compatibilism

[Age]

New proposition: Real life is incompatible with Determinism.

Take your best shot at explaining why I'm wrong, iambiguous...et al.

Again, the assumption I start with here ...

...is, by your own account, nothing more than an "assumption." One requires evidence, proofs, reasons...warrant...even for that, or all one has is what we call, "an unreasonable assumption."

You know, like the OBVIOUSLY UNREASONABLE ASSUMPTION that God is a "he", or that the Universe BEGAN.

There is NO 'evidence', 'proof', NOR 'reason' for these ASSUMPTIONS, but some of 'you', adult human beings, would continue to ASSUME and some even BELIEVE these 'things' to be ABSOLUTELY True, Right, AND Correct. That was; in the OLDEN DAYS when this was being written.

[Belinda]

What causes you to choose what you do choose?

Go back and read my previous answer: I already answered this question.

You say "you choose as you decide". What causes you to decide?

And this one, too.

Note that causes are not free but are determined by previous causes or enduring circumstances .

That's your assumption, maybe, but there is actually no reason to believe it's true. You're performing a logical fallacy called "assuming the conclusion" here. You don't get to stipulate that your view is right, and everybody else has to agree: you have to prove it's right.

Go ahead.

Free Will , if it existed, would either be caused by circumstance or by miracle.

Immanuel, do sheep, dogs, and fishes have Free Will?

What causes (your choices, your volitions, your will, your decisions)?

One of the causes of a billiard ball's pushing another billiard ball is the hardness of billiard balls. Another cause of the bb event is that somebody had the billiard table installed. Another cause is slate. Another cause of the bb event is transference of energy. And so on and so on to infinity.

[Immanuel Can]

What causes you to choose what you do choose?

Go back and read my previous answer: I already answered this question.

You say "you choose as you decide". What causes you to decide?

And this one, too.

Note that causes are not free but are determined by previous causes or enduring circumstances .

That's your assumption, maybe, but there is actually no reason to believe it's true. You're performing a logical fallacy called "assuming the conclusion" here. You don't get to stipulate that your view is right, and everybody else has to agree: you have to prove it's right.

Go ahead.

Free Will , if it existed, would either be caused by circumstance or by miracle.

Circumstance can only be part of it. It can't be the totality. Because circumstances only constrain the options to a certain range (eggs, waffles, etc.), but do not tell you which of the options you should take.

For that, you -- the volitional initiator -- must make a choice.

What causes (your choices, your volitions, your will, your decisions)?

Read above, and go back two messages. This question has been answered now twice.

If you want, you can take issue with the answers I have given; but ignoring them is not an option, if what we're having is a conversation.

[iambiguous]

There is really no physical difference between a fish that has just died and that same fish just before it died, but the live fish swims against the current determining its own behavior. The behavior of the dead fish is determine by its environment. It is that difference the physicalist ignores, or tries to. It ignores the fact that the material world has some properties in addition to physical properties--perfectly natural properties, just like the physical ones. There is nothing mystical or supernatural about life, consciousness, and the human mind. They are perfectly natural attributes of real material existents, they are just not physical properties and cannot be explained in terms of the physical properties.

Forget the dead fish.

How can I? According to your view, I have no choice in the matter.

No, according to me, if my own understanding of determinism is correct then you have no autonomous choice in the matter.

But what if it's not correct? In that case, it's not fish that interests me in regard to determinism and free will but the choices that our own species make. In particular on this thread in regard to how compatibilists reconcile determinism with moral responsibility.

Let's focus in on an example I used above. Mary is pregnant. She doesn't want to be. Here and now she is deciding whether or not to abort the unborn fetus. Given your own understanding of determinism, free will, compatibilism what exactly is unfolding inside her head?

You keep writing things, like, "Let's focus in on an example ..." as though you expect someone to choose to do that, when your argument is they cannot make such choices. I have no idea what why you say such things, since you deny choosing to. Since everything you write is just the consequence of some physical phenomena over which you have no choice, it obviously means nothing.

