compatibilism

[promethean75]

"It is an empirical fact that we all live as if free will is true, and nobody ever lives as if Determinism is true."

See what happens when you try to defend freewill? You eventually start saying silly shit like that. Wtf does that even mean... 'live as if'?

Ohhhh I see what you're getting at. Jesus dude that's lame. Alright whatever, but watch this. That evidence could be faked by someone with freewill and you'd never know it.

You got a guy who pretends he's a fatalist and one day he refuses to get out of bed. He just lays there and doesn't say a word. The wife is concerned after eight hours passes and calls the neighbors over.

What's he doing, Clare?

He doesn't believe in freewill anymore.

What?

Yeah he thinks everything he does is determined, so he refuses to choose to do anything. He's been laying there for hours and hasn't said a word.

[suddenly Harold jumps out of bed, startling everyone]

Ah hah! Gotcha! I was just pretending to 'live as if' there was no freewill, and y'all believed it!

My gawd that's brilliant, Harold! You just proved that 'living as if' one doesn't have freewill, can't count as evidence, because one couldn't know the difference between a believer in freewill and a determinist by merely observing 'how they live'.

[Immanuel Can]

...demonstrate empirically, phenomenologically that free will is in fact the ontological truth in regard to the matter we call the human mind.

I put the ball back in your court already; but you won't return it.

I say again: every human being lives as if free will is true. No human being lives as if it's not. Explain why every human being is actually wrong, and Determinism is true.

That's an empirical, phenomenological argument. Let's see you deal with it.

...what have the neuroscientists either confirmed or falsified beyond all doubt in regard to the functioning human brain examined in the act of choosing itself?

You should read that book that Henry has been recommending, the Wilder Penfield one. You would be astonished at what they've found.

What does it mean to be unable to verify or falsify something if you were never able to verify or falsify it other than as the laws of nature compel you to in the first place.

The "laws of nature" have nothing to do with Determinism. They are testable, and their existence doesn't imply Determinism.

Yes, and next you'll be suggesting that the laws of nature have nothing to do with the existence of existence itself. Instead, that goes all the way back to a God, the God, your God.

Calm down now, iam.

I'm only pointing out the fallacies of Determinism. I am not (yet) advancing any counter-theory. And so to lapse into a complaint of what I am not yet advancing is pointless. You don't even know on what grounds I would advance it, if I ever did.

Meanwhile, if Determinism fails, it fails on neutral terms. Determinism being wrong doesn't imply what's right; it only implies that Determinism itself is a failed view. And if Determinism is going to be defended, then it must be defended on exactly what you suggest -- empirical, phenomenological, rational grounds -- it cannot "win the day" by merely remaining absurdly unfalsifiable.

So if you know a real argument FOR Determinism, let's hear it. And if you don't, then why do you believe in it?

...as though a test exists for human autonomy.

It does, actually. The evidence is that all human beings experience (phenomenology) that in the real world (empirically) acting on the basis of free will works, and trying to act on the basis of Determinism fails every time.

That fact needs explaining. So far, you and I have no explanation for it.

Why not?

[Immanuel Can]

Human beings compute.

Well, human beings lived long before there were even rudimentary computers. So at most, what you are attempting is an anachronistic metaphor, and one that does not aptly describe human cognitive processes, or account for the fact that while no computer is possible without humans, humans are very possible with no computers.

[Belinda]

Human beings compute.

Well, human beings lived long before there were even rudimentary computers. So at most, what you are attempting is an anachronistic metaphor, and one that does not aptly describe human cognitive processes, or account for the fact that while no computer is possible without humans, humans are very possible with no computers.

But 'compute' is another word for quantify. People have always quantified however inaccurately. The river is less than one day's walk away. The carcass is too heavy for the child to carry. This fleece will spin into enough filament to weave his winter coat with.

[Immanuel Can]

Human beings compute.

Well, human beings lived long before there were even rudimentary computers. So at most, what you are attempting is an anachronistic metaphor, and one that does not aptly describe human cognitive processes, or account for the fact that while no computer is possible without humans, humans are very possible with no computers.

