Philosophy Now Forum

So...


...you're sitting in cafe and you're a determinist who believes that given determinism, people are not morally responsible for their actions. You're drinking tea, maybe a stevia brownie is half-eaten on a small dish. A guy comes in and he walks towards you. Calls you an asshole cause you drove poorly before you came in. But you don't even own a car.

He throws a punch.

First, you try to defend yourself. The servers are all scared behind the counter. You simply block his punches, all the while telling him to calm down. Deep down you know this guy is simply being propelled into action by his atoms and previous states, his experiences and DNA. He could not do anything else. But now his blows are starting to hurt.

So, you decide to punch him. To get him to stop, you hit him. He goes down.

Or you scream out for someone to call the police and they do and the police come and take the guy away in handcuffs.

You hit that guy!!!!!
You asked someone to call the police!!!

Both of these actions led to what this guy more than likely experienced as punishment.

You didn't punch the table.
You didn't ask the staff to call a cosmologist, to see if there was a way to punish the Big Bang - which couldn't help but expand as it did, anyway.

You took measures in relation to where the blows were coming from.

We can call that 'holding him morally responsible' or not. Our determinism might lead to us feeling more sympathy for him. Or it might not.

We don't punch one of the servers, we punch him.

Even if our determinism changes our politics about punishment and rehabilitation and how we deal with problems, at least short term, we look just like the horrible nasty evil objectivists. Why are they nasty evil? Because they are certain? But..............

We are so fucking certain we hit someone or called the police on them. That's not words, that's actions.

Or in a philosophy forum we call some people names but not others. That's also an action, though one with words.

We paint some people as the cause of the problems - objectivists - and not others. That's an action.

Perhaps we say often that we aren't sure and that we are driven by dasein.

But when push comes to shove we make moral judgments of people and then act on these with words and deeds. We categorize and put down some people and really seem to think we are different from them.

We don't hang out with some people because they are assholes or we find them boring. They may feel like this is punishment, our avoiding them. They can't help but be who they are and to refuse to change. That is determined. But we avoid them. Even though we believe in determinism.

We buy books written by people who seem more informed. That helps them economically.

But it's not the stupider, less informed authors' faults that they can't write more interesting books.

Yet we punish them. Or we 'punish' them.

Are we hypocrites?

Well, we might be compelled to hate ourselves and think so.

But that wouldn't make it logical.

And isn't it that this all comes down to?

You must not miss out on any self-torture I have. That wouldn't be fair.

Freedom: An Impossible Reality by Raymond Tallis
This issue we consider ultimate human realities as Raymond Tallis has the intention of proving free will.
Book Review
Jonathan Head

...Tallis seems to need the key assumption that intentionality doesn’t form part of the physical world, or as he puts it: “While intentionality is a fundamental and universal feature of mental states or entities, no physical entity has this feature”.

How then are we not back to the quandary that revolves around encompassing the ontological nature of the human brain itself here? Is the human brain not but more matter? And isn't it the material brain that has intentions?

Now, with God, of course, intention is explained by way of our autonomous soul. God gave us free will. End of story. But how is someone unable to believe in God able to demonstrate the fundamental relationship between mental states and the physical brain? And why is it necessarily irrational to suggest that however someone attempts to understand and to explain all of this it reflects but the only possible understanding and explanation they were, are or ever will be able to have?

In order to meet the commitment to genuine alternative options for action for free will, the agent we are looking for must have some form of semi-independence from the determinate laws of nature. The task Tallis sets himself, then, is to identify the type of agency that could only stem from a subject who is non-physical and ‘virtually outside’ in the manner he suggests. So, can he find one?

That's not the point, in my view. It's not about what one demonstrates here in a "philosophical argument" that revolves around words defining and defending other words, but coming up with a way to take any particular set of assumptions "thought up" by the material brain to those men and women tasked scientifically with figuring out how exactly the brain does its thing "chemically and neurologically" such that the existence of true options are revealed.

Daniel Dennett is Wrong About Free Will
by Daniel Miessler

But let’s continue:

"Maybe many people, maybe most, think that they have a kind of freedom that they don’t and can’t have. But that settles nothing. There may be other, better kinds of freedom that people also think they have, and that are worth wanting." (Dennett, 1984)

How is the bottom line here not this: that none of us are actually able to settle any of this beyond the assumption that "somehiow" human brains did acquire autonomy. And that the arguments we propose here do involve volition? We can't demonstrate it scientifically perhaps but then those who argue against us can't demonstrate what they believe either.

