable to you as such?

A person may judge a value against all of his other values, he may judge all of his values on the basis of one (I tend to do the latter). But I do not think that someone can possess a value while possessing the complete negation of that value (at least not simultaneously, in the instance of decision). I also do not think that a person can originate his values, so values changing values only represents another instance of materialistic causality.

As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Refute.

The first assumption is flawed. We have control, however limited, over our environment.

Ergo, the conclusion is flawed.

I would like to reiterate again since people tend to misrepresent the dichotomy.

Determination is countered by randomness, and randomness does not imply free will.

Free will = no determination
No determination /= free will

So quantum uncertainty does not grant a person free will.

I would like to reiterate again since people tend to misrepresent the dichotomy.

Determination is countered by randomness, and randomness does not imply free will.

Free will = no determination
No determination /= free will

So quantum uncertainty does not grant a person free will.

Nevertheless, It certainly gives you hope to know that fundemental particles of the universe dont know what they are until we observe them. (in a sense)

Rejecting a value does mean not holding the value.Ummm....Can someone seriously hold a value while at the same time rejecting it?I guess you answered your own question, then?

A person may judge a value against all of his other values, he may judge all of his values on the basis of one (I tend to do the latter). But I do not think that someone can possess a value while possessing the complete negation of that value (at least not simultaneously, in the instance of decision).Yet this is precisely what happens in real human psychology. While your man wanting to stab his wife example admits that a man may hate his wife, then love his wife, it does not acknowledge the simple fact that hate and love (for the same object) coexist all the time.

Indeed, many psychologists argue that strong feelings of love are inseparable from strong feelings of hatred--and, indeed, that the stronger the one, the stronger the other.

I also do not think that a person can originate his values, so values changing values only represents another instance of materialistic causality.If that's what you believe, then you can sit back and idly watch your values play out the story of your life.

Personally, I intend to take an active role in mine. I am the decider, not merely the viewer. I cannot prove that fact, but as an existential perspective it makes a hell of a lot of sense to me.

I would like to reiterate again since people tend to misrepresent the dichotomy.

Determination is countered by randomness, and randomness does not imply free will.Not so.

"Determinism" here does not refer to the abstract idea of determination, but rather to the idea of determination by natural causes.

Free will = no determinationNope. Free will = (not necessarily absolute) freedom from natural causes. It refers to a will that determines itself, a will ruled by a law that it gives to itself.

So quantum uncertainty does not grant a person free will.
That much is true.

While such sentiments may be "rooted" or "based" in biological facts, it would be absurd to say that the human will has not transformed such positions far beyond their biological usefulness.

Fine, I have no objection to that claim - at least insofar as "biological facts" are limited to "biological facts" that concern ethics.

This is a very old argument, and a very boring one. I tend to hear it from people who have never read Kant, but who know that he bases his theory in a concept of "duty." They then manage to critique a concept of duty that is not Kant's at all.

I've read Kant.

I found the derivation of the categorical imperative so unconvincing that I'm sure I misunderstood it crucially somewhere - chiefly because the result of reading him was realizing just how badly I had misunderstood some of the other parts.

As an addendum to the above explanation, Kant's moral duty follows from the fact of recognizing my own freedom... which is very relevant to this debate, indeed. The only way I can pretend that I am unaffected by the moral law is to insist that I am not free at all. As soon as I assume that I am free, I take responsibility for my actions, and that taking of responsibility amounts to an acceptance of moral law.

Considering what you've said about the subjective perspective on free will, this makes some sense... but I fail to see how mere acknowledgement in and of itself can lead to action.

I also fail to see how attempting to move beyond phenomenal causes necessarily leads to a formulation of the categorical imperative that possesses actual content, but that is definitely tangential.

See, even you need to put "wants" in quotation marks... to indicate that you don't really mean wants at all.

I used it to indicate that I was using "wants" very loosely - to borrow from the next piece of your reply, "abstracting from actual psychology."

No.

Often enough, I wish I could ignore ethical claims. I wish I could do what I want. But I feel obliged--as you put it--and feeling obliged is very, very different than feeling desirous. The only way you can ignore this is by abstracting from actual psychology, substituting "wants" for wants.

The crucial element is not "wanting", but "feeling." That is why I felt no need to expound on all the possible manifestations of what I meant by "wants."

