Probabilistic determinism only preserves the word, other than that, the concept of determinism perishes. Some events are more probable, but still precisely unpredictable. — Rich

You can say that. I'm not that attached to the word. But 'free will' also vanishes. Roughly, soft determinism is the same as soft free will, and IMV this is the default and reasonable position. It is perhaps unavoidable and therefore trivial in practice. This would place both determinists and 'freewillers' in similarly counterintuitive positions.

That's a valid point, but judges should, and generally do, take an offenders' circumstances into account when judging a case. That is often found to be a mitigation in regard to sentencing. — Wayfarer

Indeed, and we approve of such mitigation precisely because we are soft determinists, I'd say. We are also less impressed by the success of a child with affluent and loving parents.

But if it were true that 'there is no free will' and all our decisions are pre-determined or made despite our intentions on the basis of neural programming over which we have no conscious control, then it would be irrelevant. Nobody would be responsible, because there would be no free agents. This is why the so-called 'scientific argument' that there is no free will is such a complete nonsense. It is simply a way to avoid the hard truth that we are, in fact, responsible, in my view. — Wayfarer

I don't think we're far apart here, really. This reminds me of left and right politics. The right tends to lean into 'free will' and personal responsibility. The left, on the other hand, emphasizes the individual as embedded in a determining social structure. As a matter of opinion, I think the individual is ennobled by insisting on personal responsibility, even if he or she 'knows' otherwise. Of course he or she could view the ennobling insistence on personal responsibility as a kind of effective tool. A culture as a whole could also insist on its responsibility or 'freedom.' Because life is only indirectly about reliable prediction and fundamentally about control of the subjective situation, our best objective theories are not morally binding. Instead they are 'if then' statements. The 'then' we pursue, I'd say, is ultimately (inter-)subjective.

I'm afraid that's just positivist wishful thinking. There is no way for you to be able to statistically determine what a person might say. — Wayfarer

I think we can use this forum as an example of my point. Why do we have handles if there is no continuity of personality from post to post? Do you in fact have no information to offer about posters you have long observed? Do you really think you couldn't predict some of the keywords that will appear in the their future posts? At a level that is above random guessing?

Some posters will always drag in their favorite philosopher. Others will drag in the same system again and again with tweaks. Others will complain about the same social evil again and again. Etc. Now this is informal, but I think we could do statistics on their key words. We could compare the proportion of these key words among the rest of their words to the proportions of other posters, etc.

Of course I do not at all think that we have the means to predict the specific sentences of individuals. Personality is just way too complex. It is vaguely and hazily conceivable that a very superior extraterrestrial species could get surprising accuracy, but I would expect the ET to have a far more complex nervous system in order to do so as well as use technology that scans the brain in ways we haven't thought of. (That brains are related to subjective experience is something we imply with the use of the caffeine molecule for pleasure.)

We can. And in either case it leaves us with zero evidence for determinism. Belief in determinism is tantamount to deep faith, comparable to Calvanism, which hold similar beliefs contrary to all observations and evidence. — Rich

I think you have a scarecrow in your target here. I'm not arguing for strict or exact determinism. I'm making the smaller point that we already behave as 'soft' determinists. I'm not too attached to the terminology.

A second point is that observations and evidence can have no weight unless we believe the future is constrained by the past. (Hume's famous problem.) If anything can happen at anytime, with equal probability, then experience is worthless for predictive purposes. I believe this would also obliterate the intelligibility of objects. For instance, I would not be able to say that an apple was a kind of food. It could poison me one minute and cure cancer the next. It would not even be a fruit. Apples could spontaneously appear, or emerge from dirty snow. But in such a chaos the word would have no stable meaning. So language itself depends, I'd argue, on a soft determinism. Or it implies and manifests a soft determinism that is akin to rationality itself.