Sure, if we do have free will as the Libertarians argue there are any number of reasons for wanting it. But noting that "deep down" we "just know" that we do want it [for any reason] doesn't make the wanting itself autonomous.

A couple of things are interesting about this quote. First, like I’ve been saying in my various free will arguments over the last several years, Dennett does not believe in Absolute Free Will. He also says quite clearly, and I think in opposition to his quote above, that many (and maybe most) people believe in a type of free will that they don’t and can’t have.

Agreed. But isn’t that exactly what Harris said?

Okay, but how does he himself demonstrate that what he does believe about free will, he believes in such a manner it is compatible with determinism as others encompass it? Those suggesting instead that everything we believe about anything at all we believe only because we were never able to not believe it.

Same with Harris. Where do they draw the line here? How much does determinism as they understand it encompass in regard to all that we think, feel, say and do? If everything then it must include everything that they have ever written or ever said about determinism, free will and compatibilism.

It's that "spooky" gap here that I can never pin down. No, we do not possess free will but, yes, we do.

wrong thread

Freedom: An Impossible Reality by Raymond Tallis
This issue we consider ultimate human realities as Raymond Tallis has the intention of proving free will.
Book Review
Jonathan Head

...Tallis seems to need the key assumption that intentionality doesn’t form part of the physical world, or as he puts it: “While intentionality is a fundamental and universal feature of mental states or entities, no physical entity has this feature”.

This is the crux of it, right? It's not our heart or liver or kidney that has intentions, it's our brain. But how is the brain not composed of matter just as the other organs are? And do or do not the other organs function autonomically? Sure, you can point out the obvious: that the brain is our most extraordinary organ by far. But how does that necessarily establish there must be something in it that takes it "beyond" a "physical entity".

Indeed, that's the whole point of inventing the Gods, right? There is this "metaphysical" entity in us. The soul. But No God and how exactly do either scientists or philosophers go about noting, demonstrating empirically, experientially, experimentally how "I" intentionally chooses this instead of that?

In order to meet the commitment to genuine alternative options for action for free will, the agent we are looking for must have some form of semi-independence from the determinate laws of nature.

Exactly.

The task Tallis sets himself, then, is to identify the type of agency that could only stem from a subject who is non-physical and ‘virtually outside’ in the manner he suggests. So, can he find one?

Here, from my point of view, it comes down to whether or not in "finding it" he does so such that it is not encompassed in just a world of words. Deducing it into existence the way many theologians deduce God into existence. Worse, define it into existence.

You tell me from here on out.

After deftly outlining some of the challenges the physicalist picture of the world poses to the notion of free will in Chapter 1, and rightly rejecting experiments in neuroscience as having any bearing on this issue, Tallis begins his argument proper in Chapter 2 with a discussion of agency and scientific method. We can make a distinction between the ‘habits of nature’, and the ‘laws of science’ understood as our evolving conception of these habits. Tallis argues for our formulation of scientific laws as “not being identical with the inherent habits of nature… [It] must belong to a virtual space outside of nature, occupied by humanity”

So, is this or is this not just another intellectual contraption the truth of which depends entirely on agreeing or disagreeing with him in regard to what these words mean when put in this particular order. How are the "habits of nature" in regard to all of the other conscious animals around us -- instincts, drives, biological imperatives -- different from our own? Clearly, we are remarkably different when it comes to "intentions". But how does this establish that the human brain intends autonomously?

You show me where the "virtual space outside of nature" is parked in our brains.

To me this is a puzzling claim, for why would the partial understanding of nature encapsulated in our current scientific theories not be part of nature itself?

Again, exactly. If nature is the embodiment of the laws of matter and we are just the end most evolution of nature itself [on this [planet], sure, maybe there is a "metaphysical" explanation for human intention that does not include God. But beyond the scientific method employed by the brain scientists to root this out, what can philosophers contribute to the mystery much beyond "thought up" arguments. Arguments thought up be the brain itself.

The Dogmatic Determinism of Daniel Dennett
Eyal Mozes
BOOK REVIEW: Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves.
at The Atlas Society

Dennett is inverting the correct logical hierarchy. The fundamental reason for accepting free will is that it is a self-evident, directly perceived fact about our own thinking and actions.

