compatibilism

[Belinda]

Determinsm is true. 'Free Will' is a religious doctrine which is made for the purpose of being able to blame individuals for their sins. Social control in other words.

You've confused at least four very different ideas in just the last sentence, B.

But if Determinism were true, then it wouldn't matter a jot who believed it was true, and no person could possibly believe anything other than what they do, in fact, believe.

Which is a thing that you, yourself, clearly do not believe. Because you're trying to convince people who, according to Determinism, can't change their minds anyway.

People can and do change their minds. Unlike billiard balls and jet engines all animals and plants adapt to their environments. Determinism is more than a chain of events. Freedom relates to the ability to choose.The ability to choose relates to reason. Free Will is unreasoned because it relates only to the putative originating self and not to the self's environment.

[Immanuel Can]

Determinsm is true. 'Free Will' is a religious doctrine which is made for the purpose of being able to blame individuals for their sins. Social control in other words.

You've confused at least four very different ideas in just the last sentence, B.

But if Determinism were true, then it wouldn't matter a jot who believed it was true, and no person could possibly believe anything other than what they do, in fact, believe.

Which is a thing that you, yourself, clearly do not believe. Because you're trying to convince people who, according to Determinism, can't change their minds anyway.

People can and do change their minds. Unlike billiard balls and jet engines all animals and plants adapt to their environments.

If you think that, then you are not a Determinist at all...just as I thought. "Adapt by changing one's mind" is free will. The entity in question is reacting to circumstance and volitionally altering a course that would otherwise result in harm, death or exinction.

I think your problem is that you're still imagining that the word "free" here has to imply "arbitrary and without considerations of circumstance," or "without any regard at all for material causes." But it doesn't. All it means is "not totally a result of physical-material precauses." It means, "not just billiard balls."

Free Will is unreasoned because it relates only to the putative originating self and not to the self's environment.

No, that's incorrect.

"Free" does not imply "without regard for the environment" or "unrelated to circumstance." Quite the contrary -- free choices are made in order to, as you say, "adapt" or "change" the possibilities being offered by one's environment or circumstances. They're based on a reading the individual makes from the material facts on hand. They're not merely arbitrary or idiosyncratic: they're products of a conscious understanding of the situation.

[Belinda]

You've confused at least four very different ideas in just the last sentence, B.

But if Determinism were true, then it wouldn't matter a jot who believed it was true, and no person could possibly believe anything other than what they do, in fact, believe.

Which is a thing that you, yourself, clearly do not believe. Because you're trying to convince people who, according to Determinism, can't change their minds anyway.

People can and do change their minds. Unlike billiard balls and jet engines all animals and plants adapt to their environments.

If you think that, then you are not a Determinist at all...just as I thought. "Adapt by changing one's mind" is free will. The entity in question is reacting to circumstance and volitionally altering a course that would otherwise result in harm, death or exinction.

I think your problem is that you're still imagining that the word "free" here has to imply "arbitrary and without considerations of circumstance," or "without any regard at all for material causes." But it doesn't. All it means is "not totally a result of physical-material precauses." It means, "not just billiard balls."

Free Will is unreasoned because it relates only to the putative originating self and not to the self's environment.

No, that's incorrect.

"Free" does not imply "without regard for the environment" or "unrelated to circumstance." Quite the contrary -- free choices are made in order to, as you say, "adapt" or "change" the possibilities being offered by one's environment or circumstances. They're based on a reading the individual makes from the material facts on hand. They're not merely arbitrary or idiosyncratic: they're products of a conscious understanding of the situation.

If that is what you mean by Free Will then it's compatible with determinism.
Do you really not know that the free will/determinism debate hinges on origination?

[hilderos]

Determinsm is true. 'Free Will' is a religious doctrine which is made for the purpose of being able to blame individuals for their sins. Social control in other words.

You've confused at least four very different ideas in just the last sentence, B.

But if Determinism were true, then it wouldn't matter a jot who believed it was true, and no person could possibly believe anything other than what they do, in fact, believe.

Which is a thing that you, yourself, clearly do not believe. Because you're trying to convince people who, according to Determinism, can't change their minds anyway.

Not quite. Determinism doesn't state that people 'can't change their minds', rather it understands that all events, past, present and future are determined by previously existing causes. Thus, people can change their views (but not out of their own volition), unless it is has been determined that they cannot, which is something we cannot know.