But 'compute' is another word for quantify. People have always quantified however inaccurately. The river is less than one day's walk away. The carcass is too heavy for the child to carry. This fleece will spin into enough filament to weave his winter coat with.

If you use the term "compute" not to refer at all to "computers," but rather merely as a synonym for "anticipate," then you'd be correct. But that gives us no particular grounds for any claim concerning what we now call "computers" or the processes that are programmed into them. Computers don't think, wish, aspire, expect, assess, anticipate, believe, yearn, aim at goals, change priorities independently, or do any of the same processes human beings themselves so routinely do.

A computer is no more "thinking" than a sausage-grinder or a Rube Goldberg machine...it simply does, through entirely pre-given processes, that which the human programmer has programmed it to do. It makes no cerebral contribution to that outcome at all...it just tips out balls at the only location possible, or grinds out sausage in the specified shape. It has no personality, no identity of its own, and no consciousness at all.

[Immanuel Can]

"It is an empirical fact that we all live as if free will is true, and nobody ever lives as if Determinism is true."

Wtf does that even mean... 'live as if'?

It means that every single person in the history of the world has gotten out of bed in the morning and made breakfast. They've all gone off to do something they believed they should do, or to avoid something they didn't want to do. They've all conducted themselves throughout the day as if their wills changed things...they've argued, explained, debated, cajolled, instructed, advised, chided, analyzed, strategized, taken aim at, evaluated, conversed...and so on.

Not a single person has ever gotten out of bed unless he already believed something in that range was not only possible but likely to succeed. And anybody who tried to live as if the inevitable would take care of everything has simply died of starvation, bad hygiene, or having a predetermined piano dropped on his inert head.

Look at yourself, right now. You're arguing. It's as if you believe that somebody out there (not me, you might say, but somebody) can hear, respond and change his/her mind as a result of your verbalizations or typing. And if you didn't believe that, you wouldn't be bothering: because it makes no sense to do something you already know simply cannot possibly work.

So some account must be made of that fact.

[Belinda]

Well, human beings lived long before there were even rudimentary computers. So at most, what you are attempting is an anachronistic metaphor, and one that does not aptly describe human cognitive processes, or account for the fact that while no computer is possible without humans, humans are very possible with no computers.

But 'compute' is another word for quantify. People have always quantified however inaccurately. The river is less than one day's walk away. The carcass is too heavy for the child to carry. This fleece will spin into enough filament to weave his winter coat with.

If you use the term "compute" not to refer at all to "computers," but rather merely as a synonym for "anticipate," then you'd be correct. But that gives us no particular grounds for any claim concerning what we now call "computers" or the processes that are programmed into them. Computers don't think, wish, aspire, expect, assess, anticipate, believe, yearn, aim at goals, change priorities independently, or do any of the same processes human beings themselves so routinely do.

A computer is no more "thinking" than a sausage-grinder or a Rube Goldberg machine...it simply does, through entirely pre-given processes, that which the human programmer has programmed it to do. It makes no cerebral contribution to that outcome at all...it just tips out balls at the only location possible, or grinds out sausage in the specified shape. It has no personality, no identity of its own, and no consciousness at all.

In principle I agree. I'd sum it up as computers don't make mistakes due to unreason.

[Immanuel Can]

I'd sum it up as computers don't make mistakes due to unreason.

It's more than that, though. It's that what computers are "doing" is not even the same thing human beings are doing. Human cognition is not the same as machine operation. You'll never find a computer that actually has its own opinion, values, questions, issues, etc.

[Belinda]

I'd sum it up as computers don't make mistakes due to unreason.

It's more than that, though. It's that what computers are "doing" is not even the same thing human beings are doing. Human cognition is not the same as machine operation. You'll never find a computer that actually has its own opinion, values, questions, issues, etc.

That's true but why is it true? It's true because the computer obeys some explicit instruction from its human master. It follows we need to behave less like computers and more like men.

[Immanuel Can]

It's true because the computer obeys some explicit instruction from its human master.

It's true because the computers no more have a mind, an personhood or a volition than does a bag of hammers.

