Determinism

Well, it could be useful to get a third person perspective. Not arguing for deteminism per se, just saying that one could look at the reasons you chose to travel and the places you when and what made your driving such that you hit no one. So, now you are looking at yourself, in a sense as an object or process unfolding. This could be useful, for example, when comparing you to other drivers. What are Phyllo’s qualities that lead to him not having accidents. Or psychology, what led to the choices he made. This could be within a deterministic perspective where we view it as inevitable (compelled) or black boxing that, but looking at causation.

So, I can see a potential use for essentially assuming implying determinism - or black boxing it - but focusing on the causes.

It seemed like one of your problems with Iamb’s use of the phrase compelled by nature is that is was the full story. That seemed to be the end of the discussion and the end of possible exploration. Not that he would say it was the full story, but that’s as far as his analysis went. Which is not very useful. It also seemed like another problem you had with it was that it was as if this explantion contradicted or was contradicted your explanations, which as far as I can tell it wasn’t.

In a discussion of determinsm, when the only issues are ‘is determinism the case’ and ‘what does this entail’ then it could make sense to say you were compelled, but the next step would be to go in and explain how it should be looked at as compulsion and other ways of looking at it are wrong. I don’t think they are wrong, even if determinism is the case.

IOW even if determinism is the case, it can be useful to speak about things using other frames.

My point is, first of all, that I am not able to be convinced one way or the other if we have free will. If we do then in the either/or world the laws of nature would seem to be no less applicable to all of us. In the is/ought world, however, The value judgments of “I” would seem to revolve more around dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. Considerably more subjective in other words.

But: “I” groping about out on the end of the metaphysical limb [re questions this big] encounters considerably more confusion, uncertainty, ambiguity.

Whatever I think I mean here is beyond doubt far removed from all that I would need to know in order to demonstrate that what I think I know is what all rational men and women are in turn obligated to know.

I merely suspect that this part includes you too.

Yeah, we grapple here with these relationships “philosophically”…but over and over and over again, it’s “decision time” out in the world of actual human interactions.

Thus:

Sure, shooting the shit around dinner table at home, or shooting the shit with friends in a bar, that can certainly “work”. But in a philosophy venue, there are always going to be those who wish to take it further. Maybe even to actually figure it all out. As other philosophers have been grappling with it now for millennia. Let’s face it, you never really know for sure [in an autonomous world] what you might encounter in the next post here.

Is the belief by some that they are in possession of free will just a psychological illusion? Are my moral nihilism and your objective morality merely two sides of the same necessarily fused coin? The coin we call nature?

I don’t know. But something embedded in my own particular “I” brings me here to explore the question with others. Now, in an autonomous world that revolves [for me] around the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein. And, in a wholly determined universe, what “I” opt for here is never more than what I must opt for.

And then [for me] this part…

Yeah, of late. On the other hand, for most of my life, I was convinced that, through God or through one or another political ideology, the gap was closed. Not only did I possess free will but it was anchored to actual Meaning and Purpose in my life.

Just not anymore.

Still, my “fractured and fragmented” self here and now is no less embedded in the mystery that is existence itself. Whether I’m compelled to feel this or not.

Let’s just say that we react to these words from different points of view. This strikes me as the sort of “before I choose” “agency” that peacegirl champions. Until after a choice is made…when free will finally collapses that agency; until the next choice must be made.

From my frame of mind, if “everything is a manifestation of the laws of matter” that includes anything at all before, during and after you choose. Nothing that we think, feel, say or do would seem to be excluded.

If only from our conception to our death itself.

The irony is that you are staying with the static “compelled by nature” while I’m trying to go beyond that. IOW, you’re the one who is not taking it further.

Life is irreversible. It’s expressed by Lady Macbeth as “What’s done cannot be undone.”

There is no “collapse of agency”.

I wonder how many philosophers have been damaged by quantum mechanics.

Here are two classic examples of those who advocate free will, and then predicate it on that which they construe to be “natural law”.

They agree basically that an understanding of nature unfolding historically [organically] allows them to attach their autonomy to something bigger than both of them. In other words, “I” is only truly free to the extent that it is properly aligned with the one true understanding of natural law.

For one, it’s the class struggle revolving around a “scientific” understand of political economy; and, for the other, it’s the proper understanding of natural behavior as that relates to, among other things, race and gender and sexual orientation. Or on being either the master or the slave.

