compatibilism

[iambiguous]

Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions
Shaun Nichols, Joshua Knobe

...consider the claim that ordinary people believe that human decisions are not governed by deterministic laws. In a set of experiments exploring the lay understanding of choice, both children and adults tended to treat moral choices as indeterminist. Participants were presented with cases of moral choice events (e.g., a girl steals a candy bar) and physical events (e.g., a pot of water comes to a boil), and they were asked whether, if everything in the world was the same right up until the event occurred, the event had to occur.

Any ordinary people here? How about normal people? How about ordinary and/or normal people here who have spent years as top-notch neuroscientists employing the scientific method in order to study how the brain functions in the act of actually making a choice. Using fMRI technology in examining the brains of subjects who have either stolen candy bars or have not. The brains of, say, devout moralists or sociopaths.

Any links we can turn to here?

Both children and adults were more likely to say that the physical event had to occur than that the moral choice event had to occur. This result seems to vindicate the traditional claim that ordinary people in our culture believe that at least some human decisions are not determined.

Gasp?!

Physical events unfold in the either/or world. Over and over and over and over again when you do something in the either/or world you get the results you'd expect. Or, when you do something and get different results, if you dig deep enough you can determine why the result was different. The difference is not predicated on conflicting personal opinions regarding what the result ought to have been because different people want a different result.

That's why moral conflicts are so exasperating. Each side digs down and, given their own set of assumptions, demands that others embrace the results that they want. In other words, for the moral objectivists among us, there is no distinction between the either/or and the is/ought world.

Then it's just a question of [existentially] embracing one or another God or No God font.

[iambiguous]

Then you have no grounding, no argument at all.

Stop slavin'!

Why?

Because I don't like it!

Ever and always the irony that fulminating fanatic objectivists like him are not even able to grasp regarding their own enslavement!!

They "think up" arguments in which words like "freedom" and "liberty" and "justice" and "natural rights" are defined into existence. Philosophically. Ideologically. Theologically. Then issue by issue by issue, while championing individualism, they spit on the "morons" among us who refuse to share their own definitions. Their own political prejudices.

Here, regarding their own arrogant, autocratic, authoritarian dictums pertaining to free will and determinism.

Henry is just a particular fierce example of this.

Indeed, with him, it's reached the point where rather than confront even the possibility that my own arguments may be applicable to him, he puts me in his "penalty box".

That way he doesn't have to be confronted at all with the irony of his own self-contradictory outrage regarding slavery. Being a slave himself to his own dogmas.

Call it, say, the Ayn Rand Syndrome: "Dare to be an individual! Only it better be on my terms!!"

[iambiguous]

What a sick, deranged, disturbed person you are.

Sez the guy who'll kill & steal at the drop of a hat.

This man may be Alex Jones. Regardless, I believe I owe it to him to inform him that he has been conspicuously added to my foe list and that anything he writes in the future will be invisible to me. It's amazing how my foe list has cleaned up this forum from my perspective.

From the Big Bang to this!

Move over God, Nature's ways may well be all the more mysterious still!!

Click.

This "foe list" stuff. I figure it's because you genuinely have no respect for the intelligence of some here. Your own equivalent of the pinheads and meat minds. Or, on the other hand, it's because others make arguments that disturb you...they threaten your own "comforting and consoling" dogmas.

Me, I don't actually "foe" anyone here. But there are some like Age. I never read anything they post. Mostly because I'm convinced they are afflicted with one or another "condition". You simply can't reason with them. Why? Because the "condition" itself makes that "beyond their control".

Also, when you "foe" someone, you give them the advantage of being able to attack you over and again.

Like me with henry.

[CHNOPS]

Age,

Although BOTH 'you', human beings, and 'robots' can make decisions and BOTH of you can only make decisions based upon only 'that', which has been 'programmed' into each of you, the difference between 'robots' and 'you', human beings, is that WITHIN human beings there is an ABILITY to learn, understand, and reason absolutely ANY and EVERY thing, whereas this ability does NOT exist within robots, YET

ANOTHER difference is human beings can learn to understand the reasons WHY they made or make decisions. Robots can NOT, YET.

Humans dont have the ABILITY to learn, understand and reason absolutely ANY and EVERY thing.

We have the ABILITY to learn, understand and reason SOME THINGS, NOT ALL, NOT EVERYTHING.


And Robots the same. They have the ABILITY to learn, understand and reason SOME THINGS, NOT ALL, NOT EVERYTHING.


So, tell me something else about humans that make our decisions differents from Robots, because I just see more complex conditions in humans than robots and so we make more complex decisions. Nothing more.


I hope you answer like an adult and not like a child.

[iambiguous]

Compatibilism
Michael Lacewin

Compatibilism is the view that determinism is not incompatible with free will, i.e. even if determinism is true, we still have free will. A first form of compatibilism argues that to have free will is simply for one’s choice to cause one’s action. To do what you want to do is the essence of free will.

Clearly, the only way that this can make sense is to construe determinism in such a way that "somehow" it does not encompass everything that our brains in sync with the laws of matter compels us to think, feel, say and do.

