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?
…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
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.
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.
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.
“…because free will is typically taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is sometimes expressed as a thesis about the compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism…”
In other words, I still can’t figure how, once the “thesis” makes contact with the actual world of conflicting goods, moral responibilty can only be compatible instead with free will.
Somehow this seems to revolve around how peacegirl and others focus the beam on the fact that, unlike the bullet from the gun that has no choice but to kill its target, the ones pulling the trigger “choose” to do this.
Even though there was never any possibility of them not choosing to.
How can moral responsibility be made compatible with that — other than by insisting that nature compels some to believe that it is.
It doesn’t matter what the free will advocate, the compatibilist or the hard determinist claims is true given my own understanding of determinism.
All things claimed by all of them reflect human brains that are necessarily in sync with the laws of nature.
What then do I keep missing?
There are no actual choices being made here. There is only the psychological illusion of “choice” emanating from brains emanating from matter emanating from the laws that govern it.
Bullets are inanimate objects that have no choice but to obey the laws of physics just like all other inanimate objects in the Universe
Human beings are biological organisms that have the freedom to exercise moral or immoral choices such as firing a bullet from a gun
Human beings are also moral agents as well as biological organisms
A moral agent is something that is capable of making moral choices
If no choices existed then neither would free will and every thought and action would automatically be determined
But randomness which is the opposite of determinism still exists and equally applies to objects as well as organisms
But then you have to demonstrate how the matter that comprises the bullet is different from the matter that comprises the human brain.
Can you?
Now, don’t get me wrong, there may well be a difference.
And this might go back to God or to an understanding of human consciousness emanating from a brain composed of matter that can be shown to be qualitatively different from mindless matter.
But, if so, where is the actual demonstration that this is an irrefutable fact of nature?
Where is the philosophical argument [or scientific evidence] that, once and for while, finally reconciles the conflicting assumptions that have been going back and forth in regard to dualism now for thousands of years.
Okay, how is the brain as a biological organism able to reconfigure its own matter into an autonomous point of view?
How specifically does that actually unfold in the brain?
And, if this has in fact been determined by, among others, neuroscientists, why aren’t we hearing about it everywhere?
So, what about the choices that you make in dreams? Do you choose freely the things that you think, feel, say and do in them? Or, instead, does the brain create these “realities” chemically and neurologically night after night?
Everything exists on a spectrum ranging from the very simple at one end to the very complex at the other end
So complex organisms such as human beings are therefore more capable and adaptable than simple organisms
The entire spectrum is quite simply the eternal infinite reality that is in a constant state of motion and change
We do not yet fully understand how the brain works and a very specific problem is lack of objectivity
In order to study the brain you have to use the brain which is not ideally how phenomena are studied
What can be determined is that the sub conscious is more in control than the conscious
So I would say that it is that which is responsible for all dream states not the conscious