If I give a reason for something, I'm not necessarily proving it. If I have a black eye and you ask why and I say I annoyed someone so much that they hit me, I've given a reason why I have a black eye, but it would be a very strange notion of proof to say that I've thereby proved to you that I have a black eye.
In order to get a real paradox of the kind Schopenhauer hinted at, I think you'd first have to argue that all proofs are reasons and vice-versa. That might be the case in mathematics (i.e. that all proofs are reasons, and all reasons are proofs) but outside of mathematics there are distinctions to be made that might scupper the charge of paradox.

Hence, why I believe that the communism we have witnessed already have all been premature.

This hits a certain "nail on the head". Marx famously had England in mind as the country sufficiently developed enough to make socialism a reality - he was very clear that socialism would only succeed once capitalism had developed productive forces to the required capacity (he seems to have thought that only capitalism could accomplish this, but I'm not sure whether he was correct about that). Russia was way too backward economically, as far as Marx would have been concerned, to provide a viable context for socialism - and in the long run that seems to have been proven, although things may have been different if Trotsky had succeeded Lenin (far from certain). Lenin tried to adapt Marx (theoretically as well as practically) so that Russia could become a model socialist state, but arguably failed.

How about a book club on Capital? Starting with volume 1 of course. I have some side-projects to put to bed before embarking on that, but I'd welcome the opportunity to reread it whilst having an ongoing discussion about its contents. I'll try to set something up over the summer.

I think what we owe to Hegel is the idea that philosophy and its subject matter is evolutionary. I'm not saying I agree with Hegel, in fact there are some things he says that (at least in English translation) are totally impenetrable to me, but prior to him both the empiricists and the rationalists tended to share a view of philosophy as uncovering final elements which are just sitting there waiting to be found (either in the realm of reason or in the realm of sensation) and which have only external relations to each other. With Hegel we see the introduction of the idea that what is found is partly determined by the means we have for finding it, with those means themselves in turn adapting to our discoveries. The history of philosophy as a distinct branch of the subject really begins with Hegel. Of course, Hegel appears to have married this evolutionary conception with a doctrine of a final end, as - under some interpretations of him - the whole process of philosophy, indeed existence itself, had worked itself out to its conclusion when he put the final full stop on the manuscript of the Phenomenology of Spirit.

Popper had a pretty unsophisticated approach to the history of philosophy and his interpretations of the philosophers he mentions in the book you are talking about should be taken with a large pinch of salt.

And let's not forget Schopenhauer's doctoral thesis "On the Four-Fold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason", which distinguishes four versions of the principle. I think it is in that work that the we get the first distinction made between the use of the principle in regard to causes for events and its use in regard to rational reasons for belief. As far as I recall Schopenhauer's critique of those who came before him, and especially Spinoza (who arguably pushed the principle to its limits in regards to the sufficiency angle StreetlightX mentions) was that they failed to distinguish the two.

Michael Della Rocca (a contemporary Spinoza expert) seems to think that the principle should be a central issue in philosophy, since for him - if it is true under some interpretation or other - then Spinoza's metaphysics follows (after some lengthy argument of course). The problem (and Della Rocca acknowledges this) is that we need an argument to show that the principle of reason is in fact true, and that is what appears to be lacking in most of the literature (he has a stab at it himself, but I'm not sure it is that convincing).

What do you mean by Marx underestimating the power of competition? I've come across many so-called refutations of Marx's economics - from some very naive "labour theory of value is false" objections all the way up to sophisticated objections to his supposed solutions to the transformation problem, but I've not come across one that was based on his misunderstanding of the mechanisms of capitalist competition.

There are, apparently, game-theoretic Marxists, so I'm not sure why you believe simply being sympathetic to the use of game theory would lead one to be a capitalist. In any case, as I understand it, to apply game theory to economics you need to come with certain background assumptions about what a rational agent is, and of course for Marxists, there is no non-historical conception of rationality, and so they would perhaps be likely to suspect that if a game-theoretical model leads to capitalism as a choice of economic system, then the dice were loaded from the beginning.