But make no mistake about it, they are both bound together by the conviction that unless others concur with their understanding of class and race and gender and human sexuality, their own free will is utterly squandered. Even debased.

Yes, one must be an idealist. And, yes, the ideal is rooted in the one true understanding of natural law. But: Ever and always their very own understanding.

The only truly free will one can have is the freedom to think that which remains completely unknown to any one else
Even here there will be moral or philosophical blockers but they will be imposed from within so will be less restrictive
Once your thoughts become public you consciously or subconsciously are conditioned by what others think about them

You know that the determinists will say that your thoughts are not free.

So the atoms and molecules in those neurons that have to with your private thoughts are not following rigid causal chains like everything else?

I’m not a determinist, but I don’t get why one portion of the universe would be free and others not, unless one does not think it is made up of the same kinds of stuff. Or there is some emergent property. Or…?

And since our innner thoughts can guide our actions, in fact they generally do affect what we do and how we do it, why would it only be ‘inside’ that we can be free. If deep down,w here no one case sense it, I love a certain person and this leads me to move towards her, why isn’t that a free action in the world? I don’t see how there can be this partial freedom, deep inside, only, since this deep inside affects actions that should then be free also. IOW this sound noble and idealistic and romantic rather than based on any worked out ideas in ontology.

No, the ultimate irony is almost certainly embedded in the gap between what we venture to opine in venues like ILP about subjects like this, and all that we clearly do not know about our own existence in relationship to whatever is behind the knowledge needed to grasp an understanding of existence itself.

And what could possibly be more static in an exchange like this than the fact that the laws of nature may well compel both of us to move only in a direction that we could never not move in?

Now, assuming some measure of autonomy, note what you construe to be the clearest example of how you are moving the exchange beyond everything being “compelled by nature”. What on earth are you talking about? As this might be ilustrated in an actual context in which men and women make choices.

And how might Lady MacBeth have actually demonstrated this as it relates to peacegirl’s “agency” before, during and after she makes a choice?

The point isn’t undoing what has already been done, but of grappling with the extent to which human “agency” is able to participate autonomously in what is about to be done.

Is there a part of the human brain that allows for any measure of human “will” at all? In other words, at the instant a choice [any choice] is being made?

That is the question, right?

…going to be embedded in a clear demonstration someday that the human brain is capable of producing thoughts and feelings and behaviors derived from the actual option to choose something else instead.

Until then we take our own existential/subjective leaps to one set of assumptions or another.

Then it becomes a matter of whether any particular “I” is able to accept that sort of uncertainty.

And of whether or not nature compels them to inist that, no, objectively, it is either what we believe or what they believe.

Like many things freedom exists on a spectrum so it is wrong to think of everything as being equally free
The Universe might be made up of the same stuff but that stuff can manifest itself in very different ways
The neurons firing in my brain will not for example produce the same thoughts as the ones firing in yours
Not all phenomena are going to produce identical results just because they share the same basic structure

This is the classic approach of the hard-core intellectual to the question at hand.

You merely assert something to be true about causation and human will without any attempt to actually demonstrate how you were able to confirm this in regard to your own choices…your own interaction with the choices of others.

How in the brain does one note the manner in which, when faced with a particular choice, causation [the past] is “absorbed” into free will [to create the future].

Well, you just assume that somehow that’s the way it works. And it must work that way because otherwise how could you possibly justify the brilliance of that observation itself?

Thus the “state of perpetual dynamic flux” that comes to embody your own “willed” future is clearly demonstrated to be true precisely becasue you have just “chosen” to assert that it is. Tautologically as it were.

But that has nothing to do with freedom. A brick and a soccer ball will roll down a steep hill in completely different patterns, but we tend to think of both, utterly different, patterns as being determined.

I wonder, here: what does it mean when surreptitious chooses to defend the idea of freedom by pointing to difference in pattern. How could surreptitious not realize that his point demonstrated nothing about freedom, nor that it didn’t really respond to the points I made.

We could choose objects that are much closer to each other and the same problem arises.

No one is contesting the individuality of brains. The neuronal patterns, glial patterns, neurotranmitter patterns, oxygen uptake (and therefore use) of different parts of the brain, and more differ between individuals. And not just a little. So, this need have nothing to do with freedom. No two brains are alike. Which has nothing to do with freedom (or the lack of it).

