NationStates Jolt Archive

That's exactly what instant gratification is.

Yeah, exactly.

And it makes your entire position incoherent.

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.

'You' are your brain. Your brain controls everything you do. 'me' and 'brain' are not separate.

Your BRAIN thinks that it is better for you. Just look at people on drugs. Their brains experience increased neurotransmitters, so their brain thinks it is better, even if it isn't.

Now you are back to the original argument - you want to do it because you think it is the best action at the time.

you want to do it because you think it is the best action at the time.

Since it's clear to me that whatever example I use, you'll just make the necessary adjustments to it for it to correspond to this theory, let me just ask you: why do you think this connection holds?

How is what we want to do always the same as what we think is best for us?

Yeah, exactly.

And it makes your entire position incoherent.

"The principle in which the id operates on. According to Freud, the id is the part of your personality that wants instant gratification of what you desire. The id is unconcerned with the consequences of acting on these urges as long as it obtains total gratification immediately. It is fair to say that discomfort is not one of the id's strong points and only operates on one principle: pleasure."

The id is basically your unconscious.

Your id wanted the soda, so you drank it. Your superego(conscious) knew it was bad. Your id won 'the fight' and your ego(regulator between conscious/unconscious) chose to drink it anyway.

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.
Which amounts to being a cyclical catch-22 situation of sorts.

I concede that punishment and reward can be justified in terms that are compatible with determinism.
Do you mean in a utilitarian sense, as J J C Smart has argued?

Anyway, thanks for clarifying your position further.

'You' are your brain. Your brain controls everything you do. 'me' and 'brain' are not separate.
Then if your brain desires something, you desire it, do you not? You're essentially making Soheran's argument for him.

Your id wanted the soda, so you drank it. Your superego(conscious) knew it was bad.

when was the last time you chose to do something that you knew was worse for you?
It never happened, I guarantee it.

:rolleyes:

Since it's clear to me that whatever example I use, you'll just make the necessary adjustments to it for it to correspond to this theory, let me just ask you: why do you think this connection holds?

How is what we want to do always the same as what we think is best for us?

First, I'm not adjusting my theory.

Second, we always 'want' to do whatever it is we are doing. How can you argue that you voluntarily would chose something you didn't want to do over something you did want to do?

Then if your brain desires something, you desire it, do you not? You're essentially making Soheran's argument for him.

Uh... How is that making Soheran's argument?

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).

I'm surfing the net, drinking soda, and posting on NS General at 11:33 PM, even though I have work tomorrow morning at 11:15. I know this isn't good for me, yet I'm doing it anyway because I want to.

I'm an intelligent person, and the best thing for me to do would've been to brush my teeth at 10:00 PM and hit the sheets five minutes after. But I'm doing this because it's more fun, and I know that I can wake up just early enough to shower and eat before I go to work. I won't feel as good as I would've had I done the best thing, but who cares? It's my choice.

So again, fuck this bullshit. If you actually believe that you can't cut your own path in life, you have some rather serious issues which I'd rather not have to deal with, because frankly, I don't give a shit about people who think they know everything about life when they don't know a damn thing about their own thought processes.

But be my guest and continue with your lacking views on the human thought process, princess. It's entertaining.

Uh... How is that making Soheran's argument?
Consider the statement you made - your brain thinks it's better for you. But you just argued brain and "me" are inseparable. If your brain thinks something, given what you just argued before, then is it not you who thinks it and desires it? Freely?

Consider the statement you made - your brain thinks it's better for you. But you just argued brain and "me" are inseparable. If your brain thinks something, given what you just argued before, then is it not you who thinks it and desires it? Freely?

You and I know that his response to this is going to be downright ridiculous. :D

I'm surfing the net, drinking soda, and posting on NS General at 11:33 PM, even though I have work tomorrow morning at 11:15. I know this isn't good for me, yet I'm doing it anyway because I want to.

I'm an intelligent person, and the best thing for me to do would've been to brush my teeth at 10:00 PM and hit the sheets five minutes after. But I'm doing this because it's more fun, and I know that I can wake up just early enough to shower and eat before I go to work. I won't feel as good as I would've had I done the best thing, but who cares? It's my choice.

So again, fuck this bullshit. If you actually believe that you can't cut your own path in life, you have some rather serious issues which I'd rather not have to deal with, because frankly, I don't give a shit about people who think they know everything about life when they don't know a damn thing about their own thought processes.

But be my guest and continue with your lacking views on the human thought process, princess. It's entertaining.

My argument wasn't that there is no such thing as choice or something. I was just arguing about the nature of choice. The only thing that affects your choice is your intelligence. More intelligent = better choice.

First, I'm not adjusting my theory.

No, just the examples.

Second, we always 'want' to do whatever it is we are doing. How can you argue that you voluntarily would chose something you didn't want to do over something you did want to do?

I agree that we always do what we "want" - in a very loose sense that would more effectively be summed up by "prefer", but that's another discussion.

What I want to know is how you can argue that what we WANT corresponds to what we think is BEST for us.

If you grant that this is in fact not the case, then you are left with the statement that "we always do what we want" - which hardly seems, in and of itself, antagonistic to freedom (though I would claim that sometimes giving in to certain wants is inconsistent with freedom.)

I'm surfing the net, drinking soda, and posting on NS General at 11:33 PM, even though I have work tomorrow morning at 11:15. I know this isn't good for me, yet I'm doing it anyway because I want to.


The fact that you are unable to avoid making choices which you know to be bad rather militates against free will, no?

My argument wasn't that there is no such thing as choice or something. I was just arguing about the nature of choice. The only thing that affects your choice is your intelligence. More intelligent = better choice.

Changing what you originally said to suit your already ridiculous and indeed shallow "argument" won't make you very popular around here, buttercup. I'm adding bonus points to the hilarity meter because you didn't actually go back and edit your original post in an attempt to at least look like you were trying.

You distinctly said that nobody has ever made a choice that was worse for them. Now you're saying that idiots make bad choices, and intellectuals make good choices? Whatever happened to the 100% happiness of all good choices?

Come on, you can do better than that.

Consider the statement you made - your brain thinks it's better for you. But you just argued brain and "me" are inseparable. If your brain thinks something, given what you just argued before, then is it not you who thinks it and desires it? Freely?

downright ridiculous. :p

If you desire something, maybe part of you wants it and part of you knows it's bad. Sometimes the desire 'wins' sometimes it doesn't.

Maybe you wanted to drink ten sodas. But you would never do that, it's bad for you. But you can drink one soda, cause it tastes good. Even though you know it's bad for you.

The fact that you are unable to avoid making choices which you know to be bad rather militates against free will, no?

Who said I was unable to avoid them? The night before last, I went to bed at 10:30 PM sharp, taking the better choice (the latter was, well, what I'm doing right now).

Then again, you are the same person who insulted me for being on welfare (even though it's through no fault of my own), so would you kindly fuck off?

If you desire something, maybe part of you wants it and part of you knows it's bad. Sometimes the desire 'wins' sometimes it doesn't.

Maybe you wanted to drink ten sodas. But you would never do that, it's bad for you. But you can drink one soda, cause it tastes good. Even though you know it's bad for you.

So what?

downright ridiculous. :p
I am just demonstrating what conclusion your premises lead to.

If you desire something, maybe part of you wants it and part of you knows it's bad. Sometimes the desire 'wins' sometimes it doesn't.

Maybe you wanted to drink ten sodas. But you would never do that, it's bad for you. But you can drink one soda, cause it tastes good. Even though you know it's bad for you.
What is the point you are trying to make exactly?

You distinctly said that nobody has ever made a choice that was worse for them. Now you're saying that idiots make bad choices, and intellectuals make good choices? Whatever happened to the 100% happiness of all good choices?

I said that nobody ever made a choice they thought was worse for them at the time.

What the fuck are you saying? That smarter people make worse choices and idiots make the best choices ever?

So what?

There is a certain point where you realize that the consequences outweigh the instant gratification. This 'certain point' would change based on your intelligence.

If you knew something was bad for you (as in death) but it tasted great would you eat it? No.

But if another person found the same thing and didn't know it would kill them, would they eat it? Yes.

The people making the argument that there is no free will have made a major logical error.

Although the following is true:
As humans, we are born into an environment over which we have had no control.
the next statement is an assumption:
All of our actions are based on reactions to our environment.
Therefore, we have no free will.

Who said that all of our actions are based upon reactions to our environment? ALL? What qualifies that statement?

Two other things to consider:
1) If we always do what we consider to be best for us, where does that leave someone sacrificing their life for loved ones? It's obviously not best for that person (they die). Love doesn't fit in here.
2) Perhaps we always do what we consider best but have free will to change what we consider best. For example, the person above has decided that it's best for his/her family to live rather than for him/her to live.

Regardless, assuming that every last behavior we have is caused by environment is not a given, and must be proven.

I said that nobody ever made a choice they thought was worse for them at the time.

What the fuck are you saying? That smarter people make worse choices and idiots make the best choices ever?

Is that so?

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.

*sigh*

Must we keep this going? Look, even if you do go back a few pages and edit your post, the quote will still be in one of my posts, so you've already missed your chance.

A word of advice: Sharpen your mental and debating skills, and please, don't attempt to formulate such ludicrous and flimsy theories off the top of your head. Oh, and your Benjamin Franklin quote is butchered as well.

There is a certain point where you realize that the consequences outweigh the instant gratification. This 'certain point' would change based on your intelligence.

First, so what? What does it have to do with the discussion?

Second, it's simply false to say that it changes based on your intelligence. I can be very intelligent, and know perfectly the horrific consequences of a particular action, and go ahead and do it anyway.

It depends not on intelligence, but on self-restraint.

Is that so?



*sigh*

Must we keep this going? Look, even if you do go back a few pages and edit your post, the quote will still be in one of my posts, so you've already missed your chance.

A word of advice: Sharpen your mental and debating skills, and please, don't attempt to formulate such ludicrous and flimsy theories off the top of your head. Oh, and your Benjamin Franklin quote is butchered as well.

Yes it is so. It doesn't make sense when you take that one part out of the entire post.

I'm not formulating this off the top of my head, it is actually pretty simple psychology.

I wasn't quoting Benjamin Franklin. I was quoting the idea.

Who said I was unable to avoid them? The night before last, I went to bed at 10:30 PM sharp, taking the better choice (the latter was, well, what I'm doing right now).

Then again, you are the same person who insulted me for being on welfare (even though it's through no fault of my own), so would you kindly fuck off?

Obviously you are unable to avoid them, since here you are, when you shouldn't be.

And as to insulting you for being on welfare, I really don't recall. It's entirely possible as I am a very rude individual. No doubt you were whining about something at the time however.

This merely shifts the question - why must we EITHER decide OR be determined?Because the very idea of (free) decision belies determination. Because determination means that there can be no free will.

But we also need to decide AND be determined, because we can comprehend neither one without the other.

I can make a decision while acknowledging that every aspect of the decision has been predetermined.What you mean is that you can make a decision while at the same time thinking to yourself, "every aspect of this decision has been predetermined." You cannot, however, decide and not decide at the same time; you cannot act and watch yourself acting at the same time; you cannot be both knower and known, subject and object.

Yet in a certain sense that is what you must try to do. That is how you are driven by practical reason.

All determinists need claim is that the decision is DETERMINED, not that it is epiphenomenal.That makes sense from an objective perspective (think "talking about other people"), but not from the perspective of the subject. From the perspective of the subject, the epiphenomenal is the stuff of experience itself--it is as real as real gets. In other words, subjective experience necessarily puts determinism on the defensive. It is the standard of truth.

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.Yes, but again: they can either be determined by natural law, or they can be determined by a law that we legislate to ourselves.

While you may be right that being determined by natural law is freer than being completely undetermined (that is, arbitrary), we are only truly free when we obey only the law that we legislate to ourselves.

This applies not only to deciding to act, but also to deciding what reasons to act upon.I understand. But what you're missing is that if I am an ethical person, I do choose X because it's the right thing to do. It may be that I am only an ethical person (I only choose to be determined by the moral law) because of some set of natural causes resulting in this disposition--and it is almost certainly possible that certain natural causes are necessary if not sufficient to this stance.

It does not follow that upon becoming ethical I do not thereby become free, even if I did not choose my freedom.

Think of it in terms of evolution. We are descended from creatures that had no sense of ethics, and who were certainly ruled exclusively by natural law. Various natural forces may have conspired to produce other-regarding emotions as well as the capacity for abstract thought, both prerequisites for ethical subjectivity.

Indeed, on this theory many people today--who do not behave ethically--remain ruled largely by natural law. They eat when they are hungry, they fuck when they are horny, they still when they can get away with it.

But anyone who chooses to obey the Law of Reason--for whatever cause he may have chosen this path, can honestly say, "I did X because it was the right thing to do."

...I cannot doing so without citing ANOTHER basis - at least if my choice is free, and not arbitrary.Sure you can. You may need to cite another phenomenal basis for how you got there in the first place, but once you appreciate the rightness of an ethical choice, you obey because it's right.

When someone asks, "Why did you do X?" and you answer, "Because it was the right thing to do," ... are you always lying?

Socrates already figured this one out, in an important sense, when he held that no one knowingly does wrong. Kant just put a finer point on it and supplied a more rigorous philosophical defense of this basic idea.

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.You make an unnecessary assumption.

I hate dualism, but I think an illustration may help.

Imagine two distinct universes with such radically different laws of physics that we could reasonably talk about them having different laws of cause-and-effect. They both have causal laws, but they are not the same laws and they do not behave the same way.

Now imagine that in Universe A, some phenomenon causes an entity to be thrust into Universe B. It now obeys the causal laws of Universe B.

From the perspective of Universe A, is anything that it does in Universe B "determined" in the sense of Universe A? Universe A does not even have the laws to describe its movements--at times, it even seems irrational, exhibiting apparently un-lawlike behavior.

Likewise, from the perspective of an observer in Universe B the causal laws of Universe A often appear irrational--just as a rationality measured by the scales of justice sees the capricious injustices of the natural world. Indeed, from the perspective of Universe B, whatever event in Universe A caused an entity to leap into Universe B would not be regarded as a "cause" of any particular event in Universe B.

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.Which would mean you think that anyone who says, "I did it because it was the right thing to do" is necessarily lying or deceiving himself. I disagree. The only way you can claim that he is necessarily lying is to insist that determinism is true. You must be able to claim that you know he is lying.

You have already admitted that you cannot know that he is lying, because you cannot disprove the freedom of the will.

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.Because we "could" be determined, we must be determined? Non sequitur.

If our behavior doesn't have reasons, it is arbitrary and unfree. That's all I've claimed.And I agree with you.

But I claim that it is at least possible that actions have reasons that are not encompassed by natural law. You insist that we cannot have any such reasons, which is to insist that determinism is true and subjective freedom is false. But then you contradict yourself when you agree that you cannot actually know this.

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.No, there is a difference between the epistemological limits on our knowledge of ourselves, and the contradiction between knowing and being/doing.

That hardly precludes determinism - or even the assumption of determinism.You're still not paying attention. I'm not arguing against determinism or the assumption of determinism.

I am arguing that freedom of the will and determinism are incompatible, but that we cannot simply relinquish either one.

All I'm saying is that determinism, at least as I just defined it, does not negate free willSure it does. If we are determined by natural law, then we are not free to choose otherwise. We do as circumstance, genetics, and experience have programmed us to do. We cannot choose to be anything other than what we are made to be.

Justify that.I said that a person can never know another person both objectively and subjectively. This should be obvious. It's the old, "can't get in your head" problem. Maybe if I had that little portal from Being John Malkovich, but even then Craig's subjective knowledge was never identical with Malkovich's.

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.But our perception of subjective unpredictability (the fact that we cannot know what we decide before we decide) is NOT purely a matter of a necessary lack of knowledge--again you presume that the objective perspective is "correct" and the subjective is "lacking." Subjective unpredictability is part and parcel of what it means to be a subject. It cannot be false unless the subjective perspective itself is false--and we cannot know that it is.

First, so what? What does it have to do with the discussion?

Second, it's simply false to say that it changes based on your intelligence. I can be very intelligent, and know perfectly the horrific consequences of a particular action, and go ahead and do it anyway.

It depends not on intelligence, but on self-restraint.

Did you even read my example?

One person has more knowledge of a certain situation, so it changes their course of action. Simple.

Obviously you are unable to avoid them, since here you are, when you shouldn't be.

And as to insulting you for being on welfare, I really don't recall. It's entirely possible as I am a very rude individual. No doubt you were whining about something at the time however.

We could go back and forth, with me saying that I'm perfectly capable of going to bed right this instant, yet I choose not to as this is what I want to do, and you saying that it's impossible because you for some reason believe in some "other force" or some nonsense instead of just *being*... Well, I think you get my point.

As for that, no, I wasn't whining about anything, really. I was just simply stating that I was on welfare. :p

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.If you were behaving freely, you would recognize that desire being "too strong" is not a very good reason to do something, and you would change your behavior. Since you do that which you do not will, how can you be free?

AnarchyeL, I hope you will keep defending this position for me. I'm leaving.

Most of the stuff in my posts is simple psychology. If you really can't understand it at all maybe you shouldn't be arguing about it, or go take a psychology class (and actually understand the material).

AnarchyeL, I hope you will keep defending this position for me. I'm leaving.

Most of the stuff in my posts is simple psychology. If you really can't understand it at all maybe you shouldn't be arguing about it, or go take a psychology class (and actually understand the material).

Ah, the classic cop-out. "Take a class so you can understand what I'm saying!"

NS General really doesn't need more of your type, pal. We understand what you're saying perfectly, and that's why we say it's undeniably flawed.

It seems to me that you're the type who likes to think he's above everyone just because he's taken some classes that others haven't. Disraeliland is a rather infamous poster who was much the same, though his inane drivel was on economics and social issues rather than psychological ones.

Though I will say this: I respect you more for copping out than staying here and making yourself look even more inept.

AnarchyeL: I'll reply to that tomorrow afternoon.

As it stands, I have to sleep sometime.

Or maybe the desire is just really strong.This highlights the practical difference between compatiblism and incompatiblism.

The compatiblist tells himself that all he ever does anyway is obey whichever desire (or other natural drive) is strongest. Since that's all he does anyway--even when he thinks he's being "good"--the compatiblist has managed to declare this condition "free" under certain convolutes of reason.

The incompatiblist, however, reasons that if his behavior is determined by natural causes, he cannot be free. Thus, if he eats candy simply because the desire is "really strong," despite the fact that he knows this is bad for him and he prefers health in the long run to instant gratification, he cannot imagine that he is "free" when he does this. Indeed, he struggles with himself--struggles against his desires precisely because he wants to free himself from them. When he can say to himself, "I did this because it was the right thing to do," or "I did this because it is what I really will for myself, not just because it pleases me for the moment," then he feels himself to be free.

It is this aspiration to real freedom--freedom from the natural law and obedience to the law of reason--that instills feelings of guilt and shame in the person who fails to struggle with himself. He must constantly be confronted with the possibility of freedom, but he is never brave enough or disciplined enough to achieve it. He remains imprisoned in the phenomenal.

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.And that is precisely what makes you unfree.

You know what you will, you know what you should do, yet you do something else. How can you be free when you cannot do what you will?

Do you mean in a utilitarian sense, as J J C Smart has argued?He is a utilitarian and a compatiblist, but I don't know to what extent he has connected the two.

And that is precisely what makes you unfree.

You know what you will, you know what you should do, yet you do something else. How can you be free when you cannot do what you will?

And that's exactly what makes me free, because I will myself to do whatever I damn well please... So long as the circumstances are fair.

I mean, it's not like I'm just going to take all of my clothes off in the supermarket, run around screaming "SPOBE! SPOBE!", and then rub ice cream all over my ass. I'd do it if there weren't any serious repercussions, because hey, that'd be classic.

As for when circumstances aren't at play, then sure, I can will myself to do whatever... Save for sleeping in the middle of the day, because my body just won't allow it. Believe me, I've tried (I have to be really exhausted for it to work).

He is a utilitarian and a compatiblist, but I don't know to what extent he has connected the two.
Considerably. He argues that praise and blame (or, dispraise as he labels it) would still be justifiable in a deterministic world. He gives the example (http://www.jstor.org/view/00264423/di984417/98p0149x/11?frame=noframe&userID=c250200c@lancs.ac.uk/01cce4406000501b795dd&dpi=3&config=jstor) of a lazy schoolboy - one who isn't necessarily stupid. He then argues that by praising this boy, he will be influenced to perform better. Essentially, then, he posits that praise and dispraise are of merit in a utilitarian sense. Of course this says nothing of whether this (dis)praise is morally justifiable.

Note that I've gone from, in the beginning of the thread, strongly criticizing the pure determinist position.

Now I find myself attacking the purely libertarian view.

This is the nature of dialectical argument--attack whichever side seems to "need" it at the time. ;)

We could go back and forth, with me saying that I'm perfectly capable of going to bed right this instant, yet I choose not to as this is what I want to do, and you saying that it's impossible because you for some reason believe in some "other force" or some nonsense instead of just *being*... Well, I think you get my point.

