freewill/determinism debate throwback. it's throwback thursday. no wait it's friday. still though.
professor sarty pants wrote:1. Determinism referring to causality has to integrate conscious agency as part of its conception of causality.
2. A living agency participates in determining its own fate through choice - choice is the expression of will; its external manifestation.
3. Choice is how this causality participates, but hard determinism implies that choice is also determined and not a choice at all, but the illusion of it, basing this on a strictly mental participation in choosing from the available options.
4. In many cases the choice has already been made and then registers in the mind, after-the-fact.
This implies that free-will is slight and difficult to direct - the mind must cultivate itself to react impulsively, just as the body does - imposing upon the body an alternate choice from the one it has already made.
if 1 were true, there would be something about the nature and process of causality that wouldn't exist unless there were people around to think about it. it would mean the very act of 'conceiving' of causality does something to the way it works or changes (adds or subtracts) something about its nature. and what if two or more people have a different 'conception' of it? does that mean causality can be more than one thing, depending on whatever it is the person's 'conception' makes it?
if 2 is true, it means 'there is a kind of phenomena that isn't subject to the same causality that everything else in the world is subject to. it is called the 'will', and it produces another kind of causality that competes with the other over the 'fate' of the person.' but if these two are engaged in a causal exchange, any talk of agency is redundant. the causal relationship itself
is that causality and any kind of agency would be just another effect of this causality, just another feature, and a single causal chain would preside over everything.
bu look at 3 and 4. it says that there is a
special kind of mental state that involves a slight and difficult process of cultivating itself so it can react impulsively... which must mean 'free of causality'. i defer you to problem 2.
here's something i posted... maybe even twice before. if i did, and nuthin clicked then, nuthin'll probably click this time. but that's okay.
https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2014/ ... free-will/among the great insights W had here, is noting the the equivocation we make between 'inner experience' and 'acting deliberately' that is based in a misunderstanding of what 'deliberation' entails. in fact the feeling of being compelled only comes into question when one is...
"dissatisfied with what one finds, thinking that acting deliberately in such a case can’t just consist in the fact that “I merely looked, made such-and-such a face, and drew a line” (175)."
this person who was drawing the line. his deliberation to observe the rule and follow it only occurs to him when he confuses it with an 'inner' act of will, and this arises only when he believes there had to be something more to the 'looking, making a face and drawing a line' that was guiding it from inside. and from this comes the germ of thought that the 'will' is not a phenomena, that it isn't exhibited in a behavioral act (eg., looking, making face, etc.) but in a different kind of act, an act of 'deliberation'.
that feeling of being compelled to perform properly a series of rules that, if not followed, would result in non-sense, is the genesis of the feeling of deliberation. but it isn't an 'act'. the ruling following and the apprehension of the rule following by the deliberator is the same thing. he doesn't 'choose' from some 'inner space' to deliberate, and only when he reflects on how he behaved, does he assign deliberation to arbitrary acts like looking, making a face, etc.