Obviously, unlike a rock that tumbles down a mountainside wholly in sync with the material laws of gravity, if we choose to pick up a rock and bash someone alongside the head with it, this reflects the laws of matter -- of choosing -- in a whole other way. Mindful matter is different -- enigmatically, ineffably different? -- from mindless matter.

But how? Take God out of the picture and the bottom line is that here and now neither philosophers nor scientists can tell us.

To do what you want. How is that different from wanting what you want?

Some then go "further" and argue that even if we do construe determinism in this manner it is only because we were never able not to.

Then we're stuck because intelligently argued conflicting conclusions are still the bottom line.

Here, of course, we are stuck with words. We create arguments about choosing and about willing such that the arguments themselves are often bursting at the seams with conflicting definitions and deductions.

So, for example, Hume says that free will is simply a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will.

Like we can pin up unequivocally if we are freely able to will what we will.

In other words, I act as I do because of what I chose to do. If I had chosen to act differently, then I would have acted differently. This does not conflict with determinism. My action is caused by my choice. And my choice may in turn be caused by other events. So there is a causal story for my choice and action. And determinism agrees that if my choice had been different, then I would have acted differently (different cause, different effect)

Yes, other events lead up to what I choose but there is still a component buried "somewhere" in my brain that "somehow" makes the final decision mine and mine alone.

Thus Mary's abortion is the result of her choice. And her choice is embedded in a series of events that led up to it. And if those events had been different, she might have made a different choice. But how exactly does noting this demonstrate that in a determined universe where Mary chose an abortion there is "somewhere" in her brain an "I" that "somehow" might have prompted her not to choose the abortion.

Sure, there may well be. God or otherwise.

But where is the hard evidence that confirms it?

[BigMike]

Humans dont have the ABILITY to learn, understand and reason absolutely ANY and EVERY thing.

We have the ABILITY to learn, understand and reason SOME THINGS, NOT ALL, NOT EVERYTHING.

And Robots the same. They have the ABILITY to learn, understand and reason SOME THINGS, NOT ALL, NOT EVERYTHING.

So, tell me something else about humans that make our decisions differents from Robots, because I just see more complex conditions in humans than robots and so we make more complex decisions. Nothing more.

At least with the technology we have now, people and robots remember things differently. Computers remember things by putting numbers (usually 32-bit or 64-bit binary numbers) in "drawers", which are called addresses in RAM (random access memory). Only one number can fit in each drawer. People, on the other hand, remember things by making new connections between neurons in the brain or by making the connections they already have stronger.

So, a computer can perfectly remember numbers. Humans remember settings. You might remember how much you paid for dinner with your family at The Outback last night, but you remember a lot more than just that number. You also remember what you ate, who was at the table with you, who sat next to you, what you talked about, the colors on the walls, the general mood in the restaurant, the weather outside, the waiter's tattoos, etc. People can forget numbers because of how their memories work, but computers never do, unless their software instructs them to delete the memory at the address holding the number.

Of course, there's no reason why computers shouldn't be able to do the same as humans in the (near) future. I just want to point out that they can't do it yet.

[CHNOPS]

And Age, dont answer.

Too funny.

[Belinda]

I think the difference between robots/computers on the one hand, and living creatures on the other is that robots/computers are not biased towards any particular environment unless so programmed. This gives rise to the ethic that the more the human is free to belong to his environment of choice the less he is like a robot/computer.

[Age]

Sez the guy who'll kill & steal at the drop of a hat.

This man may be Alex Jones. Regardless, I believe I owe it to him to inform him that he has been conspicuously added to my foe list and that anything he writes in the future will be invisible to me. It's amazing how my foe list has cleaned up this forum from my perspective.

From the Big Bang to this!

Move over God, Nature's ways may well be all the more mysterious still!!

Click.

This "foe list" stuff. I figure it's because you genuinely have no respect for the intelligence of some here. Your own equivalent of the pinheads and meat minds. Or, on the other hand, it's because others make arguments that disturb you...they threaten your own "comforting and consoling" dogmas.

Me, I don't actually "foe" anyone here. But there are some like Age. I never read anything they post.

it's because we make arguments that disturb you...we threaten your own "comforting and consoling" dogmas.

Mostly because I'm convinced they are afflicted with one or another "condition". You simply can't reason with them. Why? Because the "condition" itself makes that "beyond their control".

I have only questioned and challenged your so-called 'reasoning'. And, because you can NOT answer and respond Honestly without contradicting "yourself", so you feel threatened, and thus run and hide in and with your dogmas.

Your 'condition' keeps you AFRAID and VERY FEARFUL to just be OPEN and Honest here.

Also, when you "foe" someone, you give them the advantage of being able to attack you over and again.

Like me with henry.

And, if you supposedly NEVER read "another", then how would this be any different here?

They can keep attacking you over and again and you would ALSO NEVER KNOW, OBVIOUSLY.

[Age]

I didn't say I would "murder, steal, rape, and slave when it suits [me]". I said I would do it "like everybody else. To survive, I would have to [...]"

Seems to me you're pickin' nits/hair splittin', but: okay.

