compatibilism

[phyllo]

But the person does not have to know about their fate in advance for fate to be involved. Fate governs Hectors life as much as it does Achilles. He doesn't know he is doomed when he fights Achilles or that it is fate he will die, but it is his fate. Fate/dentiny, in that model, is governing the lives of those who received prophecies about their fate and all others.

I don't see that this says anything unique about fatalism or fate.

Hector will die in the fight, or Achilles will die or they will both survive or they won't even battle.

IOW, something with happen which resolves the situation. It will become "the only reality".

Hector could have free-will, he fights Achilles and dies. Some old man can say that was his fate or his destiny. Why? Because it ended up happening.

The only thing that seems to distinguish fatalism from free-will and determinism is the fact that someone supposedly knows the upcoming fate.

I would say that Iambiguous is a fatalist because he believes he knows that Mary having an abortion is her fate ... the unavoidable event even before it happens, before she is born, before the earth is formed, etc.

[Iwannaplato]

But the person does not have to know about their fate in advance for fate to be involved. Fate governs Hectors life as much as it does Achilles. He doesn't know he is doomed when he fights Achilles or that it is fate he will die, but it is his fate. Fate/dentiny, in that model, is governing the lives of those who received prophecies about their fate and all others.

I don't see that this says anything unique about fatalism or fate.

It wasn't meant as unique, it's that both Hector and Achilles met their fate, though only one knew anything about his fate: Achilles. Fate isn't tied to know or having had your fate predicted.

Hector will die in the fight, or Achilles will die or they will both survive or they won't even battle.

Sure, from the limited perspective of an observer at that time. (if fate is the way things work)

IOW, something with happen which resolves the situation. It will become "the only reality".

Hector could have free-will, he fights Achilles and dies. Some old man can say that was his fate or his destiny. Why? Because it ended up happening.

I'm not arguing in favor of fatalism. I'm describing the belief.

The only thing that seems to distinguish fatalism from free-will and determinism is the fact that someone supposedly knows the upcoming fate.

The Fates do. Sometimes dieties do. But it's fated to happen. That's all. Certain events and outcomes are fated to happen. There is a supernatural element (you said magical, but I'd probably go with supernatural). That isn't the case with determinism or free wiil (as most people conceive them - they tend not to be seen as magical, your term.) In general, I think the question is: do those who believe in fate believe that fate is only something that affects those who have heard predictions made about them or does it hold for every living person. I think fate is considered to be universal. We all have a fate. The idea is that what will be has been 'written' by the Fates or deities, and at the very least certain key events are predestined. Even if we learned about them, we could not avoid them, but most of us do not learn what our fate is. I think that's the core idea of fate.

I would say that Iambiguous is a fatalist because he believes he knows that Mary having an abortion is her fate ... the unavoidable event even before it happens, before she is born, before the earth is formed, etc.

He's all over the place. I don't think all his assertions and assumptions fit together. You might be right and I know he sometimes writes as if he believes that. But I can't really see how his beliefs fit together

[Immanuel Can]

The only thing that seems to distinguish fatalism from free-will and determinism is the fact that someone supposedly knows the upcoming fate.

Again: there's nothing that makes any difference about what anybody "knows."

Free will could exist, even if one didn't know it did; so too could Fate, whether anyone knew it existed or not. In both cases, people could simply be unaware of how things really are. There would be nothing unusual about a person not understanding the mechanics of the real universe he's in.

If Fate is how things operate, or any form of Determinism, any belief in free will is simply a delusion. If there is even a modicum of free will in the universe, then by definition, Determinism and Compatibilism are simply false. There are no other possibilities, because Determinism is an absolute declaration of the negation of free will.

[phyllo]

The Fates do. Sometimes dieties do. But it's fated to happen. That's all. Certain events and outcomes are fated to happen. There is a supernatural element (you said magical, but I'd probably go with supernatural). That isn't the case with determinism or free wiil (as most people conceive them - they tend not to be seen as magical, your term.) In general, I think the question is: do those who believe in fate believe that fate is only something that affects those who have heard predictions made about them or does it hold for every living person. I think fate is considered to be universal. We all have a fate. The idea is that what will be has been 'written' by the Fates or deities, and at the very least certain key events are predestined. Even if we learned about them, we could not avoid them, but most of us do not learn what our fate is. I think that's the core idea of fate.

