compatibilism

[henry quirk]

Anyone here who sez they aren't trolling, even just a little, is a liar. It's SOP in this place.

[phyllo]

Danger Will Robinson,

He's going to take that to mean libertarian free-will.

Do you think he's aware he's trolling, or do you think he's doing it on accident somehow?

I think he believes that a philosophy discussion is just the endless restating of his opinions.

That's a common idea around here and at ILP.

[Flannel Jesus]

1- If necessitarianism holds, then: no, it's not up to me.

2- If libertarian free will holds, then: absolutely, it's up to me.

3- If compatibilism holds, then: kinda, sorta it's up to me and kinda, sorta it's not.

I, of course, go with 2. Surprisingly, so do you.

You go with 3. So do I.

See? I can just behave like that too. How productive.

[Flannel Jesus]

Anyone here who sez they aren't trolling, even just a little, is a liar. It's SOP in this place.

Trolls often convince themselves everyone else is the same. Iwannaplato was actually trying to understand something about you. What's the point of talking to anybody here if you assume everyone is trolling?

Assuming everyone else is trolling conveniently allows you to excuse your own trolling, and shield yourself from any vulnerability you might expose in just being honest and straight forward.

[henry quirk]

I think he believes that a philosophy discussion is just the endless restating of his opinions.

I wasn't always a prickly, mean-spirited jackass, you know...okay, that's a lie...in my crib I was a prickly, mean-spirited jackass.

But, I used to engage. The Mad Philosopher's Guild, The Couch. The Cellar, here: pages and pages of thoughtful discussion.

Comes a point, though, when you're talked out, when you've repeated yourself too many times in too many places, and when too few have actually listened. I reached that point a few years back.

I still engage, just not as deeply or for as long or as often as I once did. Can't see the point in doin' more, especially here.

I believe what I post (I am a free will, a deist, a natural rights libertarian ) but I'm, as I say, all talked out. And most here (tye long-timers) are plumb tired of hearing what I have to say.

So: with that on the table, you fellas should consider yourselves fully informed. Act accordingly.

[henry quirk]

Iwannaplato was actually trying to understand something about you.

That may indeed be the case. Perhaps I'm too sour to see it. Should he return to the thread, I'll offer an apology. If he accepts, mebbe we can try again, he and I.

[phyllo]

I think he believes that a philosophy discussion is just the endless restating of his opinions.

I wasn't always a prickly, mean-spirited jackass, you know...okay, that's a lie...in my crib I was a prickly, mean-spirited jackass.

But, I used to engage. The Mad Philosopher's Guild, The Couch. The Cellar, here: pages and pages of thoughtful discussion.

Comes a point, though, when you're talked out, when you've repeated yourself too many times in too many places, and when too few have actually listened. I reached that point a few years back.

I still engage, just not as deeply or for as long or as often as I once did. Can't see the point in doin' more, especially here.

I believe what I post (I am a free will, a deist, a natural rights libertarian ) but I'm, as I say, all talked out. And most here (tye long-timers) are plumb tired of hearing what I have to say.

So: with that on the table, you fellas should consider yourselves fully informed. Act accordingly.

You could still pepper us with short powerful bursts of reasoning. It shouldn't take too much time and effort.

I'm still not "informed" as to how libertarian free-will differs from compatibilist free-will. I'm told that libertarian free-will is 'not caused' or is 'not based entirely on the state of a situation'. But it's never revealed how that could happen or why it should have or when it happens.

In your case, what changed when humans evolved from animals? What are humans doing which is different from chimps?

[Flannel Jesus]

I'm still not "informed" as to how libertarian free-will differs from compatibilist free-will. I'm told that libertarian free-will is 'not caused' or is 'not based entirely on the state of a situation'.

Last time Henry discussed this, he described a situation in which someone was guaranteed to make a particular choice, and yet still insisted they "could choose differently", even though.... you know.... it's guaranteed. And when pressed about what it means to say "they could do differently" even though they're guaranteed to do what they did, the answer was just, "they could because they could".

I think there are maybe people who could give you an answer for how libertarian free will is different, but I wouldn't bet on that person being Henry Quirk. Maybe IC has a better shot.

[phyllo]

I think that you would have to find the quote, show it to him and get his response.

IC doesn't know anything about determinism. I think it's pointless talking to him about this subject.

[phyllo]

Okay, here it is:
viewtopic.php?p=639165#p639165

If Willy was the same, perfectly the same, then Willy was not the source of the change.

There would be no change becuz Junior had no reason to choose differently, yes.

This, for the record, was your initial wording. We were talking about a possibility where he chose something different, and instead of continuing to talk about that possibility, YOU said "There would be no change". Not "the possibility of change is low". Right? There's nothing ambiguous about your words here. There would be no change.

That was followed by this exchange:

Well, you went from accepting that he could make a different choice, accepting my description of your view: "if we rewound time and found that he made a different choice, that would fit within your world view and your understanding of choice", to now saying definitively and with no hesitation, NO, he would in fact do the same thing every time we rewound. This appears like a change in your approach to me. Have I misunderstood something?

Yeah

Again, another opportunity for you to clarify your position, and you explicitly lean into what I'm saying and agree with it. I say "NO, he would in fact do the same thing every time we rewound" - there's nothing ambiguous about that, no maybe, no possibly, "every time" I said, I don't think I left any room for confusion there - and you responded with agreement.

