The particular factors are always necessary and sufficient causes of the particular “choice”. Always. Across the board. — Noah Te Stroete

I understand that this is your belief. I do not see an argument supporting your belief.

I do not think that choice belongs only to the privileged. The poor and homeless can act with charity and kindness, or with anger and hostility as easily as the wealthy and powerful.

It is clear that the cause of anything must be sufficient to effect it. There is no reason to think that the cause of everything must necessitate it as opposed to some other effect it is sufficient to cause. To make your case, you need to establish the necessity you claim.

People engage in a behavior we call "choosing", this is indisputable. Even if a different choice could not have been made, it is still the case that the choice has been made and it is is a direct result of the choosers deliberation. The choice is in the causal chain. — Relativist

I have no argument with any of this, but it does not (1) show that that only one line of action is in our power, or (2) that we are morally responsible for acts fully determined prior to our conception.

The drunk driver may have been compelled, but punishment is still necessary to keep dangerous people off the streets and for deterrence. — Noah Te Stroete

I agree, that we may be justified in removing sources of immanent danger from society, even if they did not choose to be as they are. That has nothing to do with the question of moral responsibility.

Is this adult child responsible, or is the parent who failed to teach the child discipline and responsibility? — Relativist

If there is free will, the parents are responsible for choosing to raise junior without concern for the larger good. Junior is responsible for choosing to drink and drive, and, depending on how mentally competent junior was at the time of the accident, for fleeing the scene. They are each responsible because the possible consequences of their choices were foreseeable, and there were better options available, that they either knew or had a duty to learn.

If there is no free will, the parents had no real choice in how they raised junior, and junior had no choice but to drink, drive and kill. So, there is no more responsibility in the entire scenario than there is in lightening striking and killing the bicyclist. Both would be purely physical events, devoid of moral responsibility.

You seem to be arguing that since responsibility can be distributed, it is entirely subjective. As my first paragraph shows, I reject that. The Germans who chose to do nothing when their Jewish or gay neighbors disappeared in the night bear partial responsibility, as those who continue to support Trump bear partial responsibility for his family separations, condoning political murder, and further degradation of the environment.

I'll bet you agree with me that the adult child is responsible. — Relativist

The adult child has the major share of the blame. That does not make the parents blameless.

I am still wondering how you can blame anyone, if no one has a real choice?

Both will be exhibiting behavior that can plausibly considered to have been determined by their beliefs, dispositions, and impulses. — Relativist

Plausibly. Yet, we choose to commit to our beliefs. I can decide that since God is the author of nature, reading the book of nature may throw light on the book of Genesis. If I'm disposed to drink too much, I can choose to work at being sober. By repeated acts of will, over time I can develop better impulse control. So, while you might plausibly argue that an immediate reaction is determined by beliefs, dispositions, and impulses, that reaction can well be the result of the kind of person we have chosen (or not chosen) to be.

I am still waiting for an account of responsibility that works if we have no free will and all acts are determined.

A set of properties A supervenes upon another set B just in case no two things can differ with respect to A-properties without also differing with respect to their B-properties. — Supervenience by Brian McLaughlin & Karen Bennett in SEP

Whatever happens to occur to the alcoholic is predetermined based on his memories, beliefs, experience, mood, and whatever need he feels he needs to satisfy. There is no optimization calculus. — Noah Te Stroete

Okay, we agree that there is no optimization. That being the case, what makes the outcome of proairesis deterministic? It seems that if we find many lines of action satisfactory, no one is predetermined. What we decide is based on the kind of person we intend to become.

Knowledge does enter proairesis both in the options considered, and in our estimation of where each will lead. I do not see that either implies determinism. On the contrary, the more we know, the freer we are. Knowledge removes the constraints imposed by ignorance.

Supervenience does not do away with cause and effect. — Noah Te Stroete

I didn't say supervenience does away with causality. I said it distracts from it. As statisticians remind us, correlation does not mean causality. Co-occurance is irrelevant. What counts is causal dependence. So, what causal relation guaranties that that our intentionally derived decision will be physically realizable? On my theory, the commitment to a line of action can change how we will behave physically. On your theory the relation seems purely coincidental, rather than causal.

The physical determination of the planets does not supervene on human behavior. — Noah Te Stroete

But, it does! Read the definition of supervenience: "A set of properties A supervenes upon another set B just in case no two things can differ with respect to A-properties without also differing with respect to their B-properties." The human states cannot change without there being a difference in the planetary positions. That is exactly why people invented astrology. The problem is that the connection here, though necessary, is not causal in either direction.