Again, in order to sustain an exchange such as this, yes, I can only assume that I do have some measure of free will. And, of course, that may well be the case. But these exchanges are always surreal because until we grasp definitively how brain matter clearly came to be different from all other matter, we take our own philosophical leaps to conflicting sets of assumptions in exchanges like this.

[I'm not accusing you of being irrational, only describing your arguments in terms of your own view regarding volition. I know you consciously choose what you think whether you admit it or not, because it is your nature as a human being and reason is not possible without volition]

There are those willing to acknowledge that human consciousness itself is deeply enigmatic and those who just insist that "somehow" the human mind is the exception to the "immutable laws of matter" and if others here don't accept their own "intellectual/philosophical" set of assumptions they are, well, to some here, fools.

On the other hand, ... fits into it ontologically -- teleologically? -- you come the closest of all.

Not sure what your point was in this last paragraph but there is nothing teleological about any aspect of physical or ontological existence. All of teleology begins and ends with human mnds because nothing in the universe matters except to human rational consciousness. If there were no human beings in the universe, nothing would matter and there would be no values of any kind.

The way you speak of these things as though you, "an infinitesimally tiny and insignificant speck of existence in the vastness of all there is", could possibly know for a fact that they are true!!! As though we weren't having a discussion of how the human brain functions but of how a computer functions.

And a computer functions wholly in the either/or world.

Don't we?

[iambiguous]

Again, the assumption I start with here ...

...is, by your own account, nothing more than an "assumption." One requires evidence, proofs, reasons...warrant...even for that, or all one has is what we call, "an unreasonable assumption."

Then around and around and around we all go. The evidence that philosophers provide each other here is contained in "worlds of words". Certain "intellectual assumptions" are posited in arguments that revolve basically around words defining and defending other words. The words aren't connected to the world in the manner in which neuroscientists attempt to grapple with human consciousness experientially/experimentally re the "scientific method".

What is reasonable or unreasonable in regard to dueling definitions and deductions? It's just not the same, is it?

So, where is your "hard evidence" that pins down once and for all that mindless matter evolved into mindful matter [us] and, as a result of this, human autonomy/volition came into existence.

How are you really any different from the rest of us? Sooner or later in regard to your assumptions the "evidence" starts to revolve around you just knowing that something is true.

Something is said to be logical. As though the existence of human minds can be grappled with and then pinned down using the tools of philosophy. We don't even know if the human brain itself is capable of this. There may be intelligent life forms "out there" who would look upon discussions like this as an example of early primitive groping to grasp conscious matter.

Instead, compelled or not, you posit this "table". Demanding of those like me that we put things on it that "prove" determinism is real. Meanwhile, all you have are your intellectual/philosophical definitions and deductions that "prove" human autonomy is real.

Well, okay: it seems you say that some "personal experiences" plus some "information and knowledge" counts for you in favour of Determinism. That is exactly what I want to know.

Are you kidding me?

No.

You said you have them. So you must know what they are. There can be no reason, then, why you can't say what they are. In fact, it should be dead easy.

But you left this part out...

Think of all the myriad experiences we had as children brainwashed into seeing ourselves in the world around us in vastly different ways. Think of all the experiences we had as adults that none of us are ever either fully aware of or in control of. All the countless variables bombarding us from every direction shaping and molding us in this direction rather than that in regard to things like this debate.

Grasping this exactly?!

I'm reminded of that scene from "sex, lies and videotapes":

"Ann: I just wanna ask a few questions, like why do you tape women talkin' about sex? Why do you do that? Can you tell me why?
Graham: I don't find turning the tables very interesting.
Ann: Well, I do. Tell me why, Graham.
Graham: Why? What? What? What do you want me to tell you? Why? Ann, you don't even know who I am. You don't have the slightest idea who I am. Am I supposed to recount all the points in my life leading up to this moment and just hope that it's coherent, that it makes some sort of sense to you? It doesn't make any sense to me. You know, I was there. I don't have the slightest idea why I am who I am, and I'm supposed to be able to explain it to you?"