[Immanuel Can]

People can and do change their minds. Unlike billiard balls and jet engines all animals and plants adapt to their environments.

If you think that, then you are not a Determinist at all...just as I thought. "Adapt by changing one's mind" is free will. The entity in question is reacting to circumstance and volitionally altering a course that would otherwise result in harm, death or exinction.

I think your problem is that you're still imagining that the word "free" here has to imply "arbitrary and without considerations of circumstance," or "without any regard at all for material causes." But it doesn't. All it means is "not totally a result of physical-material precauses." It means, "not just billiard balls."

Free Will is unreasoned because it relates only to the putative originating self and not to the self's environment.

No, that's incorrect.

"Free" does not imply "without regard for the environment" or "unrelated to circumstance." Quite the contrary -- free choices are made in order to, as you say, "adapt" or "change" the possibilities being offered by one's environment or circumstances. They're based on a reading the individual makes from the material facts on hand. They're not merely arbitrary or idiosyncratic: they're products of a conscious understanding of the situation.

If that is what you mean by Free Will then it's compatible with determinism.

No, it's not. Not even close.

Determinism is the belief that ALL events are caused by NOTHING OTHER than prior causal forces of some kind, and NONE are ever caused by volition.

Determinism is not the mundane recognition that SOME things are merely products of causal forces. It requires that ALL must be.

If anything at all in the entire universe is not exclusively the product of material-causal forces (or divine fiat, in the case of Calvinism), then by definition, Determinism is simply not true.

But Determinism being false does not make it "compatible" with anything.

[iambiguous]

...they start with their own set of subjective assumptions.

They not only "start" with them...the whole view also ends with them. There's no scientific evidence for Determinism, not only because it's unfalsifiable, but also because Determinism itself makes science out to be nothing but cause-effect itself, and thus unrelated to truth.

Again, if you start with the assumption that scientific evidence itself [or the lack thereof] is but an inherent/necessary manifestation of the only possibly reality in the only possible world, the "whole view" is too. As is truth. If everything that scientists [and you and I] think, feel, say and do are just so many dominoes set up by whatever brought into existence the laws of matter themselves, then, if it's composed of matter, nothing is excluded. Not even the human brain. We just don't fully understand how lifeless matter could have possibly evolved into living matter evolving into us.

And, here, don't you come back [compelled or not] to God?

Then with respect to age old antinomies like the free will/determinism debate on to Rumsfeld...

You seem to like this quotation. I don't know why.

Isn't it obvious? With respect to the really, really big and the really, really small and the Big Question [re philosophy and science and theology] you tell me how it is not applicable? Unless, for some, they merely assume that their own arguments are the definitive explanations.

And, as exasperating as it might become for some, we are all in the same boat here.

Actually, we're not, for a very good reason. Determinism requires that all is physical-material causes, and can't even affirm science. Belief in free will does not, and can accept a scientific explanation as being related to truth. And ex post facto, free will is the way we all live. Determinism's the way nobody lives.

"Actually we're not" because from my frame of mind you merely assume yourself to offer us the definitive truth here about the, what, ontological explanation in connecting the dots between science and determinism.

Okay, but how about the teleological component here? Do you link that as well to what you believe about...God?

As though the way anybody lives is the way that you construe it. Despite all those quotes from nasa. You may be just as much in the dark as all the rest of us regarding "not normal" matter, but the 5% of matter encompassed in the "human condition" pertaining to determinism and free will? That you've got down cold?

Thus:

And that's an objectively true claim: nobody in human history has ever been able to live as if Determinism is the comprehensive explanation of everything. That fact needs explaining by Determinists.

Again, if all the facts we come up with to explain anything and everything re the waking brain are wholly in sync with all the facts that unfold re the dreaming brain, it still comes back to all we don't know about "brain matter" itself. All the things "we don't know we don't know" yet. Or is that just a trivial matter to you?

To me it's somewhat analogous to reading the first few verses of Genesis and then attempting to explain Christianity.

Maybe, sure. But then we are back to demonstrating it even presuming free will. And, given human autonomy, my interest in God and religion revolve around these matters:

1] a demonstrable proof of the existence your God

You can't believe in "demonstrable proof" if you're a Determinist.

Instead, everything is just a cause-effect relation. Belief in proof isn't real; belief is only what one has been caused to experience.