I wasn't saying that we should do anything like astrology. — Noah Te Stroete

I did not mean to suggest that you were. I am criticizing the concept of supervenience as a bargain-basement replacement for causality.

The physical determination of the planets does not supervene on human behavior. — Noah Te Stroete

According to the definition, it does. Neural physical processes play a dynamic role in the operation of the mind. Supervenience, while well-defined, provides us with no assurance that the changing properties bear any important relationship to each other.

Survival is of prime importance and we survive better in groups, — Jamesk

Yes. We are social animals.

it is not a choice made of freewill. — Jamesk

Then, it is not a choice at all. Unless there is more than one possibility open, there is nothing to choose. Did the moon choose the earth as its orbital partner? Of course not.

If we are social animals, but we can choose to live alone, isn't that evidence that we are not fully determined by our nature?

I agree with much of what you said, but I still see no answer to my basic question. How can a being who is not the radical origin for a line of action be responsible for that line of action?

If A causes B, and B causes C it is still the case that B's existence caused C. If we did not exist, we could not act. — Relativist

I addressed that in my second paragraph. Being an instrumental cause does not make one responsible unless one is a willing instrument. Hammers are not responsible for how they are wielded.

None of us have freewill. We are 'all in it together' fate believes in equality. We choose to live in societies. Societies need rules to function. Rules need the attachment of responsibility to function. We agree to the rules so we agree to our share of responsibility. — Jamesk

You seem to begin with an unargued faith position, and then immediately contradict it by saying that we choose to live in societies. If we have no free will, we can't choose anything.

Ants have rules, and I have yet to read an account of the social behavior of ants that mentions moral responsibility. Do you have a more detailed argument?

But this choice is not made in a vacuum. The alcoholic might have learned that he was being "punished" for consuming too much alcohol in the sense that he hit rock bottom and things weren't going well for him. — Noah Te Stroete

A free decision is not an unmotivated decision. If I am seriously weighing two options, which ever I choose can be explained in terms of the factors motivating it. Thus, the fact that we can explain decisions in terms of motivating factors does not show that they are determined.

There is a subtext here, viz. the utilitarian assumption that there is an optimal course of action -- one that results in the greatest happiness, is impelled by the most libido, or has the maximal value of some other utility function. However, if you look at the lead up to decisions, what Aristotle calls proairesis, that is not how we choose. I have never assigned a value to each motivating factor and then calculated which option maximizes the resulting utility. In fact, such a calculation cannot be done, implicitly or explicitly. The reason is simple: motivating factors are not commensurate. No amount of sex will satisfy our need for nutrition, and neither will satisfy our need for understanding. Thus, no trade-off is possible.

H. A. Simmon has written about this at length. Human decisions are made using satisficing rather than maximization. We choose courses of action that satisfy as many of our needs as possible, rather than finding one that maximizes some utility function. As there are many courses of action that can satisfy our needs, satisficing, unlike optimizing, does not constrain us to a single line of action.

Of course, at any point in time, we place more weight on some dome needs/motivating factors than others, but the weight we give each is not predetermined. It is a result of us deciding, implicitly or explicitly, what kind of person we want to be. In your example, even after hitting bottom, the alcoholic still has to decide if they are willing to tolerate the collateral damage alcoholism causes, or if they want to commit to being sober.

Isn't the population of the planet evidence of evolutionary success of our characteristics? — Noah Te Stroete

Perhaps, but it does not tell us that our characteristics are as you imagine them. You think that we can imagine alternatives, but are still pre-determined to one course of action. I think that being able to conceive alternatives that we cannot effect can have no evolutionary value. What I am asking for is an evolutionary argument showing that the ability to conceive unimplementable alternatives is not a waste of time and energy.

I know that you have said that we can remember our previously examined alternatives, and I grant you that. I also grant that as a result, we may decide differently in the future. What I do not see is how deciding differently will increase reproductive success, given that only one option is physically possible in any event.

I believe there is a supervenience between the act of commitment and physical realization. But just as the physical realization is deterministic, so are the mental processes. — Noah Te Stroete

I think supervenience is an irrational distraction -- one invented to avoid discussions of causal ontology.