Of course, it's not like we don't have "the slightest idea" of how we came to think what we do about this particular discussion. But our ideas revolve around the life we lived. Leaving out what our conclusions might have been had for any number of reasons our lives had been very different.

[Immanuel Can]

Then around and around and around we all go. The evidence that philosophers provide each other here is contained in "worlds of words". Certain "intellectual assumptions" are posited in arguments that revolve basically around words defining and defending other words. The words aren't connected to the world in the manner in which neuroscientists attempt to grapple with human consciousness experientially/experimentally re the "scientific method".

Well, that's a self-defeating perspective, and, if you don't mind me saying so, is shallow, if we leave it there.

We shouldn't. For while it is t rue that arguments use words, it's clearly untrue that all "words" are the same in value. There are words that tell truths, and words that tell lies -- and even you think that's true, because otherwise, what could your "objection" be? It, too, would be just "words."

What is reasonable or unreasonable in regard to dueling definitions and deductions?

But it's not just "dueling definitions."

Think again: the words make reference to the external world. They form propositions about that world that can be true or false. Even mere definitions must be OF something. So it's not the case at all that everything is just a kind of internal language game. That's a conceit of the Postmondernists, and a rather stupid one, if I may say.

They have A point when they say that words are not always precise. But they lose their whole point when they say that words only refer to other words. They clearly don't: and if they didn't, then any "language game" is as good -- or more accurately, as absurd and pointless -- as any other.

So, where is your "hard evidence" that pins down once and for all that mindless matter evolved into mindful matter [us] and, as a result of this, human autonomy/volition came into existence.

Please point me to where I promised you this, and I'll happily deliver it.

How are you really any different from the rest of us?

Who are the "us" there? You mean Postmodernists?

I'm different from them in that I know that I believe in truth. They say they don't, but they also want you to believe that's TRUE.

Demanding of those like me that we put things on it that "prove" determinism is real.

I'm not "demanding." I'm pointing out the correct burden of proof, and asking what you've got.

But you left this part out...

I thought it wasn't worthy of comment. It was just an analogy from a movie: and anybody is allowed to make those; but they don't constitute either evidence or argument for Determinism.

Was there a point you thought worth retaining from all that? Then feel free to make it plainly, without the speculative references, and I'll respond.

[henry quirk]

biggy: The words aren't connected to the world in the manner in which neuroscientists attempt to grapple with human consciousness experientially/experimentally re the "scientific method".

-----

There are many men of differing disciplines who can use of these data, whether they find it reasonable to at­tempt to fit them into the hypothesis that the brain ex­plains the mind, or whether they conclude, as I have done, that the mind is a separate but related element. One of these two "improbabilities" must be chosen. Taken either way, the nature of the mind presents the fundamental problem, perhaps the most difficult and most important of all problems. For myself, after a professional lifetime spent in trying to discover how the brain accounts for the mind, it comes as a surprise now to discover, dur­ing this final examination of the evidence, that the dualist hypothesis seems the more reasonable of the two possible explanations. -Wilder Penfield

-----

We regard promissory materialism as superstition without a rational foundation. The more we discover about the brain, the more clearly do we distinguish between the brain events and the mental phenomena, and the more wonderful do both the brain events and the mental phenomena become. Promissory materialism is simply a religious belief held by dogmatic materialists...who often confuse their religion with their science. -John Eccles & Daniel Robinson

-----

Shall I continue quotin' neuroscientists who've grappled with human consciousness experientially/experimentally re the "scientific method"?

[RCSaunders]

There is really no physical difference between a fish that has just died and that same fish just before it died, but the live fish swims against the current determining its own behavior. The behavior of the dead fish is determine by its environment. It is that difference the physicalist ignores, or tries to. It ignores the fact that the material world has some properties in addition to physical properties--perfectly natural properties, just like the physical ones. There is nothing mystical or supernatural about life, consciousness, and the human mind. They are perfectly natural attributes of real material existents, they are just not physical properties and cannot be explained in terms of the physical properties.