Marx was also quite clear that the tendency of capitalism was towards the concentration of capital into fewer and fewer "hands" which is exactly the process of monopolisation.

You should read Marx, you might find you agree with his economic theory, if not his sociology. If you've already studied economics you'll be in a good position to get more out of volume 2 of Capital than most of the rest of us.

He may have incorrectly predicted that capitalism would not be so resilient

I think Marx's position on the resilience of capitalism is more nuanced than some have assumed, and let's not forget that even in Captial itself he provides models of stable capitalist economic cycles. There is also this quotation I came across in Mezaros's "Beyond Capital" which indicates that Marx was well aware of the threat of capitalism chewing up its opponents and spitting them out again (my italics).

The historic task of bourgeois society is the estab-
lishment of the world market , at least in its basic outlines,
and a mode of production that rests on its basis. Since the
world is round, it seems that this has been accomplished
with the colonization of California and Australia and with
the annexation of China and Japan. For us the difficult
question is this: the revolution on the Continent is immi-
nent and its character will be at once socialist; will it not
be necessarily crushed in this little comer of the world since
on a much larger terrain the development of bourgeois
society is still in the ascendant . '

You may be interested to know that many "serious thinkers," like Einstein himself, were socialists who were very much influenced by Marx.

:up: Thanks for that link.
Edit:
Just read the piece - it's a neat, if plagiaristic summary of some of Volume 1 of Capital. Shame on Albert for not acknowleding his sources, but given where he was at the time of writing, it's probably excusable :wink:

There isn't a whole lot from Marx that isn't complete fiction.

Have you read volume 2 of Capital? Most people don"t bother - they just read the "potboiling" volume 1 and then skip to volume 3, but it is in volume 2 that most of the economic insights and analysis about profit and loss are to be found. Admittedly there is Engel's stamp all over the contents (both volumes 2 and 3 were put together by him on the basis of notes and manuscripts Marx left behind) so we cannot just say that it is all Marx's work, but there is a lot of content in that volume which is very far from being fictional.

The labor-theory of value is false

You need to put Marx's claims about the labour theory of value into context. Yes it is true that at the beginning of Capital Vol 1 he provides an a priori argument for the labour theory of value that is (arguably) unsound. However, in the context in which he was writing, the labour theory of value was not really a point of contention amongst economists - Adam Smith held a version of it after all. What Marx did, from an a priori perspective, was draw that theory to its logical conclusion in explaining how surplus value could be generated. However, these days Marxist economists tend to regard Capital as providing the intellectual framework in which an empirically established labour theory of value has its home, and there is much empirical evidence for the labour theory of value. Marx - given his respect for science - would have been very content with the idea that the labour theory of value was in fact an empirical theory, and not an a priori principle.

I don't think self-control will solve the issues a schizophrenic or bipolar individual might experience. To say that would be idiotic.

Why would it be idiotic? I'm certainly not suggesting that people with schizophrenia or bipolar syndrome can just "snap out of it" all by themselves: that would be idiotic.

It's the fall back to medication - and specifically justifying that fall back by the argument that the actions are simply not under the sufferers control - that bothers me. I agree 100% that getting OCD under control can be hard and that sufferers might need a great deal of emotional and practical support. However, the medications that are prescribed in these cases are antidepressants which are not harmless and there are arguments to be made that in many cases the OCD symptoms are to be preferred to the side-effects of taking antidepressant drugs. But in any case, the philosophical issue here is largely independent of our sympathy for OCD sufferers, and concerns the metaphysical presuppositions behind the notion of self-control and (as Norman Malcolm put it) the conceivability of the mechanicistic stance in regard to human action.