Well hard free will, in the way you described it as completely random acts, doesn't really make sense. And I've never heard a description of "soft determinism" which makes sense. Some people profess "compatibilism" but I find this to be incoherent. So I guess we're left with free will (call it soft if you like). — Metaphysician Undercover

As I mentioned before, 'soft' free will strikes me as equivalent to 'soft' determinism. I understand soft determinism simply as a constraint on the future determined by the present and past. If I drop a heavy object, I do not expect a future in which the rock floats away. If I sexually harass a bodybuilder's wife in the grocery store, I do not expect him to walk away bored. My thesis is that we largely understand both people and objects in terms of such constraints (of what they will do as a function of their place in a network of people and objects.) We can include the past in this network in terms of present memory.

If believing in free will only means believing that the future is not exactly determined, then I believe in free will. But I'm not sure that that's how 'free will' tends to be used.

I associate it with human behavior in the context of praise, blame, prediction, and control. If we think that humans are somewhat predictable, then I think this works against 'ideal' or 'hard' free will. We might say that 'soft determinism' == 'soft free will.'

I have no idea what soft determinism is or how it is defined. If there is a single instance of choice or random/unpredictable event, no matter how small, then determinism is demolished. What's left had nothing to do with determinism other than the word. — Rich

I think we should distinguish between random and unpredictable. As science progresses, the once unpredictable becomes predictable. We can then project backwards and say that such and such was theoretical predictable (within a margin of error), but the humans then didn't have Newton's physics, for instance.

Soft determinism is simply probabilistic determinism. Some outcomes (given the situation) are more likely than others. We find this in QM as I was taught it, and I believe we 'live' this in our interactions of with others and in our political conversation.

Do you not believe that there are possibilities concerning what will happen in the future, and that your decisions can have an affect in relation to what will and will not happen in the future? — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course. When I calculate how others will likely react to prompts, for instance, these prompts will tend to be my actions in pursuit of a goal. If I want to marry someone, I will likely 'calculate' her response to my proposal. If I want to ask for a raise, I will 'calculate' the likelihood that the boss will capitulate.

Behavior has a fuzzy law-likeness, else there could be no knowledge of the human 'soul.' But in this fuzziness lies all of the drama.

Justice can’t be carried out on the basis that it’s just ‘as if’ they’re responsible. — Wayfarer

Ah, but it already is, I'd argue. Don't we think that badly raised (abused, neglected, ill-fed) children in bad neighborhoods are more likely to be incarcerated? Yet we punish them nevertheless. We don't let them go because they had less of a chance to be good citizens. Maybe the incarceration is less punitive (as we see it) and instead a humane locking away of the 'mentally ill' victim of circumstance. In any case, we don't let murderers and rapists run free.

Another route, which a few here seem to be favouring, is the behaviourist, which declares that the self/mind/subject is actually non-existent, or at any rate ought not to be considered as part of any ‘truly scientific’ analysis but is an artefact of ‘folk psychology’. — Wayfarer

There is a problem for me with this 'or.' A science can't declare an entity non-existent at the same time that it excludes that entity from its consideration, it seems to me. It makes sense to me to 'pre-scientifically' admit that of course there is subjective experience and then (for a maximum of objectivity) focus on the objective aspect of the agent (his actions and words). Of course words are connected with subjectivity in a profound way, but they are public entities that can be counted, etc. We can feasibly predict with some degree of accuracy the words that will be said as a function of the words that have been said (frequencies, etc., come to mind.)

I've never heard of "hard free will", would that be like every decision is a completely random decision? — Metaphysician Undercover

I made it up, and, yes, a 'completely random decision' is about all the sense I can make of free will. (Randomness is its own fascinating concept. Incompressible information is one interpretation of what we mean by 'random.')

I'm not using any particular philosopher's terminology here when I say this, but the 'essence' of an entity (seems to me) is the 'law' of that entity's interactions. A perfectly free entity would be vacuous. Of course with humans and free will there is still the belief in the laws of the human body and the world it exists in. The freedom is constrained by physical limitations, but not (as I understand it) by psychological limitations. Indeed, free will understood in a hard or radical sense would seem to destroy the possibility of psychology (understood as a search for regularities or patterns in behavior.)