Forget the dead fish.

How can I? According to your view, I have no choice in the matter.

No, according to me, if my own understanding of determinism is correct then you have no autonomous choice in the matter.

If you are going to call just anything that happens a, "choice," and must make a distinction between an event and a volitional choice, the distinction is not, "autonomy," but, "consciousness." A volitional choice is one where all the possible options have been consciously identified and evaluated relative to some objective and selected to execute. The rational process of evaluation and selection may not be explicit (especially if it is commonly performed one) but it is always implied.

But what if it's not correct? In that case, it's not fish that interests me in regard to determinism and free will but the choices that our own species make. In particular on this thread in regard to how compatibilists reconcile determinism with moral responsibility.

There is no guarantee any choice will be a correct one no matter how well reasoned. There is a guarantee and unreasoned choice (one based on whim, or desire, or feeling, or irrational fear, for example) will be a wrong one.

One is only responsible for the life they have the authority for making choices for--their own life. It is the fact that all own does they must consciously choose to do the makes them responsible for their actions. It is the reason we do not hold the animals or machines responsible for what they do, because they do not consciously choose their behavior.

No one is responsible to or for anyone else or anyone else's behavior.

Let's focus in on an example I used above. Mary is pregnant. She doesn't want to be. Here and now she is deciding whether or not to abort the unborn fetus. Given your own understanding of determinism, free will, compatibilism what exactly is unfolding inside her head?

What a pontless question. I have no idea what anyone else's conscious experience is, nor does it possibly matter. If you want to know what or how someone else thinks you can ask them, but the proper answer is, "it's none of your business." Because it isn't.

You keep writing things, like, "Let's focus in on an example ..." as though you expect someone to choose to do that, when your argument is they cannot make such choices. I have no idea why you say such things, since you deny choosing to. Since everything you write is just the consequence of some physical phenomena over which you have no choice, it obviously means nothing.

Again, in order to sustain an exchange such as this, yes, I can only assume that I do have some measure of free will. And, of course, that may well be the case. But these exchanges are always surreal because until we grasp definitively how brain matter clearly came to be different from all other matter, we take our own philosophical leaps to conflicting sets of assumptions in exchanges like this.

There is absolutely nothing about the physical nature of the brain that different from any other physical material. Conscious is not some kind of thing or stufff or material. Consciousness is an attribute (a quality, property, or characteristic). It's like a, "state." There are physical states like liquid, solid, and gas and some material things can have, at any time, any of those states. But those states are not things, not different kinds of matter. Consciousness is that state of a living organism that enables it to be aware (through perception) of its physical environment and (via interoception) its own physical nature . It is, as I said, an attribute, like size, or charge, or shape, or color but is just not a physical attribute such as those. Like a state it is "on" (when one is awake) and "off" (when one is asleep, anesthetized, or dead). But it is not a thing or substance and has no existence at all except as a property of some living organisms.

Not sure what your point was in this last paragraph but there is nothing teleological about any aspect of physical or ontological existence. All of teleology begins and ends with human minds because nothing in the universe matters except to human rational consciousness. If there were no human beings in the universe, nothing would matter and there would be no values of any kind.

The way you speak of these things as though you, "an infinitesimally tiny and insignificant speck of existence in the vastness of all there is", could possibly know for a fact that they are true!!!
Relative to an atom, a human being is as big as the entire universe. Physical size has nothing to do with consciousness nor the capacity for knowledge. Why would it?

[henry quirk]

There is absolutely nothing about the physical nature of the brain that different from any other physical material. Conscious is not some kind of thing or stufff or material. Consciousness is an attribute (a quality, property, or characteristic).

You're a property dualist.

[bahman]

From Free Will and Determinism: A Dialogue by Clifford Williams.

Frederick [Mr. Free Will]: Can you explain why in your sense a person can be both free and determined?

