• I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    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

    Yeah, just wanted to add to this to make it explicitly, you would have to be perfectly the same too. But I think you already factored that in..

    that is impossible, then libertarian free will cannot be the case, by definition.Janus

    It's actually not so much about it being impossible, but rather that it doesn't seem to give us free will in any meaningful sense if it is possible

    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

    This does end up being my eventual conclusion, but isn't my immediate conclusion from the argument at hand. The immediate conclusion is just that incompatibilist notions of free will don't land for me.
  • Thoughts on Determinism
    "two names". I have no idea where this comes from.

    If I have two employees, Sarah and Paul, and they have exactly the same skills at photography, and I need someone to take a photo, then with regard to that task there's no significant difference between Sarah and Paul. Of course I have two names for them though, they're two different people FFS. Should I call them the same name?
  • Thoughts on Determinism
    I have no idea where you're getting half that stuff from. "No significant difference", yes. Everything else, I don't know where you're getting everything else from. It isn't what I said and it doesn't follow from what I said.
  • Thoughts on Determinism
    why don't you just clarify your question? I clearly interpreted something wrong, how hard is it for you to just say what you meant?
  • Thoughts on Determinism
    I can't read? Isn't non-D. Maybe you can't write clearly.
  • Thoughts on Determinism
    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 wrongtim wood

    Nothing strange illogical or wrong about something being D and not non-D at all. Double-negation leaves you with a positive. If it is "isn't non d", as you say, then it's D. Not not D means D - the nots cancel out.
  • Thoughts on Determinism
    why? What's strange about it?
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    right, and the reason, as far as I can tell, that your view doesn't have the intelligibility problem is because it actually isn't reliant on indeterminism at all. If you think it's perfectly fine to roll back the clock and see the exact same events play out every time, then you think it's perfectly fine to be in a deterministic universe. You have some unique semantic reason for calling your view "indeterminism" - it looks like that semantic reason revolves around the word "physical" for whatever reason - but I don't have any semantic reason to do the same, because I don't care about "physical". A system that evolves from the past to the future is either deterministic or not, and whether that system is "physical" or not is irrelevant. The system you described, where you roll back the clocks and everything happens the same, is the very definition of a deterministic system. That's what it means to be deterministic. Being deterministic has nothing to do with "physical", and everything to do with what you said would happen if you roll back the clocks.

    So of course your view doesn't have the intelligibility problem. As far as the argument in OP is concerned, you don't have a libertarian view of free will.
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    you're asking me questions that don't matter to understand the thought experiment in question. They simply don't matter. They're as relevant as if you asked my favourite sandwich
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    This gets tiresome. You tell me.tim wood

    You criticized both me and the writer of the article for being vague, but you keep on saying completely unqualified statements that, without more specifics, are hard to judge. I don't hold free will to be that. What do you mean "are held to be"? They certainly aren't universally held to be what you said, so by whom?
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    I think you're reading stuff into it that isn't there. It doesn't say any of that explicitly, and I don't believe it says it implicitly either
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    Are D and non-D exhaustive of all possibilities?tim wood

    As far as functions go, or systems that evolve into the future, I believe so.

    Free will, still undefined, is held to be possible only in a D world operating in a loosey-goosey way under some random influences.tim wood

    By whom?
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    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

    Which is why I can't stress enough that "physical" isn't particularly important here. Afaik you brought up physical determinism. It isn't mentioned in the article and I didn't bring it up. Sure, maybe there are non physical things that go into deciding future states, future choices, future actions. That's not in question. Nobody is denying that. Whether you believe all that explains how the world evolves is physical or not doesn't seem to be to have anything to do with the argument at hand.
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    Libertarians hold that free will is only possible in indeterminism. And given that indeterminism in regards to human choice literally means "Bob's choices are indeterministic if and only if, for some choices Bob makes, Bob2 might make a different choice from Bob1 even though everything is perfectly the same about them and their circumstances", then Libertarians by extention must necessarily believe that "Bob has free will if and only if, for some choices Bob makes, Bob2 might make a different choice from Bob1 even though everything is perfectly the same about them and their circumstances"

    So you say the thought experiment is defined to make it arbitrary, but the thought experiment is quite literally *the only thing that distinguishes deterministic choice from libertarian choice*. So as far as I'm concerned, if one wants to take libertarianism serious, one MUST engage in a thought experiment like that. That's what libertarianism means. It means that the exact conditions Bob is in do not gurantee his choice, ie that Bob really, geniunely could do something entirely different even if literally nothing changed.