I may have introduced the specific word "guarantee" -which, again, you could have disagreed with at any time but chose not to - but I didn't introduce the concept of certainty about his choice into this conversation. You did that. "There would be no change", those are your words.

[Flannel Jesus]

That's right.

So what we have here is a person who believes that a particular choice, if we rewound time to before the choice, would always happen the exact same way.

And he still says that that choice counts as free will.

For some very apparent reasons - which I'm happy to elucidate if anyone doesn't see it - this is what's commonly called "compatibilism".

I'm not saying he IS a compatibilist, I'm just saying that there have been multiple occasions where the words he used to describe his own views were exactly the same view points compatibilists have, and different from what libertarian free will would suggest.

I don't think he's a compatibilist, I think he's unfamiliar with the conversation landscape about free will and had very little idea what he was saying, when he said those things.

[Immanuel Can]

I'm still not "informed" as to how libertarian free-will differs from compatibilist free-will. I'm told that libertarian free-will is 'not caused' or is 'not based entirely on the state of a situation'.

Last time Henry discussed this, he described a situation in which someone was guaranteed to make a particular choice, and yet still insisted they "could choose differently", even though.... you know.... it's guaranteed. And when pressed about what it means to say "they could do differently" even though they're guaranteed to do what they did, the answer was just, "they could because they could".

I think there are maybe people who could give you an answer for how libertarian free will is different, but I wouldn't bet on that person being Henry Quirk. Maybe IC has a better shot.

For a starter, in every version of Compatibilism I’ve been able to find, there isn’t anything genuinely “compatible” with libertarian free will. Pressed for a root belief, it seems all alleged-Compatibilists collapse into straightforward Determinism…that the TRUTH is that all choices are fully and exclusively predetermined by material forces or Divine fiat, but the APPEARANCE is otherwise.

Now, why a Compatibilism would think that having a delusion while being predetermined is in any way remotely related to the having of any genuine free will is not obvious at the start. But I think that the motives are probably fairly straightforward: the desire to explain the disjunction between the overwhelming intuition and universal acting of human beings AS IF they had free will, and not to lose the comforting absoluteness of the Deterministic view of the universe. But “I want to feel free, but also to feel secured by Determinism” is not the sort of explanation one should ever accept as a justification for retaining belief in either postulate, so that’s not a very good answer, obviously.

If Determinism exists, I think we are owed a proper accounting of why we all think and act as if we have libertarian free will.

Libertarian free will, then, would entail that Determinism isn’t true. And it would not at all follow that a libertarian has to deny basic axioms about causality, or science, or the predictive value of previous events, or the sovereignty of the Supreme Being. In fact, there’s nothing at all inconsistent with a person who holds to libertarian free will saying that events X, Y, Z, A, B, and C are cases of strict causality of some kind. But the libertarian would have to maintain that while X,Y and Z were deterministically arranged, cases D and E were shaped in some measure by choices made by persons — those choices not having been decided by prior physical forces, but rather by the choosing “self” of the chooser, based on whatever considerations he or she deemed relevant at the time, and whatever motives and projects he/she had. And in aid of this case, he/she might even point to the abundant demonstrations we have of what we call “irrational choices,” “unwise choices,” or “idiosyncratic choices” that indicate a rupture between the perceptions of the choosing subject and the strictly instrumental or causal means of obtaining the outcome. Selves do make choices, you see…and hence, libertarian free will.

Determinism has no flexibility of that kind. If we admit that events X,Y, Z, A, B, and C are all cases of strict causality, but fail to add that D and E are, too, then Determinism isn’t true. It’s not enough for a Determinist to have MOST cases; he or she must affirm ALL cases, because Determinism is a totalizing explanation. Free will is an explanation only of SOME events, and in differing degrees and simultaneous with all the rules of cause and effect and of science; it’s not an explanation pretending to cover every case.

That’s my view of it, at the moment. Your thoughts?

[Flannel Jesus]

For a starter, in every version of Compatibilism I’ve been able to find, there isn’t anything genuinely “compatible” with libertarian free will.

That's right, because that's not what compatibilism means. If you were looking for compatibility with libertarian free will, inside compatibilism, you've misunderstood compatibilism.

[Immanuel Can]

For a starter, in every version of Compatibilism I’ve been able to find, there isn’t anything genuinely “compatible” with libertarian free will.

That's right, because that's not what compatibilism means. If you were looking for compatibility with libertarian free will, inside compatibilism, you've misunderstood compatibilism.

I haven’t. But the term “Compatibilism” requires some justification: and if it doesn’t have two different things in it, then nothing’s “compatible,” and the term is a misnomer and misleading. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that the aim in any “Compatibilism” is to show that the two “compatible” quantities are determination and free will. If they’re not those things, then I’m certainly ready to hear what else they might be. But if they are, then Compatibilism is indeed a misnomer…it should be called something like “Liquidationism,” or “Eliminativism,” since really, it’s just a way of liquidating or eliminating the whole possibility of free will.

So then, what’s to recommend Compatibilism over a more-forthcoming declared Determinism? Why is it preferable to retain only a nominal tip-of-the-cap to free will, when the effective end-game is to eliminate it?

[Flannel Jesus]

I don’t think it’s unfair to say that the aim in any “Compatibilism” is to show that the two “compatible” quantities are determination and free will.

Now you've got it right. Leave the term "libertarian" out and it straightens up.