Carolyn [Ms. Compatibilist]: Yes. A person can be free and determined because what he does can be caused by something that goes on inside him even though he is not forced by some circumstances outside of him to act as he does. If he is not forced by circumstances outside of himself to act as he does, then he acts freely. Yet his action could nonetheless be caused by something inside him, such as an unconscious motive or a brain state.

Frederick: ...a person could have freedom in your sense even though he had no control over anything he does. Let me explain. If everything a person does is caused by unconscious motives, as you say, then he would have no control over anything that he does. Unknown to him, he would be buffeted about by the workings of his unconscious mind. Yet such a person would have freedom in your sense of freedom because no external circumstances would prevent him from doing what he consciously wants to do. That means your conception of freedom is a sham --- a person who has freedom in your sense does not have control over what he does.

Yep, that is basically my own reaction to compatibilism. We have "conceptual"/"theoretical" freedom, but, for all practical purposes, we have no control over what we do because "internal" and "external" are seamlessly intertwined re the laws of matter.

As Frederick notes...

"You can call that freedom if you want to, but it is a psuedofreedom."

And that, in my view, is often where the compatibilists go: letting it all revolve around what you call something, name something, define something. As though the inner "I" here was not the equivalent of all that is out in the world able to compel you to "choose" this instead of that.

Here I always come back to "I" in our dreams. The "freedom" we are convinced we have all the way up to the point when we wake up. The waking "I" no less a manifestation of the laws of matter. Only, far, far, far more inexplicably.

People are just confused. Compatibilism is wrong. The correct picture is like this: We have mind and body in which mind is not by-produce of body, dualism. The mind is free to cause but the body is subjected to laws of nature so the mind can cause changes subjected to the laws of nature.

[Skepdick]

Making requires knowing. But knowing does not require making.

What does that have to do with anything? We are talking about your Maker.

If your Maker made you then your Maker knows how to make you.

I'll let you figure that out. I expect it will take awhile, so I'll give you some time.

I hope you made use of the time "you gave me" to reflect on why you are wrong.

[henry quirk]

We have mind and body in which mind is not by-produce of body, dualism. The mind is free to cause but the body is subjected to laws of nature so the mind can cause changes subjected to the laws of nature.

I would say mind is constrained by the brain-body rather bein' subject to it, but, outside of that: yep, you got it.

[iambiguous]

How can I? According to your view, I have no choice in the matter.

No, according to me, if my own understanding of determinism is correct then you have no autonomous choice in the matter.

If you are going to call just anything that happens a, "choice," and must make a distinction between an event and a volitional choice, the distinction is not, "autonomy," but, "consciousness." A volitional choice is one where all the possible options have been consciously identified and evaluated relative to some objective and selected to execute. The rational process of evaluation and selection may not be explicit (especially if it is commonly performed one) but it is always implied.

Okay, but what does this entirely "intellectual contraption" mean "for all practical proposes?"

Back again to Mary "choosing" an abortion, such that the "choice" is only the psychological illusion of choosing freely. Or Mary choosing an abortion such that matter evolving into the human brain "somehow" created autonomy.

Or the compatibilist argument that, yes, Mary was never able not to abort her fetus, but she is still morally responsible for it.

Or, rather, the extent to which I understand compatibilism here.

Anyway, you will either reframe your argument by intertwining it in a "situation" we are all likely to be familiar with or you won't.

Or, is that sort of thing all "pointless" to you?

I have no idea what anyone else's conscious experience is, nor does it possibly matter. If you want to know what or how someone else thinks you can ask them, but the proper answer is, "it's none of your business." Because it isn't.

Here though the focus is not on what others think but on whether they were able to not think it. But: assuming free will, what others do think can have profound implications in regard to our interactions with them. What if, in the is/ought world, it cannot be determined by philosophers how rational and virtuous men and women ought to think?

But what if it's not correct? In that case, it's not fish that interests me in regard to determinism and free will but the choices that our own species make. In particular on this thread in regard to how compatibilists reconcile determinism with moral responsibility.