And, indeed, here I am right now intuitively, viscerally feeling precisely that. I "just know" that even though tonight I might have a dream in which I am posting something here entirely as a result of my brain autonomically creating these dream realities, once I wake up my brain hands over the controls to me and -- presto! -- "somehow" I become autonomous.

And of course had Ayn Rand been confronted with what she has no definitive understanding of regarding this...

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was "somehow" able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter "somehow" became living matter "somehow" became conscious matter "somehow" became self-conscious matter.

...she would no doubt just shrug her own ignorance off as so many here do: so what?!

Every reader of this review can directly perceive that the amount of mental effort he spends on considering and trying to understand it—and then whether he agrees with me or not—is under his own control. The same is true every time any one of us is engaged in any thought process of any difficulty, or makes a decision of any significance in his actions.

In other words, only a fool would actually imagine that Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged simply because her brain compelled her to autonomically. Then going all the way back to...to what exactly? The human brain is matter but matter came into existence...how exactly? Also: why exactly? And how exactly did mindless matter acquire biological life? And how exactly did biological matter acquire consciousness that evolved into us.

Well, it just did!

It is because we observe the existence of freedom as a fact about ourselves that we can go on to accept responsibility and recognize moral praise and blame as deserved. Ignoring the introspective observation of choice, Dennett makes the reality of free will depend on our need for morality rather than the other way around.

See how it works? Because we do observe and perceive things introspectively that proves we have free will! And the fact that the brain and the brain alone creates our perceptions and observations and introspection when we dream, well, that's just different.

Somehow.

As for Dennett "making the reality of free will depend on our need for morality rather than the other way around", you tell me.

After all, in a wholly determined universe as some understand it, our need for morality is no less "beyond our control".

Daniel Dennett is Wrong About Free Will
by Daniel Miessler

The randomness gambit

Next topic, and this one is unbelievable:

Harris:

"And to the extent that the law of cause and effect is subject to indeterminism—quantum or otherwise—we can take no credit for what happens."

Again:

"Indeterminism is the idea that events (or certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or are not caused deterministically." wiki

Of course, in regard to the very, very large, events are caused all the time. And we have explored that through, among other things, physics and chemistry and biology. And though re Hume we agree not to confuse seemingly endless correlations with definitive causes, no one expects the either/or world to go away anytime soon.

On the other hand, in regard to the world of the very, very small, things often become considerably more problematic.

Then the part where we grapple to understand the extent to which the human brain itself is wholly subject to the laws of matter. The part where whether we take credit for something or not, we still have no way in which to know for certain if we were never able to or not to.

Then the "randomness gambit" embedded in things like the Benjamin Button Syndrome. But can anything ever be truly random in regard to human interactions? There are so many variables involved, we are always only able to grasp so many of them. Like with the weather and the butterfly flapping its wing. Only with human beings, the complexities can only become all the more...mind-boggling?

Then, whatever you might possibly make of this:

Dennett, supposedly giving a counterexample:

"You must correctly answer three questions to save the world from a space pirate, who provides you with a special answering gadget. It has two buttons marked YES and NO and two foot pedals marked YES and NO. A sign on the gadget lights up after every question “Use the buttons” or “Use the pedals.” You are asked “is Chicago the capital of Illinois?”, the sign says “Use the buttons” and you press the No button with your finger. Then you are asked “Are Dugongs mammals?”, the sign says “Use the buttons” and you press the Yes button with your finger. Finally you are asked “Are proteins made of amino acids?” and the sign says “Use the pedals” so you reach out with your foot and press the Yes pedal. A roar of gratitude goes up from the crowd. You’ve saved the world, thanks to your knowledge and responsible action! But all three actions were unpredictable by Laplace’s demon because whether the light said “Button” or “Pedals” was caused by a quantum random event. In a less obvious way, random perturbations could infect (without negating) your every deed. The tone of your voice when you give your evidence could be tweaked up or done, the pressure of your trigger finger as you pull the trigger could be tweaked greater or lesser, and so forth, without robbing you of responsibility. Brains are, in all likelihood, designed by natural selection to absorb random fluctuations without being seriously diverted by them—just as computers are. But that means that randomness need not destroy the rationality, the well-governedness, the sense-making integrity of your control system. Your brain may even exploit randomness in a variety of ways to enhance its heuristic search for good solutions to problems."