So, 'you' want to CLAIM that 'you' have the so-called 'right' to KILL DEAD another human being man, woman, or child, for just touching "your" toothpick, but seem to get somewhat upset when "another" uses their OWN EXCUSE for what they do.

[Age]

What a sick, deranged, disturbed person you are.

Sez the guy who'll kill & steal at the drop of a hat.

But, lol, you WILL KILL and STEAL "another's" life, liberty, and/or property over just a 'toothpick' of all things.

[Age]

What a sick, deranged, disturbed person you are.

Sez the guy who'll kill & steal at the drop of a hat.

This man may be Alex Jones. Regardless, I believe I owe it to him to inform him that he has been conspicuously added to my foe list and that anything he writes in the future will be invisible to me. It's amazing how my foe list has cleaned up this forum from my perspective.

But it is NOT amazing AT ALL that when one STOPS LISTENING to ANY one else with differing or opposing views to what they BELIEVE is absolutely true, then that one thinks or BELIEVES that they have 'cleaned things up'.

[Age]

Age,

Although BOTH 'you', human beings, and 'robots' can make decisions and BOTH of you can only make decisions based upon only 'that', which has been 'programmed' into each of you, the difference between 'robots' and 'you', human beings, is that WITHIN human beings there is an ABILITY to learn, understand, and reason absolutely ANY and EVERY thing, whereas this ability does NOT exist within robots, YET

ANOTHER difference is human beings can learn to understand the reasons WHY they made or make decisions. Robots can NOT, YET.

Humans dont have the ABILITY to learn, understand and reason absolutely ANY and EVERY thing.

LOL
LOL
LOL

Name some 'things', which 'you', human beings, supposedly, can NOT learn, understand, NOR reason.

We have the ABILITY to learn, understand and reason SOME THINGS, NOT ALL, NOT EVERYTHING.

So, what 'things' are 'you', "chnops", NOT able to learn, understand, NOR reason?

And Robots the same. They have the ABILITY to learn, understand and reason SOME THINGS, NOT ALL, NOT EVERYTHING.

I AGREE.

So, tell me something else about humans that make our decisions differents from Robots,

Do NOT say this as though you have PROVEN some point.

BEFORE it is accepted that you have PROVED some thing here, we AWAIT your examples of those 'things', which 'you' are completely and utterly UNABLE to EVER learn, understand, nor reason.

because I just see more complex conditions in humans than robots and so we make more complex decisions. Nothing more.

To me, 'you', human beings, are NO more, NOR less, 'complex' than robots.

What are these, supposed, 'more complex conditions' you see in humans, than in robots?

I hope you answer like an adult and not like a child.

And there are a lot of things we hope you will do also. But we certainly do NOT expect that you will.

Oh, and by the way, the DIFFERENCE between the decisions 'you', human beings, make, from the ones robots make, is the decisions that human beings make did NOT need to be specifically programmed into 'them', by human beings, like robots did.

[Age]

Compatibilism
Michael Lacewin

Compatibilism is the view that determinism is not incompatible with free will, i.e. even if determinism is true, we still have free will. A first form of compatibilism argues that to have free will is simply for one’s choice to cause one’s action. To do what you want to do is the essence of free will.

Clearly, the only way that this can make sense is to construe determinism in such a way that "somehow" it does not encompass everything that our brains in sync with the laws of matter compels us to think, feel, say and do.

That is NOT the only way.

Obviously, unlike a rock that tumbles down a mountainside wholly in sync with the material laws of gravity, if we choose to pick up a rock and bash someone alongside the head with it, this reflects the laws of matter -- of choosing -- in a whole other way. Mindful matter is different -- enigmatically, ineffably different? -- from mindless matter.

But how? Take God out of the picture and the bottom line is that here and now neither philosophers nor scientists can tell us.

To do what you want. How is that different from wanting what you want?

Some then go "further" and argue that even if we do construe determinism in this manner it is only because we were never able not to.

Then we're stuck because intelligently argued conflicting conclusions are still the bottom line.

Here, of course, we are stuck with words. We create arguments about choosing and about willing such that the arguments themselves are often bursting at the seams with conflicting definitions and deductions.

So, for example, Hume says that free will is simply a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will.

Like we can pin up unequivocally if we are freely able to will what we will.

In other words, I act as I do because of what I chose to do. If I had chosen to act differently, then I would have acted differently. This does not conflict with determinism. My action is caused by my choice. And my choice may in turn be caused by other events. So there is a causal story for my choice and action. And determinism agrees that if my choice had been different, then I would have acted differently (different cause, different effect)

Yes, other events lead up to what I choose but there is still a component buried "somewhere" in my brain that "somehow" makes the final decision mine and mine alone.

Thus Mary's abortion is the result of her choice. And her choice is embedded in a series of events that led up to it. And if those events had been different, she might have made a different choice. But how exactly does noting this demonstrate that in a determined universe where Mary chose an abortion there is "somewhere" in her brain an "I" that "somehow" might have prompted her not to choose the abortion.

Sure, there may well be. God or otherwise.

But where is the hard evidence that confirms it?

[Age]

And Age, dont answer.

Too funny.

I did.

More funny.