    So the writer of the article isn't just defining some silly impossible thought experiment for shits and giggles, he's taking the central claim of libertarianism seriously and looking through the implications of it.
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    that wasn't very clear from your phrasing that you were talking about the experiment being impossible

    "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

    I thought you meant the decision to do one action or the other is impossible.
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    is "it is?" a non sequitur? I don't see where in the article he concedes that's impossible.
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    But only under a condition defined to make it arbitrary,tim wood

    Only under a condition that is by design the sort of condition that distinguishes determinism from indeterminism. Which is relevant, because libertarians are of course generally saying that determinism is lethal to free will, and indeterminism aka for it.

    and that moreover is conceded to be impossible.tim wood

    It is?
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    none of what you're saying looks to me to even be an attempt at engaging with the actual logic of the article in the op. None of it relies on instruments or measuring or anything.
  • Thoughts on Determinism
    I'm not sure about that tbh. I know that quantum mechanics maintains certain conservations, like momentum and angular velocity things like that. But I'm not sure about the first law, Google seems to think they there are quantum situations where it can be broken or at least fudged.
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    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

    You say that, but then you confirm that Bob2 would always do the same thing as Bob1, which is what determinism means. Even when those actions involve high level processes, skills, deliberations, you seem to think Bob2 would do the same as Bob1 given everything is the same.

    So you say determinism doesn't extend there, but then you confirm the very thing determinism says.

    It seems like there's a semantic reason why you don't want to call it "determinism" - and it looks like that semantic reason revolves all around the word "physical", even though determinism as a concept isn't limited to the physical - and so that's why you're confirming that Bob2 would always do the same as Bob1, but not calling that "determinism".
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    need not arise if one deems physical determinism not to entail unqualified determinism.Pierre-Normand

    I don't understand why you keep bringing up physical determinism at all. Even if there isn't a single physical thing in existence, and agents are all purely non physical things, the argument still makes perfect sense. Even if we're all floating spirit orbs, as long as we make choices over time, the argument holds as far as I can tell. It had nothing to do with physical anything, other than for the coincidence that we happen to live in an apparently physical world. That fact is entirely irrelevant to the conversation as far as I can tell.
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    I know. And there is not evidence that (unqualified) determinism is true.Pierre-Normand

    This conversation doesn't rely on it being true. It relies only on understanding what it means. What does it mean for something to be deterministic? What does it mean for something to be indeterministic? That's it. (and the meaning has literally nothing to do with any assumptions of physicality)

    The article in the OP isn't an argument for determinism. The conclusion of the article isn't "and therefore determinism is true". I think multiple people are getting mixed up on that.
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    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 suchPierre-Normand

    That's not what I'm talking about at all. I'm taking about determinism. Any determinism. Physical or otherwise
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    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 samePierre-Normand

    If that's true for every decision in bobs life - that Bob1 and Bob2 and bob3 and... Bob∞ will always do the same given identical everything, then... well, that's what determinism means. There doesn't look to be anything indeterministic about any of bobs decisions. That's the very thing that distinguishes determinism from indeterminism.
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    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 indeterministicPierre-Normand

    So, rational causation is indeterministic you say. I'm not really sure why you think that, or why appealing to "norms" would make it indeterministic (as far as I can see there's nothing in the definition of what a norm is that has really anything to do with determinism or indeterminism), but regardless....

    If it's indeterministic, that means you think it's possible that Bob2 will do something different from Bob1 at T2, despite being perfectly identical in every way at T1, every way meaning including physically, mentally, spiritually, rationally - every aspect of them is the same at T1. So to engage with the argument in the article fully, I'd like to see what you posit as the explanation for the difference in behaviour between Bob2 and Bob1. They're the same, remember, so why did they behave differently in the exact same circumstance?
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    I read what you wrote. It still sounds like you're saying "it's incoherent because I don't know what (in)determinism means".