I don't disagree with that.

I just tend to look at these things in terms of the practical impact on the individual.

A lot things are going to happen in life which are out of our control. And there is an urge(?) to explain it as gods' work or Fates or causality going back to the BB or pixies or whatever.

I think fatalism kicks in for the fatalist when he starts to believe that some specific thing must happen or some specific thing can't happen. Then he changes his behavior either to make it happen or to avoid it. He as to know about his fate in order to make those changes.

That's when it becomes a philosophical issue rather than entertaining mythology or story telling.

[Iwannaplato]

The Fates do. Sometimes dieties do. But it's fated to happen. That's all. Certain events and outcomes are fated to happen. There is a supernatural element (you said magical, but I'd probably go with supernatural). That isn't the case with determinism or free wiil (as most people conceive them - they tend not to be seen as magical, your term.) In general, I think the question is: do those who believe in fate believe that fate is only something that affects those who have heard predictions made about them or does it hold for every living person. I think fate is considered to be universal. We all have a fate. The idea is that what will be has been 'written' by the Fates or deities, and at the very least certain key events are predestined. Even if we learned about them, we could not avoid them, but most of us do not learn what our fate is. I think that's the core idea of fate.

I don't disagree with that.

I just tend to look at these things in terms of the practical impact on the individual.

Gotcha. Yes, from the perspective of the individual (especially one who is not a fatalist) it makes no difference. They don't know. They do their best. Stuff happens and they really have no way of knowing if it just worked out that way via inevitable cause and effect, whether free will led them to events they might have not experience if they chose otherwise and they could have or if they even had some swing room, but the main plot points in their lives were written in advance by the Fates or some deity. I understand now where you were coming from.

I was focused on the bird's eye view of the fatalist. You were focusing on what individuals experience 'on the ground'.

[iambiguous]

Free Will Is Only an Illusion if You Are, Too
New research findings, combined with philosophy, suggest free will is real but may not operate in the ways people expect
By Alessandra Buccella & Tomáš Dominik

Even more interesting is the fact that ordinary people’s intuitions about free will and decision-making do not seem consistent with these findings.

On the other hand, ordinary people's intuition about free will and decision making may well be as inherently embedded in the only possible reality as the findings of those above.

Some of our colleagues, including Maoz and neuroscientist Jake Gavenas, recently published the results of a large survey, with more than 600 respondents, in which they asked people to rate how “free” various choices made by others seemed. Their ratings suggested that people do not recognize that the brain may handle meaningful choices in a different way from more arbitrary or meaningless ones. People tend, in other words, to imagine all their choices—from which sock to put on first to where to spend a vacation—as equally “free,” even though neuroscience suggests otherwise.

Ever and always, however, when conducting a survey and publishing the results, there's no getting around this: click.

In other words, the assumption must be made that in doing things of this sort, you are doing it of your own free will. When all the while you have no way in which to establish this neurologically and chemically.

What this tells us is that free will may exist, but it may not operate in the way we intuitively imagine.

Whatever, say, for all practical purposes, that means? How might it be made applicable to Mary and Jane? Jane was always going to be toast, even though as of yet we don't know exactly how Mary's theoretical autonomy plays a part in it?

In the same vein, there is a second intuition that must be addressed to understand studies of volition. When experiments have found that brain activity, such as the readiness potential, precedes the conscious intention to act, some people have jumped to the conclusion that they are “not in charge.” They do not have free will, they reason, because they are somehow subject to their brain activity.

Few things are more mysterious [to me] than human intuition. We think things and we feel things. And then "somehow" over time these thoughts and feelings coagulate into this deep down inside me "I just know" certain things are always true or false. That, however, the entire experience here might be but one more necessary manifestation of the only possible world...?

Out of the question!