Whether you "feel desirous" or "feel obliged", it's still a feeling - still founded in biological facts, and still determining your action.

And so we're back to epistemology, which is where I'm on my strongest ground.

How do you know that this explanation is the "true" one?

You don't.

But within this epistemological framework, I cannot even begin to talk about the "true" until I can submit it to a test. And I cannot simply do that after-the-fact.

However, I am speaking hypothetically.

IF it is the reason (and for the action to have a basis, it must be), THEN it must be a cause.

I make no claim about the knowability of whether or not it actually is a reason. I have no doubt that you could shred my epistemology if you wanted to.

It is an assumption, not a proven theory. It is a useful assumption, but an assumption nevertheless.

You don't need to repeat this all the time. I know it's not falsifiable. I've never claimed that determinism is true (or false.)

Only more questionable because you have been raised in a society that accepts science as "fact" in a very ideological fashion. But the reality is that modern science does not ground itself on an epistemology of "facts," of the "real." Science grounds itself on an epistemology of falsifiable posits that does not, in the purest sense, make a claim to "truth." It much more nearly makes a claim to being "useful."

Fair enough.

Indeed, ultimately we inevitably reject determinism when we decide--some philosophers just don't like to admit it.

How so?

But then you have to face the epistemological problem head-on: how do you know it is the "real" reason?

I don't. Why must I?

Okay, then we're making more progress than I'd thought. So at least you understand that there is no empirical reason that freedom must be reducible to determinate causes.

I didn't say that... I think that determinism is the only way we can be free.

I just think it's possible that we are neither free nor determined, or that determinism and randomness both play a role, and we are only partially free.

Where we disagree is that you think this means free decisions must be determined by natural law. Thus, you are a compatiblist.

Yes, that's the position I've taken.

I hold that if our decisions are determined by natural law, then we are still not really free--because we are simply determined parts of the natural universe. We need not regard ourselves as morally autonomous, because we must admit that we could not have done otherwise

No, we need not.

We need only admit that we WOULD NOT ever have done otherwise.

I hold instead that as rational creatures we are capable of recognizing the difference between morally "right" and morally "wrong" behaviors. When we choose rightly, we submit ourselves to the moral law--and our behavior does, in fact, remain law-like, "determined" in the sense that they are prescribed by a rule.

But it is determined in a second sense, too.

It is determined by whatever "natural law" caused us to choose rightly in the first place.

It's what follows the "because" of our actions that determines whether we act freely. If the "because" is nothing more than a biological function, then we remain bound to the natural law.

I don't see it as "bound."

The sense in which we are "bound" to it is only that our minds, our preferences, our decision-making processes are naturally founded.

For our actions to be "bound" to the natural law in that sense is merely for them to be "bound" to ourselves, to our own choices.

If the "because" is, rather "it was the right thing to do," then we are free because we live according to a rule that we prescribe to ourselves. (And we do prescribe it to ourselves--no one else can tell us what is right.)

I don't see these two as mutually incompatible.

It is our determined judgments that tell us whether or not something is morally right - and our determined choices through which we act on those judgments.

You're behind the times. Epistemology gave up on that one over a century ago.

Since I have not argued for knowledge, I need not concern myself with epistemology here.

Fine. But then we can never know that we are determined, no matter how badly you want us to be.

Of course.

The problem is that the perspectives themselves are contradictory. They don't speak the same language.

I see how they are different. I fail to see how they are CONTRADICTORY.

Determinism claims that if I know all the rules and all the content of a given state of the universe, I can predict everything that will happen in the future and know everything that has happened in the past.

Determinism as applied to a given person's actions would imply that if the psychological makeup of that person were known perfectly, as well as all the stimuli affecting that person, his or her actions would be predictable with certainty.

You've established that a person can never be in such a position of knowledge with regard to herself. But this does not contradict determinism. It merely contradicts the notion that the person could ever be able to predict her actions with certainty.

I think free will can neither be proven nor disproven. Likewise (obviously) determinism.

Thus, since we can never know in an epistemologically rigorous sense what is "really real" about our will, the key is to identify the standpoints most useful to us as human beings.

Considered objectively, knowledge about human beings is advanced scientifically by assuming determinism--by assuming, that is, that we can find reliable explanations for people's behavior. In many cases, we certainly can.