Well, quite. If I'm right we'd have no choice about it anyway.

As for that, no, I wasn't whining about anything, really. I was just simply stating that I was on welfare. :p

Ah well, maybe I'd just paid some taxes. I am for national health care, so I'm not all bad.

Well, quite. If I'm right we'd have no choice about it anyway.



Ah well, maybe I'd just paid some taxes. I am for national health care, so I'm not all bad.

1: True. :p

2: Now that I think about it, it wasn't you. It was Santa Barbara... Sorry for the mix-up.

God, that guy got on my nerves.

2: Now that I think about it, it wasn't you. It was Santa Barbara... Sorry for the mix-up.

God, that guy got on my nerves.
Isn't Santa Barbara now Greater Trostia? I recall that older nick from when I was really not fond of him. :p

Isn't Santa Barbara now Greater Trostia? I recall that older nick from when I was really not fond of him. :p

I have no clue, but if it is, I'll simply shudder and cringe.

Considerably. He argues that praise and blame (or, dispraise as he labels it) would still be justifiable in a deterministic world. He gives the example of a lazy schoolboy - one who isn't necessarily stupid. He then argues that by praising this boy, he will be influenced to perform better. Essentially, then, he posits that praise and dispraise are of merit in a utilitarian sense.Yes, which is really to reduce the ethics of shame to an ethics of guilt.

My contention is that an ethics of guilt (which depends on an internalized mechanism of punishment and reward) is easily reducible to terms compatible with determinism.

An ethics of shame (which depends on an an internalized mechanism of praise and blame) cannot be reduced to terms compatible with determinism, because it depends on the ability to make judgments on the self. But if the self is determined, I cannot call myself either praiseworthy or blameworthy, because I would have done the same thing in any case. I can only look at praise and blame as external "rewards" or "punishments" for my behavior, without ever being called upon to cast judgment on myself.

I am pulled along by desire, pressed in by fear. But I need not ever feel "good" or "bad" about myself, and therefore I have no basis for a sense of duty--for a sense that I should do the right thing because it is right, not because I will get some punishment or reward for behaving rightly.

2: Now that I think about it, it wasn't you. It was Santa Barbara... Sorry for the mix-up.
God, that guy got on my nerves.

More sick is the fact that I couldn't possibly deny it. Though I do tell people not to take me seriously ever. This being the intertubes and all.

I am pulled along by desire, pressed in by fear. But I need not ever feel "good" or "bad" about myself, and therefore I have no basis for a sense of duty--for a sense that I should do the right thing because it is right, not because I will get some punishment or reward for behaving rightly.

Isn't that being an adult? People who have senses of duty or the right thing are usually trouble makers.

Is conflict or trouble making neccissarily an evil? If doing the right thing, simply b/c it is the right thing is wrong, b/c it is not nessiarily peaceful, then everything we do is about going through life withoit making waves. Is the point of life just to slip by? or should we attempt to make an impact and try to change things for good, which invaribly causes commotion and conflict. Should we attempt to better humanity, or to slide along the post modern idea that the betterment of humanity is impossible? Ralph Waldo Emerson states that the reward of a thing well done is to have done it. some times a sence of duty or of right is all that keeps us sane.

In responce to the overarching question, am i interpreting the thread correctly?
If determinism is true, then evrything including the posts written on this forum are just a complicated series of actions and reactions to our environment? in which case, an ultimate(omniscient, omnipotent) being, that could freeze time and determine exactly everything that will ever happening by prosseccing everything that has happened and seeing how that affects everything. therefor, there is no point to life other than mere existentialism, and this deep seated feeling that there is something more is just an illusion ingrained in us by circumstance and environment?

what do you think?

Isn't that being an adult? People who have senses of duty or the right thing are usually trouble makers.If by "trouble-makers" you mean a category that includes conscientious objectors, practitioners of civil disobedience, whistle-blowers, activists and the like... then yes, I would have to agree with you.

People who have a sense of duty or the right do tend to make waves in a society that respects neither.

EDIT: Lacadaemon, your name is ironic considered in light of this remark, since Sparta was most certainly a society founded on duty rather than reward. ;)

If by "trouble-makers" you mean a category that includes conscientious objectors, practitioners of civil disobedience, whistle-blowers, activists and the like... then yes, I would have to agree with you.

People who have a sense of duty or the right do tend to make waves in a society that respects neither.

EDIT: Lacadaemon, your name is ironic considered in light of this remark, since Sparta was most certainly a society founded on duty rather than reward. ;)

Well actually I wanted Lacedaemon, but it was taken at that time. So I made my own name up; not having a sense of duty.

I disagree that sparta was a society founded on duty. I think it was founded more on fear and terror, thus leading to the inevitable oliganthropia. (Which interestingly enough is happening in the US, but for different reasons).

But I digress. Most people just want to be left alone: whistle blowers, civil disobedience, things like that are usually a reaction to those who have imagined a 'better world' in the first place. Frankly, as I said, they are trouble makers. You can argue that they are making things 'better' but it's all a matter of opinion anyway since it all comes down to normative values (is that still the buzz word) in any case.

(And life is deterministic. You can't change the past, and one day the future will be the past, so it's a waste of time worrying about it).

I disagree that sparta was a society founded on duty. I think it was founded more on fear and terror, thus leading to the inevitable oliganthropia.Nevertheless, it is widely agreed that Sparta was THE quintessential shame culture, along with Rome, the American Confederacy, and the Axis powers of World War II.

But I digress. Most people just want to be left alone: whistle blowers, civil disobedience, things like that are usually a reaction to those who have imagined a 'better world' in the first place. Frankly, as I said, they are trouble makers. You can argue that they are making things 'better' but it's all a matter of opinion anyway since it all comes down to normative values (is that still the buzz word) in any case.You are correct, at least to a point. My position as an incompatiblist is definitely bound up with my progressive, critical politics.

Determinism/compatiblism is well-suited to a conservative ideology.

You are correct, at least to a point. My position as an incompatiblist is definitely bound up with my progressive, critical politics.

Determinism/compatiblism is well-suited to a conservative ideology.

And that's my point. Why shake a shitty stick? Is it worth it? Do you really have a plan for a better world, or is it just an excuse?

I can think of lots of things that would make the world more pleasant, and almost none of them involve philosophy.

And that's my point. Why shake a shitty stick?If you shake it right, the shit flies off in the other direction. :)

Is it worth it?Fighting for justice? Yes, I think so. Do you really have a plan for a better world, or is it just an excuse?An excuse for what? I don't follow. I cannot think of anything for which I need to be excused--well, at least not anything that would have much to do with working for a better world.

I can think of lots of things that would make the world more pleasant, and almost none of them involve philosophy.That's both true and false, for me. I am concerned with material improvements to the world, but I am also concerned with material improvements that actually tend to free people rather than providing them with the mere illusion of freedom (e.g. consumer choice). To identify and state the case for such freedom does require philosophy.

But then again, it requires the sort of negative dialectics that is the ontology of a fractured world. When we get things right, we will have dispensed with philosophy as we know it.

If you shake it right, the shit flies off in the other direction. :)

Fighting for justice? Yes, I think so. An excuse for what? I don't follow. I cannot think of anything for which I need to be excused--well, at least not anything that would have much to do with working for a better world.

That's both true and false, for me. I am concerned with material improvements to the world, but I am also concerned with material improvements that actually tend to free people rather than providing them with the mere illusion of freedom (e.g. consumer choice). To identify and state the case for such freedom does require philosophy.

But then again, it requires the sort of negative dialectics that is the ontology of a fractured world. When we get things right, we will have dispensed with philosophy as we know it.

So you are essentially an elitist then?

So you are essentially an elitist then?Quite the contrary.

And I see no reason to play THAT little game.

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 have a number of choices in how we respond to our environment, therefore we have free will. naturally it is limited but then there is no conceivable way in which options could not be limited.

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.




taken the blame for something instead of a friend.


hell theres people that has acctually gone to jail instead of others.


there are some things that while they are better for us are just morally wrong.
i'v gotten too much change back from the local supermarket. could have taken it and noone would have known. i handed it back, not because i thought my concience was going to haunt me for an extra buck or 2 but because it was the right thing to do.

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.
Nothing says that you have to enslave your morality to your current situation. As a human being, you possess the capacity to develop moral criteria for determining if a particular action is right or wrong.
Not that very many people are willing to do so, but they [i]could[i] choose to do so out of their own freewill.

Quantum Mechanics states that observation dictates reality, not reality dictating observation. Thus determinism can not be true.

The essence of thought is freewill in itself.

Because the very idea of (free) decision belies determination. Because determination means that there can be no free will.

The one sort of determination that no one claims is unfree is SELF-determination.

Because it does not necessarily preclude our desires and judgments being sovereign, determinism permits this.

What you mean is that you can make a decision while at the same time thinking to yourself, "every aspect of this decision has been predetermined." You cannot, however, decide and not decide at the same time; you cannot act and watch yourself acting at the same time; you cannot be both knower and known, subject and object.

No, but none of this is necessary to accept the determined nature of a decision.

Determinism does not suggest that the individual can somehow "not decide" and expect her decision to magically ensue. Indeed, it is only THROUGH the decision-making process that the decision is determined in the first place.

Yes, but again: they can either be determined by natural law, or they can be determined by a law that we legislate to ourselves.

I meant "determined" only in the first sense.

How do we decide what law to legislate to ourselves, if not through some predetermined basis or arbitrary randomness?

How do we decide to obey it?

I understand. But what you're missing is that if I am an ethical person, I do choose X because it's the right thing to do.

No, I grant this.

I merely maintain that both the reason you care about "right" enough to act on it and the reason you come to the conclusion that certain behaviors are "right" is bound up in natural law - at least if we can meaningfully refer to them as "free."

You may do it because it's the right thing to do - but only in the sense that the hungry person eats because she's hungry. As the hungry person's action is based on hunger, so is your action based on whatever basis you have for performing right acts - avoidance of shame, prioritization of reason, compassion, or whatever.

Think of it in terms of evolution. We are descended from creatures that had no sense of ethics, and who were certainly ruled exclusively by natural law.

Now you seem to be suggesting, in contravention of your earlier position, that we can somehow determine on an objective level whether or not behavior is determined by natural law.

But anyone who chooses to obey the Law of Reason--for whatever cause he may have chosen this path, can honestly say, "I did X because it was the right thing to do."

Perhaps, but he cannot add "and as such I am free of phenomenal causes."

Sure you can. You may need to cite another phenomenal basis for how you got there in the first place, but once you appreciate the rightness of an ethical choice, you obey because it's right.

"Once you appreciate the role food plays in satisfying hunger, you eat it because it relieves hunger."

What's the difference?

When someone asks, "Why did you do X?" and you answer, "Because it was the right thing to do," ... are you always lying?

Of course not.

But the distinction between doing something because it is right and doing something because it (say) makes me rich and powerful is not a matter of phenomenal/non-phenomenal bases, but merely of different phenomenal bases.

From the perspective of Universe A, is anything that it does in Universe B "determined" in the sense of Universe A? Universe A does not even have the laws to describe its movements--at times, it even seems irrational, exhibiting apparently un-lawlike behavior.

Likewise, from the perspective of an observer in Universe B the causal laws of Universe A often appear irrational--just as a rationality measured by the scales of justice sees the capricious injustices of the natural world. Indeed, from the perspective of Universe B, whatever event in Universe A caused an entity to leap into Universe B would not be regarded as a "cause" of any particular event in Universe B.

The problem is not so much particular causal laws as the nature of causation itself.

A cause of an action must be the cause before the action as well as afterward... and an action without causes is almost definitionally arbitrary.

Which would mean you think that anyone who says, "I did it because it was the right thing to do" is necessarily lying or deceiving himself.

No - that's a perfectly legitimate reason for an action.

He must merely ALSO admit that his preference to act according to what is right is determined.

The only way you can claim that he is necessarily lying is to insist that determinism is true. You must be able to claim that you know he is lying.

You have already admitted that you cannot know that he is lying, because you cannot disprove the freedom of the will.

No.

If someone were to say "my choice was based on reasons and undetermined", I would say that he were wrong - not because I know that determinism is true, but because the only way his choice could have been based on reasons is if it were determined, and the only way his choice could have been undetermined is if it were arbitrary, and unfree.

Because we "could" be determined, we must be determined? Non sequitur.

No - because if we offer reasons for our actions, we are in effect stating that they were determined.

We may be wrong about our actions having reasons. We may, in fact, be undetermined and unfree. But insofar as we accept that our actions have reasons, we must accept that they are determined.

Any system of determining actions must either end in arbitrariness or in a basis that precedes the will - because anything that lacks a basis is arbitrary.

And I agree with you.

But I claim that it is at least possible that actions have reasons that are not encompassed by natural law. You insist that we cannot have any such reasons, which is to insist that determinism is true

Hardly.

It is merely to insist that if we actually have reasons, then we must have some basis for determining our actions - and that basis, if it too is to have reasons behind it, must be founded in something else, and so on.

This does not at all presuppose determinism.

No, there is a difference between the epistemological limits on our knowledge of ourselves, and the contradiction between knowing and being/doing.

Again, I see the difference. I don't see the CONTRADICTION contained in their implications that you have been arguing for - that the free will we assume in subjectively making decisions necessarily contradicts with the determinism that seems to exist (even though we cannot know it exists) from the objective perspective.

You're still not paying attention. I'm not arguing against determinism or the assumption of determinism.

No, I'm aware of that.

But you are certainly arguing that they are INCOMPATIBLE. And that is the contention I reject.

Sure it does. If we are determined by natural law, then we are not free to choose otherwise.

Only in the sense that we ACTUALLY choose a certain option, and not others. This is an "unfreedom" implied by choice itself.

We are capable of choosing otherwise - under the simple condition that we actually preferred to do so.

We do as circumstance, genetics, and experience have programmed us to do.

Indeed - but this is not incompatible with freedom as long as the "programming" operates through our will and not against it.

We cannot choose to be anything other than what we are made to be.

We can defy past behaviors and we can overcome preferences that we do not like - all determinism requires is that the basis for making these decisions be, ultimately, determined.

I said that a person can never know another person both objectively and subjectively. This should be obvious. It's the old, "can't get in your head" problem.

Can't a person imagine herself in another person's place to predict the second person's actions?

Doesn't objective knowledge of another person's behavior help in such an attempt?

But our perception of subjective unpredictability (the fact that we cannot know what we decide before we decide) is NOT purely a matter of a necessary lack of knowledge--again you presume that the objective perspective is "correct" and the subjective is "lacking." Subjective unpredictability is part and parcel of what it means to be a subject. It cannot be false unless the subjective perspective itself is false--and we cannot know that it is.

You misunderstand. I did not mean that the subjective unpredictability is a falsity that would be recognized as such under conditions of full knowledge. I meant that subjective unpredictability could be a TRUTH whose basis is not indeterminism, but rather a necessary lack of knowledge.

If you were behaving freely, you would recognize that desire being "too strong" is not a very good reason to do something, and you would change your behavior. Since you do that which you do not will, how can you be free?

I'm actually not so inclined to disagree with you here, though I would have a year or so ago.

There is a meaningful difference between what might be called a "strong-willed" and a "weak-willed" person in terms of freedom - I'd say it has to do with the capability to act based on a rational ordering of preferences rather than mere whim. The person who acts based on whim, in a certain sense, does NOT do what she wants - while she wants to satisfy a given desire, she ALSO wants other things, and lacks the willpower to restrain her actions in accordance with those wants.

But the choices of both are still determined.

he prefers health in the long run to instant gratification

And this "preference" is either the arbitrary result of random phenomena, or it is ultimately determined by natural causes, too.

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.

You are still able to control your actions, however, those actions are extremely limited. Free will exists, but it is extremely limited.

Nietzche ya'll.

We are all in the slave morality meaning that we can never have free will.

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.

Do you predict an endless dialectic, forever approaching the truth, never reaching it?

The essence of thought is freewill in itself.

No, the essence of thought is electrical firings in the brain.

Are you free to think, or do you think by necessity?

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.

Here is an experiment for you.

Go to the kitchen makeyour self two differant sand whiches.
Chosse which one you want to eat, then eat the othere one.

Choice = Free Will.
Will = The power of control you have over your mind.
Free = The idea of being able to do as you will.
Free will = The power of choice of actions.

Refutetations?

Refutetations?

Let's say that your mind is controlled by a machine of some sort.

The machine makes your body perform the necessary action - and, correlating with this command, it makes your mind simulate the decision-making process and act of volition that otherwise would have led to the action.

Your decision is not only utterly under the control of the machine, but also has no necessary connection to the action you perform. To best fool you, the two are actually made to correlate - but there is no causal relation between your decision and your action.

Are you free? By your own definition - "the power of choice of actions" - you are not, but it may still seem as if you were. The perception of choice embodied in the example you gave would still hold, but it would not correspond to actual free will.

So, no - your argument no more proves free will than the OP's disproves it.

Here is an experiment for you.

Go to the kitchen makeyour self two differant sand whiches.
Chosse which one you want to eat, then eat the othere one.

Not possible.

Choice = Free Will.

Choice does not = Free will. Choice motivated by self-created values = Free will.

If at any time a person is not an originator of his or her values, then the decision will not be his or hers, but that decision which the situation demanded.

Will = The power of control you have over your mind.

This makes Free Will a tautology. No one has "The power of control you have over your mind" who does not also have free will. Unfree will, something that is plainly present, is outlawed by your definition.

Free will = The power of choice of actions.

This is not far off, although I don't know how you got here from your premises.

The key is to distinguish between the power to decide and the ultimate power of decision.

Choice motivated by self-created values = Free will.

What's the significance of the base values being self-created?

The one sort of determination that no one claims is unfree is SELF-determination.

Because it does not necessarily preclude our desires and judgments being sovereign, determinism permits this.No, our desires and judgments cannot be "sovereign" if they are, in turn, ruled by determined natural causes.

This would be like calling a trial judge "sovereign" when he applies a law that was given to him by the real Sovereign. He is, at least in theory, NOT free to do as he wills, because he must do as he has been determined to do. While he remains the individual who renders a judgment, the judgment is not, in theory at least, "his."

Similarly, it is meaningless to claim that I am "self-determined" if I have no non-determined self to do the determining. You want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to maintain that every word that I type is determined by a long chain of causes stretching back to the beginning of time, yet because at some point those causes become "internal" rather than "external" to me, I am in some meaningful sense "free."

But this cannot be the case, because if determinism is true and I am just another phenomenon caught in a chain of causation, then there is nothing "special" about "internal" causes. They are, in every sense, identical to external causes. It is absurd to draw any meaningful distinction between the two.

No, but none of this is necessary to accept the determined nature of a decision.

Determinism does not suggest that the individual can somehow "not decide" and expect her decision to magically ensue. Indeed, it is only THROUGH the decision-making process that the decision is determined in the first place.Yes, but you're still missing the point.

When I actually decide something, accepting the assumption that my decision is determined and there is nothing I can do to change it does nothing to help me actually decide. Indeed, in order to make a decision that is NOT merely random, I need to assume that I have a choice in the matter.

Faced with a decision, does thinking, "Whatever I do is determined" absolve me from making a decision? No, and you clearly agree with this. When I decide, on what basis am I going to decide? Does determinism tell me on what basis to decide? No. It tells me that whatever I decide, it will have been due to natural causes, but it does not give me any advice on how I should decide.

Ultimately, even if I "believe" I am determined, I must face my decision as if I were free. I do not know how I will decide before I decide. From my subjective perspective, that choice has not been made, and it needs to be made. From my subjective perspective, I am IN FACT free to choose. And no matter how firmly I believe that I do not "really" objectively have a choice, the fact of the matter is that I do have a choice. I cannot avoid making a choice. And when I choose, I choose as if I were free.

I meant "determined" only in the first sense.I know. And that is where your reasoning is flawed.

Let us review.

1) "To choose freely is NOT to choose randomly." Here we agree.
2) "To choose non-randomly is to choose according to a determination of natural law." Here is where you have become confused.

The fact of the matter is that "not random" is not equivalent to "naturally determined." Certainly not logically so, and if you want to claim that the only non-random phenomena are naturally determined, as opposed to rationally determined, then you must demonstrate that it is not possible that there are rational determinations that are not natural determinations.

In other words, in order to prove your case you must prove that determinism is necessarily true--because if any doubt remains, then it is at least possible that something can be non-random but also non-natural. Understand?

How do we decide what law to legislate to ourselves, if not through some predetermined basis or arbitrary randomness?The key is that the basis for the moral law is knowable a priori. It does not depend on the contingent determinations of this universe.

How do we decide to obey it?Rationally, we recognize that if we are free to choose (and we cannot avoid the subjective perception of choice), then we are morally responsible for our choices. That responsibility means that we have an obligation to choose rightly--indeed, if we do not choose rightly then we cannot affirm that we are free. In this way, our most basic sense of dignity as a rational creature depends on our commitment to do right. Arguably, anyone who can even barely grasp the significance of that dignity should want to do right in order to affirm it.

