Philosophy Now Forum

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 7:51 pm

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 5:10 pm

And I could have responded with a general account for how one might think about different evaluations of people dependent on the íssues raised in that article. But I wanted a bit more of a response from him before producing more, at least enough to see he'd read it. And there's enough there, I think to object, for example, or support the idea.

I think if he had posted, it would be one or several of his standard three responses.

In any case, he seems only interested in posting his opinions of the blurbs he quotes.

Which is a very strange process. It seems more associational than a real connection to the texts. At least the ones I've looked at.

It's improv, baby

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 8:11 pm

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 7:51 pm

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 5:10 pm
I think if he had posted, it would be one or several of his standard three responses.

In any case, he seems only interested in posting his opinions of the blurbs he quotes.

Which is a very strange process. It seems more associational than a real connection to the texts. At least the ones I've looked at.

It's improv, baby

Ah, but is there actually improv in a deterministic universe????

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 7:50 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 7:19 pm

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 4:54 pm Actually, I'm pretty sure he's said it's based on a true story he was part of.

Mary and Mary's boyfriend were iam's friends, as I recall, or something?

The problem with this idea is that people like iam don't have friends. And the problem with my idea above is that people like iam don't get laid, so Mary couldn't have cheated with him. Normally that is, unless some fairly unusual daseins were involved. I'm starting to see the intricacies..

Hey, he's told us about his life many times. The guy's had a wide range of phases. I'm sure he's had friends and more. We can't confuse his online presence now with the life he's led or even, leading.

People do change, for good and for ill.

Doubt it. Even mildly-moderately autistic people rarely have friends because others can't really relate to them and they can't really relate to others. Going through phases doesn't help much either. The may have "friends" sometimes.

Atla wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 8:37 pm Doubt it. Even mildly-moderately autistic people rarely have friends because others can't really relate to them and they can't really relate to others. Going through phases doesn't help much either. The may have "friends" sometimes.

I know autistic people with friends. I have a mild one myself. I also doubt Mr. Big autistic.
That's the end of my speculation on Iambiguous for the month.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 8:45 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 8:37 pm Doubt it. Even mildly-moderately autistic people rarely have friends because others can't really relate to them and they can't really relate to others. Going through phases doesn't help much either. The may have "friends" sometimes.

I know autistic people with friends. I have a mild one myself. I also doubt Mr. Big autistic.
That's the end of my speculation on Iambiguous for the month.

All his threads are about his autistic struggles..

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 3:27 pm

iambiguous wrote: ↑Sat Feb 17, 2024 10:06 pm Again, I rarely read what you post here unless you're coming after me.

So, you complain when I go after you for making you the issue, but those are the only posts you read. Think for a second about how that is problematic even on a practical level.

Those are the only posts I read now. On the other hand, for any number of years over at ILP, I read many, many, many, many of your posts in the philosophy forum. But, as it turned out, it is that which prompted me to choose to avoid them here. Well, given some measure of free will, of course.

Again, however, it's no less an entirely subjective judgment call on my part. I would never argue that how I construe you reflects the manner in which all rational men and women are obligated to construe you in turn.

Though, sure, how would you go about connecting the dots between that post and, say, Mary aborting Jane?

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 3:27 pmWhy not actually interact with the post, so I know you read it. I know nothing about Mary's level of neurosis, ability to reason, level of compulsiveness...you know, like stuff from the article I quoted and my response to it.

But: from the perspective of some determinists, you know only what your brain compels you to know about Mary...about anything. The part where, given 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.

...we're all stuck.

Spinoza & Other Determinists
Myint Zan compares different ways of denying free will.

Makkhali Gosala’s Amoral Fatalism

The ancient Indian philosopher Makkhali Gosala, who died around 425 BCE, preceded Augustine by about 800 years, Calvin by about 2,000 years, and Spinoza by about 2,100 years. One notable aspect of Gosala’s philosophy is his fatalism.

