If it were somehow possible to repeat a situation in which I made a certain choice and everything in that situation was exactly the same in every possible way, libertarian free will would entail that I could, this second time around, make a different choice. — Janus
that is impossible, then libertarian free will cannot be the case, by definition. — Janus
It follows that that free will means simply 'acting according to one's nature'. Since we don't create ourselves, this seems the most sensible notion of free will: that is a compatibilist notion. — Janus
To say that something is - D - and at the same time isn't - non-D - is what I call strange. Or odd, or illogical, or wrong — tim wood
This gets tiresome. You tell me. — tim wood
But my point is that physical determinism—the deterministic laws governing physical processes like brain states—doesn’t explain why Bob1 or Bob2 are acting in the way that they are. It doesn't provide the right causal story and so it leaves something important out of the picture. — Pierre-Normand
"So under libertarianism, the decision to do one action over the other ends up being arbitrary after all." But only under a condition defined to make it arbitrary, and that moreover is conceded to be impossible
But only under a condition defined to make it arbitrary, — tim wood
and that moreover is conceded to be impossible. — tim wood
People generally assume that the dependency of actions on past law-governed neurophysiological events (for instance) entails some form of determinism. It does. But it merely entails physical determinism—the existence of regular laws that govern material processes in the brain, for instance. But this low-level determinism doesn't extend to high-level processes such as the exercise of skills of practical deliberation that manifest an agent's sensitivity to norms of rationality. — Pierre-Normand
need not arise if one deems physical determinism not to entail unqualified determinism. — Pierre-Normand
I know. And there is not evidence that (unqualified) determinism is true. — Pierre-Normand
That's only physical determinism. Physical determinism is a thesis about the causal closure of the physical and the deterministic evolution of physical systems considered as such — Pierre-Normand
In my view, it is indeed quite trivial that if Bob1 and Bob2 are identical, atom for atom, and likewise for their environments, and assuming microphysical determinism holds, then their behaviors will be the same — Pierre-Normand
What distinguishes my account from compatibilist accounts is that it shares with most libertarian accounts a commitment to rational causation (as distinguished with Humean event causation), which is not merely indeterministic — Pierre-Normand
what on earth kind of free will can your description of an "indeterminst compatibilism compatibilist" possibly entail? — javra
Which cries out for defining all these terms. I have pointed out above that the article's mention of non-D was at least incomplete/inadequate and either thereby incoherent or itself already incoherent. — tim wood
your description of an indeterminist compatibilism — javra
Without some rigorous definitions, even if just tentative, nothing coherent can be stated or established — tim wood
Anyway, to complete the argument of the OP, an impossible thought experiment is set up, which itself is self-contradictory. In it, B1 and B2 have to perform the same action, but it is acknowledged that they do not. And that blows up that imaginary world. — tim wood
You don't see that an indeterminist concept of free will is logically contrary to a determinst's concept of free will — javra