Of course you can. You just can't know beyond all doubt whether you did or did not have the option not to believe it. Now, given free will, we could know or not know back in 1969 whether we could put astronauts on the Moon. But could we know or not know whether such an endeavor was immoral given all of the problems we have right here on planet Earth that money could/would/should have been spent on instead?

Some even question what we think we know about the landing itself. They claim to know it was faked in a Hollywood studio. So, even in regard to the either/or world, we still need an omniscient God around to resolve some controversies.

So, yes, given the manner in some understand so-called "hard determinism", everything is just cause and effect re the laws of matter. Everything is just so many dominoes toppling over onto each other. Everything is destined/fated to unfold in the only possible reality. Including us.

2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?

I don't see how this is remotely relevant to the problem of Determinism. Why would we think a Deterministic universe would have to apportion all beliefs equal footing? It seems obvious to me it apportions them no footing at all.

Nothing at all is not profoundly intertwined in determinism if you are compelled by the laws of nature to understand determinism in the only possible manner in which you were ever able to. How could all beliefs not be interchangeable if they are the only beliefs possible? Same with the consequences of those beliefs given behaviors we were never able not to choose.

Only, again, I am more than willing, given the manner in which "here and now" I understand free will to admit I'm just not thinking this through in the most reasonable manner. Are you will to acknowledge this in turn?

3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and spiritual paths

I've no idea what this means.

Well, I try to encompass it in the OP from these ILP threads:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296

At least with respect to our moral, political, aesthetic and spiritual value judgments.

4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your God/spiritual path

Determinism has to say that whatever's happened, just happened. It has no "theodicy problem" in it.

Exactly.

I think there are issues in your questions worth addressing...but I don't see the relevance to Determinism.

Well, we construe determinism differently. From my frame of mind, you think only what you were never able not to think. And nothing any of us think cannot but be relevant if we were never able not to think it.

Not, of course, that I can actually demonstrate any of this in regard to the "for all practical purposes" world that we live and interact with others in. Back to all of us being in the same boat again.

There's a massive difference between saying, "Well, Determinism could be true," and saying, "Determinism is based on science." It's not. And one of the things that disqualifies it is its utter unfalsifiablity. That's criterial, not opinion-based. It's by the very definition of what "doing science" demands that Determinism is disqualified, not by my mere perspective or opinion, or yours.

Who is arguing that determinism is based on science? Certainly not me.

Oh, sorry...I thought you were saying you thought you had reason to believe Determinism was true. But you have no such argument? Okay.

No, I am merely taking it back a step. To argue whether determinism is based on science raises the question of what science is based on. And if science is based on the only possible reality in the only possible world whatever conclusions that scientists come up with are the only conclusions they could ever have come up with.

Same with our reasons here. Same with our arguments. They are all necessarily interchangeable in the only possible world.

That's still the mystery [for me] regarding compatibilists. How, in particular, they are able reconcile determinism with moral responsibility. It simply makes no sense to me. Compelled or not.

I am more than willing to acknowledge that the odds my own point of view here reflects the definitive or optimal explanation is almost certainly remote.

Oh. Then we agree. The chance of Determinism being true does, indeed seem very remote to me.

Okay, but how remote is it that you will actually be able to demonstrate this? After all, for the person who does accomplish it, it's instant fame. He or she world be the talk of the planet. Only further down the rabbit hole we go this far out on the metaphysical limb. For even if such a person were to come forth, we have no way of being absolutely certain that this too isn't but another manifestation of the only possible reality.

We don't even know if the human brain itself is capable of resolving it.

"It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe." nasa

I see no particular conclusion warranted from this. You'll have to be more explicit, I'm afraid.

And how exactly would matter comprising but 5% of all matter/energy go about being more explicit?

Let's take that as a topic: what does believing this "grim conclusion" get you? In other words, what makes Determinism attractive for you?

We've already seen it's not scientific or necessary. It's just a wish. So what makes that a winsome wish?

Philosophy [from my frame of mind] isn't about what the conclusions I arrive at "gets me". It's about what seems reasonable to me.

Great. What are the "reasons" for thinking Determinism is true? That's what I'm not seeing.

Just Google the pros and cons of determinism: https://www.google.com/search?q=determi ... nt=gws-wiz

Lots and lots of reasons will be given for believing or not believing in it. But how much closer do any of them get us to determining once and for all if our own reasons are in fact our own reasons? And not just reasons we were never able to not have?

Phenomenologically and sociologically, we can demonstrate it from the fact (I'll say it again) that NOBODY LIVES AS A DETERMINIST. That's a phenomenon, and sociological fact.