On a baser level, I have already argued that the emotional analogue is the sense of shame. But even if shame gets us to the point of wanting to behave as if we are free, once we make that decision we determine our actions by the a priori moral law rather than a posteriori natural laws.

Now you seem to be suggesting, in contravention of your earlier position, that we can somehow determine on an objective level whether or not behavior is determined by natural law.No.

It is very significant for my argument that we can never know--we can never objectively rule out the possibility of freedom. However, it is equally significant that objective reason tends to lead us in that direction, even as subjective (moral) reason inevitably leads us to believe in free will--which we can nevertheless never actually prove.

This is the heart of the paradox. We are stuck with both of them.

"Once you appreciate the role food plays in satisfying hunger, you eat it because it relieves hunger."

What's the difference?The principal difference is that I eat because it relieves hunger long before I "appreciate" the role that food plays. Just like any other animal.

But the distinction between doing something because it is right and doing something because it (say) makes me rich and powerful is not a matter of phenomenal/non-phenomenal bases, but merely of different phenomenal bases.No. Only when I do something because it is right can I affirm that I am free from natural causation. Or at least, if I am determined to behave as if I am free from natural causation, the way to do that is by obeying the moral law, by taking responsibility for my actions.

Doing the right thing is the very essence of taking responsibility. When I have done something wrong and I decide to confess--to do the right thing--what do we say? That I am taking responsibility. I am saying, "Yes, that was my choice. I was responsible for it." When I approach a decision that has not yet occurred, similarly, by choosing to do the right thing I say, "Yes, this is my decision. I take responsibility for it. I have no excuse if I do not behave rightly, because it is my decision to make."

A cause of an action must be the cause before the action as well as afterward... and an action without causes is almost definitionally arbitrary.Yes, but in order for your argument to work you need to claim that the only causes are natural causes. And to make that case you need to prove that determinism is true.

I am only maintaining that you cannot deny the possibility of non-natural causes--which would still be causes, and would still satisfy the non-randomness criterion.

If someone were to say "my choice was based on reasons and undetermined", I would say that he were wrong - not because I know that determinism is true, but because the only way his choice could have been based on reasons is if it were determined, and the only way his choice could have been undetermined is if it were arbitrary, and unfree.Again, only by asserting that the only "reasons" are natural reasons.

And so we come back, as always, to the epistemological problem. You cannot prove that the only causes, the only reasons, are natural causes/reasons.

No - because if we offer reasons for our actions, we are in effect stating that they were determined.Yes, but not that they are determined by natural laws.

It is merely to insist that if we actually have reasons, then we must have some basis for determining our actions - and that basis, if it too is to have reasons behind it, must be founded in something else, and so on.

This does not at all presuppose determinism.It does if it insists those reasons MUST be natural reasons, because it presupposes (for no particular reason) that there cannot be any other kind.

Again, I see the difference. I don't see the CONTRADICTION contained in their implications that you have been arguing for - that the free will we assume in subjectively making decisions necessarily contradicts with the determinism that seems to exist (even though we cannot know it exists) from the objective perspective.Because the free will that we assume in subjectively making decision takes as its basic premise that we have a choice. It assumes that we can choose to obey the moral law rather than natural law.

It is precisely because the moral law is true a priori that it often conflicts with the contingencies of natural law. The "should" of the moral law is right no matter what the causal chains of this world. So unless you can demonstrate that the causal chains of this world necessarily lead us to choose rightly--which would be absurd, unless you want to claim that everything human beings have done EVER is right--then there is a necessary contradiction between the moral law and the natural law.

There is a contradiction between behaving freely and being determined.

We are capable of choosing otherwise - under the simple condition that we actually preferred to do so.But in order to take responsibility for our actions, we need to be able to say that we are capable of choosing otherwise whether we prefer to or not. To take responsibility for our actions we need to be able to describe a difference between duty and inclination. Otherwise, how can we be responsible? We were destined to follow our preference regardless. There was nothing we could have done, as moral agents, to change that fact--indeed, our moral agency is only as good as natural causes have determined it to be.

If we cannot assert an ability to defy the natural law, then we cannot claim responsibility for our actions. Yet we are bound to assert responsibility for our actions, because nothing can tell us how we are going to decide until we actually do it--we can never know that we are not free.

And as long as it is possible that we are free, we must endeavor to behave as if we are.

Can't a person imagine herself in another person's place to predict the second person's actions?Sure. But that doesn't mean I actually know what it's like to be you the same way that you know what it's like to be you. I can't possibly.

Doesn't objective knowledge of another person's behavior help in such an attempt?Surely. But this is the nature of the paradox.

I did not mean that the subjective unpredictability is a falsity that would be recognized as such under conditions of full knowledge. I meant that subjective unpredictability could be a TRUTH whose basis is not indeterminism, but rather a necessary lack of knowledge.It surely is a necessary lack of knowledge, because we can never know what we will decide before we decide it--and if we did, we would be free to decide otherwise.

What's the significance of the base values being self-created?

Base values are carnal.
Carnal can be overcome with higher order thinking.
Higher thought governs free will.
Base values by the transitive property can be controlled by free will.

Most Carnal

Space
Sex
Food

High thought imbued with carnal

Pride
Lust
Greed
Sloth
Envy
Gluttony
Wrath
(and I don't feel like saying the rest..)

Can all be overcome individually or as a whole by free will.

Do you predict an endless dialectic, forever approaching the truth, never reaching it?To be honest, I'm not sure.

On the one hand, I am inclined to follow Kant's argument that the dialectic results from an inherent contradiction in how the human mind has access to the world. We have both subjective and objective knowledge, we cannot disclaim either, and on the question of the freedom of the will they lead us to contradictory conclusions--yet conclusions that we cannot actually prove either way. Thus, we are left in a paradoxical state of knowledge with respect to the will.

On the other hand, critical theory suggests that our entire mode of knowing the world--the subjective/objective split--is bound up in our present material relation to the world, which holds out the hope that we might, in a redeemed material relation, be able to synthesize the two in such a way that the problem of free will would be resolved. We cannot imagine what this way of looking at the world would be, even if we might catch the occasional glimmer, or we might learn about other cultures that appear to perceive the world differently--perhaps in ways such that the freedom/determinism paradox dissolves.

In either case, I am committed to the ideal of a redeemed material relation to the world. So I suppose, some day, I hope that human beings will find out what that way of being in the world looks like.

Perhaps, as Adorno puts it, "dialectics is the ontology of the false condition."

No, our desires and judgments cannot be "sovereign" if they are, in turn, ruled by determined natural causes.

This would be like calling a trial judge "sovereign" when he applies a law that was given to him by the real Sovereign. He is, at least in theory, NOT free to do as he wills, because he must do as he has been determined to do. While he remains the individual who renders a judgment, the judgment is not, in theory at least, "his."

The judge here is constrained by the law because the law is not his creation. It can contrast with his desires.

The decisions of a determined will necessarily cannot be other than that which the will wills.

Similarly, it is meaningless to claim that I am "self-determined" if I have no non-determined self to do the determining. You want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to maintain that every word that I type is determined by a long chain of causes stretching back to the beginning of time, yet because at some point those causes become "internal" rather than "external" to me, I am in some meaningful sense "free."

But this cannot be the case, because if determinism is true and I am just another phenomenon caught in a chain of causation, then there is nothing "special" about "internal" causes. They are, in every sense, identical to external causes. It is absurd to draw any meaningful distinction between the two.

The "meaningful distinction" is contained in what is meant by "internal causes." They are causes that are internal to the process of decision-making: indeed, they are the content of the process of decision-making.

This differs essentially from causes that are NOT part of the process of decision-making - and these causes can impede freedom.

The distinction is between a person whose decisions actually determine his or her actions and a person whose decisions are either epiphenomena or totally irrelevant. This is very much a meaningful distinction, and one highly relevant to freedom. If my decisions do not cause my actions, I am not free; if they do, then at the very least I have some degree of sovereignty - I get what I want, and not because someone gave it to me, but because I chose it for myself.

Yes, but you're still missing the point.

When I actually decide something, accepting the assumption that my decision is determined and there is nothing I can do to change it does nothing to help me actually decide. Indeed, in order to make a decision that is NOT merely random, I need to assume that I have a choice in the matter.

And you do.

The problem is that you are assuming that the choice process and the deterministic process are somehow independent. They are not. They are the same.

What we will choose is pre-determined, yes - but not in contravention of our choice process. Indeed, the determinism is BASED on the nature of our choice process - what we will choose is determined by the criteria we use for choice.

To actually choose, then, is not to reject determinism. It is to cooperate with it.

2) "To choose non-randomly is to choose according to a determination of natural law." Here is where you have become confused.

To choose deterministically, more broadly - to choose as part of a string of causes that extend until the beginning of time.

The fact of the matter is that "not random" is not equivalent to "naturally determined."

That would depend on what you mean by "natural."

Certainly not logically so,

Yes, logically so - at least in the sense I specify above.

The problem is that you are caught up too much in the subjective/objective distinction, and are looking at what I'm saying in terms of that.

Your argument, as I understand it, has been more or less that in order to make a necessary equivalence between subjective reasons and objective causes ("natural law") I must assume determinism. This is true, but I have not argued that such an equivalence is necessary.

I am arguing something crucially different - that even if we look at decision-making in terms of subjective reasons, we STILL must see free decision-making as determined. (Once we have done so, of course, there is no longer any point to preserving the dialectic. Objective and subjective coincide, at least on this subject, and as such we have good reason to believe that objective causes correspond to subjective reasons. But this is an implication of the argument, not a premise.)

However, it is equally significant that objective reason tends to lead us in that direction,

If determined behavior is behavior in accordance with natural law, free behavior is behavior in accordance with the ethical law, the two are incompatible, and on the objective level determinism is assumed, how can you cite (objectively) specific behaviors in animals as indicative of an ethical law beyond the natural law?

The principal difference is that I eat because it relieves hunger long before I "appreciate" the role that food plays. Just like any other animal.

So the difference is between "I eat food because I'm hungry" and "I eat food because it's good for me"?

But this is a superficial distinction, because it just begs the next question: why is doing something "because it's good for me" somehow non-phenomenal while doing something "because I'm hungry" is?

Ultimately I guess I fail to see how it is possible to act "because it is right" alone - or perhaps, more precisely, I fail to see how the conclusion could be reached that something is "right" in the sense you're using it (something that I must regard as binding) without first having some sort of reason upon which to base its rightness.

No. Only when I do something because it is right can I affirm that I am free from natural causation. Or at least, if I am determined to behave as if I am free from natural causation, the way to do that is by obeying the moral law, by taking responsibility for my actions.

But you are not answering the question.

It's true that if I regard myself as responsible for my actions, I must recognize also that obligations actually oblige me. But how does "doing something because it is right" transcend the phenomenal causation you claim is behind "doing something because I am hungry"? Don't both depend, ultimately, on a fact about our desires? How can I move from recognition of a fact (a priori or a posteriori) to action based upon it without desiring some end towards which I can incorporate knowledge of the fact?

Again, only by asserting that the only "reasons" are natural reasons.

No. Only by asserting the necessarily causal nature of reasons.

Forget "natural" for a moment. How do I make a decision between two choices non-arbitrarily? Only by citing reasons. How do I choose which reasons to prioritize non-arbitrarily? Only by citing reasons. And so we move backward to a base set of reasons upon which my other choices are based. And what's the foundation of THOSE reasons? It really doesn't matter, because selected randomly or by determinism, all of my non-arbitrary choices can be predicted from them.

Because the free will that we assume in subjectively making decision takes as its basic premise that we have a choice. It assumes that we can choose to obey the moral law rather than natural law.

Yes, but again, the "can" here need not be the "can" of the Incompatibilist sense - that there actually is a chance of it happening. It need merely mean that I CAN choose it IF I choose to choose it - as I do not, because I prefer not to.

So unless you can demonstrate that the causal chains of this world necessarily lead us to choose rightly--which would be absurd, unless you want to claim that everything human beings have done EVER is right--then there is a necessary contradiction between the moral law and the natural law.

Of course there is.

There is a contradiction between behaving freely and being determined.

That does not follow.

But in order to take responsibility for our actions, we need to be able to say that we are capable of choosing otherwise whether we prefer to or not. To take responsibility for our actions we need to be able to describe a difference between duty and inclination. Otherwise, how can we be responsible? We were destined to follow our preference regardless. There was nothing we could have done, as moral agents, to change that fact--indeed, our moral agency is only as good as natural causes have determined it to be.

When you say that a person is responsible for her crimes, what's the significance? Merely that SOMETHING ABOUT THE PERSON - rather than some interfering circumstance - caused them.

What else are we pointing to? Why else does responsibility for crimes matter, except as an indicator of the moral character of a person - which is certainly something that can be retained under determinism?

If we cannot assert an ability to defy the natural law,

To defy determinism would simply be to defy our own choice. That is impossible whatever the actual causes of our decisions.

The judge here is constrained by the law because the law is not his creation. It can contrast with his desires.It was an analogy. For the purposes of the analogy, I was taking the judge's will to be the expression of his "desire" in the sense that the human will, if determined, expresses a "desire" that does not, in fact, originate in a free self.

The "meaningful distinction" is contained in what is meant by "internal causes." They are causes that are internal to the process of decision-making: indeed, they are the content of the process of decision-making.Yes, but what is the ontological distinction between the content of decision-making and the "exterior" content of the material world? The line is essentially arbitrary, if we take determinism for granted.

This differs essentially from causes that are NOT part of the process of decision-making - and these causes can impede freedom.No, they don't differ essentially from external causes. They differ according to "location," but not in essence--they are of the same stuff, namely natural causation.

I get what I want, and not because someone gave it to me, but because I chose it for myself.But as you are so fond of pointing out, according to determinism I only "want" it because some external process resulted in my wanting it. So I get what I did not choose for myself through a process over which I have no control.

What we will choose is pre-determined, yes - but not in contravention of our choice process.You're speaking in tautologies. They sound nice, but they don't say anything.

The problem is that you are caught up too much in the subjective/objective distinction, and are looking at what I'm saying in terms of that.How else can I look at it? I am a subjective creature with access to an objective world. I cannot be merely one or the other.

Your argument, as I understand it, has been more or less that in order to make a necessary equivalence between subjective reasons and objective causes ("natural law") I must assume determinism. This is true, but I have not argued that such an equivalence is necessary.You have, even if you have not realized it.

You have argued that my subjective reasons--the reasons for which I make a decision--are simply part of a natural causal chain. If this is not to state an equivalence between subjective and objective reasons, then what could it possibly be?

I am arguing something crucially different - that even if we look at decision-making in terms of subjective reasons, we STILL must see free decision-making as determined.No, you're shifting your argument now.

What you have been arguing is that in order to be free, decisions cannot be random. They must have reasons. But to have reasons is only to be determined by natural law if those reasons are themselves part and parcel of natural law.

The only reason to assume that the reasons for a decision are necessarily natural reasons is to take determinism (which insists that all causes are natural causes) for granted. But then you beg the question, don't you?

If determined behavior is behavior in accordance with natural law, free behavior is behavior in accordance with the ethical law, the two are incompatible, and on the objective level determinism is assumed, how can you cite (objectively) specific behaviors in animals as indicative of an ethical law beyond the natural law?I cannot prove that they are, any more than I can prove that the behaviors of other human beings that appear to follow a moral cause rather than a natural cause actually do. But I suppose that other people do because I recognize in them a moral subjectivity that is similar to the moral subjectivity that I cannot deny--no matter how hard I try--in my own person.

Similarly, I may believe I recognize some form of moral objectivity in animals. But it is a matter that is beyond proof, largely because I can't see the world through their eyes anymore than I can see it through yours.

So the difference is between "I eat food because I'm hungry" and "I eat food because it's good for me"?Something like that, yes.

But this is a superficial distinction, because it just begs the next question: why is doing something "because it's good for me" somehow non-phenomenal while doing something "because I'm hungry" is?Because the former asserts a moral cause, while the latter asserts a natural cause.

I can never know that the real reason I choose something is the moral cause that I assert, but I can also never know that I choose things only as a result of natural causes--because I cannot demonstrate the truth or falsity of determinism. It all comes back to the epistemological question.

Ultimately I guess I fail to see how it is possible to act "because it is right" alone - or perhaps, more precisely, I fail to see how the conclusion could be reached that something is "right" in the sense you're using it (something that I must regard as binding) without first having some sort of reason upon which to base its rightness.

You can reach a moral understanding of "rightness" through the use of your subjective (practical) reason, and it is my contention that you can find criterion of "rightness" that hold a priori for all rational creatures.

Because these reasons hold a priori you don't need a "base" for their rightness.

But how does "doing something because it is right" transcend the phenomenal causation you claim is behind "doing something because I am hungry"? Don't both depend, ultimately, on a fact about our desires?No. Because the moral law exists a priori, it is right whether I want to obey it or not. And I am obliged to do the right thing whether I want to or not. That is the nature of "obligation"--it imposes on us, it does not arise from within us.

Your problem, as I see it, is with actually doing the right thing. You want to know, "But what natural desire leads me to want to do the right thing?"

But here you are begging the question, because you presume that I will only do the right thing if I want to and NOT because I am obliged to.

But the problem is that you can never know that. Since you cannot prove the truth of determinism, is is possible that people can do things that we do not want to do. We may do things out of obligation rather than desire.

It is only logically necessary to trace our motivation to a natural cause if we have already presumed that all causes are natural--that is, if we have already decided that determinism is true.

How can I move from recognition of a fact (a priori or a posteriori) to action based upon it without desiring some end towards which I can incorporate knowledge of the fact?Because the "fact" you recognize has the nature of an obligation: it demands an action, your desires notwithstanding.

Forget "natural" for a moment. How do I make a decision between two choices non-arbitrarily? Only by citing reasons. How do I choose which reasons to prioritize non-arbitrarily? Only by citing reasons. And so we move backward to a base set of reasons upon which my other choices are based. And what's the foundation of THOSE reasons? It really doesn't matter, because selected randomly or by determinism, all of my non-arbitrary choices can be predicted from them.You are presuming without reason that the logic of the moral law comports with the unidirectional cause-effect logic of the natural law.

The reality is that even as I discover a moral law a priori, this serves only as a base for what has been called the "imaginary domain," or the "kingdom of ends" in which moral agents participate in (collectively) creating and shaping the moral law. Deliberation, in this sense, takes on its true form--it is not merely a process of "adding and subtracting" (as Hobbes would have it) to move from A to B to C to a decision in a perfectly mechanical, predictable manner.

Rather, the moral law that we can know a priori, to borrow an analogy used earlier, is somewhat closer to the basic rules of chess--it tells us how we can move in the moral world, but it does not dictate every move. But of course, this does not mean that any one of our moves is "arbitrary"--although each game of chess may be unique, and no move is scripted, players certainly move intentionally and non-arbitrarily. Given the starting conditions and the rules, you cannot predict the outcome.

A better analogy might be the basic rules for a programming language. Given a particular problem for which we want to write a program, we can only use these rules--but we may also use them more or less creatively.

It is the possibility for rule-based creativity that we find in the moral law, the law of action, the law of a rational human world. We create this world... which is precisely the reason that it is so fragile.

It is possible for morality to die out of the world--especially if people become so intent on treating themselves as mere objects that we forget the dignity of our own freedom, and the respect that it deserves.

It need merely mean that I CAN choose it IF I choose to choose it - as I do not, because I prefer not to.Nonsense.

When you say that a person is responsible for her crimes, what's the significance? Merely that SOMETHING ABOUT THE PERSON - rather than some interfering circumstance - caused them.No. If she is entirely determined, there is no "person" in a moral sense. There may be an active creature whose behavior we can modify (or not) through punishment or treatment, but there is no "person" who chose to do wrong.

Indeed, for this very reason advocates of compatiblism do away with the idea of retribution. They maintain that the only purposes for punishment are incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation... because there is no free person who "deserves" to be punished.

Incompatiblists such as myself maintain that sometimes people do deserve punishment. Indeed, we regard it as a matter of respect towards the criminal--acknowledgment that the criminal is more than a psychological profile and actually has a choice. For that matter, a rational moral agent should desire punishment for this very reason.

Soheran:

To reiterate something that may get lost in the longer post...

If you are arguing that by citing moral reasons for our actions we must necessarily agree that we are "determined" by them, then I am willing to let the argument rest at that point--although I would argue that the logic of moral reason is such that it allows considerably more play than natural causation.

In this case, you are not sticking to determinism--at least not to any form of determinism that has ever formally gone by the name--since you allow that people might (we can never know) reach a decision for purely moral reasons. It is possible that we are not simply the playthings of natural forces.

On the other hand, if you are arguing that by citing moral reasons for our actions we must necessarily agree that we are determined by them, AND we must necessarily trace our moral reasons back to some original natural cause(s), then you have to admit that you are taking determinism--which has always meant determination by natural causes--for granted.

And in that case you violate the epistemological position that you claim to accept, viz. that we cannot know the truth or untruth of determinism objectively.