Fatalism is just one more word that comes to mean different things to different people in regard to human autonomy. Same with words like destiny. Or cynicism or nihilism. Do they mean only what our brains compel us to think they mean or "somehow" did our brains actually acquire the capacity to shape our fates and our destinies in such a way that obviates or transcends cynicism and and nihilism?

Anyone here believe this? Okay, given a set of circumstances that precipitates conflicting value judgments that precipitates conflicting behaviors, let's explore that empirically.

According to scholars, Gosala’s views are mainly known through statements made in the texts of a couple of religions dominant in his times, Buddhism and Jainism. Apparently both the Buddhists and Jains of Gosala’s time considered him, if not a deviant, then at least entirely outside their traditions.

Okay, but how far outside them? Isn't that what everyone has to take into account when confronting one of the many, many One True Paths other than their own? Thus, for the Christians among us, what might be the fate of Buddhists and Jains souls on Judgment Day? And, of course, the equivalent for Christian souls from the vantage point of Buddhists and Jains.

Gosala seems to have espoused the view that human beings are preordained to suffer. He discoursed about the futility of human effort, and denied the consequences of good or bad deeds. Gosala even denied the operation of karma, which idea was already long-established in Indian philosophy and theology.

The view he "espoused". In other words, one more spiritualist predicating everything he thinks, feels, says and does on what he believes is true "in his head". In fact, that's why there can be so many of them...they simply have to have "faith" it's all true. And as history confirms over and again that faith can be blind as a bat.

Besides...

Karma can generally be defined as consequences in both present and future lives of present volitional actions and those volitional actions from past lives. Variations on the idea can be found in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. A few Buddhist texts indicate that the Buddha himself condemned Gosala’s views as the ‘meanest’ or ‘most low-based of the doctrines among the many preachers of many sects’ of ancient India, more than 2,500 years ago.

Let those Eastern folks squabble over something that means practically nothing at all to the God of Abraham.

Besides, absolutely everything that we do we do because we were never able to opt not to. Karma is inevitable but it has nothing at all to do what mere mortals "deserve".

Spinoza & Other Determinists
Myint Zan compares different ways of denying free will.

[Spinoza's] isn’t the predestinationism of Calvin, which is based on the Creator’s will, nor is it ‘predestination’ in the Augustinian sense of God already knowing what will happen. To the extent that this writer can discern, Gosala did not say that fatalism emanated from the will of the Creator. Ostensibly, the fatalism is just there.

Here, however, many people embrace a God, the God because without Him what else is there to attribute human volition to? And there are any number of theological arguments to explain away Calvin's and Augustine's own rendition of an omniscient Christian God.

And just as fatalism is "just there" "somehow", why was not Spinoza's own thinking "just there" "somehow"? Here there appears to be no possible manner in which to grasp this until we can in turn grasp how and why the human condition itself fits snuggly into the existence of existence itself.

Spinoza denied free will, but he was not a fatalist in the mould of Gosala, nor an espouser of predestination like Augustine or Calvin. Unlike them, Spinoza did not attribute his determinism to God, but rather, because everything that happens takes place through natural laws.

Just out of curiosity then, for those who believe they understand Spinoza's thinking here, how do you suppose he would react to my own example above...Mary being wholly determined to abort Jane while the compatibilists insist that she is still morally responsible for doing so.

Pantheism and moral responsibility? Pantheism and immortality and salvation?

"for those who believe they understand Spinoza's thinking here, how do you suppose he would react to my own example above...Mary being wholly determined to abort Jane while the compatibilists insist that she is still morally responsible for doing so."