Considered subjectively, the problem for the self is one of figuring out what to do, how to behave. I argue that it is very useful to think of one's self as "free"--as capable of deciding any way one wants--in order to make reflective, rational decisions. Indeed, it is somewhat more than useful--it accords very well with how we actually go about the business of deciding.

Of course, I maintain that the two perspectives persist in a dialectical relationship with each other. By gaining objective knowledge about why we have behaved the way we do, we can give ourselves a leg up in deciding to behave otherwise.

For instance, suppose we discover objectively, scientifically, that the desire to overeat is often related to stress.

Now, people have been overeating for a long time, and many feel like they have no control over the impulse. They try to diet; they fail. They try to exercise; it never seems to be enough.

One day an overweight person reads an article suggesting that overeating may be due to stress. The next time this person has the urge to eat, he recognizes that he is feeling stressed, or something stressful has just occurred. Recognizing that he's not really hungry--he's stressed--he chooses not to eat, but to do something else to relieve his stress. Maybe he goes outside, maybe he does a crossword, maybe he seeks counseling. But he is staring to take control of his life.


That is an important distinction to make in the midst of all these questions of what "want" means. Often, we want to behave differently than we do behave. We may try very hard to behave differently. But somehow, we cannot seem to take control. We may, in fact, feel very determined.

This is one prong of the dialectic. When we feel very determined, in all likelihood we are... subjectively we have not been able to assert ourselves as doers, and so we just follow along in our own history.

But ironically, the better we know ourselves objectively, the freer we are to be ourselves subjectively--that is, to be the people we want ourselves to be.

Ironically, I made a statement in a philosophy forum (Surprisingly awash in Christians and traditionalists which have made me realize how little I understand the nihilism I espouse, and how poorly I refute the TAG) that the history of philosophical and scientific thought is a dialetical progression between the objective and subjective, with an eminent victory by the subjective. I was referring to the attempts to assign worth to humans and the negation of skeptics. I was thinking outloud and I am not sure how it relates to this topic, but I felt like mentioning it.

One thing that it did imply, however, was a Nietzschean eschewing of truth for utility. I have already denied the definitive truth of determinism, and I cannot deny the usefulness of assuming freedom (although I am not sure that understanding our objective role in reality causes fatalism, I am a bit of a Spinozan), so your arguments ring true to me.

That's a more complicated question. One cop-out is to say that this objective question does not bear on my incompatiblism. But I'll do one better and say that I do not think there is a "line" where creatures are either "free" or "not free."

Non-human animals display a wide range of ethical behaviors, from elephants saving hippos to dogs and cats running cross-country to find their lost families. Personally, I don't exclude them entirely from the register of moral subjectivity.

I am no expert in animal neurology, so I don't know just how they make decisions and what not (I tend to give away my bias with that statement).

One problem I have with this, though, is that you are assigning a moral responsibility to animals based on actions that, were humans to undertake, would obviously represent a moral virtue (to most of us), but are not considering the process by which they arrived at their actions.

Is an ant morally responsible for sacrificing himself to the colony? If it is the action or effects of the act that determines the morality, or is it the mental process of choosing. It seems for our purposes, we must rely on the choice, and I seriously question the choice that most animals place in their actions.

To paraphrase someone whose name I can't remember. Life is like a card game, predestination is the hand you're dealt, free will is the way you play it.

I've read Kant.

I found the derivation of the categorical imperative so unconvincing that I'm sure I misunderstood it crucially somewhere - chiefly because the result of reading him was realizing just how badly I had misunderstood some of the other parts.One question: Did you read the Critique of Pure Reason, or just the Groundwork? Everyone reads the latter, but it doesn't make a lick of sense--or at least, the sense it makes is not very convincing--without the First Critique.

Considering what you've said about the subjective perspective on free will, this makes some sense... but I fail to see how mere acknowledgement in and of itself can lead to action.It doesn't. But that acknowledgment sets up the sense of shame... especially when it is coupled with the acknowledgment that other people, like me, are free moral subjects.

The sense of shame, of course, also does not immediately cause action. But it does set up a very "human" motivation for adherence to the obligations of the moral law.

I also fail to see how attempting to move beyond phenomenal causes necessarily leads to a formulation of the categorical imperative that possesses actual content, but that is definitely tangential.Well, the categorical imperative itself is virtually without content. It is extremely formal.