I have no idea what the concept of "we" or "wrestle" means under determinism. — Rich

Let's imagine an extra-terrestial with a superior brain and/or technology who can calculate future individual human behavior with pretty good reliability. Just as humans calculate the weather a few days in advance, our alien friend can calculate your behavior a few days in advance, at least in broad strokes. But here's the twist: she doesn't tell you what her algorithm gives (what you are most likely to do). Yet you believe that her algorithm exists and that it works well enough.

Does that keep you from struggling with decisions? Admittedly, it may creep you out to think of her knowing what you'll do (with some possibility of error) sooner than you will. Her machine will have to take your knowledge of its existence into account. (If she tells you its predictions, you might intentionally try to violate them, which you presumably could. The machine's accuracy might depend on your ignorance of its specific output.)

Nothing has any meaning with determinism. There is no reason to even take discussion of meaning seriously since whatever we utter has already been determined. — Rich

Hard determinism is problematic, but (as I have suggested) soft determinism is the common position in practice if not in theory.

But if the future already exists, in a hard determinist way, we wouldn't have any incentive to attempt to influence what we apprehend may or may not occur, because it's already determined. Whether or not I'm getting the job I want is already determined, so I don't need to send a resume. — Metaphysician Undercover

Interesting point. The way our knowledge of hard determinism would affect our actions which in turn would affect this future would have to be already baked in to that future. Some of the problems in sci-fi movie plots start to manifest.

For me the issue is a probabilistic determinism that, in my view, we already believe in in terms of practice. (Of course QM is probabilistic and our knowledge of human behavior is fuzzy). I plan my interactions with others according to an image of what they are more or less likely to do in response to this or that prompt. I don't suggest to an alcoholic that we go out for a drink, secure in the radical freedom of the alcoholic to decide a new. (With 'hard free will' there would not be alcoholics, since past behavior would give no information about future behavior.)I get to know myself this way too. Maybe I don't buy ice cream at the grocery store, because I tend to eat too much of it once I start. Finally, we hate abuses of children not only for the immediate trauma of the abuse but also because we think of the damage to the child's personality that might resonate for decades or a lifetime.

We use the term all the time. "He wasn't himself", "self-confidence", "self-awareness". They all imply that there is a constant and unified thing such that a person could act in such a way as to be contrary, or untrue, to it. The psychological theory is that no such thing exists, that we are just a collection of contradictory impulses. The evidence seems to support such a theory. — Pseudonym

As I argued above, I can only understand the a science of behavior in terms of the prediction and control of said behavior. But what are we modeling if not the entity that behaves? This entity is the unified thing that can be 'untrue' to our current model of it. As I suggested to Rich above, we all do folk-psychology (which seems to me to be implicitly deterministic, if 'only' probabilistically). We'd be surprised if a person yawned when his hair was on fire. That would be part of our general idea of the human. Then we specialize with individuals. Cathy over there is a little bit different from every other human who has ever lived, probably. Some sequence of stimuli would generated different 'output.' Language is probably the easiest manifestation of this uniqueness. How many sentences are still out there that have never been uttered?

I probably agree with you in spirit if not in letter, though. For one thing, I don't think there's a 'thine own self' to which we can be virtuously true.

I just think the self of ordinary language exists more than it doesn't exist, to the degree that it is worth the trouble to pick sides about the use of a decontextualized word. I don't think we know exactly what we mean by 'self' in most cases (if ever), but that may apply to every word. How exactly can we say what 'mean' means? It's as if we find ourselves in a basic competence, perhaps because our self-for-ourselves is mostly made of words? I view philosophy as (among other things) this kind of identity construction.