[iambiguous]

Free Will Is Only an Illusion if You Are, Too
New research findings, combined with philosophy, suggest free will is real but may not operate in the ways people expect
By Alessandra Buccella & Tomáš Dominik at sci/am

But that assumption [above] misses a broader lesson from neuroscience. “We” are our brain. The combined research makes clear that human beings do have the power to make conscious choices.

On the other hand, is that the same thing as saying human beings make free choices? Day fter day after day, over and over again, we clearly make choices. And we know that others makes choices in turn because from time to time we have to deal with the consequences.

And while we all have brains, we didn't choose the one we have. And the one we have may or may not become conscious of the fact that after thousands of years, we are still unable to definitively pin down if the choices we do make we make of our own volition. Some here will choose to argue that others are fools if they don't agree with their own assessment and conclusion. But it's always only a more of less educated guess given The Gap and Rummy's Rule.

But that agency and accompanying sense of personal responsibility are not supernatural. They happen in the brain, regardless of whether scientists observe them as clearly as they do a readiness potential.

Here, however, even scientists are unable to demonstrate that God does not exist. And until we pin down conclusively what human existence is naturally, we have no way of ruling out whatever the supernatural might be.

So there is no “ghost” inside the cerebral machine. But as researchers, we argue that this machinery is so complex, inscrutable and mysterious that popular concepts of “free will” or the “self” remain incredibly useful.

I can live with that. In fact, that's my point: I have to.

We all do. There's what we think we know about "I" out in the world. And there's how that is embedded in all that we do not know about that, at times, "complex, inscrutable and mysterious" nature of...of what exactly?

[iambiguous]

Free Will and Moral Responsibility
Chelsea Haramia

But what if every one of our actions is actually out of our control? That is, what if only seems as if we have the freedom to choose between actions, but we are in fact as undeserving of blame as, say, the severely mentally ill?

This is perhaps what disturbs many the most about determinism. If none of us do have free will then all of us may well be just toppling over onto each other like so many dominoes. Really, if both the genuises and the severly mentally ill among us are autonomically in sync with the only possible reality, what does it mean to blame or to credit someone for the things they did? They did only what they were compelled to do and we reacted to it only as we were ever able to.

There are many philosophically interesting answers to this question, and they deal with some famous and famously difficult problems surrounding the concept of free will.

Of course, the concept of free will is little more than a world of words. Words defining other words such that their meaning never seems to come down out of the conceptual clouds themselves.

While for all practical purposes...?

The concept of free will brings with it the idea that at least some of our choices are ours alone— we are fully in control of them, and therefore we are fully responsible for them. Free will is the basis for moral responsibility, or so many have argued.

Which, perhaps, is why compatibilism is still beyond my reach. How can someone never not do something but still be held morally responsible for doing it? Other than the possibility that those who either do or do not hold another responsible are themselves reacting only as they ever could,

[attofishpi]

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⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Compatibilism is compatible with the mean_time..of my will..
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[iambiguous]

Free Will and Moral Responsibility
Chelsea Haramia

Philosophers commonly say that ‘ought’ implies ‘can.’ What does this mean? To justifiably tell someone that she (morally) ought to do something, it would also have to be the case that she can do that thing.

On the other hand -- click -- arguing about whether we ought to do something that nature has given us the actual capacity to do...? It doesn't necessarily make the hard determinist argument go away.

Then the part where some here insist we can know what we ought or ought not to do...simply by following one or another Scripture, or manifesto or deontological assessment of the human condition.

Suppose I tell you that you ought to cure cancer. If you did cure cancer, you could prevent large amounts of suffering and many premature deaths. It would be a really good thing.

So, just out of curiosity, how many here are convinced they are themselves doing what they ought to do? And, in turn, that they know this to be the case because they believe they arrived at that conclusion autonomously.

Nonetheless, given that, in all likelihood, it would be impossible for you to cure cancer, it seems absurd to say that you have a moral responsibility to do so, or that you ought to.

Imagine someone actually finding a cure for cancer...but refusing to disclose it. In other words, for whatever rooted existentially in dasein personal reasons, they are unwilling to disclose it. How far is "society" then justified in, one way or another, wringing it out of him?