The crucial element is not "wanting", but "feeling." That is why I felt no need to expound on all the possible manifestations of what I meant by "wants."Yes, but actual feelings differ in important ways. We experience desires as "ours," obligations as "imposed on us," and that distinction is not trivial.

Whether you "feel desirous" or "feel obliged", it's still a feeling - still founded in biological facts, and still determining your action.While I think it is important to recognize the motivations associated with "feeling" obliged, the argument works just as well when I remove obligation from the realm of the felt: when I feel that I want something, but at the same time I think that I am obliged to act otherwise, I can decide to meet my obligations despite myself--despite my feelings, despite my desires, despite everything I want for myself. I can choose to do something because I should.

The sense of shame may help me to get in the habit of doing so, but it is not strictly speaking required for me to be an ethical person. I always have the choice to do the right thing.

IF it is the reason (and for the action to have a basis, it must be), THEN it must be a cause.Yes, and that is a very useful conjecture from the objective perspective.

From the subjective perspective, I can only ask, "What should I do now, and why should I do it?" When I determine the reason, I will determine the action, and I will act.

From an objective perspective, I may go back after the fact and reason that something else better explains my behavior, rather than the reason I gave to myself.

This does not change the fact that when I make future decisions I will have to give a reason to myself. And when I give a reason to myself, it will have to be a right reason, leading to right behavior. Otherwise, how can I be free? How can I be free if I do not do what I believe to be right? If I do something other than what I believe to be right, it must be something outside my own will that determined my behavior--and then I am not free.

How so?For the reason just stated. We either allow ourselves the belief that we are determined, in which case we have to admit that we do not decide; or we decide, in which case we must believe ourselves to be free.

I don't. Why must I?Because if you don't know that it is the real reason, you don't know that it was the cause.

Your whole point has been to say that IF I can explain something after the fact (X->Y), THEN I know that X caused Y, so that Y was determined by X. But in order to know that Y was determined by X, I have to know that X actually caused Y. Otherwise, it's all just conjecture.

You can't prove that I'm determined. It is therefore reasonable for me to believe that I am not and to use that belief as a basis for a moral framework.

In much the same way, I do not believe in God, but I cannot prove that God does not exist. Therefore, I cannot claim that it is unreasonable for others to believe in God--and, indeed, to use this belief as the basis for a moral framework. Of course, I may have moral reasons for arguing that disbelief in God is preferable to belief... but they would be moral reasons, not arguments grounded in supposed facts that I cannot prove.

Since I have not argued for knowledge, I need not concern myself with epistemology here.But your entire argument has been that if I can explain my behaviors objectively after-the-fact, then I can declare that they are, really, determined. You definitely need to defend this assertion epistemologically.

You insist that your argument holds if the explanation proffered is the TRUE one. You need to defend its truth, you cannot just assert it. Even as a hypothetical, it only works if it is possible for us to determine true causes--which it is not. Again, modern science makes no such claim.

I see how they are different. I fail to see how they are CONTRADICTORY.Try thinking them both at the same time. Try knowing what you are going to do before you decide to do it.

Determinism claims that if I know all the rules and all the content of a given state of the universe, I can predict everything that will happen in the future and know everything that has happened in the past.Yes. And you certainly cannot falsify that claim.

Determinism as applied to a given person's actions would imply that if the psychological makeup of that person were known perfectly, as well as all the stimuli affecting that person, his or her actions would be predictable with certainty.Totally unfalsifiable.

You've established that a person can never be in such a position of knowledge with regard to herself.Yes. And it should be obvious that she can never be in such a position with respect to anyone else.

But this does not contradict determinism.Nor should it, since I am not trying to negate determinism.

I accept determinism. I also accept free will. I also accept that they are incompatible with each other. I am willing to live with the paradox, because I do not think finite human knowledge can solve every problem. Our reason is bound to produce its fair share of paradoxes.

It merely contradicts the notion that the person could ever be able to predict her actions with certainty.And that's enough to force her to consider her decisions as if she has a free choice, even if it is possible that in the "really real" of the universe, she does not.

Not so.

"Determinism" here does not refer to the abstract idea of determination, but rather to the idea of determination by natural causes.

I was referring to the fact that quantum physics have been brought up many times in this thread.

Nope. Free will = (not necessarily absolute) freedom from natural causes. It refers to a will that determines itself, a will ruled by a law that it gives to itself.