If, however, it was demonstrable that this offender had no free will, then that plea wouldn’t even be required. Nobody would be responsible for anything. — Wayfarer

I think you are forcing a particular meaning on the word 'responsible' here. It seems to me that it wouldn't matter that we were all (under the assumption of determinism) ideally irresponsible. We still as individuals and societies have to deal with violation of taboos, crimes, etc. We would still hold people responsible in the weightiest sense of the word. True, a shared belief in determinism might change the way we make and enforce laws, but we would still reward and punish.

The theory that we have no unified 'self', nor 'free-will' would predict that in certain cases of brain damage, changes would take place to what we call a person's 'self', and they do. A theory that we have no free-will would expect to see something like the results in Libet's experiments, and it does. It would expect to see ad hoc rationalisations of sub-concious actions, and it does. It would expect to see strong links between environment and behaviour, and it does. It would expect to find no central brain activity associated with conciousness, and it doesn't. It's a good theory. — Pseudonym

Hi. I haven't looked into this deeply (disclaimer), but I'm surprised if it's the case that scientific theories include terms like 'self' and 'free will.' And what is it that we call a person's 'self'? Can we pin down the word? Do we want to?

I can understand theories as prediction functions from observable brain states to behavior, or from one kind of behavior to another. But I can't make sense of 'we have no free will.' That's because I can't make sense of 'free will.' Sure, it has a vague meaning.

On the other hand, I do see how a tendency toward ad hoc rationalizations of subconscious actions could be framed as support for the vague and metaphysical theory that we have no free will.

What is knowledge, belief, or anything, if everything is determined and there are no choices? Knowledge disintegrates into a totally meaningless concept concocted by what? The Laws of Physics? Determinists are walking contradictions. Whatever they say it's simply concocted by whatever governs determinism, so who cares? It has zero meaning about anything. — Rich

Let's say that everything is determined, for the sake of argument. What now? The mere assumed fact that the future already exists in a certain sense doesn't give us access to that predetermined future. We still wrestle the experience that we'll continue to call 'choice' or 'free will.' We might joke that we are 'suffering from the illusion of choice' again, but this is the same kind of suffering. It involves an ignorance of what we will do ahead of time (in borderline situations especially.) That's my attempt to demonstrate that the mere abstract truth of determinism doesn't have much weight.

My second point is that we are all already soft determinists. We reason about how others may or may not react to different requests, provocations, seductions, etc. We reason about what they will do in terms of what they in particular have done and what humans in general have done in similar situations.
What would truly be freaky here is the kind of perfect free will that was utterly unpredictable. How would behavioral science be possible in the context of this radical free will? Would this not imply that any inferred patterns are a matter of chance? That all scientific results on human behavior are null and void? This is similar to denying that nature is lawlike because we can not ground induction in deduction without an axiom that dodges the issue.

In short, hard determinism is trivial without access to the future. [Such access might not even make sense, for sci-fi movie reasons.] Also soft determinism suffuses our ordinary activity and thought in the world.

Consciousness is fundamental to all knowing. — Janus

I read this and thought: consciousness [among other things] is knowing. And the knowing is something like the known itself with an added distance effect. We add a sort of zooming-out and call this the 'I'? or 'consciousness'?

And so it begins.

Talk of places in the mind must be metaphorical - the mind does not have places.

What is it to have a place in the mind? — Banno

Hi. So that 'it' continues, what is it for something to be metaphorical? Could we not ask if 'mind' itself is clear term? Perhaps you would agree here. You would like to avoid 'mind.' But you need 'proposition.' If I ask you what a proposition is, you'll probably give me yet other words.

Can we make completely explicit what it is to share a language? If we have not done so already and yet want to do so, will we not need this inexplicit understanding of a language to get started?

Last point is that philosophers seem unlikely to gain control the use of 'belief.' Even if a few philosophers agree on the elegance of a definition, they'll still need to understand its use among everyone else. (I don't think we can be perfectly explicit about this understanding.)