A set of properties A supervenes upon another set B just in case no two things can differ with respect to A-properties without also differing with respect to their B-properties. In slogan form, “there cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference”. — Supervenience by Brian McLaughlin & Karen Bennett in SEP

There can be no historical events without variations in the positions of the moon and planets, but that does not mean that we should all be studying astrology. The critical issue is what causes what, not what supervenes on what -- which is usually totally irrelevant.

So, to return to the central question, how is it that the intentional process of proaiesis just happens to terminate in the one course of action that is physically predetermined -- especially if there is no causal relation between our intentional commitments and our physical behavior?

Now this is not to say that you couldn't still be right about all this, but I still have concerns that need to be addressed. — Noah Te Stroete

As you can see, I an willing to take the time to address them.

I'm sure that many who died in the Holocaust had doubts about a providential God. — Noah Te Stroete

Of course they did. The problem of evil is real, and I know of no solution that can put our feelings of dismay to rest.

We can still have moral responsibility in the absence of freewill in the Libertarian sense. — Jamesk

How? If whatever I do is fully immanent, fully determined, in the state of the world before we are conceived, then our actual existence can play no role in determining how we act. Under what theory/definition of responsibility can a being whose actual existence plays no role in determining an act be responsible for that act?

Of course, being predetermined would allow us a role in our acts. We would be instrumental causes. Thus, your theory would seem to make instruments responsible for what they are used to effect. That being so, are hammers responsible for hammered artifacts?

I’m still not SURE I agree that a long-term goal is a sign of free will. It is still a choice but a choice that constantly and repeatedly has to be made. I gave my reasons for believing why I think decisions or choices are determined. — Noah Te Stroete

By itself, a goal is not a sign of free will, but the choice of a goal against a compulsion is a sign that the compulsion is not determining. Consider an alcoholic who habitually goes into every bar he or she passes. One day they commit to being sober. That commitment makes no physical change. Their brain is still wired the same way. Every time they pass a bar, they still start to walk in. So, they remind themselves of their commitment and, by force of will, walk by. Each time they do this, they change their neural connections by a small amount. In time, their new intentionality is incarnated in a new neural pathway. This is the neurophysical reflection of the ancient observation that repeated good behavior leads to habits of right action, aka, virtues.

So, yes, changing your brain wiring is not easy. It does require constant recommitment, and the lack of apparent progress can be discouraging. Still, over time it happens.

As for evolution, the mental exercise of weighing choices is a mechanism nature has chosen that has made humans successful. It is a mischaracterization of what I believe to say that evolution decides which is better, viz. the decision made or the option not taken. The mechanism is what evolution selected for. — Noah Te Stroete

Of course evolution would not be making the individual decisions. Still, we need a mechanism for evolutionary selection of the capacity to represent multiple options -- one that translates into reproductive success -- or evolution does not explain the phenomenon. (Note also that selecting the ability does not explain primary appearence of the capacity, without which it could not be selected.

If evolution does favor the consideration of options, how is this an argument for determinism? Surely, the consideration of options is useless unless we are free to implement the one that we decide is better. It would be very coincidental if the one that we judged to be better mentally were also the only one that was physically realizable. Such a parallel relation reminds me of Leibnitz' monadology and would seem to require a providential God. Isn't it more rational to think that the very fact of commitment to the better option is one of the conditions of physical realization -- just as it is in the above example of the reforming alcoholic? So, if we are free to choose which option we think better, and often free to implement it physically, where does determinism enter?

I believe consciousness is just as real as matter as I am a spiritual person. — Noah Te Stroete

I agree. I am also a spiritual person. We are fairly close in our beliefs, but differ on some details.

You are welcome.

I was being called to dinner when I last responded, so had little time. Let me start again.

Evolution works by selecting successful variant genotypes. It does so by means of "reproductive success," which is a very brutal means, viz. it lets their young live, and kills the deselected variant and/or its young. Let's assume that, suddenly, an individual emerges who is able to think of more than one possible action, but is constrained (on your hypothesis) by the laws of nature to execute only one.

First, one may wonder in what sense the other options are "possible" as opposed to imaginary. Perhaps in some other world I might have gone 70 mph on the I-15, but in this world, it was impossible to do so. What I could have done in some imaginary world is completely irrelevant to what I can do in the real world.

Second, you suggest that the advantage of being able to think of the other option is that we remember it, and make better decisions next time as a result. In the abstract, I find this an interesting observation, and one that may well be true. The question is, does it make sense in the narrow context of evolution? What is "better" in the evolutionary sense is what gives us more viable offspring. What is "worse" is what kills us, or at least gives us fewer viable offspring.