There is determination that is countered by free will, and there "abstract" determination that is countered by randomness. Why does free will not counter both, as it certainly an objective randomness?

*snip*It sounds like many of the same ideas are rattling around our respective meat computers. ;)

I am no expert in animal neurology, so I don't know just how they make decisions and what not (I tend to give away my bias with that statement).I don't really know how human beings make decisions, either, but I am willing to assign moral worth to some and not to others based on alternative behavioral criteria.

One problem I have with this, though, is that you are assigning a moral responsibility to animals based on actions that, were humans to undertake, would obviously represent a moral virtue (to most of us), but are not considering the process by which they arrived at their actions.No, because I'm not particularly concerned with the process.

What I am concerned with is the contrast between other-regarding emotions like "concern" or "love" and self-interested drives like hunger. While I am the first to argue that the basis for other-regarding instincts lies in evolutionary biology, certain "above and beyond" behaviors seem to stand out as indicating genuine moral concern, or at least a rudimentary kind of moral concern.

Consider dogs who cross continents, braving terrible dangers, hunger, and thirst, to find a particular family. While the basis for this kind of love may be found in the natural affection for the people who feed and care for an animal, something more seems to be at work here. After all, in many of these stories we discover that families along the way had taken the animal in, had provided food for it, had substituted for the lost care-taker. We hear that these animals escape from animal welfare authorities to find the particular people they especially love.

And you see animals mourn. You see animals experience genuine "human" emotions. There's something ethical or quasi-ethical in that, for me... and it goes beyond the simple biology that forms its base.

Or maybe I'm just a sappy animal lover.

Is an ant morally responsible for sacrificing himself to the colony?No, but this is clearly "programmed" for it. Again, it's the "above and beyond" kind of cases that seem to impress me.

I was referring to the fact that quantum physics have been brought up many times in this thread.Yes. That argument is an embarrassment to anyone who tries to counter straight-up determinism, for two reasons:

1) It pretends that determinism can actually be "refuted."
2) It sets human beings up for a mode of decision-making that is even less dignified than natural determination!!

There is determination that is countered by free will, and there "abstract" determination that is countered by randomness. Why does free will not counter both, as it certainly an objective randomness?From the perspective of a "libertarian" theory of the will--who thinks we are simply free, end of story--free will would appear random from an objective perspective.

As an incompatiblist I refuse to kill the dialectic. From an objective perspective we appear determined. From a subjective perspective we appear free. And we cannot simply renounce either of these: we can disprove neither of them, and both are useful to human life.

He reacted to his abusive environment with a decision to not replicate it. I'm not agreeing with the OP's premise but deciding not to replicate his abusive upbringing IS a reaction.

It would only be a reaction if he didn't think it through, wouldn't it?

Free will is the ability to make decisions based on careful thought. And I can safely say that when I have kids, I won't treat them like my dad's treated me. It's not a reaction, because I've thought it through quite thoroughly.

A reaction would be socking him in the fucking mouth after he screams at me for fifteen minutes for some trivial shit like not vacuuming the floor every goddamn day, or saying "no" to some of his suggestions. But, since I have free will, I refuse to do such a petty thing. I keep my chin up, grit my teeth, and wade through this river of shit I'm in.

So fuck all of this bullshit you people are espousing. Enough.

I accept determinism. I also accept free will. I also accept that they are incompatible with each other. I am willing to live with the paradox, because I do not think finite human knowledge can solve every problem. Our reason is bound to produce its fair share of paradoxes.

So essentially you regard both as useful concepts and would assume either to be true depending on what you're after (for instance, determinism when looking at humans objectively), but you remain agnostic on the subject? I don't see why this is so much a paradox as the result of a lack of knowledge. Isn't it more a matter of perspective, i.e. the stance I take depending on the subject-matter I'm dealing with? Objectively speaking both cannot hold true if they contradict one another; we simply cannot know this for now though. I'm just trying to better apprehend your position.

On what grounds do you reject compatibilism by the way? I am sure you've mentioned why earlier, but I'm too tired to wade through this entire thread.

One question: Did you read the Critique of Pure Reason, or just the Groundwork? Everyone reads the latter, but it doesn't make a lick of sense--or at least, the sense it makes is not very convincing--without the First Critique.