If u toss a coin theres a 50% change it will be tails up. but once the coin is tossed and have landed theres was a 100% chance it would end up as it did.

what i'm trying to say is once something is done it was the only thing that could have happened. And since everything begun somewhere (some atom or something exploded). they all followed physical rules so they could only end up in one way. And since they ended up in that way the forming of planets could only happen just the way it did. And the eletrical impulses in your brain all follows the same rules and therefore could only do just as they do (since anything else would bbe impossibles couse then they wouldn't do as they should).

Soheran:

On reflection, I think perhaps our disagreement boils down to this.

I say that I do something because I am obliged to do so.

You retort that if I did it, I must have "wanted" to do it--it must fulfill, however remotely, some desire (conscious or unconscious) of mine.

You may claim that this is formally or logically true, true "by definition" as it were. Yet the only tautology here is that if I choose something, I must have chosen it. There is no logical proof that in order to do something I must want to do it, or that doing it must fulfill some "need" of mine--not even a psychological need to behave morally.

The only way you could prove this point is to prove the truth of natural determinism--because then it would be true that I only do things due to causes such as "want" or "need."

So long as you cannot be certain, however, that everything I do is naturally caused, you cannot be certain that everything I do must be tied to some want or need. You cannot be certain that I do not behave for the sake of duty--because I should, not because I want to.

And this is the incompatibility between determinism and a robust notion of free will:

Determinism presumes that I act only for the sake of some natural, psychological cause; everything I do must satisfy something in my natural, material/psychological nature.

Free will, by contrast, asserts that I may do something simply because it is right. It asserts that even in the absence of "motivation," even in opposition to motivation, I can choose to do my duty.

Free will accepts "obligation" as a valid reason unto itself. Determinism flatly refuses to do so.

Thus, they are incompatible.

EDIT: Ironically, this means that determinists do not accept the validity of the reason, "because I have to," insisting instead that for anything I do, I necessarily "want to." To advocate the possibility of free will, however--and again, with such great irony--admit that people often do things "because they have to," not because they want to.

;)

Hanibalia:

Just to get this straight, are saying that free will does not exist because, what you explained was fate. Something happened and it was the only thing that could have happened. It impossible to argue with someone who believes in fate, because that is their only arguement. Not dicussing why someone cant have free will, but basically fate dictates everything. - what we are trying to discuss here is not the idea of fate (that is a different subject), but between set reactions - and free will. One side explains that we have the choice to decide our reactions to stimuli, the other, that our reactions are part of neural brain patterns that cannot change (thus we dont make a concious choice between one thing and another). It is purely a chemical and physical thing. To put it in Broader terms, some who is Religious against someone who is an athiest (only believing in science as a true authority). Really whoever side anyone choses has to try to convince the other side of either the existence of God, or their being no such thing as God.

Personally i believe in there being a god and free will. For an idea to exist, there has to be some form of truth to it, whether a dream, imagination, mixing of ideas... But all have some relation to reality. My arguement is, that as we have this idea of a god, surely is some form or another, a god or higher being must exist. Therefor not all we do is dictated by science and physical laws. Free will exist because there is a god who created us.

I can make this even more succinct. :)

If you think that I can only will what I desire, you already take determinism for granted.

If you think I can will against what I desire, then you accept the freedom of the will.

If you take determinism for granted, you're going to have to justify it without reference to the idea that I can only will what I desire. Otherwise, you're arguing in a circle.

What's the significance of the base values being self-created?

If a person draws their values from an external source, then the he is not the ultimate arbiter of his decision.

If a person draws their values from an external source, then the he is not the ultimate arbiter of his decision.Exactly. To insist that a person is free despite the fact that she is bound to pursue ends that were determined for her by nature is merely to play a semantic game.

It does not preserve free will. It just changes the definition.

Let's say that your mind is controlled by a machine of some sort.

The machine makes your body perform the necessary action - and, correlating with this command, it makes your mind simulate the decision-making process and act of volition that otherwise would have led to the action.

Your decision is not only utterly under the control of the machine, but also has no necessary connection to the action you perform. To best fool you, the two are actually made to correlate - but there is no causal relation between your decision and your action.

Are you free? By your own definition - "the power of choice of actions" - you are not, but it may still seem as if you were. The perception of choice embodied in the example you gave would still hold, but it would not correspond to actual free will.

So, no - your argument no more proves free will than the OP's disproves it.


Okay I don't quite understand what you are talking about here?

I can't assume that my mind is controled by a machine, surly my mind is a machine, the brain.

The brain certainly does perform some actions without your concious effert or knowledge, but such day to day actions are not the subject of will.

Will can also be defined as want. I want a cheese sandwhich, I will my body to take such actions in order to make a cheese sandwhich.

Where in this example can you show that my will, is being controled by anything other than me?


You have only made a statement here but provided no evidance or reason behind why you think this?

Not possible.



Choice does not = Free will. Choice motivated by self-created values = Free will.

If at any time a person is not an originator of his or her values, then the decision will not be his or hers, but that decision which the situation demanded.



This makes Free Will a tautology. No one has "The power of control you have over your mind" who does not also have free will. Unfree will, something that is plainly present, is outlawed by your definition.



This is not far off, although I don't know how you got here from your premises.

The key is to distinguish between the power to decide and the ultimate power of decision.

Heh as in most things I think people over complicate matters.

In essance free will is nothing more than the the power of choice.


Free, means unrestricted or unfetterd.
Will, means what you want.

So Free Will is simply unrestricted choice.

It is also easyly testable, as in my sandwhich experiment, make a choice to do something, and then choose to do something else.

The act of chossing then discarding the original choice for the opposite one, is all that is needed to show free will.

The act of determining wether such a choice has some how been pre-determined, or that the choice you make is dependant on outside influence is certianly negated in this experiment, because ultimatly, you can do the experiment multiple times, and choose to eat either the sandwhich you want, or the sandwhich you don't want as many times as you will it.

In essance free will is nothing more than the the power of choice.

I tend to think people underthink things, as you have made free will meaningless.

Free, means unrestricted or unfetterd.
Will, means what you want.

So Free Will is simply unrestricted choice.

Then there is no such thing as unfree will, and the distinction of "free" will becomes meaningless.

It was an analogy. For the purposes of the analogy, I was taking the judge's will to be the expression of his "desire" in the sense that the human will, if determined, expresses a "desire" that does not, in fact, originate in a free self.

The problem is that with the judge, we can speak of two decisions of will:

1. The decision of the will based on the application of the law, that is thus determined by the content of that law;
2. The decision of the will based purely on the judge's desires.

It's reasonable to expect that the two will usually differ, and in accordance with this we can say that the law's determination of the will violates freedom.

In the case of the person whose will is determined through the process of decision-making itself, there is no second will to be contradicted - there is no violation of freedom.

Yes, but what is the ontological distinction between the content of decision-making and the "exterior" content of the material world? The line is essentially arbitrary, if we take determinism for granted.

No, it isn't.

The line is not arbitrary for the simple reason that the whole question of free will is whether it is MY will and MY choices that determine my actions. The distinction here is between causes that are meaningfully "mine" - causes expressed through my will and my choices - and causes that are external to me.

No, they don't differ essentially from external causes. They differ according to "location," but not in essence--they are of the same stuff, namely natural causation.

Yes, but this is not a weakness of compatibilism.

If anything, it is a strength - it explains how what could reasonably be called "free will" can simultaneously be something that is not "weird", that does not make us wonder how it could possibly have come to be.

But as you are so fond of pointing out, according to determinism I only "want" it because some external process resulted in my wanting it. So I get what I did not choose for myself through a process over which I have no control.

You are demanding that determinism offer a freedom that makes no sense.

You want it to both give the will the power to choose, not only actions, but all the standards of choice - but this is impossible, because choice is not meaningful unless a standard already exists.

The problem is that you fail to see the significance of choice - the reason the power of choice is important for free will. It is not because the power of choice is free will in and of itself; it is because the power of choice empowers the chooser. The chooser may not choose herself, she may not choose the bases for all her choices, but she need not - indeed, if choice were taken that far, we would no longer in any sense have a "chooser", merely choices being made by random processes in an arbitrary way.

You're speaking in tautologies. They sound nice, but they don't say anything.

No, what it says is crucial.

In order to actually make a decision, I need only approach a decision with the perspective that my choice is actually significant - that through my choice process, and not independent of it, an alternative will be selected.

Determinism allows this. It does NOT mean that we can somehow be passive and expect a decision to make itself, because it requires us and our choices as part of the causal chain.

You have, even if you have not realized it.

You have argued that my subjective reasons--the reasons for which I make a decision--are simply part of a natural causal chain. If this is not to state an equivalence between subjective and objective reasons, then what could it possibly be?

The problem is the word "natural." If they are reasons, they are simply part of a causal chain - they meet the requirement of determinism, that perfect predictability be possible under conditions of perfect knowledge of one state.

I have indeed stated, and I do indeed hold, that objective causes and subjective reasons correspond to one another ("equivalence" is probably too strong - "because I am hungry" is a subjective reason, "because neural phenomena connected to hunger caused me do it" is an objective cause). As such, I have been careless with the terminology - particularly with my use of "phenomenal." But my argument does not presuppose any such equivalence or correspondence, or at least, if it has been, it doesn't need to.

No, you're shifting your argument now.

What you have been arguing is that in order to be free, decisions cannot be random. They must have reasons. But to have reasons is only to be determined by natural law if those reasons are themselves part and parcel of natural law.

The only reason to assume that the reasons for a decision are necessarily natural reasons is to take determinism (which insists that all causes are natural causes) for granted. But then you beg the question, don't you?

Determinism need not insist that all objective causes and subjective reasons correspond.

Indeed, the two could have nothing to do with one another with determinism still being true - as long as decisions remain perfectly predictable. As long as there is no randomness.

So all I need demonstrate is that even if the process of decision-making is viewed subjectively, all non-arbitrary choices are ultimately DETERMINED - are ultimately traceable back to what I have referred to as "base reasons."

Of course, this changes little else. We still have no "ultimate choice" in the sense you and Vittos are talking about. But we need not assume (though there is no reason not to) that the subjective reasons and objective causes correspond.

Because the former asserts a moral cause, while the latter asserts a natural cause.

Now you're just repeating yourself.

I know that the distinction you want to make is between "moral" and "natural." What I want to know is the basis for this distinction. Why is the moral non-natural?

You can reach a moral understanding of "rightness" through the use of your subjective (practical) reason, and it is my contention that you can find criterion of "rightness" that hold a priori for all rational creatures.

And I do not see how this is possible.

You could perhaps establish criteria for rational action that apply regardless of the end, but even these would rest not merely on a creature's rationality but on its desire to actually apply that rationality.

Reason in and of itself cannot bind.

You want to know, "But what natural desire leads me to want to do the right thing?"

But here you are begging the question, because you presume that I will only do the right thing if I want to and NOT because I am obliged to.

I recognize the possibility of doing something because "I am obliged to" rather than "because I want to."

The point I am making, however, is that "I am obliged to" is really "I feel obliged to" - obligation requires us to recognize it, to care about it, before it actually manifests itself in our action. And thus, even if we don't WANT to do it, we still CARE about doing it - we still VALUE adherence to it. And this valuation is the standard we use to make our choice.

You are claiming that, upon discovery of the moral law, obedience to it just springs into existence - it is neither random (because it's based on the reason "because it's right") nor determined (because it requires no pre-existing valuation, and thus does not succumb to the problem of non-arbitrary justification that I am repeatedly referencing.)

But this makes no sense.

Because the "fact" you recognize has the nature of an obligation: it demands an action, your desires notwithstanding.

And what kind of "fact" could that possibly be?

You are presuming without reason that the logic of the moral law comports with the unidirectional cause-effect logic of the natural law.

I'm not talking about the moral law. I'm talking about decision-making in general.

I make a decision. I base it on a reason, as I must for it not to be arbitrary. That reason must actually cause the reason to actually be a reason.

I needed to have decided (not necessarily consciously) to use that reason rather than others. I must base this, too, on a reason, as I must for it not to be arbitrary. And so on.

What I want to know is: where in this chain of reasons is there room for anything that is neither arbitrary (that is still based on reasons) nor determined (that is NOT based on prior reasons)?

Rather, the moral law that we can know a priori, to borrow an analogy used earlier, is somewhat closer to the basic rules of chess--it tells us how we can move in the moral world, but it does not dictate every move.

"Why did you not take her rook with your pawn?"

"Because that would violate the rules."

"Why do you not violate the rules?"

I need a reason of the same sort here, too.

But of course, this does not mean that any one of our moves is "arbitrary"

Of course not. But they are only not arbitrary because I bring to the chess board values and preferences that are beyond simple obedience to the rules.

My moves are not arbitrary only insofar as I make them for reasons - "because I want to win", "because I want to annoy her", "because I want to show off."

None of those reasons escape the deterministic causal chain - and I fail to see why reasons in the context of the moral "game" would be any different.

--although each game of chess may be unique, and no move is scripted, players certainly move intentionally and non-arbitrarily.

The RULES do not script everything, no.

But the great variable here is the PLAYERS - and their moods, their thinking processes, and so on. Take them fully into account, and to the extent that the game is not based on arbitrary moves, it is still scripted.

It is possible for morality to die out of the world--especially if people become so intent on treating themselves as mere objects that we forget the dignity of our own freedom, and the respect that it deserves.

If the rightness of actions is a priori, and recognition of rightness requires recognition of the binding status, how could morality die out?

there is no "person" who chose to do wrong.

You did not answer the question.

What's the significance of "choosing" to do wrong, if not for what it indicates about a person?

You may claim that this is formally or logically true, true "by definition" as it were. Yet the only tautology here is that if I choose something, I must have chosen it. There is no logical proof that in order to do something I must want to do it, or that doing it must fulfill some "need" of mine--not even a psychological need to behave morally.

I submit simply that we must act based on reasons - and that facts in and of themselves cannot be reasons. They are simply facts.

It follows that, a priori or a posteriori, the moral law in and of itself will not be recognized as binding "automatically", without any reference to any other reason or basis.

This, I think, is the core of our difference - not a matter of "having to do" versus "wanting to do."

"I chose to walk to the library, because the sky is blue." This is unintelligible until it is clarified that I enjoy (value) walking under blue skies.

"I grant consideration to the harm my actions inflict on others, because doing so is right." This is NOT unintelligible - but only because we ASSUME that most people care about doing what is right. Without this implicit clarification, it makes no more sense than the other.

Edit: Because "right" could be said to presuppose a "demand" to comply with it, as indeed you have argued, it could be said that it is intelligible in a second sense that the first is not - the reason given does not only imply, but presupposes, the element of caring. But, then, all that is necessary is to change the statement based on a certain standard of right:

"I grant consideration to the harm my actions inflict on others because it maximizes the happiness of others."

"I grant consideration to the harm my actions inflict on others because it is required by treating others as ends-in-themselves."

And in both of these cases, I need a second element - a VALUATION of the fact provided in the "reason" portion of the statement that bridges the barrier between mere recognition of fact to actual action.

The problem is that with the judge, we can speak of two decisions of will:

1. The decision of the will based on the application of the law, that is thus determined by the content of that law;
2. The decision of the will based purely on the judge's desires.

It's reasonable to expect that the two will usually differ, and in accordance with this we can say that the law's determination of the will violates freedom.Actually, you're misapplying the term "will."

There can be only one will, because when the judge wills he acts. If he considers an option without acting upon it, he does so in the process of deliberation. When he reaches his conclusion, he acts upon his will; what he does not act upon is not his will.

Thus, there are indeed two options here:

1. A decision based on the application of the law.
2. A decision based purely on the judge's desires.

(Realistically, there are probably more, in part because we do not have to assume that the causes of a decision are "purely" based in either the law or desire. That is, it is also possible that he compromises somehow.)

In any case, to the extent that a judge acts upon (2), he is determined by the natural law. To the extent that he acts upon (1), he is determined to the moral law, and precisely to that extent he is free.

In the case of the person whose will is determined through the process of decision-making itself, there is no second will to be contradicted - there is no violation of freedom.No. If there is no second option--no alternative basis for decision--then I am bound to only the natural basis, and I am necessarily determined by it. I am entirely unfree.

No, it isn't.

The line is not arbitrary for the simple reason that the whole question of free will is whether it is MY will and MY choices that determine my actions.No, it's not.

I haven't been clear on this, so the confusion is partly my fault. The question of free will does not depend on whether a decision is "mine" or not, although it does presume this. My simple ownership of my choices is necessary, but not sufficient, to consider me free.

The essential statement of free will is that it is possible for me to act according to the moral law, and for no other reason.

That is, to be free means that it is possible for me to make a choice because--and only because--it is the right thing to do.

The distinction here is between causes that are meaningfully "mine" - causes expressed through my will and my choices - and causes that are external to me.No.

The distinction here is between a will that is based on the moral law and a will that is based on the natural law.

Yes, but this is not a weakness of compatibilism.

If anything, it is a strength - it explains how what could reasonably be called "free will" can simultaneously be something that is not "weird", that does not make us wonder how it could possibly have come to be.Yes, but by admitting that your definition of free will applies to some second idea that "could reasonably be called" free will, you admit that determinism is incompatible with the concept of free will with which the debate began.

Thus, if my purpose is to retain the original, robust notion of free will, you have to admit that determinism is, in fact, incompatible with this notion. Compatiblists do not "win" the philosophical debate by changing the terms. They just bury their heads in the sand and do their best to talk past it.

You want it to both give the will the power to choose, not only actions, but all the standards of choice - but this is impossible, because choice is not meaningful unless a standard already exists.What do you not understand about "a priori moral standard"?

The problem is that you fail to see the significance of choice - the reason the power of choice is important for free will. It is not because the power of choice is free will in and of itself; it is because the power of choice empowers the chooser. The chooser may not choose herself, she may not choose the bases for all her choices, but she need not - indeed, if choice were taken that far, we would no longer in any sense have a "chooser", merely choices being made by random processes in an arbitrary way.My critique parallels a popular critique of capitalism: if my choices are between Cheerios and Toasty-O's, I am not free. Choosing between natural satisfactions of natural causes is not a free choice.

Free choices are moral choices. This is the definition of free will.

In order to actually make a decision, I need only approach a decision with the perspective that my choice is actually significant - that through my choice process, and not independent of it, an alternative will be selected.You still don't get it. "Alternatives" are not enough.

The problem is the word "natural." If they are reasons, they are simply part of a causal chain - they meet the requirement of determinism, that perfect predictability be possible under conditions of perfect knowledge of one state.Do the axioms of mathematics "cause" the properties of numbers?

I have indeed stated, and I do indeed hold, that objective causes and subjective reasons correspond to one another ("equivalence" is probably too strong - "because I am hungry" is a subjective reason, "because neural phenomena connected to hunger caused me do it" is an objective cause).And I agree perfectly with this. What I maintain and you ignore is that you cannot know that all subjective reasons correspond to objective reasons. To do so, you would need to prove the objective truth of determinism.

Determinism need not insist that all objective causes and subjective reasons correspond.Yes, it does. Because if there is a subjective cause that does not correspond to any objective cause, then I choose solely because of the subjective cause. And my argument is that the moral law--moral obligation--need not correspond with objective causes.

Indeed, this is the very definition of a priori, and the problem of an a priori moral reason is intimately bound up with the freedom of the will. If there is an a priori moral reason, then it may, but need not correspond with some contingent objective cause.

Indeed, the two could have nothing to do with one another with determinism still being true - as long as decisions remain perfectly predictable. As long as there is no randomness.Foregoing an argument, for the moment at least, as to whether it is possible to behave with reason but without perfect predictability, I would like to point out that your position is weakening:

1) If you admit that the moral law and the natural law "could have nothing to do with one another," then you have to admit that it is possible you might not predict the mandate of the moral law by judging from natural causes. That is, while the subjective (moral) perspective "predicts" one thing, the objective (natural) perspective "predicts" something else.
2) In this case, they would be, by definition, "incompatible." For either to be true, the other must go. Yet, as I have maintained, we cannot actually dispense with either.

Of course, this changes little else. We still have no "ultimate choice" in the sense you and Vittos are talking about.Yes, and that ultimate choice is free will. What you have been describing is will--an ability to choose. A mouse has a will, a rock does not. A mouse has a will, a human has a free will.

But we need not assume (though there is no reason not to) that the subjective reasons and objective causes correspond.And this is precisely the definition of incompatiblism. For compatiblism, they must.

I know that the distinction you want to make is between "moral" and "natural." What I want to know is the basis for this distinction. Why is the moral non-natural?The moral is of a distinctly different character than the natural. Think of "declarative" natural facthood to "imperative" moral facthood: "I want to stay home" as opposed to "I should go to school."



And I do not see how this is possible.

You could perhaps establish criteria for rational action that apply regardless of the end, but even these would rest not merely on a creature's rationality but on its desire to actually apply that rationality.You do not see how this is possible because (your denials notwithstanding) you take determinism for granted.

For you, will must be traceable to some natural cause--e.g. "desire." But this is the very statement of determinism. If you cannot prove that determinism is true, then how do you know that every will must be traceable to some natural cause?

