Inevitabilism Vs. Compatabilism

I’m really not gunna read the rest of this novel though

After reading and re-reading both arguments, I have to say that I’m struggling with the idea that the two sides are mutually exclusive. Seems to me there is a distinction to be made between the two, but it is a fine distinction, almost like comparing apples to oranges.

Tab concedes that on an individual level, we certainly feel like we’re able to make autonomous choices. Even while refuting Pav’s cereal guy argument, he brings in quantum indeterminacy and the butterfly effect. Which seems to support Pav’s cereal guy argument. But Tab’s main argument relies on a grander scale, anthropologically, demographically, and temporally. And although he posits that the optimal solutions exist outside of time, that doesn’t seem like an especially useful axiom, because we don’t exist outside of time. We can only judge those solutions as optimal after the fact, and hindsight is 20/20.

If I understood correctly, Tab’s position can be summarized in this sentence:

Pav points out that one must consider the role irrationality plays, introducing a somewhat random factor which results in our inability to predict future events with a high degree of accuracy. He agrees that probability enables us to make fairly reliable predictions, but the door is left open for deviations from those predictions. Whereas Tab’s argument analyzes the past to reveal inevitability, Pav’s seems to focus more on the unfolding of the future and our inability to predict developing events.

I’d sum up Pav’s argument with this:

You both did a great job in illustrating your points and making your case. The fact that you each came at this debate from differing vantage points makes it difficult to judge; and as I said earlier, the positions themselves are not so far apart. It would’ve been easier if one of the positions was for strict determinism.

But since that was not the case, I’ll have to give a slight, very slight edge to Pav. You two are both excellent in your rhetorical skills, both were eloquent and compelling, and actually both arguments were convincing. If Tab would’ve talked a little more about how inevitabilism can help us view the future as well as the past, I probably would’ve given him the edge.

Well done, both of you.

A fine and reasoned decision.

What, me, disappointed…? No [size=60][sob][/size] not at all.

I agree that Anita came to a well-reasoned Judgment. Thank you Anita for all of the compliments that you paid to both myself and Tab!

I’m going contrary to my nature to comment on one of these debate things, probably because I ended up feeling sorry when you kept begging for people to choose who wins. Christ, my kids do that to me what seems like a million times a day, give me a break. And it’s a little ironic given the topic, no? But WTF, you probably won’t be surprised that it’s my opinion that neither of you wins. :smiley:

Also, as far as style, I thought you both proceeded into discussion without clarifying well enough up front your individual understandings of the critical terms used here. Because of this, it seemed to me to end up as a debate of exploring some fundamental meanings as one goes along rather than refining a more concise initial position, so I took points away (before I’d even given any, as a matter of fact!) for that.

As for the specific stuff, here’s a little bit. I didn’t have time to read all that dialogue Tab wrote. And I’m pretty sure that had I read all of it, my opinion wouldn’t change. But I could be wrong.

Again, neither of you really identifies which definition of you’re aruguing over. I think that’s a problem that ends up confusing the debate, because when you’re discussing one, another one stands in the background without note but influencing the argument anyway. If free will is an agent’s ability to control his or her action according to his/her will (as long as conditions of the situation permit this), then that’s one thing. And mostly what you’re arguing over, I think. But the broader idea about free will as something that transcends our physical existence and how the workings of the world ultimately control us is lurking back there, not really elaborated upon by either of you. I think Tab comes closer when he talks about an individual “experiencing” the freedom of choosing and how he can “feel” after-the-fact as though he could’ve chosen differently. I think he’s reaching for the ultimate when he says…

“Regardless of the truth of the matter, a society believing, and acting upon the belief, that it possesses freedom of choice will act very differently from one that does not. The simple existence of the concept in the group mind, frivolous or real, has effect.”

…and yet doesn’t explain the “effect”, so I’m not sure how or why that’s relevant. Anyway, just because anyone – or an identified group of anyones – believes they possess freedom of choice doesn’t mean that they do. What he’s labelled “freedom of choice” is the fact that agents have the ability to control their behavior and choose their actions. That doesn’t mean they possess self control in the ultimate sense.

Pav’s view of the ultimate sense of it shows up (I think!) as he notes the “unpredictability of happenstance in the purely physical world”…but then assumes once a “sufficiently sentient breed of agents came into being” were prompt to mentally categorize all of this unpredictability into “the novelty of choice”.

Of course right off, “came into being” implies causality and I assume the point is that it took humans to construct the idea of causality. But humans also constructed “happenstance”. So what’s the point here, really?

What does “quantum indeterminacy” mean and whose finger is doing the tapping?