Importantly, then, you are not blameworthy for your failure to cure cancer. It seems that we are only justified in blaming (or praising) people for their actions—or believing that they are responsible for their actions—when they are able to freely choose one action over others. As we have seen, this freedom is the subject of extensive philosophical analysis, but our everyday sense of moral responsibility hangs in the balance.

Not really though, right, Mr. and Mrs. Objectivist? And, presuming some measure of free will, all the arguments from all the hard determinists in the world are not likely to convince them to abandon the comfort and consolation they sustain in simply believing that their own One True Path to Enlightenment really, really is the bottom line for mere mortals in a No God world.

[iambiguous]

Free Will and Moral Responsibility
Chelsea Haramia

1. Libertarian Free Will

Those who claim that we have libertarian free will argue that we make free choices when it is possible that we could have done otherwise than what we actually did. When this condition obtains, we are justified in blaming (or praising) the person who made the choice, i.e., holding that person morally responsible for the action.

Yep, there is little doubt that if "somehow" we did acquire autonomy, this makes sense. Nor is there much doubt then that if we possess free will, we are responsible for the behaviors we choose. But then there are few objectivists who won't insist further that their own One True Path is all you need to know about that.

And of course, the flagrant assumption among any number of Libertarians that the One True Path revolves entirely around laissez-faire market capitalism.

The idea that we possess free will...has a lot of intuitive force behind it, but philosophers have struggled with the question of what could allow for free will in the face of concerns about the causal laws of the world.

In other words, in a No God universe. And, in a No God universe, material interactions are either explained given one or another assessment of Pantheism or "somehow" given the Big Bang the Human species is now just along for the ride. From where? To where? With God teleology is built right into existence itself: God's will.

But no God and meaning and purpose are just all that much more elusive and mysterious.

[iambiguous]

Free Will and Moral Responsibility
Chelsea Haramia

Hard Determinism

Hard determinists appeal to the causal laws of the world in order to challenge the claim that we have free will, in the sense of ‘free will’ that both they and libertarians accept.

How about we settle this once and for all by carefully defining what all rational men and women are truly obligated to mean by "hard determinism". The most logically and epistemologically sound meaning in other words.

By, of course, simply rejecting the possibility that in defining things, we are for all practical purposes no less compelled to by our brains to do so.

Everything that happens can be fully explained by the causal history of what happened before. Though it seems as if we have choices, it is always the case that, for any choice we are faced with, only one of the seemingly available paths will ultimately be taken, and the other paths were never truly available: we cannot do otherwise.

That's the "thing" for many here. The assumption that "somehow" when bacteria and termites and squids and apes evolved into us, we acquired those "internal components" of "mind" that permit us to "just know" that we could have opted otherwise.

It's the fact that over and over and over again we are confronted with the reality that human beings do make choices. So, they must be autonomous.

To suggest that we have free will is to suggest that we are somehow outside of and unaffected by the causal chain of events—that we can be the sole source of our actions—and the hard determinist argues that this is unsupported by facts about how the world works.

Right. How the world works given the fact that we really have no definitive understanding of how and why existence itself "works".

[Age]

LOL These people are, STILL, FIGHTING OVER what they BELIEVE is an 'one' VERSUS 'another', ONLY, issue. And, the ones who SEE and/or KNOW that BOTH 'free will' AND 'determinism' ARE COMPATIBLE WITH 'each other' are, STILL, 'trying to' FIND, WORK OUT, and/or FORMULATE the VERY SIMPLE and EASY sound AND valid argument, which, OBVIOUSLY, NO one COULD REFUTE.

Talk about FURTHER EXAMPLES and PROOF of HOW BELIEFS and PRESUMPTIONS REALLY WILL NOT ALLOW and LET these human beings FIND, RECOGNIZE, and SEE what the ACTUAL IRREFUTABLE Truth, here, IS, EXACTLY.

[iambiguous]

Free Will and Moral Responsibility
Chelsea Haramia

Compatibilism
The hard determinist may then find this to be proof that moral responsibility is an illusion, or she may attempt to retain a viable sense of moral responsibility in the face of determinism. Compatibilists argue for the latter: they claim that determinism and moral responsibility are actually compatible.