I marvel that nobody wants to address that fact.

Again, the assumption that you can assert things such as this and that, in asserting them, it makes them true. That there is simply no possibility that your brain, wholly in sync with the laws of matter, is constructed such that you were never able to not assert them. That all phenomenological and sociological facts are not inherently/necessarily subsumed in the only possible reality because you don't believe they are.

That, in other words, to marvel or not to marvel at anything is, what, entirely at your command? That your "observations" are the real deal going all the way back to whatever brought into existence the existence of matter itself? Again, somehow intertwined in your own thoughts and feeling about God?

Where does religion fit in here for you? Assuming free will is in fact the real deal.

Why argue? Your mind and mine are, according to Determinism's "lights," only guanteed to be in whatever state was predetermined for them. You can't change my mind, or I yours. But I can see you think you can make a case for Determinism here.

But why are you discussing? Why contend for the view? If Determinism were true, there could be nothing less important than whether or not anybody believes in it, since " belief" is not a causal factor for Determinists.

Again, I merely note that given the life I've live -- all the particular experiences, information, knowledge etc., pertaining to free will that came my way -- I have come to accept a "philosophical prejudice" that I am now typing these words given the only possible reality in the only possible world. But, unlike you [from my perspective], in no way, shape or form am I arguing that my frame of mind comes closest to the "whole truth" about determinism; and that if others think differently than I do, they just don't "get it". They don't grasp what it really is.

So let me put the question bluntly: If free will is an illusion, and Determinism is true, then how is it possible that 100% of all people who have ever lived have lived on the basis of their belief that free will is true, and 100% of the Determinists have been unable to live, even for a short time, as if their Determinism were true?

I'm asking for your empirical-sociological explanation of that observable fact.

If determinism as I understand it is true then how anything and everything pertaining to the "human condition" came to be comes back to what we still don't know -- may never know? can never know? -- about how matter itself was able to "somehow" configure itself into the human brain.

From my frame of mind, you want an answer to your questions...all the while presuming that your questions and your answers really are the default here in these exchanges. Not only that but presuming that your questions and your answers are opted for freely by you because you don't live as though determinism were true. As though that "proves" that determinism itself is false.

[promethean75]

"Free Will' is a religious doctrine which is made for the purpose of being able to blame individuals for their sins. Social control in other words."

Good shit, but we wouldn't say that it was 'made' by the religious, rather it became weaponized by the religious.

The illusory feeling of freewill developed much earlier than the concepts of gods and spirits and shit. You might say it's a phenomenological quality of experience that comes with the evolution of (our) complex brains.

Only much later as divisions of labor were established in societies, and hence the religious parasite class (shamans, oracles, mystics, monks, priests, preachers, etc), was it discovered by that class that they could control and manipulate other members of society by integrating a fear of god or spirits into the feeling of responsibility and guilt that came with the illusion of freewill. This was their most essential form of power and how they maintained their station in society; by combining these two fundamental deceptions. Well that and making predictions (about battles, harvests, seasonal changes, etc; you could pretend you had special omniscient powers and if you guessed right about something, everybody was like 'holy shit look at this this dude right here. I think I'd like to give him some of my money'), giving blessings, faith healing, and advising leaders.

[Belinda]

Immanuel Can wrote:

Determinism is the belief that ALL events are caused by NOTHING OTHER than prior causal forces of some kind, and NONE are ever caused by volition.

That is incorrect. Not only prior causes but also contemporary and ongoing circumstances cause all events. Volition is caused by inborn characteristics plus learned preferences, and does not originate in the individual.

The only Originator is God. No man is an originator.

[Immanuel Can]

...if you start with the assumption that scientific evidence itself [or the lack thereof] is but an inherent/necessary manifestation of the only possibly reality in the only possible world, the "whole view" is too. As is truth. If everything that scientists [and you and I] think, feel, say and do are just so many dominoes set up by whatever brought into existence the laws of matter themselves, then, if it's composed of matter, nothing is excluded. Not even the human brain. We just don't fully understand how lifeless matter could have possibly evolved into living matter evolving into us.

Right.

So "science" means nothing more than "whatever the physical-material causes produced." Reason, judgment, consciousness, logic, recognition of evidence, and, as you say, truth itself, are all just "an accident of physical-material causes." But the problem, then, is we have no justification in believing ANY of them.