When we come to the second occasion, the one in which we remember the alternative, how does remembering an alternative that was never tested by evolution equip us to make a "better" decision in the evolutionary sense? I do not see that it does. I grant that the knowledge of past alternatives can change what is chosen on the second occasion, because any variation can, but I do not see why it will increase as oppose to decrease the number of viable offspring we have.

Third, it is unclear how you are thinking of decision making. I see it as an intentional process, supported by physical processing, that terminates in an attempt at physical action. Is that how you see it, or do you see it as a purely physical process with an epiphenominal conscious overlay? In other words, does what we think really matter?

I can understand, given that you suffer from a compulsive disorder, you have a hard time seeing yourself as free. Still, I see you as acting freely. Why? Because even though you feel compelled to do x, you have freely decided that you do not want to do x and are seeking the means (via CBT) to avoid doing x. We know that we are committed to a goal when we are actively engaged in means to attain that goal. It seems from what you have said that even though you are compelled to do x, you are working on the means of ceasing to do x.

That brings me back to the case of the UCLA OCD patients. Even though they had their various compulsions, they were committed to breaking those compulsions, sought and found means of doing so, an were able to incarnate their intentionality in new neural pathways.

Yes, reward and punishment can affect behavior. I see no evidence that it can change the goal to which one is committed.

I understand your argument. The question is: how can evolution determine that an unimplemented decision is better than an implemented one? All it can do is select survivors based on the decisions they actually make.

The best of luck to you. You might ask your therapist about the UCLA results.

I have no reason to doubt that you have free will. You may have trouble executing some decisions because of your disorder, but not being a psychiatrist, I'm not really qualified to speak to that. I do know that in the case of OCD, it has been proven (at UCLA, if memory serves) that cognitive therapy can rewire the brain. You may want to read about it, and see if it might help you. If you are interested, I can look up the citation(s).

If you can't buy the Maserati, what sense does it make to say that you are choosing it? You must be choosing it for something, or you can't truthfully be said to be choosing it at all. — Herg

Whenever I select or prefer one thing over another, I'm choosing it. Even though I can't implement my choice now, it is still a choice. If I were to win the lottery tomorrow, I would not go through the selection process again, I would simply implement my pre-existing choice. What am I choosing it for? The car I aspire to own.

In the context of our discussion, choosing L1 means choosing L1 in order to execute L1, and the presumption is that you have the power to execute L1, because if you don't, you cannot truthfully be said to be choosing L1 at all. — Herg

Choosing is an intentional act. It creates a disposition that will be physically implemented if possible, but even if the implementation isn't now possible, the state of the world has changed because I now have a disposition to act that I lacked before my choice. It is a common thing for people to first choose, and then await their chance.

The relevant point is not what seems to be true, but your unargued claim that it only seems to be true. — Dfpolis

We agree that it seems that executing L1 rather than L2 is in your power; the burden of proof is on you, not on me, to prove that both L1 and L2 actually are in your power. As for 'unargued', what do you imagine I have been doing since we started this conversation? — Herg

I've already shown how we know potentials. As for what you have been doing, as I recall, you have been criticizing the notion of free will, but have offered no reason to believe in determinism.

What an odd argument. Science is able to make reliable predictions precisely because, in cases such as the vinegar and baking soda case, there is no free will; the vinegar and the baking soda, when mixed together, have to make carbon dioxide because they have no choice in the matter. — Herg

Not quite. There is free will here. I may choose to mix them or not. Still, even if I choose not to mix them, the potential to produce carbon dioxide remains. This is just like choosing not to go to the store. Even though I choose to stay home, the potential to go remains.

Yes, free will does not enter into the reaction, but that's equally true of many choices once implementation begins. Once I step out of the plane door to begin a skydive, there is no going back.

That is how we know that making carbon dioxide in such a situation is possible. — Herg

No, that is not how we know that producing carbon dioxide is possible. We know acetic acid and sodium bicarbonate will react as they do because previous investigators have have freely chosen to investigate analogous cases. We have never examined, and no one could ever examine, the exact case before us, contextualized as it is. We must rely on reasoning by analogy.

Chemistry is the result of a long history of experiment and analysis in which we find analogies to the case at hand. The same is true of our knowledge of having incompatible options equally in our power.