That's a compound problem there, haus. I'd wager that Spinz would acquit both mary and the compatibilists of responsibility (in the moral-metaphysical sense) but scold the compatibilists for passing judgement on mary for exercising her natural right. He'd call that judgement emotional and muddled, inadequate, since the anger toward her would be based on the irrational idea that a clump of cells is a person. On the other hand, he'd probably honor the state if it forbade abortion... if a genuine democratic agreement among the citizens brought that law into existence. Spinz was a 'right is might' through democratic force guy, more or less, and saw the state much like hobbes did, as an absolute power that had sovereignty over its citizens. But then at the same time, the proper state as Spinz saw it probably wouldn't outlaw abortion, nor would it consist of citizens who thought it morally reprehensible. The reasons for calling abortion bad would likely seem silly to Spinz.

What Is Free Will?
Grant Bartley wants to know what the problem with freedom is all about.

To answer the philosophical riddle of whether people have free will, we first need to understand what free will is, or at least, what it would be. My goal here is to work out what free will must be if it does exist, and along the way, try to demonstrate that it must exist.

You know what's coming...

Here and now, how are our answers pertaining to free will, as with our understanding of it, not in turn merely an inherent manifestation of the only possible reality?

Some here will argue that I am hopelessly stuck in grappling with this myself. Okay, but how exactly would they go about demonstrating that their own argument pertaining to my arguments is not something that was wholly compelled by our brains?

Some Choice Jargon

An attempt to define ‘free will’ might reasonably start by defining ‘freedom’.

Same thing though. What if every and all attempts by us to define something -- anything -- is not in turn but another necessary component of the only possible reality?

I will use the definition that freedom is the capacity to explore possibilities. This isn’t the only good definition of freedom, but it works well with the rest of what I’m going to say. By this definition, someone is free to the extent that they can explore possibilities or options, and even a simple animal, or even a bacterium, is free insofar as it can explore the possibilities presented by its environment.

Click.

Okay, let's presume that "somehow" when biological matter evolved here on planet Earth into you and I and everyone else, we did acquire the capacity to define these things of our own volition.

In other words, that in many profound ways we are nothing at all like a "simple animal" or "a bacterium" in regard to the behaviors we choose. After all...

But the freedom of bacteria is relatively limited. Creatures capable of thought can explore not only their immediate physical surroundings but also the world of ideas. This freedom to explore ideas is also not unlimited: the outer borders of that freedom are the limits of our imaginations.

As though our imagination is not in turn derived in large part from the existential parameters of our own unique lives. Just go back through time historically and across the globe culturally and attempt to pin down ontologically or teleologically the most rational assessment of freedom...either philosophically or for all practical purposes.

The power of the will in the term ‘free will’ might be reasonably defined as the power of enacting choices or decisions made by a mind. We could say, wills make choices, so free wills make free choices.

Sure, we can say that. But is averring it actually the same thing as demonstrating it? And yet any number of members here certainly seem to think that need be as far as they go. They believe it. That's what makes it true.

Thus...

So, just by these definitions, free will is choice enacted by a mind from possibilities. Free will means a mind causing a state of being from options. So even just by defining the words, we understand that free will is conscious causation. The trick is to understand what this means. What is supposedly being caused by consciousness, from what options, for instance?

Bingo: Free will as a world of words defining and defending yet more words still. Consciousness doesn't become any less mysterious just because we think we have encompassed it in a world of words.

What Is Free Will?
Grant Bartley wants to know what the problem with freedom is all about.

Our definition of freedom as ‘the ability to explore possibilities’ fits well with the fact that free will involves choice, since to choose is to decide between possibilities.

Yes, but only if that is predicated on the indisputable fact that we do have free will. After all, those aliens from the free will sector of the universe above observing us in the wholly determined sector of the universe down here on planet Earth, note that we define many things. That, as well, it appears as though we are exploring possibililies of our own volition. Then they remind themselves that this not the case at all.

And certainly, in terms of the freedom of intelligent agents, before there can be freedom to act, there must be the freedom to think. Choice must first mean that to some degree we choosers choose our own thoughts.