I read the Groundwork and only portions of the Critique of Pure Reason - not enough to get to the discussion of free will.

I can choose to do something because I should.

Only if you care about what you should do. And then the crucial factor is not the "should" but the "care."

The sense of shame may help me to get in the habit of doing so, but it is not strictly speaking required for me to be an ethical person. I always have the choice to do the right thing.

On what basis are you deciding to act rightly, though?

For the reason just stated. We either allow ourselves the belief that we are determined, in which case we have to admit that we do not decide; or we decide, in which case we must believe ourselves to be free.

This merely shifts the question - why must we EITHER decide OR be determined?

I can make a decision while acknowledging that every aspect of the decision has been predetermined. Admittedly I must presuppose that my decision actually matters - that it is a crucial factor in my action - but this is not precluded by determinism. All determinists need claim is that the decision is DETERMINED, not that it is epiphenomenal.

Because if you don't know that it is the real reason, you don't know that it was the cause.

Your whole point has been to say that IF I can explain something after the fact (X->Y), THEN I know that X caused Y, so that Y was determined by X. But in order to know that Y was determined by X, I have to know that X actually caused Y. Otherwise, it's all just conjecture.

No, you misunderstood me.

I don't seek to prove that our actions are determined. I seek to prove something different - that IF our actions have reasons in a way that saves us from the unfreedom of arbitrariness, our actions are determined.

To proceed with the argument again:

1. In order for our decisions to be saved from arbitrariness, they must have a reason. You've granted this.
2. In order for something to meaningfully serve as a reason for an action, it must be tied to a CAUSE of that action. If I say "I do x because y", then y must be causally connected to x.
3. If something is caused by something else, then it is determined. Therefore, determinism is necessary for freedom from arbitrariness.

This applies not only to deciding to act, but also to deciding what reasons to act upon. That choice, too, cannot be arbitrary if it is free. Thus, while I may be able to choose between "I'm going to steal the brownies because I'm hungry" and "I'm not going to steal the brownies because stealing brownies is inconsistent with the moral law", I cannot doing so without citing ANOTHER basis - at least if my choice is free, and not arbitrary.

Ultimately, I must come to a basis that I personally did not choose - and that means that all of my other decisions were determined by that basis, and therefore by the phenomenal causes that caused that basis. I am determined.

You can't prove that I'm determined. It is therefore reasonable for me to believe that I am not and to use that belief as a basis for a moral framework.

Indeed, this is a solution to the problem of determinism - if determinism is actually a problem, which I maintain that it is not.

But your entire argument has been that if I can explain my behaviors objectively after-the-fact, then I can declare that they are, really, determined.

Yes; I was trying to show that IF you can truthfully offer reasons for your actions, THEN you must admit that your actions are determined.

Certainly, I can't know that those reasons are true - or that they will EVER be true. Our behavior could be entirely random and arbitrary; I have no way of knowing that that is not actually the case.

You insist that your argument holds if the explanation proffered is the TRUE one. You need to defend its truth, you cannot just assert it. Even as a hypothetical, it only works if it is possible for us to determine true causes--which it is not.

No - I insist that my argument holds if there is some truthful explanation that COULD theoretically be proffered.

Our capability to know its truth or falsity is irrelevant. If our behavior has reasons, then it is determined. If our behavior doesn't have reasons, it is arbitrary and unfree. That's all I've claimed.

Try thinking them both at the same time. Try knowing what you are going to do before you decide to do it.

This is impossible, but the reason it is impossible is not that determinism is not compatible with free will.

The reason it is impossible is simply that we cannot know ourselves perfectly. That hardly precludes determinism - or even the assumption of determinism.

Yes. And you certainly cannot falsify that claim.

Totally unfalsifiable.

Of course you can't, and of course it is.

All I'm saying is that determinism, at least as I just defined it, does not negate free will - even if we must subjectively perceive our actions as unpredictable in order to freely make decisions.

Yes. And it should be obvious that she can never be in such a position with respect to anyone else.

Justify that.

Nor should it, since I am not trying to negate determinism.

But you are trying to show the incompatibility of determinism with free will.

If our perception of subjective unpredictability is purely a matter of a necessary lack of knowledge, then even if it is necessary for free will it is not incompatible with determinism. Determinism grants that actions can be unpredictable if we lack the knowledge to predict them perfectly.