Of course, a line of approach we've not yet considered is the later Wittgensteinian one that would treat the word "possible" like the word "game" - no one single definition is going to link all intelligible uses of the word. In any given case we can unpack the word "possible" and frame it in other terms (for instance as counterfactual conditionals which hold the laws of nature fixed, or as counterfactual conditionals that hold only the law of contradiction fixed, etc etc) but there is no single criterion or rigid set of criteria that all intelligible uses of the word must meet. Sure, anything that is not impossible is possible, so whenever we use the word "possible" we could probably replace it with "not impossible" (although there are probably nuanced examples where the choice between the two would change what the speaker expressed about his own opinions) but at least in terms of formal modal logic, to state that what is possible is not impossible is just an empty tautology.

whereof one cannot reason through a condition

I think the motivation behind my position is that where the condition involves action, it is always possible to reason through it (even if doing so requires emotional support etc). That being so I'd be committed to saying that there are no conditions of the type we are discussing that cannot be reasoned through.

Yes, counterpart theory - perhaps the most extreme form of nominalism I've come across. When I read Lewis (like you, years ago) I was reminded of Hume's remark about Berkeley being totally irrefutable but utterly unconvincing.

I think we are largely in agreement on many points, although I do have a couple of questions for you.

One of the "possible" positions that niggles at me is that the principle of least action may simply be a heurestic device for balancing energy equations, and thus has no real ontological commitments. My response to that is that there are no grounds for treating the PLA any more or less heuristically than any other law of nature, so that there is probably some question begging going on behind the reply, but that seems a little limp-wristed. Perhaps you have a better line of response?

As regards the constraints based ontology you talk about, could you expand a little on this and specifically what you mean by "material sponaneity" and "formal limitation"? Examples always help me, but granted examples can sometimes be misleading and fail to capture nuances. Do you regard the formal limitations as capable of evolution, or are they fixed and immutable?

If something, for whatever reason, is determined as impossible

This is precisely the issue in reverse though - what are the criteria for impossibility? Are we talking about physical impossibility, logical impossibility.... Each will have different criteria presumably, just like "possibility" under my contention.

And just to be fair to myself, you did identify the unintelligible with the unknown in this comment:

....it is thought of as the unknown

I don't know who thinks of it as the unknown, but not me, and I gave you a reason why. You may have meant to say that being unknown is a necessary but not sufficient condition for being unintelligible, but thinking of one thing as another is (in usual parlance) to equate the two things in thought, which in this case would be to take being unknown as a necessary and sufficient condition for being unintelligible.

OK. Well, regarding the first paragraph, many different people report having similar kinds of dreams - naked at the bus stop/teeth falling out/etc etc - but dreams aren't evidence of anything except dreams.
As to the second paragraph, I suppose someone with a vested interest in a mind-brain identity theory of one kind or another might challenge the claim that there is no brain function in these patients. Perhaps there is no recorded brain function using basic EEG, but what about MRI scanning? Is there recorded evidence of patients reporting NDEs whilst undergoing MRI brain scans that show absolutely zero brain activity? Genuine question - I would be interested to read any links to such cases.

For someone new to this thread and does not really have the time to skim through all the posts, what's the usual response to the claim that whilst NDEs may be real phenomena, in the sense that they are genuine mental events that occur when the body temporarily shuts down its usual physiological activity, that they are just species of hallucination and so not evidence for anything except the existence of mental events?

We mention the unintelligible commonly, it is thought of as the unknown.

A little like @jkg20, I'm beginning to get a little lost, since what is unknown is not commonly what is unintelligible. Supposing I don't know what my birthday present is because it is wrapped in paper. Suppose that what is wrapped in that paper is the latest iPhone. That I do not know that my birthday present is an iPhone does not make either the iPhone nor the fact that it might be my birthday present unintelligible to me (indeed I may even hope or imagine that my birthday present is an iPhone) .

Anyway, let's get back to modality:

MetaphysicsNow is perfectly correct that possibility is intelligible if he means by "possibility" what I believe he means. — jkg20


No, if MetaphysicsNow is saying what you claim, this is not perfectly correct, it is unintelligible because "infinite possibilities" is self-contradictory, — Metaphysician Undercover

jkg20 said of me, more or less, that when I use the word "possibility" in the abstract, it just stands for "criteria for what is possible". That's pretty much correct, and I do not see how it commits me to the unintelligibility of possibility or possibilities. The criteria will vary in varying circumstances - sometimes we will be interested only in what is physically possible (i.e. the criteria will include the idea that whatever is possible has to conform with the known laws of nature). At other times, perhaps when writing science fiction, we may want to think beyond those constraints, but still wish to insist that what we are imagining is a possible future, and in that case our criteria would be limited to excluding only logical contradictions (at least, to exclude obvious logical contradictions, some logical contradictions can be deeply buried). In both kinds of cases, laying down the criteria of possibility allows for an indefinite number of perfectly intelligible possibilities. Perhaps it also allows for an infinite number of possibilities, I don't know, it doesn't seem to me to matter much one way or another.