Then back to entities like the Terminator. We note that over and again he too makes choices. But then he is entirely programed from the future to methodically, step by step, act out that program. He hunts down Sarah Connor, but never once does he stop to think, "is this the right thing to do"?

Then in the second film he comes back entirely programmed instead to protect Sarah Connor. Did he have free will?

Then [of course] back to the author making points -- philosophical points? -- about all of this...

You choose what to think, or what you want to do, before you enact any such choice. So what I’ll primarily mean by ‘choice’ is your specification of the contents of your mind, at least to some extent, with ‘choice’ only secondarily referring to any actions that may result from the mental deliberation. Thought comes before action, otherwise we’re not talking about rational choice but rash impulse. Indeed, if we don’t choose mentally before we act physically, we’re not talking about choice at all, we’re talking about an automatic reflex or response: a reaction or an impulse. So before any truly chosen bodily movement can be enacted, there must be a choice to move. This includes moving your mouth to speak. With this in mind, I’ll define choice primarily as the conscious specification of your next mental contents, such that your willing is your conscious specification of the next contents of your mind. Alternatively put, free will means the ability to choose one set of mental contents rather than others, potentially followed by action resulting from that choice. But free will is the capacity to specify one’s next mental content from a range of possibilities, and only consequently about enacting this choice physically.

But: He is either making these points freely or he is not. And I am either pointing that out freely or I am not. And you are either reading these words yourself freely or you are not.

What might the freedom to choose our contents of mind involve? And does this sort of mental causation actually happen?

And how exactly do philosophers go about pinning that down?

In other words, ever and always back to what any of us can delineate objectively 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.

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.

Then the part where some here are able to simply shrug this all off as what, incidental in grappling with the human condition itself?

What Is Free Will?
Grant Bartley wants to know what the problem with freedom is all about.

First, this idea of choice makes sense only in terms of a mind being aware of ideas or options to choose from. Anything not a deliberate, conscious choosing between options I don’t think is properly called ‘choice’.

Actually, in my view, "first" is 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.

First because until either scientists and philosophers can establish that in fact we do have some measure of free will, we can never really rule out that we don't. If the human brain is interchangeable with the human mind and both are wholly in sync with laws of matter how exactly could we?

Unless, perhaps, a theologian is able to establish instead that a God, the God, his God does exist, and our autonomy is the embodiment of His Divine will.

So, strictly speaking, there can be no such thing as ‘unconscious choice’.

How "strictly speaking" though given "the gap" and "Rummy's Rule?

By definition, when we talk about subconscious or nonconscious brain activity, we’re talking in terms of only physical causes, not in terms of any direct influence of conscious will.

Definitions!

Click?

This is basically peacegirl's argument over at ILP. And yet in a wholly determined universe as some understand it, how exactly are we not defining these things other than as our brains/minds compel us to?

Nonconscious brain signal processing is not choice, but something which happens automatically, biochemically. Most of the brain’s activity isn’t directly associated with the making of conscious choice, and so is automatic in just this way.

Speaking of automatically, how are the "choices" that we make in our dreams not entirely embedded biologically, chemically and neurologically in our brains?

Most of our brain? How about all of it?

What Is Free Will?
Grant Bartley wants to know what the problem with freedom is all about.

Next, sometimes our decision-making is choice, that is, mentally deciding between alternative possibilities present to your awareness. But your mind doesn’t always explicitly present you with multiple choices from which to choose.

Also, the conscious mind [in a free will world] has to contend with the subconscious mind and the unconscious mind. Then the part where "somehow" this is all intertwined in the far more primitive components of the human brain. After all, where does the ego stop and the id and the superego begin? How do we pin down with any degree of sophistication where genes give way to memes in regard to the behaviors we choose?

To wit:

Sometimes no distinct options are present to your awareness, and you must cause your next contents of your mind on the basis of the present content, through intuition or imagination.

This is not choice, so much as making a decision. Nevertheless, I think a lot of your willing means you choosing from ideas emerging out of the background of your awareness and presented as vague possibilities. Here you dismiss or affirm options as they arise in your awareness.