Moving along, Pav elaborates upon what he believes to be a valid depiction of a chain of cause and effect to illustrate how events of the “past” will have impact on “the future”. As I read, I could hear the ice cracking and I wanted to shout a warning to him to get out of there NOW…but I figured the noble souls who enter this ILP Chamber do so with the understanding that sinking into the freezing depths is, well, an option. :slight_smile:

He says it’s all because a guy chose Cocoa Puffs for breakfast. Actually, he said “wanted”, which would’ve (should’ve IMO) allowed him to introduce the concept of intention into the mix. But anyway, his point is that the decision that, on the surface, seems relatively inconsequential, actually leads to “vast intended and unintended consequences”. Really?

I didn’t care for hypothetical Cocoa Puffs example because he started with a simple decision and then selected a chain of events in a linear way, so that he could base all the contingencies along the line on that one. But this doesn’t reflect the intricacy of the web of causality. On the surface, he makes his neat linear case. No doubt he would respond “but I only meant that as one possible example!” But that’s not how it works. He doesn’t realize that each of the occurrences that he has isolated at each point along the way to his chosen outcome are, in fact, at each moment, interrelated in this web through an infinite number of relationships that he can’t possibly identify.

In other words, it’s not even remotely that simple and I’d say it’s, in fact, so complex, that he can’t claim that the example can prove anything about causality. Just as I can hold an orange in my hand and, as an exercise, try to imagine everything that occurred in the past to place it there. My way is a teensy weensy bit better, because I’m starting with an actual orange (versus ending up with an imaginary ghost town) and I know a few facts about how it got there (I saw it, I bought it, I sat down at the table and gazed at it and thought about it. I have a reasonable certainty that it came from a particular tree in a particular location, and that it was picked, packed, distributed, displayed, chosen, paid for, etc. That’s my little linear chain…but I’m of course ignorant of the lion’s share of what actually caused that orange to be in my hand at the precise moment. I may deduce that it was part of a causal process, but there is absolutely no way that I can know this, because the web is too intricate.

This is a non sequitur to me. The future is simply a projection of thought, it’s not about causes- and effects-to-be.

All I’ve got the time for, sorry.

Good breakdown, Ingenium. The only thing that I would mention for now (and only because mentioning this won’t sway any votes) is that you attributed a couple of Tab’s quotes to me.

So I’ve put that down on the score sheet as another big fat double zero.

Tally stands at 2-1 to Pav. Thanks Ingenium. Should have read the dialogue though. That was my favourite bit. Quantum indeterminancy. Wiki.

I do not think you should ever expect the Chamber of debate to be well used compared to other forums. Obviously, debates like this take considerable time investment and aren’t going to occur every day. But, in my view a forum that produces the occasional gem is probably more worthwhile than one that produces eons of crap.

This debate was pretty excellent. The standard very, very high throughout. I enjoyed both positions and think both were very well explicated. The heavily metaphorical approach worked well and was entertaining. I also appreciated the break from the ‘quote and shoot’ approach.

Here is my breakdown:

In Tab’s first post, he argued that there was room for indivdual maneover, but that his verision of ‘inveitabilism’ leads to the view that the path of societies as a whole is determined:

What I mean to say by this is, throughout history, despite there being implicitly a diversity of choices to be made at any one point, overall, mimicking pre-determinism, only a select section of the starting populations would ever remain in existence, namely the ones who acted to follow exactly the path delineated by the best solutions to certain problems. Solutions which existed, in hypothetic form, prior to the event.

I felt this initial line of argument had promise. However, I feel the response from Pav somewhat missed a key element of Tab’s argument - that Tab was allowing for personal freedom and for decisions freely made to have an effect. The cheerio’s example, for example, was about how one person could trigger something in a society to happen - an example which Tab correctly defeated with his response that he has already allowed for this: that his argument was that this can only happen when the socitey at whole was in trouble. I couldn’t see much trouble for Tab’s position after Pav’s first response.

However, in my view - Pav delivered a surefire real hit a bit further on:

Inevitabilism would indicate that anytime a fucked situation exists that there will be a trigger to set it off, however, this fails to take into account the fact that an unstable system not presented with a trigger will still maintain.

This point may be devastating, and I feel it is something Tab should have explicitly answered. However, if Tab does answer this in his final post, I can not locate precisely where (perhaps a disadavntage of his eccentric style?). This is certainly a disadvantage, in my eyes, for his inevitablism theory and a hit well scored by Pav.

That said, I do not feel that Pav’s one mighty blow was enough, and during the debate I personally felt that much of Pav’s posts were skirting round the edge of relevency. I think it was a tough one for Pav - you let Tab start which means he got to define the debate, and in my view Pav never fully caught up with the way it had been defined - preferring to talk about the freedom of individuals and the limited scope effect of that freedom, without latching on fully to the debate about societies and the general path of human kind. This is probably seen best in his final statement:

The Compatabilist believes in mobility, horizontal, vertical, rotational and circular mobility. In other words, the Compatabilist understands and accepts that there are going to be aspects of his own individual experience that are beyond his control, but that there are also aspects fully within the realm of his control. To wit, while some things have been determined, many things (quite possibly, most things) have not.