Why should we believe the accidental byproducts of an indifferent universe? On what basis should we even believe they're related to truth?

Why should we trust anything our own brains seem to "cough up," in this unguided, uncaring process of physical-material causes bashing into each other?

I'm reminded of Arnold's line about the world being nothing more than "...ignorant armies clash[ing] by night." According to Determinism, the "night" is so total that there are no "armies" or agencies in the entire world that are not completely "ignorant."

And, here, don't you come back [compelled or not] to God?

You have to, I think.

That is, unless one is willing to settle into Determinism and truly disbelieve all the offerings of one's own mind. The intelligibility of the universe and even of one's self must be nothing but an illusion, if all we have here is the collision of physical-material accidents.

But this brings us back to the problem I emphasized at the end of my last message, too.

So let me put the question bluntly: If free will is an illusion, and Determinism is true, then how is it possible that 100% of all people who have ever lived have lived on the basis of their belief that free will is true, and 100% of the Determinists have been unable to live, even for a short time, as if their Determinism were true?

I'm asking for your empirical-sociological explanation of that observable fact.

And your answer was as follows:

From my frame of mind, you want an answer to your questions...all the while presuming that your questions and your answers really are the default here in these exchanges.

To which I have to say, no, not at all. I chose my wording very carefully.

I require no presumption on your part: just an observation we all can recognize, and which you cannot possibly avoid making too, if you're looking at the situation at all. I'm asking you how -- not from my perspective or anyone else's, but from a purely observational standpoint -- you can account for this fact. That's all.

Not only that but presuming that your questions and your answers are opted for freely by you because you don't live as though determinism were true. As though that "proves" that determinism itself is false.

No, I'm not making any positive claim for my own case here. I'm just asking how you, working as a Determinist, explain that observable fact to yourself.

I'll still hope for your answer, if I may. But meanwhile, I'll respond further.

Okay, but how about the teleological component here? Do you link that as well to what you believe about...God?

Well, you're assuming there IS a "teleological component" in reality, and while I agree there is, I have to (in fairness to the other view) suggest that it's possible to think there's not. Certainly, if Determinism is true, then we cannot expect that a physical-material causality would have some "objective" in mind in "creating" a universe and setting it on some "trajectory" toward a "goal." All that gets really implausible if Determinism were true.

But I do agree that if we want to believe there IS some teleological direction to the universe -- even if all we believe it actually is, is something like "higher evolution," or "spiritual unity," or some other such vague pseudo-goal -- we are driven back to thinking about a deliberate Creation.

For teleology is a purposive attribution. And how can a completely impersonal, non-conscious, non-intending universe have any "purpose' in existing?

All the things "we don't know we don't know" yet. Or is that just a trivial matter to you?

No, it doesn't. But it does seem irrelevant to the question.

For there are surely billions of things we do NOT know. And about them, we can say nothing. But there are also things we do think we KNOW. And it's only about those I'm inquiring.

Remember the cup and the Atlantic Ocean? I'm not asking you to account for the vastness of the Atlantic: I'm just asking you about the cup of water you have in your hand.

What's in that cup? One thing is the observation in red above. You know that's true. Another is, you say, that there seems to be "teleology." Can't I ask you about how that seeming seems to you? What about your own conviction that it adds up to some kind of nihilism? Can't we discuss what part of the water in your cup helps you arrive at that conclusion?

To be overwhelmed with the "unknowns" seems to me no more than a form of mental paralysis, at best; or, in some cases, perhaps, just an evasion of having to think precisely. The cup remains in the hand. There is water in that cup. It came from the vast Atlantic. Let's talk about the water-in-hand, and let the Atlantic roll on however it may, so that we may perhaps add a little more water to our cups.

To me it's somewhat analogous to reading the first few verses of Genesis and then attempting to explain Christianity.

That would actually be a pretty good way to start. For the whole Christian narrative is actually buried in the first three chapters of Genesis. But one doesn't see it until one looks back.

I could make that case for you, but it's not the topic here, and I don't want to sidetrack us.

You can't believe in "demonstrable proof" if you're a Determinist.

Instead, everything is just a cause-effect relation. Belief in proof isn't real; belief is only what one has been caused to experience.

Of course you can.

Such belief "can" be done. One can believe in anything if one wishes...even rainbow unicorns, of course.

I mean it just cannot be done rationally, meaning "in accord with Determinist assumptions."