Again, let's go back to a decision you recently made -- willed? -- in regard to choosing a behavior that some would regard as moral and others immoral. Why your emerging ideas and not theirs? Why the background of your awareness and not theirs? Why dismiss or affirm your options and not theirs?

Here you dismiss or affirm options as they arise in your awareness. For example, you’ve just got off the train and walked out of the station: you’re thinking about what to do next: there are various ideas being suggested more or less prominently to your mind at this point. As you opt for one of these possibilities – just to think about doing it – it expands into becoming your next conscious thought – your response to your current desire to move.

Yes, this seems to encompass the way our minds work as we'd go about the business of getting off a train and leaving a station. But it does not pin down one way or the other whether this is a reflection of human autonomy. About a week ago, for example, I had this dream where I left an Amtrak train at Penn Station and got in a cab for the Javits Center. Something I did on a regular basis as part of my job. But, again, as utterly real as I felt this experience was, it wasn't real at all. It was entirely invented by my brain.

What Is Free Will?
Grant Bartley wants to know what the problem with freedom is all about.

Metaphysically speaking, someone who believes there is free will, that is, that there is as we’ve defined it, ‘autonomous mental content determination’, is called a libertarian.

On the other hand, metaphysically speaking, what does it actually mean to speak metaphysically?

"Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality. This includes studies of the first principles of: being or existence, identity, change, consciousness, space and time, necessity, actuality, and possibility." wiki

"Metaphysical studies generally seek to explain inherent or universal elements of reality which are not easily discovered or experienced in our everyday life. As such, it is concerned with explaining the features of reality that exist beyond the physical world and our immediate senses." PBS

Sure, we do the best we can to connect the dots between our actual physical existence from day to day, and the mind-boggling Big Questions that then go all the way back to "somehow" fitting what we believe "in our heads" about the human condition "here and now" and how that fits into everything that we do not understand about the existence of existence itself.

Still, given the manner in which some understand determinism, the libertarians themselves are no less thinking and feeling and saying and doing things only as they ever could have in the only possible reality.

Thus...

On the other hand, a promoter of the idea that there is no real free will is called a determinist, because for them all your so-called ‘choices’ are predetermined by previous events. For the hard determinist, free will is an illusion; there’s only the inevitable flow of physical events causing other events, and your mind somehow emerges from that.

Unless, of course, one of them is wrong? Yet, how exactly would philosophers go about grappling with that -- logically? epistemologically? -- given 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.

And if there is a resolution here, would not science be far better equipped to come up with it?

Besides the libertarian and the determinist, there are compatibilists, who believe that despite all the activities of our brain cells being predetermined from the beginning of time, our mental responses are nevertheless still choices, because these illusions of causation would be the choices we would make if we were actually free to make them (or something like that).

Yes, as the aliens in the free will sector of the universe note, we human beings inhabiting the wholly determined sector of the universe are observed making choices.

Just as we make choices in our dreams. But then the part where the sleeping brain gives way to the wide-awake brain...how to explain that?

Or the part where actors "choose" to say and do only that which the screen writers or directors "choose" to script for them.

Or the part where brain tumors and any number of mental afflictions propel -- compel? -- us to "choose" things that in our "right mind" we would never choose.

Can anyone here give us an example of human behavior that is not the impulse of free will, if so, how does this come about, this rogue example of no free will or does it have a cosmos of peers? Is free will only true under certain conditions and if so, what are those conditions? I believe all human behaviors are reactions to our world context, for being itself is a cause to all conscious subjects and other individuals are objects in my world. There is no such thing as human action there is but human reaction, that said to be a motivated action is a reaction to the outside world. The concept of free will is a blatant denial of the complexity which is existence. At best it is a highly functional illusion one that deters us from understanding our fellows and taking an evolutionary step toward a greater humanity.