[promethean75]

"At the waterfall; When we see a waterfall, we think we see freedom of will and choice in the innumerable turnings, windings, breakings of the waves; but everything is necessary; each movement can be calculated mathematically. Thus it is with human actions; if one were omniscient, one would be able to calculate each individual action in advance, each step in the progress of knowledge, each error, each act of malice. To be sure, the acting man is caught in his illusion of volition; if the wheel of the world were to stand still for a moment and an omniscient, calculating mind were there to take advantage of this interruption, he would be able to tell into the farthest future of each being and describe every rut that wheel will roll upon. The acting man's delusion about himself, his assumption that free will exists, is also part of the calculable mechanism." - FN

[Immanuel Can]

"At the waterfall; When we see a waterfall, we think we see freedom of will and choice in the innumerable turnings, windings, breakings of the waves; but everything is necessary; each movement can be calculated mathematically. Thus it is with human actions; if one were omniscient, one would be able to calculate each individual action in advance, each step in the progress of knowledge, each error, each act of malice.

This is entirely a gratutious metaphor, not an argument.

You don't know at all if there's any analogy between a waterfall and free will. And it's unlikely there is: because the former is obviously strictly physical, and the vexed question is about "will," which (assuming it exists) is bound to be non-physical. So you've dodged the important issue and just assumed your conclusion by couching it in poetic rhetoric.

That's not philosophy. It's just storytelling.

[promethean75]

Imma materialist, so the onus is upon you, young man. Your two articles of faith; that there is a non-physical 'will' and that this will is 'free'.

[Immanuel Can]

Imma materialist, so the onus is upon you, young man.

It's not, actually. I don't owe you your presumption.

You can't "win" the Materialist case by merely presuming Materialism is true until further notice. That's called "assuming the conclusion," and is a basic logical fallacy.

[henry quirk]

From way back in '15...

Joe walks up with a cardboard box and sez 'I got a ham sandwich in this box'.

It costs me nuthin' to accept his claim, even if he never opens the box.

I know, as fact, bread, ham, lettuce, tomato, mayo, mustard, cheese, exist. I, myself, have used those items to build ham sandwiches. That a ham sandwich may be in Joe's box doesn't violate the way the world (seems) to work.


Later in the day, Joe walks up with a cardboard box and sez 'I got a walkin', talkin', dancin', livin' ham sandwich in the box'.

That, folks, is a claim of entirely different kind.

Walkin', talkin', dancin', livin' ham sandwiches, insofar as I know, do not exist. Such a thing would be a clear violation of how the world (seems) to work. So, before I can accept Joe's claim, I'm gonna have to see the contents of that box. Moreover, I want to inspect the miracle sandwich for micro-robotics, for micro-processors, for itty-bitty speakers. That is: before I can even begin to accept the reality of the miracle sandwich, I need to verify, for myself, that it indeed 'is' a miracle sandwich.


Anecdotes about the miracle sandwich are not sufficent. Volumes of logical discourse about the miracle sandwich are not sufficent. The argued 'neccessity' of the miracle sandwich is not sufficent.

My hands, my eyes, my brain, applied to the miracle sandwich, alone is sufficent. Yes, demanding the tangible, the measurable, 'fact', real stuff, is the sphere of the unimaginative, the uncurious, the shallow, the dimbulb and yet -- as methodology -- it seems the best way to conduct an investigation.

It truly pains me that I'm incapable of sharing in the joys of belief based on belief alone. I can only hope that if God...er...a miracle sandwich...exists, then it will take pity on my limited self and allow me entry to the Great Deli In The Sky when my time comes.

The ham sandwich is out of the box and on the table: plainly, it walks, talks, dances, lives; there are no micro-robotics, micro-processors, or itty-bitty speakers.

I reason: if bread, ham, lettuce, tomato, mayo, mustard, cheese exercise no autonomy, no will, no intent, and if there are no micro-robotics, micro-processors, or itty-bitty speakers, then there must be sumthin' more to that walkin', talkin', dancin', livin' ham sandwich.

The burden, then, is on those who'd explain that walkin', talkin', dancin', livin' ham sandwich solely on the basis of its material constituents.

They've been at it for 50 years, are no closer, today, to explaining mind, or disprovin' agent causation (true free will), than they were when they started, but I'm the irrational one becuz I no longer share their faith in a promissory materialism.