Some interesting points, and your last paragraph is something I've posted about on my website in the past (the unexamined commitments to possibilities embedded in the use of the principle of least action, which raise questions about exactly how specific possibilities crystalize into actualities).
Concerning modal realism, and specifically the kind that David Lewis propounds, if I understand you correctly you regard a central problem with it as being its account of probability? I'm not a modal realist, but I would imagine that they would try to adopt some Bayseian notion of probability in which the beliefs concerned would be beliefs about which of the many possible worlds one is located in. Not sure whether this would work or not, however. Although it would take more argument to make a direct identification between Lewisian modal realism and quantum mechanics "many-world"ism, I believe that some have also argued that under a many-worlds interpretation, probabilities just disappear because (to paraphrase you) "everything that can happen does happen". I think I've read somewhere that a Bayseian approach combined with some kind of idea of self-locating beliefs (i.e. beliefs about which world you are in) can help with this, but I've not dug into it in too much detail. In any case, going Bayseian to save a metaphysical position certainly does invite the question about who's beliefs are concerned here, and I think you might be right that there is a tendency to smuggle in a God's eye-view hoping to pull the wool over our eyes that there is not an implicit commitment to idealism (of some kind or another).

You argue just to argue. — Conway

Sometimes, but not in this instance. Here I was arguing to try to get clear on exactly what your philosophical proposal is. However, when you respond to my arguments with nothing but non-sequiturs, I have no choice but to conclude that you really do not have anything philosophically interesting to say. So, farewell, I wish you better luck astonishing the world with your mathematical prowess than you have been able to do so with your philosophical abilities. You can always take solace in the maxim that a prophet is not without honour except in his own country.

@jkg20 I wouldn't bother playing around with Conway - it's amusing for a while but there are some serious posters on here with philosophically interesting things to say and who at least try to avoid non-sequiturs.

OK, let's leave aside the philosophical distinctions.

FACT 1: There is not a "nothing" in this reality
FACT 2: Therefore zero can NOT be "nothing"

Again, non-sequitur and possibly also just false. If by "fact1" you mean that the term "nothing" does not exist in this reality, it is false - the term exists and has an instance in your very statement. If you mean by "fact 1" that the term "nothing" does notrefer to anything in this reality, that may be correct, but that would not render the term "nothing" meaningless, not all words that have meaning refer to things. In either case for Fact 2 to be anything other than a non-sequituur you would have to make a connection between the term "nothing" and the term "zero". The two terms have different uses, so they are not synonyms. Your argument needs more premises before it becomes consistent, once it is consistent we can discuss its soundness.

By the way, that mathematicians use the sign "0", or that you use the sign "0_" does not entail that those signs refer to anything.

Of course I agree that unicorns are not actual. What I do not agree with you is that that makes them abstract. The philosophical distinctions concerned here are between the particular and the abstract, on the one hand, and the possible/fictional and the actual. These are two entirely different distinctions. Let's suppose I say it is possible that human beings could inhabit the moon. What makes that statement true? One line of response is that it is made true because there is a possible world in which human beings really do (n.b. NOT actually do) inhabit the moon. What is a possible world? Well, certainly for some people they are abstract objects. However, there are modal realists who believe that possible worlds are real things populated with real concrete particular things - i.e. they are not abstract. If the philosophical implications of your system rely on conflating the abstract with the (merely) possible, which so far it seems to do, then you have some work to do to deal with modal realism.

Suppose there is varying amounts of "nothing".
"It" does not exist in this reality....therefore...
zero can not represent "it".....