You just can't know beyond all doubt whether you did or did not have the option not to believe it.

By Determinism, you have to believe there's no "doubt" at all. You were made to believe it. There's no such thing as an "option," so there's no "doubt."

Now, if you want to doubt Determinism is true, then you can wonder, as you say.

But here again you see the problem: Determinism makes an iron cage. It does not even grant one permission to wonder. It insists on answering all questions with the fatal, "Because of physical-material causes; end of story."

So, yes, given the manner in some understand so-called "hard determinism", everything is just cause and effect re the laws of matter. Everything is just so many dominoes toppling over onto each other. Everything is destined/fated to unfold in the only possible reality. Including us.

Yes, that's the point.

I'm confused as to how you can state it like this, but not see the inevitable corollary of that depiction of things: it is that your own cognition is nothing but that. So you are not "thinking," but rather "being-made-to-think-you're-thinking" by material forces. And your cognitions are oriented to causal, not truth.

2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?

I don't see how this is remotely relevant to the problem of Determinism. Why would we think a Deterministic universe would have to apportion all beliefs equal footing? It seems obvious to me it apportions them no footing at all.

Nothing at all is not profoundly intertwined in determinism if you are compelled by the laws of nature to understand determinism in the only possible manner in which you were ever able to. How could all beliefs not be interchangeable if they are the only beliefs possible? Same with the consequences of those beliefs given behaviors we were never able not to choose.

Well, if you believe in Determinism, you'd have to think that all such beliefs were not just "equal," but "equally bunk."

And nihilism itself wouldn't be excluded from that group. You couldn't even believe in the phenomenon of "belief," but would have to relegate it to the status of "epiphenomenon," which essentially means, "odd thing that happens but really means nothing at all."

So you were not able to choose your nihilism. It was not a product of reasons or evidence, but rather of the completely random productions of the random universe: you might simply have been caused to be a Zoroastrian or a Sufi -- but the universe forced you to be a nihilist, and me to be a Christian.

But if that's how it is, we're not talking to each other right now. I'm being-made-to-gas, and you're being-made-to-gas, and the differences between the ways we're "gassing" are totally irrelevant to the truth of falsehood of the beliefs we "gas."

if science is based on the only possible reality in the only possible world whatever conclusions that scientists come up with are the only conclusions they could ever have come up with. Same with our reasons here. Same with our arguments. They are all necessarily interchangeable in the only possible world.

Yes, that's what Determinism insists must be true. No science, no reasons, no arguments are related to truth. They're just phenomena, meaning just "things that happen". Their relative merits cannot be weighed.

That's still the mystery [for me] regarding compatibilists. How, in particular, they are able reconcile determinism with moral responsibility. It simply makes no sense to me. Compelled or not.

Well, I couldn't agree with you more.

Compatibilism seems to me to be a form of intellectual cowardice -- a refusal to let go of the consolations of Determinism while being totally evasive about the implications in it one doesn't like. But I see that no rational account can be made of Compatibilism.

It is, to borrow a metaphor from Isaiah, like trying to sleep with a blanket that's too short: pull in one's feet at one end, and the shoulders get cold; pull it up to the shoulders and the feet get cold; try to wrap oneself, and either the left or right side pop open and the cold air comes in again. There is simply no way to make the "blanket" of Compatibilism keep one warm...except by ceasing to think at all.

Okay, but how remote is it that you will actually be able to demonstrate this? After all, for the person who does accomplish it, it's instant fame. He or she world be the talk of the planet.

Well, as I said, the problem with Determinism is its unfalsifiability: there's always an explanation that seem to "save" it from being unavoidably wrong, and leaves it some crack of plausibility through which a Determinist can slip, fashioning yet another denial as he goes.

However, what pushes him to search for that crack is the mounting data, especially the experiential/existential data, piling up against his Determinism.

I say again: people never live as Determinists. Never. And the Determinist knows this, which makes his position eternally precarious, even though he always has that crack to slip through. Still, even he, himself, can't live as if his Determinism is actually true; and this troubles him, and makes him lunge for things like Compatibilism, if he lacks the courage to maintain his views with consistency, or as he finds he has no ability to do so anyway.

Philosophy [from my frame of mind] isn't about what the conclusions I arrive at "gets me". It's about what seems reasonable to me.

Then you cannot be a Determinist. For Determinism holds that "reason" itself is nothing but a material cause-effect relation, and is not privileged about "unreason," which is also a material-causal byproduct of equal origin and equally null value.