    We talked about it already though. You say there's not even a tentative definition. I gave you one about functions - at least I think that was you. Do you recall how I distinguished deterministic functions from indeterministic ones?

    You're acting like you're really trying and I'm responding in bad faith, that's not my experience of this conversation. My experience is, we've actually pretty explicitly gone through what these words mean at least in some context, and then pages later you just conveniently forget and get hostile about it because you're confused again. But we can go through it again.

    Here's where I defined the difference between a deterministic and indeterministic function.

    Do you want some hands on examples?
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    interesting, would you say you can square genuine alternative possibilities with determinism? How would you describe a situation where there's genuine alternative possibilities, and yet determinism holds true?
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    OK. So, first let me say, I'm not interested in convincing you of compatibilism. I can't do that. I don't want to do that, it's beside the point. I'm not even interested in convincing you compatibilism is *coherent*. All I'm interested in is if you're able, after this, to translate someone saying "I'm a compatibilist" into a more broken-down paraphrasing of what they're probably saying.

    Luckily that's really simple.

    If someone says "I'm a compatibilist", they're saying "I believe we have free will, and the type of free will I believe in wouldn't be undermined by determinism".

    That's why it's compatible with determinism - because it wouldn't be undermined if, somehow, we found ourselves in a world where determinism were unambigously confirmed to be the case.

    So are we past step one? Step one: understand what it means for someone to understand "free will" from a compatibilist perspective.
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    what on earth kind of free will can your description of an "indeterminst compatibilism compatibilist" possibly entail?javra

    A compatibilist one. Do you know what a compatibilist kind of free will is?

    Let's break this down into two steps for you.

    Step one: understand what it means for someone to understand "free will"from a compatibilist perspective.

    Step two: understand why it's possible for an indeterminist to understand free will from a compatibilist perspective.

    Shall we start with step 1?
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    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

    Why? Why is mentioning a term that tim wood doesn't know the definition of incoherent? Is it incoherent any time anybody says a word you don't know? Determinism is defined on wikipedia, or Stanford philosophy encyclopedia. It's not a complicated definition either - well, maybe it is to some I guess, it seems pretty straight forward to me. You not knowing the definition of a word doesn't mean anybody who uses that word is being incoherent.

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    your description of an indeterminist compatibilismjavra

    I didn't describe an indeterminist compatibilism. I described an indeterminist compatibilist - a person who is a compatibilist, who happens to be an indeterminist.

    The two positions aren't related. It's just a person who holds both positions at once..
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    The universe being indeterministic doesn't seem to give any more room for free will than if it were deterministic.
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    what I believe about free will is way more difficult to express than the ideas in this article. And they don't matter in regards to a thread about the argument in this article, so I would prefer not to do that here.

    I'll just briefly say that my belief in free will can be summarised by "emergent compatibilism". If you want to read about that sort of idea from someone much more intelligent then I, check this out. If you want to talk more with me about it, I'd request you start a new thread.
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    Without some rigorous definitions, even if just tentative, nothing coherent can be stated or establishedtim wood

    You don't even have a tentative definition of indeterminism?
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    the entire scenario with the 2 bobs is laid out assuming INDETERMINISM is the case. Not determinism. So that's why I didn't really understand why you're saying they have to do the same thing. If indeterminism is the case (and we're assuming it is, at that point in the article), then that enables Bob2 to do something different from Bob1.

    Without going further into what I think of the rest of the argument, can you understand that at least? That the article takes indeterminism as an assumption, not determinism, and that therefore it's not the case that Bob2 has to do the same thing as Bob1.

    There's a point in the article where he says this: "But the libertarian denies that Bob’s will is causally determined by anything". From that point on, for at least the next couple of paragraphs, and certainly while talking about the two bobs in the two worlds, he's talking about indeterminism.
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    would you briefly paraphrase what you think the argument is in that article, and what the conclusion is? I'm really curious where you're at.
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    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

    They HAVE TO perform the same action? I'm not sure we're reading the same article. Why do you say they have to? The author didn't say that.
  • I found an article that neatly describes my problem with libertarian free will
    You don't see that an indeterminist concept of free will is logically contrary to a determinst's concept of free willjavra

    My description of an indeterminist compatibilist didn't involve an indeterminist concept of free will.
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