Incidentally, the episode of Futurama in which Fry finds his fossilized dog in the year 3000 was just on.

For those who don't know, it has perhaps the saddest ending that a cartoon episode has ever had--ever.

In flashbacks, we see that the dog was insanely loyal to Fry; and they did everything together. When Fry disappeared, "accidentally" frozen in a cryogenic facility, only his dog manages to track him down; he actually brings Fry's idiot parents to their frozen son, but they are too self-absorbed to see what's going on.

3000 years later, Fry finds the fossilized remains of his dog and goes about playing with it for most of the episode (with Bender's insane jealousy providing the bulk of the comedic backdrop). Eventually, he learns that the Professor can clone his dog (amazingly, personality and memory as well) and he eagerly awaits the dog's rebirth. But in the process, he learns that his pet lived to a ripe old age, and he decides that his dog lived a full life without him--as a result, he no longer wants to go through with the cloning process.

But in the final flashback, we see that Fry's dog returned to the pizzeria where Fry worked... and never left. Day in and day out, he waited to see his friend. He died on the spot.

He died on the spot, waited three thousand years, managed to survive as a freakin' fossil and after 3000 years he finally faced the astronomically unlikely possibility of reunion with his companion--and Fry decides not to do it.

What does this have to do with this thread? Enough. But just enough. ;)

There is no such thing as free will.

You do not really have a 'choice'.

Think about it - when was the last time you chose to do something that you knew was worse for you?
It never happened, I guarantee it.

You were only able to do what you perceived to be the best.

Therefore, the only thing changes the outcome is your knowledge of a situation. An intelligent person is more likely to perceive the best 'choice', and because they are more intelligent, that 'choice' is more likely correct (the best choice of action).

Think about it - when was the last time you chose to do something that you knew was worse for you?

Every time I eat candy, or avoid physical activity, or drink soda.

Every time I eat candy, or avoid physical activity, or drink soda.

You're not doing something, at the time, that you think is worse for you.

You eat candy, drink soda, etc. because you believe the instant gratification of the candy/soda/etc outweighs the long-term or other consequences.

Just because you might think otherwise after the fact, doesn't mean you didn't think it was the best thing to do at the time.

You might even 'know' what you are doing is bad while you are doing it, but some part of your unconscious believes that it is actually better for you.

You're not doing something, at the time, that you think is worse for you.

Yes, I am.

I know it's bad for me. I do it anyway.

You eat candy, drink soda, etc. because you believe the instant gratification of the candy/soda/etc outweighs the long-term or other consequences.

No, I don't.

I believe the long-term consequences outweigh the instant gratification; I believe I'll be better off if I make a better decision. But I fail to act on this belief - because my DESIRE for instant gratification is too strong.

Just because you might think otherwise after the fact, doesn't mean you didn't think it was the best thing to do at the time.

No, I think so at the time, too. It just doesn't stop me.

You might even 'know' what you are doing is bad while you are doing it, but some part of your unconscious believes that it is actually better for you.

How convenient... "some part of your unconscious"... :rolleyes:

I do it anyway.

because my DESIRE for instant gratification is too strong.

It just doesn't stop me.


Exactly genius. That DESIRE is part of your unconscious. A desire for something would mean that you really want it, right? Well there has to be a reason you want it so bad. And your brain thinks that this 'reason' is more important than the other reason that tells you it is bad.

Actually, here:

Just answer the question why do you 'do it anyway'?

So essentially you regard both as useful concepts and would assume either to be true depending on what you're after (for instance, determinism when looking at humans objectively), but you remain agnostic on the subject?Not agnostic exactly.

I have used the limitations on our knowledge presented by the problem of falsifiability to show that we cannot know that we are determined. But I have not adequately characterized the nature of that limitation. I will explain further in what follows. In short, the freedom/determinism limitation has the character of a "both/and," not an "either or."

I don't see why this is so much a paradox as the result of a lack of knowledge.There are two ways that we can have a theoretically irresolvable lack of knowledge--a question for which we cannot, even theoretically, acquire an answer. While these are highly formal problems of reason, they have analogues in empirical experience. First, you can have a lack of knowledge regarding a question because there is no possible way to obtain evidence relevant to it. This is the case with competing interpretations of quantum theory: so long as they produce identical mathematical results and empirical predictions, there is simply no way to decide between the two. One may use either of them at will, perhaps one now the other according to a rule of expediency.