Phenomenologically and sociologically, we can demonstrate it from the fact (I'll say it again) that NOBODY LIVES AS A DETERMINIST. That's a phenomenon, and sociological fact.

I marvel that nobody wants to address that fact.

Again, the assumption that you can assert things such as this and that, in asserting them, it makes them true.

No, I'm not assuming that at all. Again, I'm just pointing to a fact anyone can observe, and nobody can help observing.

I'm puzzled by the refusal of Determinists to recognize a fact they cannot help recognizing.

Where does religion fit in here for you? Assuming free will is in fact the real deal.

That's a big question, but you've supplied part of the answer yourself.

If we believe in things like teleology, or even in things like consciousness, reason, volition, personhood, etc. we have no other possibility than to believe free choice exists. And if free choice exists, then we are drawn to the question, "How"? How, in a truly godless universe, does a thing like volition or reason or science or intelligibility or consciousness ever get involved?

So we are at that question.

[Immanuel Can]

Immanuel Can wrote:

Determinism is the belief that ALL events are caused by NOTHING OTHER than prior causal forces of some kind, and NONE are ever caused by volition.

That is incorrect.

No, it is correct.

The definition of a "cause" is an event that precedes and precipitates another. Contemporaneous events cannot be causes, because they don't happen before the effect. Thinking otherwise is like imagining one's grandchild could be the cause of one's own birth.

Volition is caused by inborn characteristics plus learned preferences, and does not originate in the individual.

That which you assume here is just that -- an assumption, not something anyone has reason to agree with. You don't know: it's just what you would prefer to think.

The only Originator is God. No man is an originator.

God is the Creator. But man is creative. God has volition. And He has given volition to man...and to woman, since you are arguing here...without volition, you couldn't.

[Belinda]

Immanuel Can wrote:

Determinism is the belief that ALL events are caused by NOTHING OTHER than prior causal forces of some kind, and NONE are ever caused by volition.

That is incorrect.

No, it is correct.

The definition of a "cause" is an event that precedes and precipitates another. Contemporaneous events cannot be causes, because they don't happen before the effect. Thinking otherwise is like imagining one's grandchild could be the cause of one's own birth.

Volition is caused by inborn characteristics plus learned preferences, and does not originate in the individual.

That which you assume here is just that -- an assumption, not something anyone has reason to agree with. You don't know: it's just what you would prefer to think.

The only Originator is God. No man is an originator.

God is the Creator. But man is creative. God has volition. And He has given volition to man...and to woman, since you are arguing here...without volition, you couldn't.

You would not exist if it were not for the Sun and our galaxy, which are circumstantial causes of life on Earth. You have a habit of re-defining words so they fit your arguments. Please see Aristotle on causation.

Unless you introduce miracles from a supernatural source biology and learning are the only two causes of volition.
God or nature is the only Originator. True, men are creative. Men create from new syntheses of old evidence , and from newly emerged evidence. God or anture does not synthesise but creates or created anew. You have not understood the purport of origination, unless you introduce miracles.

[henry quirk]

Man as agent, as cause, as a point of causal power, by necessity, is embedded in an environment, a circumstance.

Man acts, and acts upon.

Man responds, and responds to.

And: man's dependence on sun, soil, air, etc. is not a negation of free will; these are, by necessity, his environment, his circumstance. He sustained by them, nuthin' more or less.

God is the First Cause: He made man as a cause (lesser, to be sure, but potent).

[Immanuel Can]

You would not exist if it were not for the Sun and our galaxy,...

The Sun and our galaxy are manifestly contingent entities...which mean they are not eternal or self-existent, and have an origin. So no, this isn't true. Neither the sun nor the galaxy itself is the cause of my existence, even if their presence is sustaining to that existence now.

...biology and learning are the only two causes of volition.

"Learning" is not a Determinist cause. So you're not a Determinist. You're just confused as to what Determinism is.

But here's Britannica on that:

"Determinism, in philosophy, theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes. Determinism is usually understood to preclude free will because it entails that humans cannot act otherwise than they do."

So human beings don't "learn," according to Determinism, nor do their "volitions" have any effect whatsoever on what happens.

[iambiguous]

aside from just believing this...and then asserting it to others here as though anyone who does not believe the same is inherently/necessarily wrong, how would you go about demonstrating/verifying it...?

first, I don't assert others are wrong: flat out, I say anyone claimin' they're not a free will is lyin' or nuts

Well, in that case...