Same thing?

Whatever you do make of it...were you ever able to opt freely to think about it longer and of your own volition come to a completely different conclusion?

We. Just. Don't. Know.

Freedom: An Impossible Reality by Raymond Tallis
This issue we consider ultimate human realities as Raymond Tallis has the intention of proving free will.
Book Review
Jonathan Head

Tallis’s key argument here is that the way we scientifically study nature shows that our scientific understanding of it must lie outside of it. This independence is shown particularly by our ability to examine nature through the isolation or manipulation of variables, such as when we test Boyle’s Law concerning the relation between pressure and volume of a gas by keeping a constant temperature. This independence he says is evidence for free agency. Tallis writes that “preparing the experiment, carrying it out, repeating it on numerous occasions, and collating the results of endless repetitions, demonstrating it to fellow scientists to persuade them of its truth, do not look like an expression of nature’s habits” – it seems to be the work of “an agent, rather than a reagent”.

This is basically true for almost everything we do. We do things in a way that no other matter really even approaches. Even among other conscious animals, they seem to go about the business of living on automatic pilot. They are driven or compelled by instinct. Some literally right from the start. How amazed we often are watching a nature documentary in which some species are born and immediately they are entirely on their own. "Somehow" their brains are already hardwired to "know" what to do. That, to me, is almost as mind-boggling as us. "Somehow" nature itself managed to create a fully functioning creature with absolutely no need for the years of indoctrination that we go through...utterly helpless and dependent at birth.

But surely given all of the thought that we put into doing any number of things as adults, there must be a "free agent" in there somewhere. How and why that is the case we may never fully understand. But there it is, that indisputable assumption that "I" am able to opt among different behaviors.

While we may agree that the behaviour in scientific experimentation makes it unlikely to be carried out by anything other than a free agent, it is not entirely clear to me why scientific behaviour is more evidence of our agency than any other sort. We could, on the contrary, argue that all aspects of our behaviour presuppose a partial and ever-changing understanding of the workings of nature, not just when we are controlling variables in the rather artificial atmosphere of a scientific experiment.

That's basically my point as well. Just because we're able to convince ourselves that we are in fact a "free agent" doesn't mean that "somehow" nature itself didn't bring that frame of mind into existence as well. If nature can evolve into snakes able to fully function at birth, why not what we can do? Science may well be but the most dazzling aspects of the laws of nature.

Still...

Matter evolving from the Big Bang into something able to invent Smart Phones and the Internet and philosophy forums and threads like this one?

Hmm, maybe there is a God.

Further, we may question whether behaviour per se can be used as part of an argument for free will in the strong sense Tallis is committed to. Any behaviour we could point to could arguably be manifested by an agent determined by the laws of nature as much as by an incompletely determined agent. A capacity to reflect upon and manipulate the workings of nature seems a neutral point of evidence concerning whether or not we could have acted otherwise, and so, freely.

In any event, Mr. Tallis, how do you connect the dots between your own conclusions and this...

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was "somehow" able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter "somehow" became living matter "somehow" became conscious matter "somehow" became self-conscious matter.

Then those here who actually believe that what they believe about all of this reflects, what, the ontological truth about the human condition itself?

Then those who are compelled in turn to insist on a teleological component as well. Usually in the form of one or another God.

Meanwhile, philosophers and scientists and theologians have been grappling with this profound mystery now for thousands of years.

Maybe in your next Philosophy Now column.

The Dogmatic Determinism of Daniel Dennett
Eyal Mozes
BOOK REVIEW: Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves.
at The Atlas Society

DENNETT'S TREATMENT OF CAUSALITY

Dennett continually exhorts the reader to question commonly held assumptions about determinism and freedom. He complains about "the complacency with which these theses are commonly granted without argument".

Of course, that's what I'd point out to the Dnaiel Dennetts and the Ayn Rands of the world. I'd suggest that the complacency with which they presume that the arguments used to concoct their own theses may well in turn be but a manifestation of the only possible reality. They are both right, but only because right and wrong are interchangeable in a world where all arguments and all theses are only as they ever could have been.

Yet his entire project depends on one assumption that he complacently accepts without argument and never thinks of questioning. Dennett assumes that causality is a relation between events: The motions of atoms or ions at one moment cause their motions at the next moment; the firing of a nerve in the brain causes a muscle to contract.