There is no guarantee any choice will be a correct one no matter how well reasoned. There is a guarantee and unreasoned choice (one based on whim, or desire, or feeling, or irrational fear, for example) will be a wrong one.

On the contrary, given our interactions in the either/or world, there are countless situations in which there is only the right answer. Whereas in the is/ought world, how do we go about establishing the right answer? Philosophically or otherwise. The question here though revolves around autonomy. From my frame of mind "here and now" there can be no wrong answers if all answers are wholly as in sync with the laws of matter.

One is only responsible for the life they have the authority for making choices for--their own life. It is the fact that all own does they must consciously choose to do the makes them responsible for their actions. It is the reason we do not hold the animals or machines responsible for what they do, because they do not consciously choose their behavior.

Unless, of course, human animals are no less compelled by the laws of matter to act only as they must. That's the part we are still groping to understand more fully. Here philosophically, and, for the neuroscientists, experientially.

No one is responsible to or for anyone else or anyone else's behavior.

And yet, even assuming volition on our part, there are any number of contexts in which we might be indoctrinated by others to behave as we do. As children in particular. Or we might be using drugs or have a mental condition/affliction. Think Leonard killing Teddy in Memento.

Again, in order to sustain an exchange such as this, yes, I can only assume that I do have some measure of free will. And, of course, that may well be the case. But these exchanges are always surreal because until we grasp definitively how brain matter clearly came to be different from all other matter, we take our own philosophical leaps to conflicting sets of assumptions in exchanges like this.

There is absolutely nothing about the physical nature of the brain that different from any other physical material. Conscious is not some kind of thing or stufff or material. Consciousness is an attribute (a quality, property, or characteristic). It's like a, "state." There are physical states like liquid, solid, and gas and some material things can have, at any time, any of those states. But those states are not things, not different kinds of matter. Consciousness is that state of a living organism that enables it to be aware (through perception) of its physical environment and (via interoception) its own physical nature . It is, as I said, an attribute, like size, or charge, or shape, or color but is just not a physical attribute such as those. Like a state it is "on" (when one is awake) and "off" (when one is asleep, anesthetized, or dead). But it is not a thing or substance and has no existence at all except as a property of some living organisms.

As I noted, I have no clear understanding of how abstract assumptions like this play themselves out given actual human interactions. These "attributes" "states" "things" "stuff" "material"...are they manifestations of the only possible reality? Or manifestations of the singular autonomous reality that we perceive as individuals in any particular set of circumstances? A reality we freely opted to embrace.

Not sure what your point was in this last paragraph but there is nothing teleological about any aspect of physical or ontological existence. All of teleology begins and ends with human minds because nothing in the universe matters except to human rational consciousness. If there were no human beings in the universe, nothing would matter and there would be no values of any kind.

The way you speak of these things as though you, "an infinitesimally tiny and insignificant speck of existence in the vastness of all there is", could possibly know for a fact that they are true!!!

Relative to an atom, a human being is as big as the entire universe. Physical size has nothing to do with consciousness nor the capacity for knowledge. Why would it?

Yes, but how does that make my point go away?

[Immanuel Can]

Making requires knowing. But knowing does not require making.

What does that have to do with anything?

Everything.

It means that God can know what you are going to do, and yet you are still the one doing it when you do it. He may have made you, but He hasn't "made" you do what you choose to do.

And this is routine, even for humans. For, no doubt, if you and a woman combine you will make a child; but once that child is born, he/she will begin to make his/her own choices, from the very first moment. Free will beings do that.

[bahman]

Making requires knowing. But knowing does not require making.

What does that have to do with anything?

Everything.

It means that God can know what you are going to do, and yet you are still the one doing it when you do it. He may have made you, but He hasn't "made" you do what you choose to do.

And this is routine, even for humans. For, no doubt, if you and a woman combine you will make a child; but once that child is born, he/she will begin to make his/her own choices, from the very first moment. Free will beings do that.

Could I ask God what I am going to do later? Couldn't I do the opposite of what God says?