Reason in and of itself cannot bind.That is a deterministic assumption. If you suspend your faith in determinism for a moment, you would have to admit that it is possible that reason in and of itself can bind--you cannot prove anything to the contrary.

I recognize the possibility of doing something because "I am obliged to" rather than "because I want to."

The point I am making, however, is that "I am obliged to" is really "I feel obliged to"No, it's not. If I wanted to say "I feel obliged to," I would have said, "I feel obliged to." I said "I am obliged to" because that is precisely what I meant.

You assume that "I am obliged to" is "really" "I feel obliged to" because you have to squeeze a natural cause in there somewhere. Your deterministic assumption is that it must be there. But you cannot prove that assumption--and an assumption it remains.

In other words, if determinism is true, then "I am obliged to" is really "I feel obliged to." But only if determinism is true.

- obligation requires us to recognize it, to care about it, before it actually manifests itself in our action.It requires us to recognize it, but it does not require us to "care" about it--unless you stretch the definition of care to encompass something like "ascribe importance to." But to recognize and to ascribe are purely subjective acts of the understanding. Obligation does not require us to have a "desire" toward it or even a "fear" regarding disobedience. It only requires that we recognize it.

Unless, of course, you take determinism for granted. ;)

And thus, even if we don't WANT to do it, we still CARE about doing it - we still VALUE adherence to it. And this valuation is the standard we use to make our choice.Yes, but valuation is NOT the same as desire, and the subjective act of valuation need not--unless you assume determinism--correspond to an objective natural cause.

And what kind of "fact" could that possibly be?"Facts" of the moral law are maxims, imperatives.

What I want to know is: where in this chain of reasons is there room for anything that is neither arbitrary (that is still based on reasons) nor determined (that is NOT based on prior reasons)?Again, I want to hold off on a discussion of whether the moral law is determined, but briefly: the moral law is determinate but not "determined." Again, like a game of chess. Or perhaps better yet, like a mathematical proof: the axioms of mathematics do not dictate the moves of a complex theoretical proof, but they do make them distinctly non-random.

You are working with a false dilemma: either non-random or perfectly predictable (determined), which you take to be exhaustive. But there are many forms of non-randomness that are not perfectly predictable.

"Why did you not take her rook with your pawn?"

"Because that would violate the rules."

"Why do you not violate the rules?""Because I am obliged as a game-player to follow them. I don't like it, because I'm not very good and I always lose. But I am obliged nevertheless, as long as I'm going to play the game."

Now, "Why do you follow the moral law?"

"Because I am obliged as a rational creature to follow them. I don't like it, because I'm always getting stepped on and taken advantage of. But I am obliged nevertheless, as long as I am a rational creature."

In the first case, you can cite a natural cause as the ultimate origin--ultimately, I must want to play the game, or I wouldn't play it.

But in the case of the moral law, the rules are derivable a priori as facts of reason, and as rules of reason they oblige every rational creature... and as long as I am a rational creature, I am obliged to follow them.

But they are only not arbitrary because I bring to the chess board values and preferences that are beyond simple obedience to the rules.All I need to bring to the moral law is my own reason. And, in perhaps a tragic sense, I cannot then renounce the moral law without renouncing my own rationality as well.

If the rightness of actions is a priori, and recognition of rightness requires recognition of the binding status, how could morality die out?While the rightness itself can never die out, our knowledge and understanding of it can. So can our recognition. And even if we recognize the law, it "binds" in a moral sense only--it imposes an obligation. It cannot force us to comply, it can only force us to recognize that we should.

I submit simply that we must act based on reasons - and that facts in and of themselves cannot be reasons. They are simply facts.That's the difference between natural facts and moral facts. And that is why they are incompatible.

Thus, there are indeed two options here:

1. A decision based on the application of the law.
2. A decision based purely on the judge's desires.

(Realistically, there are probably more, in part because we do not have to assume that the causes of a decision are "purely" based in either the law or desire. That is, it is also possible that he compromises somehow.)

In any case, to the extent that a judge acts upon (2), he is determined by the natural law. To the extent that he acts upon (1), he is determined to the moral law, and precisely to that extent he is free.

Wasn't the original purpose of your analogy to argue the opposite - that insofar as the judge obeys the law he has been given by others, he is determined and not free?

No. If there is no second option--no alternative basis for decision--then I am bound to only one basis, and I am necessarily determined by it. I am entirely unfree.

Don't I still need a basis to decide between the two alternative bases?

The essential statement of free will is that it is possible for me to act according to the moral law, and for no other reason.

What does this have to do with freedom?

Yes, but by admitting that your definition of free will applies to some second idea that "could reasonably be called" free will, you admit that determinism is incompatible with the concept of free will with which the debate began.

I actually said, or at least implied, exactly that in my first reply to you - that's why I said that it was a convenient definition for Incompatibilists.

I just don't think it's a very good definition - because it rests freedom on what must be arbitrary.

Thus, if my purpose is to retain the original, robust notion of free will, you have to admit that determinism is, in fact, incompatible with this notion.

But my whole point is that the "original, robust notion of free will" advocated by Incompatibilists is either arbitrary (because it requires randomness) or not actually incompatible with determinism.

What do you not understand about "a priori moral standard"?

How it can escape this problem.

I still need a standard by which I can accept such an "a priori moral standard" as dealing with my actions.

My critique parallels a popular critique of capitalism: if my choices are between Cheerios and Toasty-O's, I am not free. Choosing between natural satisfactions of natural causes is not a free choice.

There is a crucial difference between the two. The problem with consumer choice in general is that it is tangential to the actual desires of a person. The fact that a worker can choose between two different brands of shampoo in no way frees her from the hierarchy of the factory or office, and in no way concerns her capability to provide effectively for herself and her family. More generally, it concerns none of the essential goods she desires; she is not meaningfully free because the social conditions under which she lives prevent her from doing and attaining what she desires.

"Choosing between natural satisfactions of natural causes" denies us nothing. We cannot desire other choices; if we ever did, they would be available.

Do the axioms of mathematics "cause" the properties of numbers?

Does accepting the a priori truth of axioms of mathematics in and of itself cause me to pay attention to them?

I might pay attention to them - but only pragmatically. Only in reference to certain ends that must be presupposed. Not simply through recognition of their truth in and of themselves.

And I agree perfectly with this. What I maintain and you ignore is that you cannot know that all subjective reasons correspond to objective reasons.

Actually, I see no reason to disagree with that - though I would question how you could even know that any particular subjective reason corresponds to an objective cause.

Couldn't even "I eat because I am hungry" have nothing to do with objective causes?

Yes, it does. Because if there is a subjective cause that does not correspond to any objective cause, then I choose solely because of the subjective cause.

And it makes no difference in terms of determinism.

Objective or subjective, it can still be determined - and in order to be non-arbitrary, it must be.

If there is an a priori moral reason, then it may, but need not correspond with some contingent objective cause.

Yes.

There is no "a priori moral reason." Such a thing is impossible.

Foregoing an argument, for the moment at least, as to whether it is possible to behave with reason but without perfect predictability, I would like to point out that your position is weakening:

1) If you admit that the moral law and the natural law "could have nothing to do with one another," then you have to admit that it is possible you might not predict the mandate of the moral law by judging from natural causes.

I said "subjective reasons" and "objective causes," not "moral law" and "natural law" - a significant difference, if the dictates of the "moral law" are necessarily acted upon without reference to the objective causes.

I will indeed admit that it is possible that subjective reasons and objective causes could theoretically differ in their conclusions. The objective causal chain of the cells and chemicals in my brain and the subjective causal chain of the reasons and values in my mind may not cause the same actions.

2) In this case, they would be, by definition, "incompatible."

Yes, they would be - one or the other must actually control the action. If subjective reasons do, the person is free. If objective causes do, the person is not. There we agree.

But there is no necessary incompatibility. Objective causes and subjective reasons may correspond perfectly - may in fact be founded in the same processes, just viewed from two different perspectives. We cannot KNOW this - but we also cannot know that this is NOT the case. If the human mind is such that subjective reasons and objective causes necessarily correspond, then there can be no contradiction between what the objective causes lead to and what the subjective reasons do.

And even if they do not, while "subjective" and "objective" may be incompatible in this respect, free will and (subjective) determinism are not.

What you have been describing is will--an ability to choose.

No. I have been describing free will - an ability to choose according to what one values and prefers.

The moral is of a distinctly different character than the natural. Think of "declarative" natural facthood to "imperative" moral facthood: "I want to stay home" as opposed to "I should go to school."

Yes, and I appreciate this distinction. But my question concerned difference between different shoulds. To apply it to your example:

"I should stay home, because I value fun."

"I should go to school, because I value rightness" (under a certain definition of "rightness", anyway.)

If you cannot prove that determinism is true, then how do you know that every will must be traceable to some natural cause?

I don't. But I do know it must be founded in something practical - at least if it is something that can be free. It cannot just be something "out there" - it must have a relevance, a connection to me that binds me to it.

That is a deterministic assumption. If you suspend your faith in determinism for a moment, you would have to admit that it is possible that reason in and of itself can bind--you cannot prove anything to the contrary.

It can't because of the is-ought fallacy.

I can start from an imperative and move rationally from it to another imperative, but unless I start from one, I can never conclude one.

It requires us to recognize it, but it does not require us to "care" about it--unless you stretch the definition of care to encompass something like "ascribe importance to." But to recognize and to ascribe are purely subjective acts of the understanding.

Yes. But "ascribe importance" is not.

On what basis do I ascribe "importance" to an imperative - without a prior valuation of importance that applies to it?

Obligation does not require us to have a "desire" toward it or even a "fear" regarding disobedience. It only requires that we recognize it.

The crucial element is within the definition of "obligation."

"Obligation" presupposes that a certain action is valuable. I'm asking how its value can be established without prior existing values - values that are determined, and that determine it.

Yes, but valuation is NOT the same as desire, and the subjective act of valuation need not--unless you assume determinism--correspond to an objective natural cause.

But valuation also does not spring out of nowhere. It is founded in prior values.

How do we decide what is valuable, without reference to standards of value - to the valuation of value? We must have a base set of values, ultimately - and these determine the others, unless the others are arbitrary.

Again, we are led to deterministic conclusions.

"Facts" of the moral law are maxims, imperatives.

Again, I want to hold off on a discussion of whether the moral law is determined, but briefly: the moral law is determinate but not "determined." Again, like a game of chess. Or perhaps better yet, like a mathematical proof: the axioms of mathematics do not dictate the moves of a complex theoretical proof, but they do make them distinctly non-random.

Yes, but again - the difference is in terms of the inputs, namely the chess players or the mathematician.

They have ends, and they act within the rules to pursue them. The rules of chess and the axioms of mathematics do not determine every part of the game or the proof, but the rest is not undetermined - it is just determined by something else.

But there are many forms of non-randomness that are not perfectly predictable.

Take the pure form of a chess game. Abstract away all the preferences of the players, except a simple commitment to obey the rules.

The moves would not be entirely random, no. But they would definitely be arbitrary. And players who so behaved would not be in any sense "free."

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

Our reactions are still our own.

http://smilies.vidahost.com/contrib/ruinkai/cistinebiggrinA.gif

I tend to think people underthink things, as you have made free will meaningless.



Then there is no such thing as unfree will, and the distinction of "free" will becomes meaningless.

Wooo hoo, so that means I win!:eek:

Just in an attempt to explain my personal opinion on this matter:

We have free will as in it is up to us weather we have a Cola or a Pepsi with our nice tasty sammich, but it doesn't matter because if we go through the exact same situation with the exact same person every time, the choice will be exactly the same every time.

If you tossed a hundred identical coins in an identical direction with the exact same force every time it would land the same each time. True, even the tiniest differences could change it, but in theory if the same event is replayed without any differences it will play out the same.

Now to bring this to a more complex scale, when you are choosing your drink at the cafe you are choosing based on a number of other factors: What is cheaper, what tastes better, what has less sugar. These might not apply directly to you but they're a few things that will influence your decision. In the end you will pick one, lets say cola.

Now, if we went back in time and put you back to the point where you chose again with the same memorys as you did the first time and the same reasons and people, would you do it any differently? No, it's just the same as last time, you would make your mind up in the same time based on the same factors and ultimately choose the same drink. Seems pretty logical? I hope so :p

So what I am trying to say is while you have the -choice- of choosing your action, what you will do is really predetermined by the different factors and your own personality. Even if you say "Hey, I'm gonna have a Pepsi just to annoy that person who said I'd have a cola" you'd still have the Pepsi every time we replay the situation because every time you want to annoy me :)

I'm... not sure if I was trying to prove either side right here, but that's my opinion :D

Wasn't the original purpose of your analogy to argue the opposite - that insofar as the judge obeys the law he has been given by others, he is determined and not free?Yes, but you wouldn't accept the limits of the analogy (and analogies are always limited)--and in any case I think it actually works better as an illustration of what actually happens.

Don't I still need a basis to decide between the two alternative bases?If you are rational, then you are obliged to choose the rational (subjective) basis. If you are not rational, then the moral law does not speak to you and the point is moot.

I actually said, or at least implied, exactly that in my first reply to you - that's why I said that it was a convenient definition for Incompatibilists.

I just don't think it's a very good definition - because it rests freedom on what must be arbitrary.Only if you assume that the moral law is arbitrary. Hence, the argument rests on the contention that the moral law is knowable a priori to any rational creature.

But my whole point is that the "original, robust notion of free will" advocated by Incompatibilists is either arbitrary (because it requires randomness) or not actually incompatible with determinism.This is because you assume that a moral law not based in natural law must be arbitrary. But that is your assumption, not ours.

I still need a standard by which I can accept such an "a priori moral standard" as dealing with my actions.You are rational. If you are rational, it obliges you. The only "standard" is reason.

There is a crucial difference between the two.Of course there is a difference between the two. It was an analogy, a parallel, a guide to understanding the flow of the argument. It was not, in itself, an argument.

"Choosing between natural satisfactions of natural causes" denies us nothing. We cannot desire other choices; if we ever did, they would be available.Choosing between natural satisfactions of natural causes denies us everything that is implied in the concept of "free will." It makes us no different than rats who choose which turn to take in a maze. They have will, but not free will.

You want to turn free will into a pleonasm, but only by depriving the term "free" of any actual meaning.

What, for you, actually is the distinction between free will and will?

Does accepting the a priori truth of axioms of mathematics in and of itself cause me to pay attention to them?No. But when it comes to the moral law, we don't have a choice: right is right, whether we like it or not, and unless we can manage to stop making decisions--unless we can avoid the inevitability of choice--we are obliged to choose according to the moral law.

If you don't want to do mathematics, don't do mathematics. But if you don't want to decide... well, too bad. You can't avoid it.

Actually, I see no reason to disagree with that - though I would question how you could even know that any particular subjective reason corresponds to an objective cause.Well, presumably physiological psychologists and neurologists can point to at least some connections between subjective reasons and objective causes. The important point, for this argument, is that they cannot prove on this basis that all subjective reasons must depend on objective causes.

Couldn't even "I eat because I am hungry" have nothing to do with objective causes?It could. I happen to doubt that it does.

Objective or subjective, it can still be determined - and in order to be non-arbitrary, it must be.There are several problems here.

First, arbitrary is not the same as random.
Second, both "random or determined" and "arbitrary or determined" are false dilemmas. "Non-arbitrary"/="perfectly determined." If we cannot get past this simple problem of basic metaphysics, then I'm afraid this conversation is already doomed.

There is no "a priori moral reason." Such a thing is impossible.If you want, we can move on to that debate, which is really what is at issue here.

The problem is that you still persist in assuming the truth of determinism without being able to demonstrate that truth either objectively or logically. Your logical proofs, in particular, inevitably beg the question because you assume in advance that every event must be traceable to some natural cause or causes.

I said "subjective reasons" and "objective causes," not "moral law" and "natural law" - a significant difference, if the dictates of the "moral law" are necessarily acted upon without reference to the objective causes.They are not "necessarily" acted upon without reference to the objective causes. The point is that they may be acted upon without reference to objective causes, and you cannot prove otherwise.

I will indeed admit that it is possible that subjective reasons and objective causes could theoretically differ in their conclusions.Then you admit that free will and determinism are incompatible. The objective causal chain of the cells and chemicals in my brain and the subjective causal chain of the reasons and values in my mind may not cause the same actions.Right. And if each causal chain makes a different prediction, they cannot both be true. You only actually do one of them.

If you follow the moral law and it happens to conflict with natural causation, then free will is true and determinism is false.

If you cannot follow the moral law because you are bound to natural laws, then determinism is true and free will is false.

Yes, they would be - one or the other must actually control the action. If subjective reasons do, the person is free. If objective causes do, the person is not. There we agree.Exactly.

But there is no necessary incompatibility Objective causes and subjective reasons may correspond perfectly - may in fact be founded in the same processes, just viewed from two different perspectives.Yes. I can imagine some possible world in which natural laws produce behaviors that are perfectly conformable to the moral law. It is not true, in the language of modal logic, that NECESSARILY~(Free + Determined).

In such a world, no one could ever do anything wrong. However, in the actual world in which we live I can access the moral law and I can see that people very frequently do things that are wrong. Now, if it is possible that they could have behaved rightly, then they are free. If it is not possible that they could have behaved rightly, then they are determined by the natural law. The assumptions are incompatible given that this world does not always produce moral behavior.

We cannot KNOW this - but we also cannot know that this is NOT the case.Right.

We can never KNOW that we are free any more than we can KNOW that we are determined. But as rational creatures bound to the moral law, we are obliged to behave according to the moral law, which is only to say that we are obliged to endeavor, subjectively, to behave as if we are free.

If the human mind is such that subjective reasons and objective causes necessarily correspond, then there can be no contradiction between what the objective causes lead to and what the subjective reasons do.That's right.

But since there is a contradiction between what objective causes lead to and what subjective reasons tell us is "right," then we know that subjective reasons and objective causes DO NOT, in this world at least, correspond.

And even if they do not, while "subjective" and "objective" may be incompatible in this respect, free will and (subjective) determinism are not.You're adding in this "(subjective)" now because you're trying to backtrack to the position that we are determined even if we are free from natural causes. But this is not the case of causal determinism: causal determinism insists that we are naturally determined as natural creatures in a natural world. As soon as you admit that we may not be determined by natural laws, you have to admit to the defeat of determinism: you admit that we can do things without any link to a natural causal chain. We can do things as free agents with the capacity to act for the sake of the moral law, and for no other reason.

No. I have been describing free will - an ability to choose according to what one values and prefers.And I deny that this is free will, especially if what one "values and prefers" is itself determined by natural law.

If you accept this definition, then you have no basis on which to differentiate human choice from the choice of an earthworm, which surely chooses where to go based on its valuation of food and its preference for certain kinds of soil.

Yes, and I appreciate this distinction. But my question concerned difference between different shoulds. To apply it to your example:

"I should stay home, because I value fun."

"I should go to school, because I value rightness" (under a certain definition of "rightness", anyway.)But neither of these is a valid maxim.

Just as there are rules in the natural world for what counts as a "true" statement, the moral law provides rules for deciding which maxims are true and which ones are not. You may be able to construct sentences using the word "should," but those sentences need not always express a genuine, true, maxim.

I don't. But I do know it must be founded in something practical - at least if it is something that can be free. It cannot just be something "out there" - it must have a relevance, a connection to me that binds me to it.It does.

The moral law binds all rational creatures. You are (I suppose) a moral creature. Therefore it obliges you.

It can't because of the is-ought fallacy.Actually, the is-ought fallacy is precisely the reason that the moral law and the natural law remain at odds with one another.

I am the one who wants to keep my "ought" separate from my "is." You want to maintain that I should be able to trace every "ought" back to a natural "is."

I can start from an imperative and move rationally from it to another imperative, but unless I start from one, I can never conclude one.EXACTLY.

So if you start from natural causes, you can never get to a moral reason. This is why your maxims, above, are not valid.

"I should stay home, because I value fun."

Ought = "I should stay at home." Is = "I value fun."

"I should go to school because I value rightness."

Ought = "I should go to school." Is = "I value rightness."

Both fallacious moral statements.

The crucial element is within the definition of "obligation."

"Obligation" presupposes that a certain action is valuable.No, it doesn't.

Consequentialism, as a particular form of moral theory, presupposes that actions should be judged on whether or not they are valuable.

Deontological ethics presupposes no such thing. Indeed, behaving morally may have, in some circumstances, very dire effects. It may, indeed, get me killed--and I don't believe in an afterlife, so I get no benefit there.

I'm asking how its value can be established without prior existing values - values that are determined, and that determine it.It doesn't need to be, because it doesn't need "value." It is an obligation.

I am rational. I figure out that all rational creatures are obliged to follow the moral law. Therefore, I know that I am obliged to follow the moral law.

I don't necessarily want to follow the moral law, but I recognize the obligation. So my choices may be structured:

Should I do what I want to do, or should I do what I am obliged to do? Whatever I decide, that is my will.

Your problem is that you have so utterly confused the definitions of "want" and "will" that you cannot tell the difference anymore.

Yes, but again - the difference is in terms of the inputs, namely the chess players or the mathematician.