And how is that not the case in regard to the matter that evolved into the human brain? Yes, it may be that the human brain is like no other matter. That "somehow" it does include autonomy. And this has nothing to do with God. Only Ayn Rand herself took determinism into the is/ought world. In other words, in regard to moral and political and even esthetic value judgments, what she believed [dogmatically] determined what you believed. Or else.

Now, back up into the intellectual contraption clouds:

In all his discussions of causality, he discusses it as a relation between events; analyzing causality, to Dennett, means analyzing precisely when one event can be said to be the cause of another. He states that he finds the ordinary concept of causality "informal, vague, often self-contradictory" and hard to analyze precisely, but it never occurs to him that this seeming difficulty is the result of an attempt to treat causality as the wrong kind of relationship.

Right, the wrong kind of relationship. As though the author here has access to all of the empirical, material, phenomenological facts that would need to be known in order to explain precisely how the human brain itself did manage to step outside the causal chain that seems to intertwine all other matter.

And then [No God] why it happened as it did and not some other way.

Daniel Dennett is Wrong About Free Will
by Daniel Miessler

How is Daniel Dennett—one of the best philosophers of our time, capable of making such an obvious mistake?

How about this:

Given determinism as some understand it, making a mistake is no less ultimately a psychologiocal delusion than not making one. If your brain compels you think, feel, say and do only what you are ever able to think, feel, say and do, how can anything be deemed a mistake other than because our brains no less compel us to call it one.

And all I can do is to imagine that I do have free will such that someone will finally be able to explain to me why I am making a mistake in regarding determinism as I just suggested that some do.

Let me walk you through this:

Harris says that randomness doesn’t grant you freedom
Dennett says he has a counterexample, and then shows an example of randomness, to which a human responds in a predictable way (given the input), and then claims a free choice was made.

What? This is logically blasphemous. If you’re trying to prove that the human made a free choice you can’t use a response to random stimuli as your evidence. You can program a “moral” robot to make the proper choice if the light flashes a certain way as well, so if this happens did it too make a “responsible action”?

Again, this is why I am always attempting to bring "intellectual contraptions" of this sort down out of the didactic clouds.

Mary aborting Jane.

How would Harris explain to Mary what he means by "randomness not granting her freedom" in regard to her pregnancy?

And wouldn't he have to assume that "somehow" his explanation in and of itself was not an inherent manifestation of the only possible reality?

Same with Dennett's own take on randomness.

In other words, are we or are we not Nature's equivalent of, say, the Terminator? Nothing that we think, feel, say or do is ever entirely random because everything is entirely in sync with the laws of matter. The human brain is just Nature's...masterpiece?

Then the most profound mystery of all: Nature, the human brain and teleology.

In other words, sans God, in the way that, perhaps, the pantheists encompass the universe itself?

"Pantheism is the philosophical religious belief that reality, the universe and the cosmos are identical to divinity and a supreme being or entity." wiki

But how to even begin to grasp something like this? No God but "somehow" the universe itself has an ultimate meaning and purpose?

Freedom: An Impossible Reality by Raymond Tallis
This issue we consider ultimate human realities as Raymond Tallis has the intention of proving free will.
Book Review
Jonathan Head

In Chapter 3 Tallis considers the important notion of physical causation. If all events in the material world are brought about by chains of causes, then it may seem that all our physical actions are constrained by what has come before.

Here, of course, that is easy to grasp in regard to the interactions of matter lacking in consciousness. A weather event might occur somewhere in the world. And meteorologists can tell us step by step how it happened and why it happened given what they know scientifically about all the material components of weather.

But then we came along. Conscious matter able to create an industrial world that many scientists now insist has caused the climate to change such that there is a very real threat to the lives of millions as weather events become more severe and prolonged.

So, if matter is matter is matter, what's the difference? Or is the matter that evolved into the human brain so unlike any other matter that [God or No God] there's a profound difference indeed.

As Tallis succinctly puts it, “If causation were an intrinsic property of nature, a material necessity binding all the events in the material world, we might be justified in viewing our actions as mere links in a causal network that weaves itself unbroken from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch”.

Or, perhaps: Since causation is an intrinsic property of nature, a material necessity binding all the events in the material world, whatever we believe is either justified or not, it's all inherently, necessarily embedded in a causal network that weaves itself unbroken from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch.