This makes no sense. If it is supposed to be a two line argument with the third line as conclusion, the conclusion is a complete non-sequitur. Also, even if somehow you managed to make the argument consistent, the argument is not sound since the first premise:
Suppose there is varying amounts of "nothing"
Is false, or at least arguably false. My claim is precisely that there are not varying amounts of nothing, whereas your system seems to involve the idea that there are varying amounts of nothing.

Take a look at modal realists like David Lewis. They will equate a fictional with a possible unicorn, but possible unicorns are just as much particulars (and so not abstract) as your thumb, the only difference is that they are not actual.

This is a philosophy forum - there may be some mathematicians around who can give you precise commentary on your mathematics - but I'm sticking to the philosophical claims you are making about your mathematics.

There is an abstract unicorn...

And perhaps another disagreement. There might be possible unicorns, there might be fictional unicorns but a possible or fictional unicorn is not straightforwardly the same thing as an abstract unicorn.

In all cases I have 0 of the thing given.

So here is one possible point of disagreement. You say "in all cases I have 0 of the thing given", and I say "that's logically equivalent to saying you have nothing, in all cases, no need to profliferate the types of nothing". I guess now you refer me to point 2a). 2a) looks problematic for all sorts of reasons, Meinongians on the forum might have something to say about it, but in any case, were I to claim that "0" just signifies the absence of anything, then it doesn't look like I'm committed to saying that there is such a thing as 0, and certainly not that there are lots of different types of it. My semantics for "0" would not need to include a strange nothingness (or strange nothingnesses). It might need to include the empty set, but the thing about the empty set is that, on any axiomatic set theory that includes an empty set, it is unique.

On a point on which I believe we are agreed, I think the idea that modality is a central issue for science (and I include philosophy) is correct - I even indicate on my own website that scientists like Hawking who make (made) statements to the effect that philosophy is dead are dead wrong precisely because of the implications of modality. I also think there might be an interest in pursuing the idea that the notion of human freedom might gain from analysing how specific possibilities are precipitated out of all possibilities to become actualities. However, those possible points of agreement aside, there is a lot of what you are saying that just seems plain wrong to me.
You can have a fully consistent theory of modality that retains the law of excluded middle. You can also have one that rejects the law of excluded middle, but retains the law of non-contradiction. Let's call the former kind of modal thinker a BigEndian and the latter a LittleEndian Concerning the example for Aristotle, BigEndian and LItteEndian are totally in agreement that we cannot know or decide which of the statements "There will be a sea battle tomorrow" or "There will not be a sea battle tommorrow" is true the day before the event. The BigEndian will simply insist that this is only an epistemological fact, and does not entail that neither one nor the other is in fact true. Certainly, this requires a particular brand of realism about future events, but then BigEndians (and generally speaking everyone who favours classical logic) will be a realist about most things. The LittleEndian has a (perhaps more sophisticated) view of the interplay between epistemology and metaphysics that ties together in some way what can be known/decided and what exists. There is no simple way to decide whether the BigEndian or LittleEndian is correct.
In all cases, a modal realist is not going to allow the existence of non-real possibilities: all possbilities for a modal realist are equally real, although they might not all be equally likely. This includes possibilities concerning the past (the German's might have won the Second World War) as well as the present and the future. It includes farflung fancies - for instance possibilities that I come up with on the spur of the moment like there could be a cow on the moon right now eating grass - and possibilities that are more closely anchored to actuality - the structure of benzene might not have been discovered by Kekule. Now, any modal realism is going to have an interest in making distinctions between possibilities on the grounds of their relevance to specific cases, but the basic thing they have to go on regarding what possibilities are real is the logic they accept. Modal realists who subscribe to either intuitionist or classical logic will both fall back on the law of non-contradiction. Modal realists who subscribe to paraconsistent logics might not (it depends how expansive they take the idea of a true contradiction to be).

Your points about infinity and possibility are not clear to me - modal realists of any kind can quite happily accept the idea that there are an infinite number of possibilities and that does not render possibilities unintelligible.