They have ends, and they act within the rules to pursue them. The rules of chess and the axioms of mathematics do not determine every part of the game or the proof, but the rest is not undetermined - it is just determined by something else.That is the determinist's assumption, yes. But it is an assumption. You cannot prove it.

Take the pure form of a chess game. Abstract away all the preferences of the players, except a simple commitment to obey the rules.

The moves would not be entirely random, no. But they would definitely be arbitrary.No, they wouldn't be. Well, some of them might be, from an argument of symmetry--but an arbitrariness that I know and accept is not, in any case, unfree.

Take a simpler game--tic-tac-toe. Assume that we have two ideal players, playing by the rules with a commitment to win (which will never happen, of course, but that's how the game works).

X's first move is determined by the rules: take the center, because it controls the most possible lines.

O's first move is constrained by the rules: he must take a corner square, which controls the most possible lines of those positions available to him. But which corner?

Because of the symmetry of the board, it doesn't actually matter which corner square he takes. So he chooses one arbitrarily. Does this make his decision unfree? Does it mean he could not have chosen one of the other corners, if he willed it?

Does it make him unfree that after he decided to choose a corner, any corner would do? I don't see how it could.

According to you, of course, he would be more free if what he had for breakfast somehow determined that he would take the top-left square, and he could not have decided otherwise.

Bullshit.

Wooo hoo, so that means I win!:eek:

Yes, if you can win a chess game by knocking the board off of the table.

I want to summarize.

Incompatiblist

1) There is an a priori moral law knowable to rational creatures.
2) Said moral law obliges said rational creatures.
3) It is possible that a rational creature may choose to act in obedience to the moral law and for no other reason.

Compatiblist #1

1) There is no a priori moral law.
2) There is no such thing as "obligation" separable from a "feeling of obligation."
3) Whenever a person chooses to act in obedience to a moral law, we can trace a causal chain back through their feeling of obligation to some natural cause or causes that determine that feeling.

Compatiblist #2

1) Suppose there is an a priori moral law knowable to rational creatures.
2) Suppose said moral law makes statements such as "rational creatures ought to treat one another with respect."
3) No person will obey such maxims unless they have a reason to "care" about such maxims, and we can always trace "caring" to some natural cause or causes that determine that attitude.

In either case, compatiblism dissolves the tension between obligation and desire. It asserts that behind every actualized obligation there is some desire (or fear, or pick your natural cause). But then obligations are meaningless, because they can never actually be the reasons for action--the "real reason" is always hidden behind the curtain somewhere.

Of course, we are only justified in the assumption that there must be something behind the curtain if we already believe that causal determinism is true.

And in any case, the term "compatiblism" has been a poor disguise for the fact that what they are really arguing is that free will is impossible--we cannot, after all, choose to do the right thing out of duty. We can only choose to do the right thing because of some natural causal chain, and in that case we cannot have chosen otherwise. They "redefine" freedom to suit their ends, but what they have really done--quite explicitly--is insist that moral freedom is impossible.

Why? Because they take determinism for granted.

*reads last few pages of thread, with difficulty*

What, for you, actually is the distinction between free will and will?

Free will: the power of choice determination through our values and preferences.

Will: the power of choice determination.

Someone whose chooses, but chooses according to something other than reasons, has a will, but not a free will.

There are several problems here.

First, arbitrary is not the same as random.

Granted. But random, in regard to free will, is arbitrary.

Second, both "random or determined" and "arbitrary or determined" are false dilemmas. "Non-arbitrary"/="perfectly determined."

I can have a reason behind my action even if my action is not determined. In that sense my action is not arbitrary.

But I can have no non-arbitrary reason for choosing THAT reason over another - because if I did, that reason would provide me with ONE answer, not two.

This precise formulation does not work quite as well with regard to the a priori moral reason argument, but the principle behind it works neverheless.

I have a choice between telling the truth, and suffering an inconvenience for it, or lying.

I want to lie, but my recognition of a priori moral facts means that I know I shouldn't.

You would say that if I choose to lie, I am not acting freely. I'm not entirely certain of this, but I'll grant it. On some level, if I do what I know I should NOT do, I am contradicting my will.

Ultimately, I decide to tell the truth. Is this choice determined? It is not determined by some standard that chooses between reasons, no, but it IS determined by something else - my ability to control myself, my willpower.

If it is not, what causes it to happen? My choice? But what is my choice here but an expression of my willpower?

And if the strength of my will is a determined matter, then my choice to obey the moral law rather than the natural law must be determined as well. By your argument, I cannot be held responsible - because while I may be able to comprehend a "should" independent of my pre-existing values, I will only act on it if my natural composition permits me to. And either way, I am determined.

If you want, we can move on to that debate, which is really what is at issue here.

The offer is tempting, because the question interests me immensely, but on reflection, no - not now, anyway.

We were both wrong. You say here that the crucial issue is whether such an a priori moral reason is possible, and indeed, I was operating on that assumption in my last post. But this is not really the crucial issue. The crucial issue is whether acting on ANY reason, a priori or otherwise, can really escape the deterministic chain in a manner that is not arbitrary - a manner that could meaningfully be called "more free" than the alternative.

That's right.

But since there is a contradiction between what objective causes lead to and what subjective reasons tell us is "right," then we know that subjective reasons and objective causes DO NOT, in this world at least, correspond.

No.

We know only that not all our actions are free - that some of them are inconsistent with what we recognize as right.

We can still act on subjective reasons while being unfree. "I am hungry" is a subjective reason that could easily interfere with a recognition of "should": "I should return this money to my friend, but I'm hungry, so I'll use it to buy food instead."

Nowhere do I need refer to objective brain states or behavioral patterns, merely to subjective mental ones. My reason may not be good, and for that reason you could say it is not really free, but it's still a subjective reason.

As soon as you admit that we may not be determined by natural laws, you have to admit to the defeat of determinism: you admit that we can do things without any link to a natural causal chain. We can do things as free agents with the capacity to act for the sake of the moral law, and for no other reason.

It doesn't matter whether the causal chain is natural or not. It's still a causal chain - it's still deterministic.

If you accept this definition, then you have no basis on which to differentiate human choice from the choice of an earthworm, which surely chooses where to go based on its valuation of food and its preference for certain kinds of soil.

The fundamental difference is practical reason. A human being can ask herself, "What should I do?" The level of "should" does not exist for an earthworm. If it has conflicting inclinations, their resolution is a matter of whim, not reason.

But the answer to "What should I do?" is still a matter of my values and preferences - and even if an a priori moral reason exists, a possibility I still deny, the question of whether I will actually act on that moral reason is still determined.

EXACTLY.

So if you start from natural causes, you can never get to a moral reason.

What I need is not "moral" reasons necessarily, but practical reasons - reasons that bind my action. A completely amoral person need not be unfree. (Someone who recognizes morality but fails to act on it is a different case entirely.)

You ignore a perfectly ordinary and legitimate use of "should" that can apply here.

"If you want to have fun, you should stay home."

"If you want to do the right thing, you should go to school."

Should I do what I want to do, or should I do what I am obliged to do? Whatever I decide, that is my will.

Yes - and whatever you decide depends on whether or not you have the strength of will to do what you are obliged to do over what you want to do.

Your choice is still determined - unless it is random. Unless, instead of being dependent on your strength of will, there is some cosmic die being rolled. But I fail to see how it could be neither.

Because of the symmetry of the board, it doesn't actually matter which corner square he takes. So he chooses one arbitrarily. Does this make his decision unfree?

This decision is irrelevant to freedom, because it does not concern preferences.

You're right that my earlier position was mistaken, but you're still wrong about the larger point. A choice can be undetermined without being unfree, as long as its undermined status corresponds to the indifference of the actor, but there is still no distinction of FREEDOM between such indeterminism and determinism.

I was born into an environment of idiots, people of a lower mental capacity than me. I was born into an environment where I was more talented, physically attractive, and articulate than others. Therefore I have no free-will when it comes to being uncharitable to those less fortunate than I. I can exploit them and humiliate them because I am more intelligent than they. I can have a Narcissistic personality with no drawbacks, because I'm smarter and better looking than everyone else I know.

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

Refute.

I question both premises.

I question premise (1) as begging the question, and as seemingly contrary to the facts. We have changed our environment tremendously as technology-using beings.

I question premise (2) on the basis that entities do not simply react to their environment. Reacting is only one possible explanation, or cause, for something's actions. The cause of an entity's actions is, to some extent, the entity itself.

And so I refute your argument on the basis that you have not supported event-causation over agent-causation.

I was born into an environment of idiots, people of a lower mental capacity than me. I was born into an environment where I was more talented, physically attractive, and articulate than others. Therefore I have no free-will when it comes to being uncharitable to those less fortunate than I. I can exploit them and humiliate them because I am more intelligent than they. I can have a Narcissistic personality with no drawbacks, because I'm smarter and better looking than everyone else I know.
Stewie, is that you? :eek:

In all seriousness though, how about you actually prove the above?

If you want, we can move on to that debate, which is really what is at issue here.
Since Soheran has declined the offer, may I ask that you outline your reasons for insisting on the existence of an a priori moral reason? I have no inclination to debate it right now, but I'd like to see precisely what case you'd make.

Stewie, is that you? :eek:

In all seriousness though, how about you actually prove the above?

Why should I prove it? You're an idiot like the rest, and you can take abuse from me, because you're cramping my style. I have a right to exploit the people around me, because they force me to lower my level of thinking, to simplify my speech, to compliment them when they have greasy hair and bad teeth. They are weighing me down and keeping me from progressing.

In all seriousness, I'm trying to get over a mildly narcissistic personality disorder. A choice.

Why should I prove it? You're an idiot like the rest, and you can take abuse from me, because you're cramping my style.
Because otherwise it is nothing but a mere assertion. Of course, encapsulated in one's own little world anything can hold true should they desire it.

In all seriousness, I'm trying to get over a mildly narcissistic personality disorder. A choice.
From what it seems you have much toil ahead of you.

Because otherwise it is nothing but a mere assertion. Of course, encapsulated in one's own little world anything can hold true should they desire it.


From what it seems you have much toil ahead of you.

aaah! the whole thing was a joke! a set up!

But seriously, if someone is born into an environment where he has a natural advantage, he has the right to use it to exploit others, especially if he feels estranged by them. He has no control over whether or not he makes people feel insignificant by being so brilliant. How can anyone call anyone a show-off?

aaah! the whole thing was a joke! a set up!
I had to inquire, because another NSG poster did in fact make this assertion until he was thoroughly disproven.

But seriously, if someone is born into an environment where he has a natural advantage, he has the right to use it to exploit others, especially if he feels estranged by them. He has no control over whether or not he makes people feel insignificant by being so brilliant. How can anyone call anyone a show-off?
One would think that a truly superior individual would be able to overcome their natural inclinations to use others and behave in a moral fashion, treating others as ends and not means, wouldn't you agree? That others may envy this person is of course no fault of their own.

I had to inquire, because another NSG poster did in fact make this assertion until he was thoroughly disproven.

"Until"? He didn't stop.

I was born into an environment of idiots, people of a lower mental capacity than me. I was born into an environment where I was more talented, physically attractive, and articulate than others. Therefore I have no free-will when it comes to being uncharitable to those less fortunate than I. I can exploit them and humiliate them because I am more intelligent than they. I can have a Narcissistic personality with no drawbacks, because I'm smarter and better looking than everyone else I know.

I am so glad I am not an Epsilon.

Free will: the power of choice determination through our values and preferences.

Will: the power of choice determination.

Someone whose chooses, but chooses according to something other than reasons, has a will, but not a free will.

How can someone choose without values. If he chooses according to someone else's values, he is an extension of their will, not his own. Will, then must be the internal motivations of the actor.

Therefore, we can then consider free will to be soveriegn internal motivation, self-governed motivation. Self-governed is self-created as well, but since we cannot self-create, then we cannot have a sovereign internal motivation.

Take a look at BNW, when the children are given an aversion to books, it is free will that causes them to obey their values and never read a book?

If you still think it is, then you win, but free will becomes a meaningless concept.

"Until"? He didn't stop.
Another reason to reject his assertion I suppose - a superior individual would tend to learn from experience. ;)

Free will: the power of choice determination through our values and preferences.

Will: the power of choice determination.

Someone whose chooses, but chooses according to something other than reasons, has a will, but not a free will.Yes, but in the version of causal determinism that you espouse, "our values and preferences" are just empty words.

You maintain that they are "ours" because at some point in the causal chain, they are located "inside" "us."

But how is my preference for cheese any different than a rat's in a maze? I go left because that's the way to the gourmet shop, he goes left because the smell is stronger that way.

But random, in regard to free will, is arbitrary.Yes, but arbitrary is the larger category. Arbitrary contains random. It is possible to make arbitrary decisions that are not in any meaningful sense random.

Arbitrary means that the decision does not matter to the ends I have in mind, so I can choose "for whatever reason."

Random means that I choose for no reason at all.

I can have a reason behind my action even if my action is not determined. In that sense my action is not arbitrary.Actually, you might have a perfectly arbitrary reason.

But I can have no non-arbitrary reason for choosing THAT reason over another - because if I did, that reason would provide me with ONE answer, not two.Here, again, you want to have your cake and eat it too.

On the one hand, you maintain that the previous causes of my internal preferences have no bearing on their ontological status. You say that because I make decisions based on internal causes, I am free. Bullshit, I respond: on your theory, if every internal cause can be traced to an external cause, it is determined and so are you, because each internal cause simply carries over the character of the external cause. But you deny this claim, insisting that there some sort of magical ontological shift occurs when I can call a cause "internal"--indeed, I need no longer be concerned that it is merely the playing out of external causes.

On the other hand, you want to say that if I cannot trace Reason A to some prior natural cause, then Reason A is hopelessly tainted by the fact of its origins, or lack thereof.

You can't have it both ways. Either there are meaningful breaks in causal chains that allow us to introduce new causal chains, or there are not. If you're going to maintain that every reason is tainted by the character of those that precede it in a causal chain, then at a minimum you'll have to admit that there is no meaningful distinction between "internal" and "external" natural causes--and that is to admit that on your theory there is no such thing as "free will," merely "will."

This precise formulation does not work quite as well with regard to the a priori moral reason argument, but the principle behind it works neverheless.You're right that it does not work with regard to the a priori moral reason--it does not work at all--because in the context of the moral law the definition of "reason" fundamentally changes.

Reasons in the moral law are rational reasons, not natural ones. They are of a kind with the reasons that guide a mathematical proof, an argument, perhaps even a narrative: they are determinate (non-random) but not determined.

Allow me to make a concession to contingency. At some point in the history of the world, natural causes resulted in human beings attaining to the status of rational creatures. At this point, human beings gained access to the moral law--while it may have been determined by the universe that we should attain to this status, having reached this point we are now capable of determining ourselves according to the moral law--and more importantly, the moral law does not follow the same rules as the natural law.

More particularly, at some point in each of our lives we attain, through the natural causes of brain development and social advancement, to the status of rational creatures. At this point we are now capable of governing ourselves according to a moral law that does not follow the same rules as the natural law.

You can find an "original" natural cause that gets us there. But once there, you need not find a natural cause that brings us to any particular decision reached through the moral law. But more importantly, the moral law is determinate (non-random) but not determined. By behaving according to the moral law, we can be free.

I have a choice between telling the truth, and suffering an inconvenience for it, or lying.

I want to lie, but my recognition of a priori moral facts means that I know I shouldn't.

You would say that if I choose to lie, I am not acting freely. I'm not entirely certain of this, but I'll grant it. On some level, if I do what I know I should NOT do, I am contradicting my will.Precisely.

Ultimately, I decide to tell the truth. Is this choice determined? It is not determined by some standard that chooses between reasons, no, but it IS determined by something else - my ability to control myself, my willpower.Yes, and willpower does sit at the crux of the paradox. When I exert my will to do the right thing--to behave as if I am free--I intuit that this is what I have done: I have asserted the fact of my freedom from natural cause by choosing against natural cause to do the right thing.

But, I ask myself, was it determined that I should have the necessary force of will? Had I not been "strong," would I not have behaved rightly? And is this "strength of will" a moral or a natural cause? Certainly, should I choose to do so, I can examine my personal history and psychology to find events and experiences that have contributed materially to my will-power. But, I also cannot prove that I am determined any more than I can prove that I am free.

I can never know. But because I can never KNOW, I have to admit the possibility that I am free--that, in fact, I "triumphed" over natural law in order to do the right thing. And it is precisely this possibility of freedom that obliges me to obey the moral law, to behave as if I am free.

Since I cannot know that I am not free, I have no excuse for behaving otherwise. Determinism would be a cop-out.

And if the strength of my will is a determined matter, then my choice to obey the moral law rather than the natural law must be determined as well.Right. But I cannot know that. I cannot accept it as an excuse for a failure to behave morally.

By your argument, I cannot be held responsible - because while I may be able to comprehend a "should" independent of my pre-existing values, I will only act on it if my natural composition permits me to. And either way, I am determined.Yes. And we all think that. We all think, "Maybe I couldn't have behaved otherwise, anyway." But then we have to think, "Maybe I could." Because we cannot know that we are determined by natural law.

We were both wrong. You say here that the crucial issue is whether such an a priori moral reason is possible, and indeed, I was operating on that assumption in my last post. But this is not really the crucial issue. The crucial issue is whether acting on ANY reason, a priori or otherwise, can really escape the deterministic chain in a manner that is not arbitrary - a manner that could meaningfully be called "more free" than the alternative.This is why the existence of an a priori moral law IS PRECISELY the issue.

If there is no a priori moral law, then I can only derive moral laws out of facts of experience, and since the facts of experience are determined there is every reason to believe that the facts of the moral law would be determined by them--but then, this is a contradiction that violates the "is-ought" fallacy. So there can be no genuine moral law.

On the other hand, if there is an a priori moral law, then it is by definition independent of natural causation. This allows the possibility that it obeys a law of reason different from the laws of natural causation. It can be determinate (non-random) without being determined.

We can still act on subjective reasons while being unfree. "I am hungry" is a subjective reason that could easily interfere with a recognition of "should": "I should return this money to my friend, but I'm hungry, so I'll use it to buy food instead."Yes, but we subjectively (morally) know that this is WRONG. And to the extent that we violate our own moral law--to the extent that we do what we know subjectively to be WRONG--we are unfree.

Nowhere do I need refer to objective brain states or behavioral patterns, merely to subjective mental ones.Yes, but when I behave in this way I do not obey the subjective moral law--I fail to obey the subjective law of action, which is that I act as I should. Therefore, the cause of my behavior must be something objective (indeed, I treat myself and my friend as objects), something naturally determined. I cannot be free if I do not behave as I know I should, because I actualize a contradiction in the will.

My reason may not be good, and for that reason you could say it is not really free, but it's still a subjective reason.The "reason" cannot be subjective, because subjective reason follows the moral law--the law of should, not "am."

It doesn't matter whether the causal chain is natural or not. It's still a causal chain - it's still deterministic.No. The moral law is determinate, but not determined. It is non-random, but it does not follow the natural law of cause and effect.

The fundamental difference is practical reason. A human being can ask herself, "What should I do?" The level of "should" does not exist for an earthworm. If it has conflicting inclinations, their resolution is a matter of whim, not reason.PRECISELY.

Thus, if I decide based on a whim ("I am hungry") rather than a moral reason ("I ought to return my friend's money"), I behave like an earthworm, not like a human being. I will, but I do not will freely.

But the answer to "What should I do?" is still a matter of my values and preferencesNo. This is why the a priori moral law is so important. It precedes all of your values and preferences.

- and even if an a priori moral reason exists, a possibility I still deny, the question of whether I will actually act on that moral reason is still determined.No, the question of whether you will attain to the state of reason necessary to recognize the moral law is determined. But the moral law presents itself as an obligation. It demands that you should behave a certain way, regardless of whether you "want" to.

When you follow the moral law, you may suspect that you would not have done so if not for some preference of yours. In some cases, you may even be able to point that preference out. But you cannot assume that it is impossible for a person to obey the moral law out of duty rather than because of some natural cause, unless you have already assumed the truth of causal determinism.

What I need is not "moral" reasons necessarily, but practical reasons - reasons that bind my action.Moral reasons are practical reasons. That's why Kant calls his moral treatise, The Critique of Practical Reason. Moral reasons are reasons that bind your actions.

A completely amoral person need not be unfree.Yes, he is. Because if he has no morals, then all he has are whims--like an earthworm.

You ignore a perfectly ordinary and legitimate use of "should" that can apply here.Grammatically legitimate and culturally ordinary, but not morally legitimate, which is the key factor. The statements you offer are, from a moral point of view, either incorrect or nonsense--more properly nonsense, since they both violate the "is-ought" fallacy.

Your choice is still determined - unless it is random. Unless, instead of being dependent on your strength of will, there is some cosmic die being rolled. But I fail to see how it could be neither.Ever actually done a complex mathematical proof?