"aside from just believing this...and then asserting it to others here as though anyone who does not believe the same is inherently/necessarily wrong, how would you go about demonstrating/verifying it...?"

second, I don't have to demonstrate or verify diddly: every person readin' these words, and the billions who never will, demonstrate agency, causal power, free will all the damned time

we can argue about why and how man is a free will, but there's no argument to be had that man is anything other than, or less than, a free will

Sounds like something that, say, an omniscient God might post. You're not Him, are you?

Also, since you know everything there possibly is to know about free will "in your head" can you apprise me of why something exists and not nothing? And why this something and not something else?

Or how about this...

What are your own conclusions regarding how and why the "human condition" itself fits into a definitive understanding of existence?

I got no clue what you're askin'...so I'll take a guess and wing it (but I'll avoid bein' preachy): Reality is not a rudderless affair; there is a moral dimension; man is not just a hopped-up, turbo-charged, monkey

Actually, this sounds more like something I'd expect at ILP from ecmandu. Or Meno.

As for what I am asking, as I noted above, the "human condition" is embedded in the 5% of matter/energy in the universe that is "normal". The other 95% is "not normal". Yet the two must be intertwined in some manner. Any educated guesses [or omniscient assertions] as to how human autonomy might fit into that?

This to me is a classic example of the "general description intellectual contraption" that revolves around the assumption that "by definition" it is true because only your own definitions are allowed to be considered.

and -- to me -- the anti-free will position is a denial of what is apparent; liars deny free will cuz -- heaven forbid! -- they should be responsible for themselves, so they work hard to redefine man as appliance; nutjobs -- driven nutty by too much philosophy -- schizophrenically choose to be appliances

Okay, another "general description intellectual contraption". Noted.

How about this: dreams.

Doesn't it amaze you how night after night you are the main character in these extraordinary adventures? And while in the dream you are no less convinced that it is reality. That you are freely choosing to do this and not that. Then you wake up and discover the whole thing was entirely created by your brain.

And what of this brain? Isn't it matter like everything else? So, how do you explain how lifeless matter evolved into living matter evolved into conscious matter evolved into us. What actual hard evidence do you have that explains human autonomy? Do you know something that to date neuroscientists don't know that establishes beyond all doubt that you have free will. Or "in your head" is this just something that you know that you do.

They merely presume that if Mary aborts her unborn fetus she is morally responsible because "by definition" -- your own -- she has free will.

oh, when mary aborts, for no other reason than she been inconvenienced, she's a friggin murderer

Well, murder is a legal term. If she aborts the unborn "clump of cells"/"human being" in a particular jurisdiction where abortion is illegal and construed to be a homicide, then she's a murderer if convicted.

But I suspect that, morally, Mary is, in turn, whatever you assert her to be "in your head".

here's why...

that human life she offs isn't hers: lil fetus person belongs to himself

Again, sounds more like something an omniscient/omnipotent God would be able to pin down beyond all doubts. Mere mortals on the other hand in a No God world have little more than their own moral and political prejudices derived, in my view, from dasein.

From the particular life they lived predisposing them to one set of subjective assumptions rather than another.

[iambiguous]

Determinsm is true. 'Free Will' is a religious doctrine which is made for the purpose of being able to blame individuals for their sins. Social control in other words.

Okay, but how far does someone take this? To the point where this very exchange is unfolding only as it ever could have in the only possible reality? I am typing these words, you are reading these words and there was never any possibility of our opting not to?

Then this...

So is there any way men can be free? There is no such thing as total freedom however a man can increase his range of available choices by learning about the world around him including other men's predictable behaviours, and his own biases and passions.

To me, this seems to be in the general vicinity of compatibilism. Determinism is true, but...

...but only in the sense that there is not "total freedom". But our brains are matter that evolved such that we can still learn about the world and thus increase our options in choosing behaviors.

This makes no sense to me. It presumes that "somehow" when lifeless matter evolved into living matter, evolved into conscious matter, evolved into self-conscious matter, evolved into us, the chemical and neurological interactions produced something analogous to the ghost in the machine.

Which some of course call their "soul"...installed in them by God.

Sure, maybe. Sure, maybe in a No God world nature was able to accomplish this. "Somehow".

But we seem to have no way in which to know for sure. So, compelled by the laws of matter or not, we take our own intellectual/philosophical leaps.