A few questions the answers to which may help me follow this post. Concerning your opening gambit:

Let all abstract numbers be defined exactly as concrete numbers.
Concrete number: A numerical quantity with a corresponding unit.
Let the corresponding unit exist as an abstract dimension notated with the use of (_).
Let the length and width of all dimensional units remain abstract and undeclared.
Let the dimensional unit be equal in quantity to the numerical quantity it corresponds to.
Let all numerical quantities inhabit their corresponding abstract dimensional units.
Let zero be assigned a single dimensional unit.

How do abstract dimensions have length and width, and what work is that axiom doing in your system? When working in basic physics, the notion of dimensionality is assocated with the seven basic dimensions, and it doesn't make any sense in that context to talk about dimensions having length or width.

What is it for a numerical quantity to inhabit an abstract dimensional unit? Presumably this is a metaphor, but a metaphor for what?

Why would zero be assigned any dimensional unit? That would seem to imply that there is a difference between 0 seconds, 0 centimetres, 0 kilograms, 0 amperes ..... But there is not, at least it is not obvious to me that there is.

I believe his point remained unanswered.

I was assuming silence implied tacit agreement from all posters.:wink:

So I can imagine not eating meat....But I'm not sure it is one of the most urgent matters facing humankind.

Do you regard the efficient use of environmental resources as an urgent issue? I'm not sure about that myself, but if one were to think so, then there is some research available to show that lactovegetarian diets are more environmentally sustainable than the typical US model of a meat eating diet. Not dug into the statistical details, so the studies may be flawed, but supposing they are true, and supposing one valued frugality in the use of environmental resources, that might provide non-subjective grounds for moving towards (lacto)vegetarianism.

Possibility does not pose a problem for intelligibility if what is possible is constrained by the laws of whatever logic you happen to prefer. David Lewis, probably the most prominent recent proponent of modal realism, considered that possibilities were real (just not actual) but even for him there were no such things as worlds in which contradictions were true. Sure, Lewis's modal realism faces a number of problems, but it does not face the problem that possibilities become unintelligible - indeed, for Lewis, his system is the only way to make possibilities intelligible in the first place.
There are a number of logics that do without the law of excluded middle but retain the law of non-contradiction (intuitionist logic, as I previously indicated). There are logics that also work with the idea that there can be true contradictions (paraconsistent logics). So-called classical logic retains both.

Clearly the real existence of possibility violates at least the law of excluded middle,

How? Are you confusing actuality with reality? They are different notions - indeed it is precisely the difference between them that modal realists like Lewis take advantage of.

Why is this a relevant question? If the will is a start of physical action, and not a continuity of physical action, then what point is there in considering the physical conditions prior to the actions of the will?

It's not about considering physical conditions, perhaps the conditions are not physical. The point is that at some time t, the will intiates something (or prevents something from initiating), but - if you are right - the will need not have done. The question then is why it did behave in that way rather than not behave in that way. Why is that question relevant? It is relevant because answering that question is the only way we will discover more about what this thing called "will" you are talking about actually is.

So for example, "possibility" refers to something in which the fundamental law of excluded middle does not apply, and is therefore unintelligible. Do you see that?

No I do not see that, because it is a contentious position you cannot just help yourself to. Maybe you are right that we need a metaphysics of modality, but most people who have worked on the metaphysics of modality believe that possibility is constrained by the laws of classical logic - including the law of excluded middle, but more specifically the law of non-contradiction. Perhaps we can do without the law of excluded middle (intuitionist logics for instance) but the law of non-contradiction is a great deal more difficult to do without and provided that the law of non-contradiction holds, possibilities are always going to be intelligible.

"Being human" might be one response that an animal eater would be tempted to offer. Filling out what it is about being human that is morally relevant will include ideas about the capacity for reason, reflection and so on, but needn't touch on pain. Sure, there will be difficult cases to deal with - what does one do with the brain-dead for instance - but any system of morality that has a cut and dried answer to all moral dillemas is probably missing the point about what morality is anyway.