Within the laws of mathematics, there are certain determinate moves you can and cannot make. But your proof is not determined within the laws of mathematics, no matter how determinate it may be. Your moves--as you perceive them subjectively, as you think of yourself as a mathematician employing the laws of reason--are both non-random and non-determined. You compose a plan, you may make false starts, you may try working backwards... there are lots of determinate, lawful things you can do, none of which is either random or determined.

You want to make them determined by injecting natural causes such as the mathematician's mood, his psychology, what he had for breakfast. And you may be right. In some cases, you may even be able to demonstrate rather conclusively that one mathematician does things one way and another does things another way because of natural differences between the two.

But you can never KNOW that there are not some things the mathematician does simply because they are rational. You cannot rule out the possibility that he obeys laws of reason independent from natural laws. And the laws of reason are simply not determining. They are, however, determinate and non-random.

A choice can be undetermined without being unfree, as long as its undermined status corresponds to the indifference of the actor, but there is still no distinction of FREEDOM between such indeterminism and determinism.But it makes every difference in the world whether the "indifference of the actor" is a rational indifference--because he understands, according to rules of reason, that his choice does not matter--or an emotional indifference, i.e. that he "does not care."

Since Soheran has declined the offer, may I ask that you outline your reasons for insisting on the existence of an a priori moral reason? I have no inclination to debate it right now, but I'd like to see precisely what case you'd make.I am a bit exhausted by the current debate, and I also have a mountain of grading to climb out from under... so this must, indeed, be brief. Perhaps when the current discussion has run its course, Soheran or I will move on by creating a new thread to discuss this issue.

In short, I basically follow the Kantian logic, which you can probably read in various forms easily enough on the Internet.

The a priori content of the moral law depends on the fact that it is based in pure reason. The "set up" for the argument is somewhat complex, but ultimately it devolves on the notion that we can only rationally will an "ought" that we can will as a universal maxim for all rational creatures--that is, that we can will as a "rule" of practical reason. In this sense, the moral law is necessarily creative--we can always come up with new rules (e.g. new forms of social or political interaction), so long as they obey the basic law of rational consistency: we need to state the same rule for everyone, for all rational creatures.

In other words, when acting I should be able to say, "any rational creature would be obliged (or at least allowed) to do the same thing."

As a "practical" matter (using the term rather loosely) this is not all that different from the old "do unto others" maxim: if I don't think other people should be doing what I plan, or I wouldn't like it if they did, then I have no basis to make myself the exception.

But how is my preference for cheese any different than a rat's in a maze? I go left because that's the way to the gourmet shop, he goes left because the smell is stronger that way.

It's not, really. Why should it be?

I've always been skeptical of the attempts to argue that animals don't have free will, at least on some level.

Actually, you might have a perfectly arbitrary reason.

But reasons are always defined in terms of ends.

A reason isn't actually a reason unless it ISN'T arbitrary - unless it actually serves some purpose, or has value in itself. Why else would I care about it?

Here, again, you want to have your cake and eat it too.

On the one hand, you maintain that the previous causes of my internal preferences have no bearing on their ontological status.

At least with respect to free will.

You say that because I make decisions based on internal causes, I am free. Bullshit, I respond: on your theory, if every internal cause can be traced to an external cause, it is determined and so are you, because each internal cause simply carries over the character of the external cause. But you deny this claim, insisting that there some sort of magical ontological shift occurs when I can call a cause "internal"--indeed, I need no longer be concerned that it is merely the playing out of external causes.

There is no "magical ontological shift."

The distinction here is one of personal identity, really... and it's true that looking at it objectively, there's an arbitrariness to it. But the fact of the matter is that WE care about this distinction.

We desire to have control over our actions - we desire the capability to act according to OUR values and preferences. And even if we are indistinguishable from rats, we care immensely when that is taken away from us.

On the other hand, you want to say that if I cannot trace Reason A to some prior natural cause, then Reason A is hopelessly tainted by the fact of its origins, or lack thereof.

You can't have it both ways. Either there are meaningful breaks in causal chains that allow us to introduce new causal chains, or there are not. If you're going to maintain that every reason is tainted by the character of those that precede it in a causal chain, then at a minimum you'll have to admit that there is no meaningful distinction between "internal" and "external" natural causes--and that is to admit that on your theory there is no such thing as "free will," merely "will."

There is no meaningful distinction in terms of the CAUSAL CHAIN, no. The causal chain doesn't care. It's just a series of dominoes falling over in a row.

But the point is that we have no reason to be particularly concerned if our base preferences actually were the product of external forces, as long as the central element of free will - my sovereignty over my actions - is maintained.

The difference between us here, I think, is a matter of your focus on having ultimate CHOICE. I don't see any particular use to having an unlimited power of choice, if it's not actually tied to our desires, or to what we believe we should do - both of which, I've argued, are ultimately founded in deterministic chains (or in randomness, which is no different with regard to free will.)

You can find an "original" natural cause that gets us there. But once there, you need not find a natural cause that brings us to any particular decision reached through the moral law. But more importantly, the moral law is determinate (non-random) but not determined. By behaving according to the moral law, we can be free.

How do we make decisions according to the moral law?

Are they all arbitrary, like that of the tic-tac-toe player? If so, how does the lack of determinism help us achieve freedom? If not, how can they be undetermined?

Yes, and willpower does sit at the crux of the paradox. When I exert my will to do the right thing--to behave as if I am free--I intuit that this is what I have done: I have asserted the fact of my freedom from natural cause by choosing against natural cause to do the right thing.

But I have not really chosen against natural cause. I have chosen against natural desire.

My rationality is still a matter of natural cause, as is my willpower - and I need not assume otherwise in order to make my choice.

But, I ask myself, was it determined that I should have the necessary force of will? Had I not been "strong," would I not have behaved rightly? And is this "strength of will" a moral or a natural cause? Certainly, should I choose to do so, I can examine my personal history and psychology to find events and experiences that have contributed materially to my will-power. But, I also cannot prove that I am determined any more than I can prove that I am free.

How did I achieve the strength of will to choose right?

There are a number of possibilities here. I might have been born with self-control, but that is certainly not undetermined. I might have had life experiences that forced the necessity of self-control upon me, but that is determined too. I might have had random processes influence my will, but while that is undetermined, it is not fundamentally different in terms of free will.

Of course, I could have chosen to be strong-willed, too - to put the effort into establishing self-control and adherence to the moral law. But it's circular to say that this means I can escape determinism or randomness, because the question then becomes: what caused THAT decision?

Because willpower precedes choice, and choice of willpower merely references willpower at a different point, ultimately, if willpower is relevant (if our decisions are willed and not random), it must precede any capability for free choice on our part. It must be part of the deterministic chain - or just be randomly caused.

This is why the existence of an a priori moral law IS PRECISELY the issue.

If there is no a priori moral law, then I can only derive moral laws out of facts of experience, and since the facts of experience are determined there is every reason to believe that the facts of the moral law would be determined by them--but then, this is a contradiction that violates the "is-ought" fallacy.

The derivation of moral law is not so simple.

You're right that it would be fallacious to say, "Human beings naturally have compassion and empathy for other human beings. Therefore, we should act with compassion and empathy towards others."

The logic I tend to use, however, is more like this: I recognize an obligation to treat others in certain ways. I may feel this obligation based on my naturally-caused sense of compassion and empathy, but this is irrelevant - what matters is that I can start with an imperative, because I recognize one (whether I want to or not.) I cannot alienate this perception.

On the other hand, if there is an a priori moral law, then it is by definition independent of natural causation.

The content of the moral law is, perhaps - just as the axioms of mathematics are. Our adherence to it is not.

Similarly, using reason I can know that insulting people isn't (usually) a good way to make friends - but acting on this hardly frees me from the deterministic chain.

Yes, but when I behave in this way I do not obey the subjective moral law--I fail to obey the subjective law of action, which is that I act as I should.

How is this the "subjective law of action"?

Perhaps it is the law of freedom, but I see no reason why purely subjective reasons need necessarily lead to adherence to it.

But the moral law presents itself as an obligation. It demands that you should behave a certain way, regardless of whether you "want" to.

Yes, and whether we actually fulfill that "should" is a determined matter - or a random one.

Moral reasons are practical reasons. That's why Kant calls his moral treatise, The Critique of Practical Reason. Moral reasons are reasons that bind your actions.

Say I'm going to do a task tomorrow that requires careful focus and concentration, and I'm scared to death of failing (for whatever reason).

I was planning on partying with my friends long past midnight, but one of them said to me, "Hey, if you don't get any sleep, you're going to fail."

So I won't go to the party. My friend's reason appeals to my fear enough that it binds my action.

There's no moral component to this - regardless of which option is right, I don't even consider that aspect. But there's a practical reason that binds my actions.

Yes, he is. Because if he has no morals, then all he has are whims--like an earthworm.

No, unlike the earthworm he is capable of a high level of self-control.

He can say, "what SHOULD I do to maximize my happiness?" And he can act perfectly in accordance with those principles, in theory anyway.

Within the laws of mathematics, there are certain determinate moves you can and cannot make. But your proof is not determined within the laws of mathematics, no matter how determinate it may be. Your moves--as you perceive them subjectively, as you think of yourself as a mathematician employing the laws of reason--are both non-random and non-determined. You compose a plan, you may make false starts, you may try working backwards... there are lots of determinate, lawful things you can do, none of which is either random or determined.

As far as any given decision goes, though, either it is done because it seems a better method than another (determined) or because it seems just as good as any of the others, and you have to go with one (random).

Assuming you are actually trying to succeed, of course.

It's not, really. Why should it be?

I've always been skeptical of the attempts to argue that animals don't have free will, at least on some level.I would agree that many animals do.

Nevertheless, your definitions don't allow you to make distinctions between them. A human has as much freedom as a dog, which has as much freedom as an earthworm, etc.

But reasons are always defined in terms of ends.No. Reasons are ends.

Moral reasons are ends-in-themselves. They are not the means to any other end.

A reason isn't actually a reason unless it ISN'T arbitrary - unless it actually serves some purpose, or has value in itself. Why else would I care about it?Because it is an end-in-itself.

There is no "magical ontological shift."

The distinction here is one of personal identity, really... and it's true that looking at it objectively, there's an arbitrariness to it. But the fact of the matter is that WE care about this distinction.Aha! But now you've beaten yourself with your own logic.

I don't care about the distinction. And according to your logic, you can't make me. ;)

We desire to have control over our actions - we desire the capability to act according to OUR values and preferences.No, you desire the capability to act according to values and preferences that you merely "possess."

I desire the capability to act according to values and preferences that are not only "mine," but which I actually give to myself--which have, that is, no necessary origin in natural cause.

There is no meaningful distinction in terms of the CAUSAL CHAIN, no. The causal chain doesn't care. It's just a series of dominoes falling over in a row.

But the point is that we have no reason to be particularly concerned if our base preferences actually were the product of external forces, as long as the central element of free will - my sovereignty over my actions - is maintained.But you're NOT sovereign. You "have" preferences in the sense that they fall within the sphere of what you call your "self." But you are not sovereign over them: they behave according to a force of nature.

You might as well say that you are sovereign over the division of your cells.

The difference between us here, I think, is a matter of your focus on having ultimate CHOICE. I don't see any particular use to having an unlimited power of choice, if it's not actually tied to our desires, or to what we believe we should do - both of which, I've argued, are ultimately founded in deterministic chains (or in randomness, which is no different with regard to free will.)Well, you're right about one thing: it's no use having an unlimited power of choice if it's not rooted in our desires OR "what we believe we should do." But you have not argued that the latter--moral law--is founded in a deterministic chain. You have merely assumed that it is, because you assume the validity of determinism.

How do we make decisions according to the moral law?

Are they all arbitrary, like that of the tic-tac-toe player?No. They are based in a priori laws of reason. Fundamentally, they demand a rational consistency in the will: I cannot will for myself what I cannot will as a universal maxim. I cannot rationally justify making myself the exception to the rule.

But I have not really chosen against natural cause. I have chosen against natural desire.

My rationality is still a matter of natural cause, as is my willpower - and I need not assume otherwise in order to make my choice.No, not to make your choice.

But to take your choice to be free, you do need to assume that your rationality is free from natural cause. Otherwise, you could not have chosen otherwise... and you can make your next choice only one possible way. If this is true, you cannot be obliged to follow the moral law--because no one can be obliged to do what it is metaphysically impossible for him to do.

How did I achieve the strength of will to choose right?You can never know. Unless you can objectively prove or disprove the truth of determinism, it will always be open to question.

Of course, I could have chosen to be strong-willed, too - to put the effort into establishing self-control and adherence to the moral law. But it's circular to say that this means I can escape determinism or randomness, because the question then becomes: what caused THAT decision?Rational recognition of the bindingness of the moral law, which needs no prior cause because it is transcendentally true a priori.

It must be part of the deterministic chain - or just be randomly caused.Or it must take for its reason a principle that has no cause... actually, let's backtrack.

You do realize there are two ways to have no cause, right?

1) If something is purely random, it has no cause.
2) If something is true a priori--that is, necessarily true--it has no cause.

When something is necessarily true, it is not "randomly" true; rather, there is no possible universe in which it would NOT be true. This is far from random.

But it is also not determined. And because it does not follow a deterministic law within itself--just as the logic of a mathematical proof is not determined within itself--obedience to the moral law is the only way to make choices that are both non-determined but also non-random.

The logic I tend to use, however, is more like this: I recognize an obligation to treat others in certain ways. I may feel this obligation based on my naturally-caused sense of compassion and empathy, but this is irrelevant - what matters is that I can start with an imperative, because I recognize one (whether I want to or not.) I cannot alienate this perception.That's right. That's what it means to discover an obligation a priori.

The content of the moral law is, perhaps - just as the axioms of mathematics are. Our adherence to it is not.We can't KNOW that.

Similarly, using reason I can know that insulting people isn't (usually) a good way to make friends - but acting on this hardly frees me from the deterministic chain.No, because "I shouldn't insult people because it won't make me friends" is not a moral law. Is/ought, remember?

How is this the "subjective law of action"?Objectively, I appear to be nothing more than the result of a causal chain. Subjectively, I am a rational creature capable of deciding.

Perhaps it is the law of freedom, but I see no reason why purely subjective reasons need necessarily lead to adherence to it.That's because you don't properly understand the philosophical meaning of the word "subject," so that as a result you confuse the meaning of the word "subjective."

I am a subject only insofar as I am free.

Objectively, I am a creature determined by natural law. Subjectively, I am a rational creature with the capacity to freely choose.

A horse gets hungry... he eats. Cause... effect.

I get hungry, but I may consider whether it is a good idea to eat now. I alienate myself from my own objective nature so as to deliberate--to decide rationally and NOT according to which appetite is the strongest.

But in perceiving myself as a rational creature--one that can deliberate and decide rather than merely being driven by the strongest desire--I perceive my obligation to the moral law. The moral law is the law of subjective reasons--that is, the reasons of a subject rather than an object.

Say I'm going to do a task tomorrow that requires careful focus and concentration, and I'm scared to death of failing (for whatever reason).

I was planning on partying with my friends long past midnight, but one of them said to me, "Hey, if you don't get any sleep, you're going to fail."

So I won't go to the party. My friend's reason appeals to my fear enough that it binds my action.

There's no moral component to this - regardless of which option is right, I don't even consider that aspect. But there's a practical reason that binds my actions.Well, you're wrong. There is a moral component to this, it's just obscured because you are going to do the right thing anyway.

You study and forego the party out of fear. That does not mean you have no a priori obligation to study rather than partying, it just means that you don't need to face that obligation as a challenge because you happen to be scared straight already.

Why do you have a moral obligation to study rather than partying? Because you are, as a rational creature, an end-in-yourself. You have a moral obligation not to waste your talents; you have a moral obligation to better yourself. (You may also have a moral obligation for other reasons. Perhaps your parents are paying for your schooling, and because THEY are ends-in-themselves you must treat their generosity with respect.)

In any case, the point is that you did NOT have a practical reason for your decision, because your fear decided for you. You did not consider what would rationally be the best choice--the right choice--but rather which choice would most nearly satisfy (or in this case, relieve) the various forces impinging on your will.

Yes, you used your reason to choose among means to an end--to figure out how best to maximize your happiness. But unless you honestly believe that maximizing your own happiness is always the right thing to do, you did not obey the mandates of practical (right-action discovering) reason.

You simply followed the sweetest smell, like a rat in a maze. At best, you turned away from the closest, easiest piece of cheese to go after another, tastier one.

I should clarify.

I have been using the term "practical reason" in a casual sense to refer to what should properly be called "pure practical reason." Wherever I say "practical reason" up to this point, assume that I mean "pure practical reason."

I shall endeavor to be more careful henceforth, thus minimizing (I hope) our confusion.

I tend to make a distinction between "practical reason" (meaning pure practical reason) and "instrumental reason" which is merely reasoning about means and methods--but which would include much of what is commonly understood as "practical reason."

No. Reasons are ends.

If they are ends, then they can't be arbitrary.

Aha! But now you've beaten yourself with your own logic.

I don't care about the distinction. And according to your logic, you can't make me. ;)

No, I can't - but if I can convince you that the reasons you don't care about the distinction are flawed, then I can at least sway you.

I desire the capability to act according to values and preferences that are not only "mine," but which I actually give to myself--which have, that is, no necessary origin in natural cause.

How is necessity any better for freedom than deterministic contingency?

You might as well say that you are sovereign over the division of your cells.

No, because I do not control them in any sense. My decisions do not effect them.

But you have not argued that the latter--moral law--is founded in a deterministic chain.

Actual adherence to it is - even if the obligation itself is a priori.

No. They are based in a priori laws of reason. Fundamentally, they demand a rational consistency in the will: I cannot will for myself what I cannot will as a universal maxim. I cannot rationally justify making myself the exception to the rule.

I've never understood how this could hold without first establishing a principle of equal treatment.

Anyway, the point is that the "what I will" portion of that formulation, even if its scope is regulated by the universalization requirement, is, you have said, not determined by it; my question is, insofar as there is room for creativity, what's the source of that creativity?

Is it the arbitrariness of the tic-tac-toe player choosing between four equivalent spaces? How is that kind of undeterminism useful at all?

No, not to make your choice.

But to take your choice to be free, you do need to assume that your rationality is free from natural cause.

Even you have acknowledged that human rationality is caused by natural law.

Rational recognition of the bindingness of the moral law, which needs no prior cause because it is transcendentally true a priori.

No, I granted that at the start of this example.

I recognize the bindingness of the moral law. Let's say I even recognize its a priori status.

The question is not whether I recognize it, but whether I'll actually ACT on it. And that requires more than rationality. It requires willpower - and how can my willpower somehow escape the deterministic chain?

But it is also not determined. And because it does not follow a deterministic law within itself--just as the logic of a mathematical proof is not determined within itself--obedience to the moral law is the only way to make choices that are both non-determined but also non-random.

You're missing the point.

I agree that a the content of an a priori moral law would neither be determined nor random; it would be a necessary truth. But human beings acting in certain ways is certainly not a necessary truth; that IS causal, or random.

So even if the moral law itself is neither determined nor random, human adherence to it is one or the other.

That's right. That's what it means to discover an obligation a priori.

Only discovery of a moral law that way can be purely deterministic: say, my biological nature causes me to recognize certain obligations.

I should clarify.

I have been using the term "practical reason" in a casual sense to refer to what should properly be called "pure practical reason." Wherever I say "practical reason" up to this point, assume that I mean "pure practical reason."

I shall endeavor to be more careful henceforth, thus minimizing (I hope) our confusion.

Yeah, I understood what you were getting at after reading the last part of the post.

Once past the confusion over "subjective" and "practical reason", the result was a much-shortened response.

If they are ends, then they can't be arbitrary.That's right. And rational a priori necessity is NOT arbitrary. But it is also not determined by causal law, because it is independent of causation.

The key here is whether I am correct in my assertion that the moral law is lawful or law-like--it is rational--but the nature of that law is different from natural causal laws. If that is true and it is possible that I can act according to the moral law, then it is possible that I escape causation--that I obey a law I rationally legislate to myself.

No, I can't - but if I can convince you that the reasons you don't care about the distinction are flawed, then I can at least sway you.Aha!

But now you are coming over to my camp.

Until very recently, you have insisted that convincing someone that his values are rationally flawed--that they violate the law of reason--cannot possibly be enough to "sway" him, because one would need to explain why anyone should "care" that his reasons are "flawed."

Until very recently, you have insisted that my will is merely a matter of which values, preferences, appetites, or passions are "strongest"--but surely a rationally flawed motivation can be the strongest!!

I think you are beginning to realize what it means to have access to an a priori moral law: it means that I can recognize that often the strongest preference--what I want--is WRONG. And only a an irrational creature would do what is rationally WRONG.

Thus, to the extent that I subjectively know myself as a rational creature--to the extent that I know myself to be capable of doing what I believe to be RIGHT even when I don't want to... I can be "swayed" by reason itself, and for no other reason.

How is necessity any better for freedom than deterministic contingency?It isn't, in itself. The necessity of the moral law is merely a demonstration of its independence of the natural law. It demonstrates that when we obey the moral law for its own sake, we free ourselves from the causal chains of natural law.

