Yes, of course. Freedom necessarily involves randomness. Just not necessarily equiprobable randomness.

When does freedom occur? — khaled

Are you asking for a literal time, or is that a way of asking "in what circumstances"? If the latter, it's simply a term for phenomena (occurrences) that are not causally determined. That could conceivably occur in any situation, any phenomena.

So why didn't he. Did he choose A because of it having more justification? — khaled

People often choose what they do because they have more justification (stronger/better reasons, in their opinion, for choosing something) for it.

This doesn't at all mean that it's not possible for them to make a different choice. Whether various options are possible doesn't at all hinge on anyone's justifications.

That A had more justification doesn't answer the question "Why didn't he pick B" — khaled

Yes, it does, as that's exactly what justifications are in this case. It's why they picked one thing rather than the other. Saying it doesn't answer that can only suggest not even understanding what justifications are in the first place, or otherwise not understanding the question "Why did you pick A"


This post is essentially just repeating the same thing yet again. Hopefully I won't have to keep doing this.

If mind is a subset of physical functions and those physical functions are either deterministic or random then where is the free will? — khaled

Will is a brain function. Freedom can occur anywhere, including brains.

OK, and is this because it is approaching newtonian types of causality. IOW statistically high chance that people will behave in certain ways that we don't want them to for not reason? — Coben

Sorry, what? ;-) That second sentence doesn't make sense to me.

So, bomb in the airport is ok, since people can choose whether to fall for it. — Coben

Yelling "bomb"? Yes, I'd not have that be illegal.

I'm a libertarian in many ways, although a socialist in other ways (mostly economic/social structure centered on economic concerns, etc.) . . . so that I'm a very idiosyncratic sort of "libertarian socialist" where I'm the only person I'm aware of with the socio-political views I have.

And yeah, I disagree with a lot of laws, mores, etc.--to a point where it's extremely frustrating to me to pay much attention to the news, which is why normally I do not, so normally I don't know much about what's going on in day-to-day politics.

I'm in favor of contractual law, but that's not a speech issue--it's a matter of actions that one is or isn't performing that one agreed to perform, and where others actions were contingent on the pledge of those actions being/not being performed.

Is this a Daniel Dennett thing? — khaled

No, not at all. Dennett arguably claims that consciousness is an "illusion" (ignoring whether that claim makes any sense).

Really? If S believed A has more justification than B could S pick B? — khaled

Yes, of course. "S could pick B" is about whether it's ontologically possible to pick B.

Justification has to do with WHY someone picked a choice that they picked. It has nothing at all to do with whether it's ontologically possible to pick something else.

That.... Doesn't asnwer my question. — khaled

Yes, it does. You're asking a question about the implications for justification for whether there are real choices.

The two have nothing at all to do with each other.

If you CAN show the causal chain then the mind isn't involved. Unless the "mind" is a literal muscle or neuron. — khaled

The mind IS identical to a subset of brain functions, yes.

So if the justification for A completely rules out B could the person have picked B? — khaled

Justification has nothing to do with whether there are real options.

Justification has to do with why S picked one rather than the other.

Yes. You can't know it is impossible to causally peg the physical sound to physical reactions — khaled

You're using "know" in the sense of certainty. It's a mistake to use it that way.

Aside from that, so in addition to needing to show the causal chain, you'd need to show that mind isn't involved now, too.

I never said equal — khaled

If they're not equal to the bearer, then it would be inexplicable why you'd not be able to understand why the justification for the choice made ruled out the other. The bearer considered those reasons better/stronger. That's what a justification is. Whatever S considers to be good/better reasons for x.

Neurology. Sounds are physical, neurolgical reactions to them are physical — khaled

You'd be claiming that mind isn't involved in other words?

Why are they incorrect. — khaled

That seems like a dumb question. They get wrong what the world is like.

Assume you thought of justifications for two options A and B and then picked B. Why didn't you pick A? Would presenting justifications for B be satisfactory for answering that question? — khaled

First, this isn't the case you were presenting.

But if you had equal justification for two options, you'd have to choose epistemically randomly.

Most of the time, when people have reasons for choices, they're not equal.