You misunderstand the position - the idea is that pain is morally irrelevant, that morality should be based on something other than a capacity for pain. That is not at all the same thing as suggesting that things that do not feel pain should not be given moral consideration.

But why is sentience morally important? I thought the general line of reasoning in the foregoing was based on the idea that sentience is morally important because with sentience comes the capacity for pain. But if someone challenges the idea that capactity for pain is morally relevant, how do you respond?

A system of morality does not require being based on whether the objects of moral concern feel pain or not. If that were the case, we needn't have any moral concern for those human beings who are congenitally insensitive to pain, but presumablly we should. One can base a morality instead on the idea of rationality, and that to be a moral creature or the object of moral reasoning is to be a creature capable of reason. Admittedly, that would take some more argument, but it leaves the whole pleasure/pain issue to one side.

There are mysteries of life which have not yet been solved.

Absolutely, but where there are mysteries we usually have the wherewithal to formulate ways of going about trying to find an explanation. How are we to do that with this thing you are calling "will" which, if you are correct, is ubiquitous in all human action? Your hypothesis is that (i) there is a thing called the will, (ii) the will is not subject to causal laws (iii) the will causes human action. This is a substantive hypothesis, it is not an apriori truth by any way shape or form. The question, then, is in any given case what leads up to the will causing a given human action or prevention of human action (nb, there is also the question how the causal mechanism between will and action works, but that is a different question). You are saying that there is no causal account for that, and given your hypothesis there cannot be since then the will would not be free (in the sense, "not subject to causal laws"). You also seem to be implying that there is no rational account for that either. That seems to rule out any kind of research program into how the will is supposed to get in on the act.

Sure, "doing something for its own sake" might need to be unpacked, but I don't think it unpacks into a tautology. If you do something for its own sake, typically that thing has an interest for you that does not require some utilitarian analysis in terms of reaching some independent goal: it may not even make you very happy to do it in some cases.

There is an expression "doing something for its own sake". Perhaps philosophy is one of those things that is, in many cases, done for its own sake.

The relation between cause and effect is a logical relation.

Here you are going against the grain of all empiricist philosophy. Rationalists like Spinoza certainly believed that the relation between cause and effect is a logical one, and he may have been right. On the other hand, that kind of position needs to be argued for, since the general presumption in the empirical tradition of philosophy at least is that the causal relation is very definitely not a logical relation.

That aside, let me ask a question. If at time t the will does indeed initiate the action (or indeed prevent the initiation) your idea is that the will need not have initiated/prevented the action. So, for what kind of reason does the will do one or the other in any given case? Is it itself caused to do so? Presumably not, since then it would not, for you, be free. Is it simply inexplicable as to why the will initiates action in any given case? Then you come bang up against the principle of sufficient reason, and leave a gaping explanatory hole in accounting for any kind of intentional action. Maybe there is a third way to respond?

1 1) F --> [ ( C --> C ) --> G ] Premise
2 2) G --> { [ H --> ( E --> H ) ] --> ( K * ~ K ) } Premise
3 3) F Assumption
1,3 4) ( C --> C ) --> G 1,3, Modus Ponens (MP)
5 5) C Assumption
6) C->C 5, Conditional Introduction (CI)
1,3 7) G 4,6 MP
1,2,3 8) [ H --> ( E --> H ) ] --> ( K * ~ K ) 2, 7 MP
9 9) E Assumption
10 10) H Assumption
10 11) E-->H 9,10 CI
12) H --> (E-->H) 10,11 CI
1,2,3 13) K & -K 8,12 MP
1,2 14) -F 3,13 Law of Non Contradiction

That gives you an indirect proof of -F given the two premises.

If by conditional proof, you mean simply prove that if premises 1 and 2 hold, then -F follows, then you can presumably just add the following steps
1,2 15) (F --> [ ( C --> C ) --> G ]) & (G --> { [ H --> ( E --> H ) ] --> ( K * ~ K ) } ) 1,2 Conjunction Int
16) [ (F --> [ ( C --> C ) --> G ]) & (G --> { [ H --> ( E --> H ) ] --> ( K * ~ K ) } )] --> -F 14,15 CI