Of course, we can never know that we actually freed ourselves--we can never prove that NO causal chain could have led us to the same conclusion--but we cannot KNOW that we are determined either.

Freedom remains as a possibility at the limits of human knowledge.

No, because I do not control them in any sense. My decisions do not effect them.You say that you do not control your cells "in any sense," but I still can't tell how you have any less control over them than you do over your desires, your appetites, your passions... all of which, according to you, are determined by forces outside your control. The fact that any given decision could not have been decided otherwise does not strike me as different than the fact that any given cell either divides or it does not.

You may "feel" more attached to one than another, you may "feel" more ownership for one than the other, but that does not make you any the more responsible for the one you perceive "in your mind." You simply fool yourself with the illusion of control, rather than grappling with the possibility of real freedom.

Actual adherence to it is - even if the obligation itself is a priori.You can't know that.

I've never understood how this could hold without first establishing a principle of equal treatment.Who needs a principle of equal treatment? Sometimes, equal treatment may violate the moral law.

Of course, you do need a principle of respect, but this is contained in the transcendental deduction that a rational creature--including other rational creatures, e.g. the people around me--is an end-in-itself.

Anyway, the point is that the "what I will" portion of that formulation, even if its scope is regulated by the universalization requirement, is, you have said, not determined by it; my question is, insofar as there is room for creativity, what's the source of that creativity?The human imagination, of course.

Now, you will want to insist that either the ideas generated by my imagination are determined by some rule, or they appear at random. Indeed, perhaps there is some element of both. But the key to understanding freedom and creativity in the moral law is to understand that the rule by which I evaluate the ideas entering my imagination is not a causal one--I do not simply follow the "strongest" idea, the one that gets me the most excited, the one that agrees most nearly with my appetites.

Rather, I choose the one that makes the most rational sense, according to pure practical reason. And because pure practical reason is the logic of ends-in-themselves I do not, necessarily, need to refer to any ends outside of these. They have intrinsic value.

Even you have acknowledged that human rationality is caused by natural law.Well, I can't prove it, but I'm willing to admit that it accords with very sensible objective conjectures... and the notion that human access to pure reason and pure practical reason is causally contingent does not affect my argument, so long as the laws of reason themselves are true a priori--without reference to a prior causal chain.

I recognize the bindingness of the moral law. Let's say I even recognize its a priori status.

The question is not whether I recognize it, but whether I'll actually ACT on it. And that requires more than rationality. It requires willpower - and how can my willpower somehow escape the deterministic chain?Because "willpower," as I have said, sits at the crux of the paradox.

When I "struggle" with a decision, I may exert "willpower" to overcome a natural causal chain in order to do the right thing--that which accords with a reason that does not depend on causality. When I succeed, I say to myself, "I struggled because it was my duty to struggle. I did the right thing because I am so obliged."

Now, you might retort that my willpower must have been causally determined--because you already assume determinism--but how can you know that? Certainly the subjective experience of the event is that I "mustered" willpower "in the name of duty," and you cannot PROVE that I did so for any other reason.

On the other hand, you might remind us that some people are more willful than others, and you might argue that there is at least some reason to believe that the willfulness of an individual is at least partly dependent on natural (e.g. psychological) causes. Perhaps so.

But that does not dissolve the argument, for two reasons.

1) First, given any individual with a particular degree of willpower, even if we suppose that some particularly difficult moral problems will be "beyond" him, his having willpower does NOT guarantee that he WILL choose those moral ends that ARE within his grasp. He still has to actually choose, and it is in choosing those rational ends that are available to him that he asserts his freedom from the causal chain.
2) Supposing some individual who "does not have the will" to do the right thing, this does not absolve him from obligation to the moral law. He may think, "I know what is right, but I do not have the willpower to do it." Well, then it follows that he is obliged to obtain the requisite willpower--being morally weak is not an excuse. And, of course, there are many ways that people can actively improve their willpower. Many of them involve a person's using objective knowledge about himself to do so, but this is (as you may recall) one of the primary reasons that I insist on the paradox rather than simply arguing that we should regard ourselves as free.

By understanding how we have been determined by causal chains, we give ourselves a better chance of breaking free of them. This is the essential insight of psychotherapy.

I agree that a the content of an a priori moral law would neither be determined nor random; it would be a necessary truth. But human beings acting in certain ways is certainly not a necessary truth; that IS causal, or random.You can't KNOW that. If someone acts in accordance with a necessary moral truth, you cannot know that their decision is causal or random. IT MAY HAVE BEEN a decision made in accordance with the moral truth BECAUSE OF that moral truth--and since that moral truth is a priori it in itself begs no prior cause.

To behave in duty to the moral law is to pull ourselves out of the world of causal chains and into the world of rational "chains."

(There is a subtle beauty in the fact that while we are talking about "chains" as sequences, the word also connotes "restraints." We can either be restrained by determinate causes, or we can enter the moral world in which we restrain ourselves by moral rules.)

So even if the moral law itself is neither determined nor random, human adherence to it is one or the other.No. Human adherence to it may be rational, determinate but neither determined nor random.

Dear Soheran:

Unless something radically new and different comes out of your next post, I am just about ready to put this baby to bed, agreeing (for the time-being at least) to disagree.

Ultimately, the incompatiblist point as I have presented it is extremely difficult to wrap one's brain around, because it depends on the acceptance of paradoxical logic, negative dialectics--and that's just not an easy leap.

Please don't take that in a patronizing way, because that is not how it is intended. I have spent the last few years reading Kant, Adorno and the like, and I can honestly say that I actually understand and conceptualize my own position better at the conclusion of this debate than I did at the beginning, because I have been forced to make it as plainly intelligible as possible.

Moreover, I think that the paradoxical understanding of free will and the obligatory status of the a priori moral law is, in many ways, one of those things that ultimately "clicks" when you seriously engage the paradox for some time... when you force yourself to move back and forth between the moments of the dialectic until you understand something of the underlying paradoxical logic which cannot quite be translated into the positive logic of verbal discourse.

There is actually something very aesthetic about it.

The key is that, while for any given decision I may be able to conjure a plausible causal explanation, I can NEVER KNOW that I was not free to choose. I can never prove that the causal explanation I have in mind (or any other) necessarily resulted in my action.

Because of that uncertainty, I cannot simply "excuse" myself from obligation to the moral law--I cannot conclude that I could not have done otherwise. I am responsible for my actions as a rational creature. And the more you think this through, the more you have to realize that moral obligations are obligations in the truest sense of the word: I MUST conform to them, whether I want to or not; I am obliged as a free rational creature, and unless I KNOW that I am NOT a free rational creature, I have no business excluding myself.

As I think you began to realize at the end, there IS something intrinsically convincing about the rational "rightness" of action. I can be "swayed" by reason--and it is possible that I can be swayed by reason alone.

I think you are still struggling against negative dialectics for the same reason that most people do: you have faith that the human mind can actually comprehend all truths, or at least all fundamental truths. You cannot accept that there is simply an inconsistency (subject/object) in how we know the world that cannot actually be resolved. We cannot reconcile subjectivity and objectivity, but we also cannot dispense with either.

We are left with a paradox.

Anyway, my sense is that neither of us is going to budge much further in the context of the current debate. But, we've also both been around NS General long enough to know that "free will" is one of those topics that keeps coming back on a fairly regular cycle.

Hence, let us retire and quietly consider our own views, in preparation for the day when we can tackle this one again.

I will, of course, read any further responses that you post. But if I sense that we simply continue to go in circles, I may not respond, or I may respond only briefly.

In any case, here's to us outlasting and/or outclassing anyone else interested in this debate!

*raises glass* ;)

I had a friend who argued this point to me, and I could understand his logic.

That we are basically machines that function on internal programming(DNA) and cause and effect, that we are bound to and shaped by the laws of physics and the environment.

As such, it is possible that if you could clone Hitler, and subject that clone to all the experiences that Hitler had endured. Then that clone would BE Hitler. With the same reactions, thought processes, and will as Hitler.

Although I disagreed with him, I could not come up with an iota of evidence to prove my point, and still cannot. Perhaps a unified field theory or an understanding of quantum physics would shed some light on this theory.

Eventually this person ended up becoming a junkie, absolving themselves of all life's responsibilities, abandoned their mate, offspring, and future. I don't even know if he is still alive. Perhaps this was his fate, perhaps not.

My point is, to accept that you have no free will is to accept that you do not matter. To accept that all of the universe is some pointless machine just ticking away for no reason whatsoever, and that everything is pointless because it has all been predetermined.

So I suggest that all who have come to this fatalistic realization, strive to prove themselves wrong in some way. To take this little bit of stimulus from your environment and reshape your way of thinking. Lest you succumb to your pointless fate instead of striving to achieve your glorious destiny.

Like someone early on said, we cannot control the circumstances but can control the reactions. So, we have free will.

My point is, to accept that you have no free will is to accept that you do not matter. To accept that all of the universe is some pointless machine just ticking away for no reason whatsoever, and that everything is pointless because it has all been predetermined.Actually, fatalism and determinism are subtly (but sometimes importantly) different philosophical positions.

Determinists can manage a form of compatiblism that allows actions and decisions to "matter."

What they can't muster is a definition of "obligation" that actually means "obligation."

AnarchyeL: I'll give you this.

Willpower is at the crux of the whole thing, and the simple formulation I've given of it doesn't fully account for the way it actually seems to work. It needs work, and I intend to see if I can arrive at a better one.

I still think the one you've presented is flawed, though - I can't see how you can base the undeterminism of choice on the choice to apply willpower, or to muster willpower.

Willpower is at the crux of the whole thing, and the simple formulation I've given of it doesn't fully account for the way it actually seems to work.No formulation can fully account for the way it seems to work, because objective knowledge and subjective knowledge of the will inevitably contradict each other.

Instead, we can comprehend the objective account--yours; or we can comprehend the subjective account; but we cannot comprehend the two at the same time.

By moving between them, first one and then the other, we can make a great deal of sense out of our experience of the world... but in the realm of pure reason we simply cannot KNOW what "happens" in that critical moment of will.

It is beyond human reason.

Only so long as you remain committed to the ideology that nothing is beyond human reason will you continue to resist the simple, almost elegant truth of the paradox itself.

I still think the one you've presented is flawed, though - I can't see how you can base the undeterminism of choice on the choice to apply willpower, or to muster willpower.And I think you still don't understand that I am NOT trying to "prove" that we are free.

Rather, I have shown that if we take an assumption of moral freedom for granted, we get a very coherent view of the world in which we are morally obliged to behave in a certain way.

Meanwhile, if we take an assumption of determinism for granted, we get a very coherent view of the world in which "pure obligation" has no meaning because we can only do as we "want."

The problem is that these two views of the world contradict one another and we cannot judge the veracity of either assumption.

Everything is caused by cause and effect. What we know of freewill is nothing but unknown and known variables interacting with one another.

Rather, I have shown that if we take an assumption of moral freedom for granted, we get a very coherent view of the world in which we are morally obliged to behave in a certain way.

The difficulty I have is with this notion, at least as you have explained it.

The problem is that the "two reasons" you presented - the fact that we must actually choose to muster our willpower, and the fact that we can consciously choose to strengthen our willpower - both depend on CHOICE.

But "choice" was, after all, our starting point. The entire argument was over whether it is POSSIBLE for choice to be neither determined nor random.

I understand that you are not trying to prove free will. My point is simply that if we need willpower to make moral choices, the fact that moral choices can affect our willpower is irrelevant - the ultimate source must be something beyond choice.

To return to the liar and the question of incompatibilist moral responsibility:

"It wasn't my fault! My will was weak!"

"But you could have tried to strengthen it."

"I know I should have, but my will was weak then, too, and I couldn't bring myself to do it."

And so on.

the ultimate source must be something beyond choice.No, only if you already think that choice is determined.

It is the ultimate source of choice that we cannot "get at" through human reason.

On the one hand, it is possible that the ultimate source of choice--the ultimate source of will--is purely natural, obeying the natural deterministic law.

On the other hand, it is possible that the ultimate source of choice--the ultimate source of will--is rational, obeying a non-deterministic law of reason. In this case, choice can, in fact, "be its own source" (to abuse the common language) in much the same way that the subjective law of reason is itself "its own."

We only have to find a source in nature if we already know that determinism is true.

But at least you've admitted that there can be an "ultimate" source--a final source without any prior cause--such as is a law of reason.

(I know that's not what you meant by "ultimate," but that IS what the word means and I am feeling playful.) ;)

"It wasn't my fault! My will was weak!""You're wrong. It was your fault, and you cannot complain about your natural weakness unless you know that it is impossible to rationally overcome such weaknesses."

"But you could have tried to strengthen it.""Excuse me. That's true, but we needn't go this far to establish his responsibility. He had an obligation to tell the truth, and he fell short of it. He can't blame his weakness, because it is precisely his responsibility to overcome that weakness."

"I know I should have, but my will was weak then, too, and I couldn't bring myself to do it.""You say you 'couldn't', but how do you KNOW you 'couldn't'? You should have tried harder. It was, indeed, your obligation to do so."

On the other hand, it is possible that the ultimate source of choice--the ultimate source of will--is rational, obeying a non-deterministic law of reason. In this case, choice can, in fact, "be its own source" (to abuse the common language) in much the same way that the subjective law of reason is itself "its own."

You said that two kinds of things exist that have no cause:

1. Things that are random. We agree that random choice is unfree.
2. Things that are necessarily true. Even if the moral law is necessarily true, choices clearly are not - if they were, then we would follow the moral law every time, which you grant they are not.

If our choices were like the axiomatic properties of numbers, perhaps we could escape determinism. But since, even if the moral law is a priori, we still must possess the willpower to actually obey it (and willpower is neither random nor necessarily true), we cannot.

You should have tried harder. It was, indeed, your obligation to do so."

"I know I should have, but my will was weak then, too, and I couldn't bring myself to do it."

The cycle goes on. The liar can always say the same thing every time - because she realizes, as everyone else must as well, that willpower is necessary for obedience to the moral law.

You said that two kinds of things exist that have no cause:

1. Things that are random. We agree that random choice is unfree.
2. Things that are necessarily true. Even if the moral law is necessarily true, choices clearly are not - if they were, then we would follow the moral law every time, which you grant they are not.No, any given choice is not necessarily true.

The power of choice may be. Subjective reason argues, ultimately, that it is--that this is the only way to understand our knowledge of ourselves.

Again, subjective and objective reason lead to different, contradictory, conclusions:

1) Objective reason argues (without proof) that everything is determined, so that free choice is impossible.
2) Subjective reason argues (without proof) that we are necessarily free to choose.

"I know I should have, but my will was weak then, too, and I couldn't bring myself to do it."

The cycle goes on. The liar can always say the same thing every time - because she realizes, as everyone else must as well, that willpower is necessary for obedience to the moral law.But only from an objective perspective can we say, with some justification, that a person "simply didn't have enough willpower."

Think about it this way:

You try really, really hard not to tell a lie. But you find yourself lying anyway.

How do you KNOW that you couldn't have tried harder?

You might say, "But I was trying as hard as I could." The "as hard as I could" begs the question.

2) Subjective reason argues (without proof) that we are necessarily free to choose.

The question, however, pertains to any specific choice.

I lie, or I don't lie. Neither of these are necessarily true.

The question, however, pertains to any specific choice.No, it doesn't.

The question is,

What is "choice"?
What is "will"?
What is "willpower"?

*sighs heavily and leaves thread before even attempting to post anything remotely meaningful, because you can't throw a well-written letter through a brick wall no matter how hard you try*

What is "choice"?
What is "will"?
What is "willpower"?

The definition? Or the mechanism?

The definition? Or the mechanism?I think somehow we've lost the thread of this argument. *sigh*

My last substantive post says just about everything I have left to say at this point.

I think somehow we've lost the thread of this argument. *sigh*

My last substantive post says just about everything I have left to say at this point.

Ah, fair enough.

Let's call it quits then. (For now, anyway.)

AnarchyeL, if we are to follow this chain of subjective self-awareness and revision of action, shouldn't we find a stopping point where the person finds the most apt assertion of his preferences, the greatest application of his will?

Is there a point where subjective and objective meet?

AnarchyeL, if we are to follow this chain of subjective self-awareness and revision of action, shouldn't we find a stopping point where the person finds the most apt assertion of his preferences, the greatest application of his will?Yes, in a moral law knowable a priori.

This is, in fact, the only kind of "stopping point" we can have, since natural causation goes back ad infinitum to the beginning of time.

Is there a point where subjective and objective meet?Depends on what you mean.

I didn't pursue this line of reasoning too far, because it seemed to be muddying the larger points, but Kant argues that certain "feelings" can be derived directly from reason--or at least they represent the result of a creature such as ourselves engaging with reason.

One of these is the sense of shame, which arises due to a rational comparison between our actual and ideal selves. Another is "respect," another is "dignity"... and I'm sure there are others, but I can't think of them right now.

In this sense, then, there is an interaction or a "meeting" between subjective and objective perspectives.

In another sense, it is important to note that in the language of modal logic, the position of incompatiblism that I espouse does NOT maintain that

N~(F and D) -- that is, that there is no possible world in which people could be both free and determined.

As I have suggested already, if natural causes led us to behave rightly, then in an important sense we could not distinguish between our free subjectivity and our objective nature--they would be, in this sense, "compatible."

Obviously, ours is not such a world--people behave wrongly all the time.

Yet the argument from the Left (broadly speaking) that at least some of the ways in which we feel compelled to hurt each other are bound up in the political and economic contradictions of our world is at least somewhat compelling: in a redeemed world, people might be less inclined to be assholes.

To the extent, then, that we can rearrange our social life to reduce the conflict between the ethical and the natural, we can approach some correspondence between the two. Will that correspondence ever be perfect? Unlikely, I think.

Still, this recalls again Adorno's thesis that dialectics is the ontology of the false condition. If we can heal ourselves as a society, the freedom/determinism problem may, to a certain extent, dissolve along with all our other contradictions.

Yes, in a moral law knowable a priori.

This is, in fact, the only kind of "stopping point" we can have, since natural causation goes back ad infinitum to the beginning of time.

I am not referring to moral a priori, but since you bring it up, I do believe it can have naturalistic roots, so even it wouldn't provide a stopping point.

The question I have relates to what I understood as your refutation of objective causation through subjective perception. I may be wrong, but it seems that you want to say that we, through our self-awareness, can never have true objective knowledge of our motivations and their resulting actions as it immediately causes a shift in the subjective which negates the objective knowledge. We can observe the causal chain of our own motivations objectively in retrospect, but the simple observation of the self changes the self and therefore makes the future unknown.

I am asking you this (these): Is there some central core, some base property or value of the person will never be willing to change? It could feasibly be considered the one thing that makes the person itself, the defining quality?

If the person grows in his self-awareness and reaches this understanding of his core quality or qualities, would the possibility of revision stop? In this, does the subjective understanding cease to find differences to distinguish itself from the objective, and therefore find itself powerless to resist causal determination?

Depends on what you mean.

I didn't pursue this line of reasoning too far, because it seemed to be muddying the larger points, but Kant argues that certain "feelings" can be derived directly from reason--or at least they represent the result of a creature such as ourselves engaging with reason.

One of these is the sense of shame, which arises due to a rational comparison between our actual and ideal selves. Another is "respect," another is "dignity"... and I'm sure there are others, but I can't think of them right now.

In this sense, then, there is an interaction or a "meeting" between subjective and objective perspectives.

In another sense, it is important to note that in the language of modal logic, the position of incompatiblism that I espouse does NOT maintain that

N~(F and D) -- that is, that there is no possible world in which people could be both free and determined.

As I have suggested already, if natural causes led us to behave rightly, then in an important sense we could not distinguish between our free subjectivity and our objective nature--they would be, in this sense, "compatible."

Obviously, ours is not such a world--people behave wrongly all the time.

Yet the argument from the Left (broadly speaking) that at least some of the ways in which we feel compelled to hurt each other are bound up in the political and economic contradictions of our world is at least somewhat compelling: in a redeemed world, people might be less inclined to be assholes.

To the extent, then, that we can rearrange our social life to reduce the conflict between the ethical and the natural, we can approach some correspondence between the two. Will that correspondence ever be perfect? Unlikely, I think.

Still, this recalls again Adorno's thesis that dialectics is the ontology of the false condition. If we can heal ourselves as a society, the freedom/determinism problem may, to a certain extent, dissolve along with all our other contradictions.

I don't feel I need to add much more to my post, but yes, I think you touched on it well here.

As I said, it seems most reasonable to say that our moral codes, if they are in anyway derived from within, are naturalistic in quality, and thereby determined. I would therefore posit that, if your estimation of self-revision (if I have managed to interpret it correctly) is true, then we can extend this revision until the person reaches his true nature which he finds himself unwilling to change. At this point he is satisfied with his objective nature and there is no conflict between objective and subjective. More importantly, he finds no discomfort in causal determination.

I guess felt the need to restate it, even if I didn't add to it.

EDIT: I honestly feel that this is the most profound thought I have ever had. This is important to me, at least.