Ah, the argument that makes no sense at all to me. Sure, I can wrap my head around determinism and free will in accepting that even they are embedded in the profound mystery of the existence of existence itself.

On the other hand, to argue that Mary was never able not to abort Jane but that she is still morality responsible for doing so? Yes, I can make sense of that too -- holding others morally responsible -- but only because in holding them responsible, we are never able not to do that either.

From my understanding of determinism "here and now", hard determinists argue everything that we think, feel, say and do, we are entirely determined by our brain to do so.

I mean, what is it about everything that seems to include these exceptions in regard to responsibility. Moral or otherwise.

Ah, but then I'm the first to admit the hard determinists are no less in the same boat everyone else is. They argue their points in a world of words that is not intertwined in any actual hard evidence.

These mysterious "internal components" of the mind that "somehow" given the evolution of biological life on Earth acquired autonomy from the brain?

By appealing to claims about an agent’s internal states, compatibilists argue that people can be held responsible when they are acting according to certain sorts of dispositions, e.g., their own beliefs and desires. And others have pointed out that we still have strong intuitions of responsibility even about cases that are explicitly deterministic.

Again, this [to me] mysterious gap between the external variables in our lives and the internal components of the mind. Someone puts a gun to your head and says, "do what I say, or I'll kill you"?

But even in a world with some measure of moral responsibility, situations like this can be problematic. What are they asking you to do? Why are they asking it? What are the consequences for others if you don't do it?

But in a world where the hard determinists are correct, the only reason someone puts a gun to your head in the first place is because they too had no capacity not to.

Sure there may well be a crucial disctinction between "external" and "internal" components here. But how is that determined beyond taking it up into the philosophical clouds and debating it all theoretically?

[Iwannaplato]

These mysterious "internal components" of the mind that "somehow" given the evolution of biological life on Earth acquired autonomy from the brain?

There are people who think that free will arises in some creatures - though even amongst those who do not mean actions and decisions that are not caused by prior causes. But generally, compatibilists do not think there are 'internal components' have led to some kind of exception from determinism. Some fringe people who call themselves compatibilists may, though I haven't encountered one. So, in the main, this is tilting at windmills.

By appealing to claims about an agent’s internal states, compatibilists argue that people can be held responsible when they are acting according to certain sorts of dispositions, e.g., their own beliefs and desires. And others have pointed out that we still have strong intuitions of responsibility even about cases that are explicitly deterministic.

Again, this [to me] mysterious gap between the external variables in our lives and the internal components of the mind.

And again, to be clear, they are NOT saying that the beliefs and desires are free and exceptions from determinism, or that the acts are. They are holding the person responsible because this is a person who wanted to rape, for example. The argument is not based on thinking that the rapist freely chose to rape as an exception to determinism. It is that he, for example, is aligned with raping. That's who he is. The guy with a bomb wrapped around his chest who is ordered to rob a bank or be blown up is not aligned with the crime, he's trying to survive. In neither situation does the compatibilist think someone is choose outside the causal chains of hard determinism.

Sure there may well be a crucial disctinction between "external" and "internal" components here. But how is that determined beyond taking it up into the philosophical clouds and debating it all theoretically?

No, it's very practical. In a deterministic universe, would you want your daughter to live next to the guy who was forced at gunpoint to rape someone, or the guy who likes to rape and enjoyed, chose his targets with care?

We make practical decisions like this all the time, whether we believe in libertarian free will or some form of deteminism like compatibilism. We hold people responsible depending on what causes inevitably led to the act. Not because some causes allowed for free will, but because of what they say about the person and what they are likely to do. And also perhaps because of what they are.

And we slap mosquitoes, most non-Buddhists, to death, even though few people think mosquitoes have free will.

And then will someone explain how libertarian free will leads to moral responsibility, perhaps you Iambiguous?

Someone rapes and it was not caused by their desires, external factors, their attitudes or wishes. What that means is that it just happened. It was NOT caused by his desires. How can you hold someone responsible?

It is implicit over and over that if we do have free will then it makes sense to consider us morally responsible. But with determinism you can't imagine how.

Well, please explain how uncaused acts can be considered moral acts?