And you assume that would be easy to do in the case of the trigger pulling and very difficult in the case of hate speech right? — khaled

Impossible in the case of hate speech, because not only is free will the case, but as folks keep telling us in other threads, apparently we can't "explain" physicalism--mind/brain identity. If we can't do that, how would we show a causal physical chain for something like hate speech?

Most of the people here WOULD say that violence is causally peggable to hate speech. — khaled

Sure. People believe all sorts of things that are incorrect. Religious beliefs are one of the biggest examples, but there are tons of different examples.

How can justification "not exist". — khaled

By the person not thinking it. Justifications exist only insofar as someone consciously has them in mind.

And if someone claims that murdering someone is causally peggable to hate speech why would they be wrong? — khaled

Show the work. Specify the causal chain. If there is one they're not wrong. But we have to be able to show the causal chain.

You could have picked the other option yes? So if you had picked the other option and I asked you for "why didn't you pick the first" You'd have justificaiton for that yes? — khaled

Probably, but that justification doesn't exist when you didn't pick that option, which is the scenario you're presenting.

I don't get why you have to be a prick about it. — khaled

I don't like arguing. You want to argue. You're not interested enough in understanding other views to bother reading them, thinking about them, etc.

In the situation at hand, we can peg the causes. See--this is an example. I said this already.

Assume you're picking between two close options. — khaled

We're past that already. What justification would you be referring to re the option not chosen?

You can't possibly not be able to understand pronoun usage to that extent.

Because the other option also has justification that could have been used. — khaled

What? What justification, coming from where?

We konw, confirmed by empirical observation, that any pulling of the trigger of a loaded gun that is pointing at someone doesn't cause anyone to die, — khaled

We know that it causes them to die when it does, because the causal chain is easily peggable. We've been through this already, by the way. So I'm not going to explain it in detail to you again.

Do you think death threats/threats of physical violence/extortion should be legal? — RogueAI

I'd have a category of criminal threatening, but it would have pretty specific criteria:

Threatening anyone should only be a crime when it's an immediate, "physical" threat in the sense of potential victims being within the range of the threatening instruments (whether just one's body, or weapons, or causally connected remote devices or substances, etc.), which are actual and not simply claimed, so that (a) either a verbal (or written, etc.) or body language threat is explicitly made, (b) the threat is reasonably considered a serious premeditation to commit nonconsensual violence, and (c) the threatened party couldn't reasonably escape or evade the threatened actions should the threatener decide to carry them out at that moment.

ou took it from there and I assumed you had read our conversation beforehand — khaled

I didn't even read that. I was responding to this: "But the decision to bias or not to bias is itself completely random. I never implied there is only 50/50 random and determined. "

For any decision you can ask "could you have done (biased the decision) otherwise?", if the answer is no then the decision is not free. For every decision for which you answered "yes" you can ask "why didn't you?". The answer to "why didn't you?" is unknown as presenting any justification for why you chose the option you chose doesn't tell me why you didn't choose the other option if you could have. So you don't know why you chose to bias a particular option in a particular way, even if you know the evidence that led you to that decision (because you can't answer "why didn't you?"). Since you don't know why you chose to bias an option in a particular way even though alternatives were available the decision must have been random. — khaled

I don't know if anything there makes any sense.

First, if you couldn't have gone another way, it's not actually a decision/choice.

Who knows why on Earth you'd say something like, "presenting any justification for why you chose the option you chose doesn't tell me why you didn't choose the other option if you could have" because that doesn't make any sense. Why wouldn't a justification tell you why someone chose one option over another?

You don't seem to understand the idea of biasing. You seem to just be putting the word into sentences because I brought it up.

I don't want to address a bunch of different stuff, because there are different issues to get into with all of it, and I hate trying to talk about an increasing number of different issues at the same time. If posts keep getting longer, we're going off track in my opinion:

So I'll just address a couple things. I don't mind going back to the others, but one thing at a time until we're done with it so that it doesn't have to come up again:

Could it never be the case that you would blame him for consequences? — Coben

That's correct. Any actions by others in response to his saying that I'm a pedophile wouldn't be caused by him. Thus he's not to blame for those actions.

But could you imagine blaming him? Reporting it as a crime? suggesting a boss fire him? See it as an action with bad effects and as such as a cause, even though other people also bear some responsibility? — Coben

I would never do any of that stuff. I'm a free speech absolutist, and that includes that I'd not make slander/libel illegal or want it socially pressured away a la firing someone, etc.