Thus, despite the fact that Pav defined, defended and supported his own theory excelently, I personally feel the debate went to Tab.

Post Edit: I’ve just read Anita’s commentary (I didn’t read other commentaries before - I thought it fair to give mine uninfluenced). I agree with everything Anita is saying, I guess we differ on votes cast as I am going more the style of debate-marking which says that the first speaker gets to define the motion, as it were, and thus it was Pav’s responsibility to respond to Tab’s arguments about societial inevitability. The fact that I am also struggling with the idea that the two sides are mutually exclusive (Anita) is a weakness for Pav as he did no set his account up clearly in a way that would refute Tab’s initial position.

That was definitely a well-reasoned Judgment, Brevel-Monkey.

I really appreciate everyone who has Judged this Debate, for me, against me, or with a, “No-Confidence/Draw/You Both Suck,” vote for taking the time to do so. These Judgments have been fantastic thus far and have also presented arguments that I think it would be very difficult for me or Tab to argue against. I’m looking forward to responding to some of these Judgments after the Judging has concluded.

Current Score:

Tab: 2
Pav: 2
Draw: 2

AND THE CROWD GOES WILD!!!

For the record: I can’t vote, so call this an abstention. Tab and I have spent years hashing this over in too many ways to count, so I am biased. (sorry, Pav) Still a couple of comments:
Tab, I think you might have spent more time emphasizing the limits of choice at the micro level. Each input in a causal chain is restricted to extremely limited parameters of behavior, typically yes, no, maybe. There is no smorgasbord of choices, and what is choice can only occur inside those narrow parameters so that outcomes are predictably deterministic, or as close to inevitable as possible. Had you punched this aspect up, Pav would have played hell countering it.

Pav, You correctly spoke to sponteniety and novelty but not enough emphasis. Tab acknowledged the mindboggling problem when he mentioned quantum indeterminacy and you didn’t push him into the corner with it. Even though inevitabilism is a well reasoned theory, appearances are still a guessing game and the utter complexity of a causal chain with all the feedback loops left plenty of wiggle room for choice. Had you pushed this, Tab would have had to try to negate chance as part of the causal process and failing to do so would have given you the upper hand.

All in all, a good debate. The lack of formaity was a plus. You guys done good. :slight_smile:

My vote isn’t supposed to count, but seeing as I’ve just read everything here, agree with many of the previous critics, and know that you’ve accepted a low-post-count vote already, I’ll say my part:

I had trouble seeing where you two disagreed! The arguments were on two different scales. The first half of each of your main examples I took as cases for the others’ point of view. Since you couldn’t come to a disagreement, I’ll refrain from coming to an agreement :mrgreen:

Tab wins for clarity of argument, ease of reading. It was fun to read, but he also made his point clearly enough that I have trouble believing there’s anything more he could ever say. Pav, as others have said, kept going 'round his points like he wanted to say more, but couldn’t figure out how to do it.

Pav wins for getting me to believe his stance is more complete. The few times he said meaningful things, they incorporated and advanced Tab’s arguments. Or maybe that’s just the conclusion I reached in trying to translate his thoughts. Tab’s points were just too simple, and relied on the enormity of scale to impress.

The arguments were all about prediction. This is different from my (likely out of date) knowledge of the fate vs. free will debate (which I settled myself here, :evilfun: ). Tab was able to show that, on large scales, important events can be predicted quite accurately. Unfortunately for him, if scale doesn’t impress me, I could use the same argument to say that the final position of a thrown baseball can be predicted with similar, if not better accuracy.

Neither discussed the difference between physics-like systems and (perceived) free-will systems. Neither discussed predictability within a complex environment. Both of these were mentioned by Pav and ignored by Tab.

Super simple summary:

Tab: I’m entertaining!
Pav: But there’s more!

Thanks to Tents for reading through all the bumf, particularly my bumf, again, and for his commentry. In hindsight I should have pushed a couple of things further, the situational-programming bit for example, but opted to cut them short - particularly in the story, because they’d have made it [even more] ridiculously long. Another day, another thread.

Hey Kygron, thanks for the review. Story of my life - too many laughs, too little substance :astonished: .

Anyway, since you gave a very positive win-win vote, I think we’ll accept it.

Score stands now at:

3-3.

I don’t know about you, but my nails are down to the quick.

Great breakdown, Kygron!

Referring to me:

I love it!

That’s a speed bump, are you trying to tell them to slow down about judging this thing?

:laughing: If they were any slower they’d be going backwards. Let’s face it, even google image search is running out of ideas to bump this thread.