So what would be the parallel situation when you are contemplating whether to stay at home or go to the store? It would have to be that we can only predict that you will go to the store, and therefore know that going to the store is possible for you, if you, like the vinegar and the baking soda, have no free will. — Herg

Let's look at the relation between prediction and potential. As I said earlier, the first way of knowing what is possible is to observe what is actual, for it could not be actual if it were not possible. Prediction is just a slight variation on this, in that a reliable prediction tells us what will become actual. Still, to make the prediction, we do not rely on the actuality of the predicted event, but on our knowledge, by analogy, of the determinate potential for that event. The question is, are all potentials determinate (determined to be actualized)? You seem to think that they are. I do not.

Consider our vinegar and baking soda. Do they always have the potential to produce carbon dioxide? I, and most chemists, would say they do. On you theory, they do not unless this vinegar and this baking soda are actually mixed to produce carbon dioxide at some point in the future. I say this because you seem to deny the second way of knowing potential -- by analogy with other cases. A potential that is never realized is, by definition, not a determinate potential -- it is not a potential that can be verified by a confirmed prediction, for ex hypothesis, the mixing will never happen.

Premiss: On some previous occasions I have gone to the store, and on other previous occasions I have stayed at home.
Conclusion: Therefore on this occasion I have it in my power to either go to the store or stay at home.

This is an invalid argument. In order to have free will it is not sufficient for there to be some occasions when a potential action (e.g. going to the store) is actualised; it has to be the case that you have the power to realise the potential action in some particular case. In effect, you are confusing a type of action (going to the store) with a token action (going to the store on this occasion). — Herg

There are two questions here. First, do you or do you not think that potencies can be known by analogy? If you do, how strong does the evidentiary basis need to be before you are willing to rely on the analogy?

Clearly, if I only went to the store once, and it was a harrowing experience, it might not actually be in my power to go to store now. Perhaps I might freeze on the way, be eaten by a lion or be struck by a car. I am happy to concede that analogical reasoning lacks the reliability of deductive reasoning. I also stipulate that one case is a narrow basis for an analogical conclusion. Having said all that, few of us doubt it is in our power to go the store -- even if we have only gone once, and probably if we'd never gone before.

As Aristotle points out, we must not expect the same certitude in ethics as we do in other sciences. The subject matter is simply too complex. So, I grant that my argument is not deductively sound, but reasoning by analogy never is.

I do maintain that what applies to mixing vinegar and baking soda also applies to humans, in that given a certain potential for human action, it is simply a matter of physical law whether the potential is actualised. — Herg

This does not cut it. No law of nature precludes the mixing of vinegar and soda that will never in fact be mixed, and no physical law prevents me from going to the store even if I decide to stay home. In both cases, it is the decision of the agent that determines whether or not the potential is actualized.

There appears to be a physicalist subtext here, viz. the assumption that intentions are physically determined. No rational model supports this hypothesis, and reflection on the fundamental abstraction of natural science tells us that there cannot be a reduction of subjective intentional operations to objective physicality for the simple reason that natural science lacks the requisite concepts.

There is no reason to think that human intentions are determined by physics, and sound experimental studies to show that they are not. That being so, we can form intentions that are physically unrealizable, as my example of wanting to go 70 mph when traffic conditions prevented me from going more than 20 mph. When our choices physically constrained (unable to be implemented because of physical conditions), we can recognize it. Since there is no conflict between intentionality and realizability in deciding whether or not to go to the store, I have no reason to believe I am physically constrained.

Of course, one can engage in magical thinking or paranoia, believing that even though we do not see them, there are forces arrayed against us, but such conjectures are hardly parsimonious. It is more rational to say that when we are constrained by physical reality, we are generally aware of it and that when we are unaware of constraints, we are free to act as we will.

Actually, quantum theory says that all unobserved physical processes are fully deterministic. Unpredictability enters only when quantum systems are observed. — Dfpolis

Since this directly contradicts everything I have ever read about quantum physics, I have no comment to make, and I shall not raise quantum physics with you in the future. — Herg

In the course of acquiring my doctorate in theoretical physics I have probably studied quantum theory more deeply than you. If you like, I can supply you with references to standard texts.