In order to safeguard our free agency, then, Tallis argues that causation is not an intrinsic property of nature; rather, it is a result of the way in which we view the world as free agents.

As though he can pin down that what he argues and how he views things is not in itself part of this unbroken causal network stretching back to the Big Bang. Let alone to an ontological understanding of existence itself.

Instead, as with all the rest of us, he can only fall back on the assumptions he makes about the laws of matter and the human brain embedded in largely abstract arguments themselves:

Pointing out, quite rightly, that our identification of causes for particular effects often depends upon our practical interests (for example, I might say a house fire is caused by the relatively unusual circumstance of the electrical short-circuit rather than by the somewhat unavoidable condition of there being oxygen present) Tallis concludes that causation is a subjective structure projected onto the world in order to connect events that hold our interest.

Next up: A YouTube video where he instructs brain scientists exploring all of this experimentally/experientially how to demonstrate that he is correct with an actual brain.

His own say.

I have to eat something.

Indeed, your stomach's been growling like a bear.

Let's stop! I can see a deli.

Waiter! Ah, good afternoon. I have to eat something.

Menu's on the table sir.

The Dogmatic Determinism of Daniel Dennett
Eyal Mozes
BOOK REVIEW: Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves.
at The Atlas Society

The alternative view is that causality is a relationship, not between one event and another, but between an entity and its action: the way a thing acts (including the way it reacts to the actions of other entities) is a function of its nature.

Yes, but the problematic element here still revolves around distinguishing between the lifeless/mindless interactions of matter, the interactions of conscious matter driven entirely by instinct/biological imperatives and the interactions of self-conscious human brains seemingly able to opt among alternative behaviors.

Nature encompasses all of them together. But are the laws of matter embedded in nature "somehow" different for each of them?

Are there any scientists or philosophers around able to answer that conclusively? And, if not, why one frame of mind and not another?

While it is often convenient to refer to some action as the "cause" of a subsequent action, such usage is derivative; primarily, an action's cause is the nature of the acting entity. For example, the motions of atoms or ions are caused by their mass, electric charge, etc., which determine how the forces operating on them affect their movement. If the nature of these entities were different, then they would act differently in response to the same external forces.

See how it works? The author is not able himself to establish definitively how the laws of matter do their thing in, say, an erupting volcano or when a lion attacks a zebra or when a human being chooses an abortion. But trust him: the human being has free will. The main difference with this particular author is that he will also insist that Ayn Rand's assessment of the ethics of abortion -- the acorn and the oak tree analogy -- also reflects the objective moral assessment in turn.

It all revolves around Rand's understanding of the human Self:

In the case of living things, whose actions are self-generated (i.e., the action's direction and energy come from sources internal to the acting entity), entity causation becomes agent causation; the contraction of a muscle is caused by the nature of the animal's muscular and nervous systems. This understanding of causality makes it possible to see how human agents, whose nature includes the ability to weigh alternative courses of action and deliberate about them, and consequently the capacity for genuine choice, act in accordance with causality, not in any way in contradiction to it.

Yeah, all of this may well be true. But that doesn't make the "proof" of it any less a world of words. A bunch of "philosophical" assumptions about human brain matter and "agency". And, for me, as long as "in my dreams" I am also convinced I am weighing between alternative courses of action only to wake up and realize it was entirely my brain doing the weighing, I'll always come back to the profound mystery of human consciousness itself.

Calling the waking brain's choices genuine doesn't make them so. And then the part where even the waking brain can be crippled by afflictions such that the things we are "opting" for wide-awake are not really genuine choices at all.

In fact, I recall as a boy the first time I was prompted to think about these things from an entirely new perspective. This one: https://youtu.be/4QewNm9dsS4

Daniel Dennett is Wrong About Free Will
by Daniel Miessler

The replay

Next, Dennett attacks the concept of the replay of the past as a thought experiment for the lack of free will:

Harris:

To say that they were free not to rape and murder is to say that they could have resisted the impulse to do so (or could have avoided feeling such an impulse altogether)—with the universe, including their brains, in precisely the same state it was in at the moment they committed their crimes.

Well, there you go. How do we go about demonstrating it either one way or the other? Other than [here] by "thinking up" various [ofttimes conflicting] philosophical arguments, the truth of which revolve entirely around the assumptions we make about what the words means when fitted together to create the argument itself. We can't then go to the brain scientists and say, "confirm this, please".