The second way to rule out knowledge on a question is, in the empirical case, you find contradictory evidence. The problem is not a "lack" of knowledge per se, but rather an inability to draw a conclusion because no possible conclusion will account for everything. This is the case with the theories espousing determinism and freedom of the will, and the reason for the paradox is the inherent contradiction between subjective and objective experience.

Now, if the theoretical and practical results of these theories were identical (as with quantum theory), they would be interchangeable--this is the compatibilist's case. So long as they can show that thinking ourselves as free does not add anything to our discourse about ethics and politics (for instance), they can argue that free will is compatible with determinism. We can use one or the other, or one then another according, perhaps, to some rule of expediency.

The thrust of my argument, then, is that thinking ourselves as free does add something to human discourse, but this can only be actualized by recognizing our determined nature.

We need to know who we are (have been) in order to be as we will ourselves to be. Meanwhile, to know ourselves objectively, to reflect, we must necessarily suspend our pretension to freedom. In other words, to be free we must know ourselves, but to know ourselves is to disclaim freedom.

Isn't it more a matter of perspective, i.e. the stance I take depending on the subject-matter I'm dealing with?That would be fine if there were no practical differences between them, but only differences of relative expediency. In other words, if (as assumptions) they produce the same results in moral theory, then you can use whichever one you want. One may be particularly fast or easy to use for a particular problem; the other may be easier for another--but either one will produce the same result, either more or less easily, more or less quickly.

My contention is that they do, in fact, produce different practical results. Therefore, we are not in a position to appeal to agnosticism. We must act--or fail to act, and in either case to decide. We cannot avoid decision until such time as we figure out whether we are determined or free, because we have already learned that this will never happen.

Thus, we need both. At the same time, playing off each other and into each other. This is the nature of dialectical knowledge. (Which is, of course, only the knowledge of an alienated world.)

Objectively speaking both cannot hold true if they contradict one another; we simply cannot know this for now though.We cannot get at the "true," remember? For all we know, neither of them may be true. There may be some third possibility we cannot comprehend--indeed, the contradiction between freedom and determination may be the closest human reason can come to comprehending a truth about the universe that our finite minds simply cannot grasp directly. We can only come close when we attempt to comprehend the contradiction by moving back and forth between its terms... by trying as far as the human intellect is capable to hold on to both at the same time.

On what grounds do you reject compatibilism by the way?Compatiblists have, to date, primarily concerned themselves with preserving the guilt-ethics of punishment and reward by translating them into determinism-friendly terms. I concede that punishment and reward can be justified in terms that are compatible with determinism. I hold, however, that ethics more broadly conceived; the motivation for much of talk therapy; and the aspiration for a better world all depend in one way or another on the freedom of the will, or at least on fundamentally determinism-antagonistic terms.

Exactly genius. That DESIRE is part of your unconscious.

Um, no. I'm perfectly conscious of the desire.

A desire for something would mean that you really want it, right?

That's presupposed by the definition, yes.

Well there has to be a reason you want it so bad.

Yes. Because it tastes good.

And your brain thinks that this 'reason' is more important than the other reason that tells you it is bad.

Or maybe the desire is just really strong.

My brain at no point needs to rationally contemplate the importance of the desire in order for me to actually undertake the action. Indeed, I can rationally contemplate the importance of the desire and conclude that I shouldn't do the action... yet still go ahead and do it.

Just answer the question why do you 'do it anyway'?

Because I want to, in an immediate sense.

NOT because I think it's actually better for me.

Yes. Because it tastes good.

OK, so that's the reason that you are drinking the soda.

Now, your brain thinks that, for some reason, rational or not, you drinking something that tastes good at the moment outweighs what is bad about it.

Just because you don't know the exact reason you did something, does not mean your brain did not think that was best for you.

Because I want to, in an immediate sense.

NOT because I think it's actually better for me.

That's exactly what instant gratification is.

Now, your brain thinks that, for some reason, rational or not, you drinking something that tastes good at the moment outweighs what is bad about it.

Me. Not just "my brain."

The problem is that you assume that this "pro" has something meaningfully to do with it actually being BETTER for me. It doesn't.

Ultimately, you must admit that I do it BECAUSE I WANT TO.

And that hardly seems to be a very good case against free will.