We are free if we are not constrained. We are constrained when we want to do A, but are prevented. This happens many times, so we know how to recognise constraints when we see them. For example, yesterday I wanted to go 70mph or more on the I-15, but traffic constrained me from going more than 0-20 mph. When I decide whether or not to go to the store, I experience no such constraint. So, I am free to choose either. — Dfpolis

This appears to be compatibilism, and if that is your position, then we have been arguing at cross purposes. I am not a compatibilist. My understanding of free will is that it requires the ability to do otherwise than one actually does. — Herg

I'm not a standard compatibilist. I deny that free decisions are fully immanent in the state of the world before the existence of the agent. At the same time, I affirm that human decisions are adequately caused and mindful, not random. In other words, agents resolve prior indeterminism to fully determine their free decisions. So, before the agent acts, L1 and L2 are equally possible, but after the decision, only one is possible.

I reject the "I could have done otherwise" formulation because I could not have done otherwise and be the person I am. Every decision we make forms who we are. I am the person formed, in part, by the history of my decisions.

Free will is necessary to explain the reality of moral responsibility -- which happens in the world. People know that they are responsible for actions they freely choose, — Dfpolis

No, they don't know this. They believe it, but belief is not knowledge, and therefore there is nothing requiring explanation. — Herg

I understand that you must say this to be consistent, but it makes no sense. How could we evolve to feel remorseful for what was, in fact, unavoidable? What a waste of biological resources that would be! If I am predetermined to do L1, how could any moral intuitions change this?

Intuitions of responsibility and remorse are actual phenomena -- "something requiring explanation," as you say. You may claim that free will is not the proper explanation, but that is not enough. The phenomena remain. You dislike the standard explanation, but offer nothing better.

So, there is a middle ground between fully determined and mindlessly random, viz. the result of mindful action on the part of a free agent. — Dfpolis

This is just speculation, because you have not established grounds for believing that minds complete the determination of actions. — Herg

It is a matter of experience and philosophic reflection since Aristotle's discussion of proairesis that humans reflect to determine which of various possible means best reflect their values in effecting their ends. Are you denying that you have weighted, perhaps iteratively, various means of advancing your life? And doesn't such reflection reduce many possible means to the one plan you actually choose to implement?

You do not even recognize the process you are part of. — Heiko

I am sorry you think I am so unreflective. As I see it, it is better to light small candles than lament the darkness.

I read your response. I am unsure what point your first paragraph is making other than many people question human knowledge. I give no weight to group opinions without rational grounds.

It may well be that a natural number is always a real number as well but that doesn't make the natural numbers the real numbers or vice versa. — Heiko

I never implied that it did, but it remains the case that while 1 is both natural and real, natural and real are distinct concepts.

if the sciences of nature managed to say what you were up to do without even asking, what importance would the insistence of being "a deciding subject" make? "You" do what you do, right? This is about perspectives only, we are talking reasons. Reasons may seem compelling or void - who should judge that? Is it enough that someone felt compelled to do something to make the reason sufficient? Is there a higher-than-individual (divine) reason that could judge? We are far away from any "knowing" if we even can argue about such things. — Heiko

As with many questions, the answers depend on details not given. If I decide to do x, physical changes will result before I actually do x. It is theoretically possible to detect these, and predict that I will do x, but that does not imply that there was no prior intentional operation.

We each have to decide what reasons we find compelling in light of our experience and background knowledge.

Different reasons may be sufficient to different acts. A feeling of compulsion my be sufficient for some.

We can show, rationally, that there is a God who is the source of intentionality. I do not pretend to know if God makes moral judgements as we think of them. It seems more likely to me that any rewards and punishments are built into the structure of reality.

I used the words "we are free to choose either L1 or L2." You used the words "L1 and L2 are equally in our power." Your words and mine mean exactly the same. — Herg

No, they mean something quite different. I can choose a Maserati over a Fiat, but that does not mean it is in my power to buy a Maserati. Choosing is selecting an intentional state, but if we cannot effect that intentionality, if what we choose is not in our power, then it cannot result in the corresponding new line of action.

Considering this from a different perspective, an epiphenomenalist or a physical determinist might be willing to grant that I can make a number of choices as long as they remain purely intentional, as he or she might hold that only one line of physical action is possible.

So in my (b) I could have written "it seems to us that L1 and L2 are equally in our power", and that would have meant the same as what I actually wrote (and would also be true). — Herg

The relevant point is not what seems to be true, but your unargued claim that it only seems to be true. A great many things that seem to be true are also known to be true.