Are we free to rape or compelled to rape? Well, if not compelled, we take our own subjective, existential leaps. From fierce feminists to sociopathic men who actually rationalize it as "natural" behavior.

Dennett:

Just not true. If we are interested in whether somebody has free will, it is some kind of ability that we want to assess, and you can’t assess any ability by “replaying the tape.”

And around and around I go. What if you are interested in whether human beings have free will, but you were never freely able to not to be interested? And what if human beings do assess particular abilities but only because they were never able to assess them other than as their brains compel them to?

The point was made long ago by A. M. Honoré in his classic paper “Can and Can’t,” in Mind, 1964, and more recently deeply grounded in Judea Pearl’s Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference, [CUP] 2000. This is as true of the abilities of automobiles as of people. Suppose I am driving along at 60 MPH and am asked if my car can also go 80 MPH. Yes, I reply, but not in precisely the same conditions; I have to press harder on the accelerator. In fact, I add, it can also go 40 MPH, but not with conditions precisely as they are. Replay the tape till eternity, and it will never go 40MPH in just these conditions. So if you want to know whether some rapist/murderer was “free not to rape and murder,” don’t distract yourself with fantasies about determinism and rewinding the tape; rely on the sorts of observations and tests that everyday folk use to confirm and disconfirm their verdicts about who could have done otherwise and who couldn’t. Rely on observations and tests of everyday folks? Is that what he really said?

Again, how is any of this an exception to the laws of matter if the human brain itself is not an exception? How are human beings to nature not what an automobile engine is to human beings? The engine works as it does because human beings put all of the parts in their proper place. The human brain works as it does because nature put all of the parts in their proper place.

It's just that the engine doesn't have the capacity to "just know" that it is responsible for all the parts being where they are. Whereas human brains do have the capacity to think and to feel that certain aspects of its own parts resulting in different behaviors are as a result of human autonomy. But only because "somehow" nature itself programed our brains to think that. What some call "the psychological illusion of free choice".

Everyday folks think Bigfoot is real. Everyday folks are waiting for Jesus to return. Everyday folks don’t believe in evolution. Everyday folks can’t find Australia on a map.

Be serious.

So?

Forget everyday folks. Consider well educated scientists and philosophers grappling with determinism and free will. What have they concluded we should all be serious about?

Freedom: An Impossible Reality by Raymond Tallis
This issue we consider ultimate human realities as Raymond Tallis has the intention of proving free will.
Book Review
Jonathan Head

...our picking events as causes in a manner that reflects our interests does not necessarily imply the causal anti-realism Tallis advocates. Following something like J.L. Mackie’s account as offered in his classic work The Cement of the Universe (1974), we can hold that events arise out of a concatenation of circumstances or conditions that we understand as a general ‘causal field’ while allowing that we may want to pick out any particular condition(s) of an event as especially important from our own practical standpoint.

How does this not cry out for a particular context? Like the one revolving around Mary's abortion. By all means -- click -- given what you believe is being conveyed here by J.L. Mackie and Raymond Tallis regarding "causal anti-realism" and "causal field" how would these assessments be conveyed to Mary in regard to her wanting "to pick out any particular conditions" embedded in the act of aborting Jane "as especially important from [her] own practical standpoint."

In this way, we can both believe that causal necessity binds all the events in the material world in a manner that potentially threatens our agency, and agree with Tallis’s point that our identification of causes can be somewhat subjective.

Can Mary both believe that the laws of matter compel her brain to compel her to abort Jane given the only possible material/phenomenological reality and that her own identification of causes are as well genuinely subjective experiences?

Other than in believing both she was never able not to?

What do I keep missing here?

There is also the rather pressing challenge that Tallis faces of telling us how observers came about if there were no causation before observation.

Then back to this part:

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was "somehow" able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter "somehow" became living matter "somehow" became conscious matter "somehow" became self-conscious matter.

Then those here who actually believe that what they believe about all of this reflects, what, the ontological truth about the human condition itself?

Then those who are compelled in turn to insist on a teleological component as well. Usually in the form of one or another God.

Meanwhile, philosophers and scientists and theologians have been grappling with this profound mystery now for thousands of years.

Either in the only possible reality in the only possible world or of their own volition.

How is this not applicable to Tallis himself? Making his "proof" regarding human freedom just another philosophical argument predicated on his own "world of words" philosophical assumptions.