The society we need is one where people don't believe something just because someone says it. Making slander/libel illegal doesn't lead to that society.

You replied to me talking to someone else. — khaled

?

I introduced the idea that the decision to bias a decision is random there. — khaled

Why?

I hope so. That's what I kept referring to when I said true randomness. Randomness that is not an approximation due to our lack of knowledge — khaled

The word is there because some choices seem random. Some do not. That doesn't mean that the choices that do not seem random are determined. They also do not involve randomness in the sense of flipping a coin. They involve biasing.

I don't know where you're getting the idea from that biasing is a decision (necessarily) or that's "completely random." I certainly didn't write anything like that.

If we're specifying the cause if x, we need to list everything that deterministically produced x.

For one, in saying that speech is causal to some action, we're denying that the people who performed the action in question had free will--that they had any choice in how they acted. This would amount to saying that the soundwaves in question had a physical effect on the person so that, in combination with the other physical factors that we'd need to specify, they were literally forced to perform the action in question. That's what causality is.

I think we could devise an illegal experiment. Shouting duck or fire or rape or bomb in various locations and then having control tests in similar location types, to see if speech is causal. — Coben

If it's causal, then no matter who is hearing it, they need to react in the relevant way. Otherwise we need to account for the difference.

Metaphysics:

Traditionally, it's:

(1) "Universal 'science'," "first philosophy" or "first principles,"--all common names for more or less core logical axioms required for things to obtain, to be coherent, etc.

(2) "Natural theology" or basically philosophy of religion

and

(3) Ontology - or philosophy of existence/philosophy of "being," nominally at "higher" levels of abstraction, but depending on one's views about the extent to which those abstractions are possible/to which they make sense, there can be a lot of overlap with the sciences here, only from a philosophical perspective/philosophical methodology rather than an approach via scientific methodology. Ontology answers questions such as "What is the world (everything extant) comprised of?" "What is its nature/ what is the nature of the components that comprise things?" "Is there more than one kind of component?" "What are properties?" "What is causality?" "What is motion?" "What are relations?" "What is time (& space/spacetime)?" etc. etc.

==================================================

It's not uncommon now for folks to think of metaphysics as more or less synonymous with (3)--ontology--only, especially if one rejects religion more or less. (1) is often thought to be best suited for logic "proper."

There's a lot of confusion due to the etymology (or rather misunderstandings of the etymology) of the name, "metaphysics." It's often taken to refer to something "beyond" physics, in the sense of transcending physics, more or less in a mystical sense. The fact that part of metaphysics is traditionally natural theology doesn't help this misunderstanding. Really, the name stems from "after" physics, and it was meant literally, in the sense of an editor who was anthologizing the work of Aristotle putting the then-unnamed book (which was dubbed "metaphysics" for the collection) after the book known as "physics." In other words, it was simply "here's the book named 'physics'" and then "here's the book after the book named 'physics.'" The content of Aristotle's book (dubbed "metaphysics") was the initial starting point for the subject matter of metaphysics.

Why is it illegal to yell fire in a crowded theater (when there's no fire).`? — Coben

That's a good question that would be interesting to research historically--the roots of the belief that speech can be to blame in situations like that.

Because you argue that philosophy is correct. Philosophy is entirely subjective. If philosophy is correct, that means correctness is somehow a subjective condition. — Marzipanmaddox

So philosophy can't make claims about (objective) facts in your view?

Correctness by default is not subjective. — Marzipanmaddox

First, how are you getting "Corretness is subjective" from my comment?

the objective metric of benefit/harm — Marzipanmaddox

Independent of persons, where would we find a metric of benefit/harm? Where would we even find anything counting as benefit or harm?

Why is subjective morality respected? — Marzipanmaddox

Because it's correct. Morality doesn't occur independent of persons. It's a way that people think about interpersonal behavior.

There are a lot of people who have graduate degrees and/or practical expertise in more than one field. I'm someone with graduate degrees in two very different fields.

If this is a roundabout way to argue that it's a dilemma, it's only a dilemma if you think about it in those terms.

If you don't consciously think that, it's not the case. That's the whole point.

Same thing for thinking about anything negatively.