Causation is a universal principle in classical physics so there is no reason why it should not apply to brains which are also classical
You have a free will choice between actual options and so you choose the one that at the time is the most beneficial or preferable

The sub conscious decides some hundredths of a second before the conscious but I would not accept that as a falsification of free will
The sub conscious operates at a more profound level and you are only supposed to be aware of what the conscious is thinking anyway

None of this responds to the points I made in either of the previous two posts.

The more advanced a system is then the more freedom it will have to move around
So organisms have more freedom than objects because they can move more freely
And we as the most advanced organism therefore have the greatest freedom of all
Our freedom is so much more that we are psychologically as well as physically free

A Compatibilism / Incompatibilism Transformation
By Trick Slattery
From the “Breaking the Free Will Illusion” web site

What I always prefer in regard to highly abstract “general descriptions” like this, is to take the words as they are understood by any particular “I” here and now and situate them in a particular context. Like, say, Trick thinking that this is true, writing down his thoughts about it in a book and on the internet; then me reading his thoughts; then me typing out these words in reacting to them.

Given the positions of the “compatibilists” and the “hard incompatibilists”, how are choices/behaviors like this explained such that the explanation itself is able to be demonstrated as in fact true objectively for all of us?

What does it mean [definitively] to speak here of having or not having “responsibility”?

And I mean for any of it.

How does it not all still come down to the assumptions that we make about what we think we know about those things we can’t possibly know everything about?

In other words, how does someone like Trick make points like this…

…and not immediately think, “I was never able not to make these points”.

How are all the squabbles over “semantics” here not in turn just another manifestation of the psychological illusion that the brain is able to concoct through a series of chemical and neurological interactions precipitating a mind, precipitating a self-conscious “I” that is no less wholly embedded in the laws of matter?

My own understanding of determinism includes my own understanding of determinism — that it’s just another inherent manifestation of whatever set in motion the laws of matter themselves.

With folks like Trick and peacegirl and others, there always seems to be this flicker of autonomy that makes a defense of the points they raise not all that far removed from the manner in which the free will folks defend their own points.

It’s [still] all over my head, that’s for sure.

If you think only determinism exists then you cannot be held morally responsible for your actions
If you think compatibilism or free will exists you can be held morally responsible for your actions

I say morally responsible because legally everyone is treated the same regardless of their philosophical position
So a hard determinist cannot claim the absence of free will as a reason for justifying himself breaking the law

Compatibilism is the default postion here because not every choice genuinely involves free will
That is two or more choices where each one has a relatively equal probability of being chosen
Sometimes on occasion there is literally only one available choice that can actually be taken

Well, 1) if someone holds you responsible for your actions, they can’t help but do that. 2) It is not inconsistant to try to eliminate a problem or minimize it. My neighbor keeps coming into my back yard. I get pissed off and report him to the police. He gets fined, which causes him not to do this so much (or it doesn’t work, but one can still take action very much as one does in free will models.

Right, he can get treated as a problem and cannot argue, since the others are acting in complelled ways.

More from our hardcore intellectual…

Somehow this is thought to be a keen observation on the subject of free will.

The past apparently is clearly beyond any measure of autonomy. But to the extent autonomy prevails in regard to that which we choose [freely] to remember about the past, we are still able to use those memories to shape the present into a future that is not wholly compelled by the laws of nature.

Cause and effect have created a past that we can then will into a future that is somehow not subject to the laws that all other matter must obey.

The brain – his brain anyway – is the one exception in regard to natural law. Nature is championed by him but only to the extent that he is freely allowed to dictate to others how they are obligated to embrace nature in turn.

The irony here then being completely lost on him.

How is this all actually demonstrated by him to be true? Well, being a hardcore intellectual, he has only to assert it as something that is believed to be true “in his head”.

Perhaps even defined into existence?

Whether compelled by nature, or of his own free will, we can always count on the hardcore intellectual to keep the “analysis” up in the clouds.

What on earth is this supposed to mean with regard to the behaviors that we choose from day to day?

Let him cite some examples of “pure projected abstraction” being “vulnerable to human emotional and egotistical corruption.”

And let him demonstrate how all of this unfolds in a human brain that some neuroscientists insist is no less the embodiment of nature’s laws.

How on earth are these laws not then applicable to his own frames of mind?

Some feedback. Yourresponses are on the same subjewct, but they don’t really respond to points I’ve made. They seem to rephrase earlier assertions you’ve made. Which makes it hard to have a discussion. I could repeat my points, but I’ll drop it.