So, the question is: how do we know what is possible? There are two ways. First, whatever actually happens must be possible, or it could not happen. The second way is knowledge by analogy, which is how science makes its predictions. For example, in previous cases, mixing vinegar and baking soda has produced carbon dioxide. Even though the present case differs slightly from previous cases, I know, by analogy that, if I have vinegar and baking soda I have the potential to produce carbon dioxide. I know this for a fact, whether or not I actually mix them to produce carbon dioxide.

So, you can choose to say that we only "seem" to have potentials that are not actualized, but in doing so, you reject the structure of science, and specifically, its ability to make reliable predictions.

What feature(s) of your past experience do you believe give you this knowledge? I don't believe there are any such features. — Herg

The fact that I have gone to the store and stayed at home previously, and have not suffered any relevant disability since.

You are not entitled to describe your state of mind as "awareness of alternatives being equally in my power" until it is established that these alternatives actually are equally in your power; and since this is precisely the issue between us, you are begging the question. — Herg

But, that has been established by previous analogous cases. There is no question begging, as I have shown how we know unrealized potentials, and that schema applies here. The ball is in your court to show why it applies to mixing vinegar and baking soda, but not to going to the store.

This is almost certainly not true of our universe. Nature is probabilistic rather than deterministic at the quantum level, and quantum superposition means that there is usually more than one line of action leading from the present state. — Herg

This is a common misunderstanding among non-physicists. Actually, quantum theory says that all unobserved physical processes are fully deterministic. Unpredictability enters only when quantum systems are observed.

Superposition does not mean that there are many states present but that the one state present is can be analyzed into a sum of mathematically independent function. Further, superposition only applies when the dynamics is linear to a good approximation. As electron-electron interactions bind bulk matter and are intrinsically nonlinear, the concept of superposition breaks down for bulk matter.

Since, as I have just stated, our universe is almost certainly not deterministic, and there are multiple lines of action in purely physical systems, humans having multiple lines of action does not imply that humans are not purely physical systems. — Herg

As I explained, this is based on a misunderstanding of physics. Since there were no quantum observations before the advent of intelligent observers, and even now they are quite rare, no matter what interpretation of quantum measurement you subscribe to, the physical universe is almost completely deterministic.

Further, whether or not you believe in collapse on awareness (I do not), measurement, as the one possible exception to determinism, involves intelligent observers. This undermines your argument, as the possible indeterminism you cite only occurs when intelligent observers become involved.

Finally, if you believe that the universe is not deterministic, how can you object to the reality of incompatible possibilities?

But even if the universe is deterministic, and purely physical systems only have one line of action leading from the present state, while humans see multiple lines of action before them, you still have not shown that we are free to choose between those multiple lines of action. — Herg

We are free if we are not constrained. We are constrained when we want to do A, but are prevented. This happens many times, so we know how to recognize constraints when we see them. For example, yesterday I wanted to go 70mph or more on the I-15, but traffic constrained me from going more than 0-20 mph. When I decide whether or not to go to the store, I experience no such constraint. So, I am free to choose either.

Your premise 1 begs the question by describing our state of mind as "we are aware that...", as I have already noted. — Herg

I do not understand what you're claiming. We have to begin any sound line of reasoning with experiential facts -- things we are aware of. I have explained how we know what is possible. So, what, exactly is your objection?

The sense of "in my power" that you use here will not deliver what you need to establish free will. What you mean here is that there are facts about the physical world - such as the gravitational attraction between your body and the earth, and the lack of any surface between the earth and moon on which you could walk - that prevent you walking to the moon, but that do not prevent you walking to the store. That sense of "in my power" is all about the limitations physical laws place upon a body like yours; it has nothing at all to do with free will. — Herg

It has much to do with free will, but not everything. Mechanistic determinists claim that the laws of nature preclude free will. You have pointed out some of the things the laws of nature prevent, and going to the store is not among them. Let's suppose that the laws of physical nature prevented me, at some micro-level, from going to the store. That would not prevent me from forming and committing to the intention to go to the store. Then I could commit to going to the store, only to find that I was physically unable to do so, as I was physically unable to go over 20 mph on the I-15 yesterday.

Of course, there are other kinds of determinism. For example, motivational determinists claim that we are determined to do whatever will be the most emotionally rewarding, or some variation on that. As you claim that the physical world is not determined, I am not sure what kind of constraint you think prevents us from being free.

Second, being in my power is a real state, with well-defined truth conditions.

The truth conditions are that you should be free to choose between alternatives; but you are not entitled to say that this is a real state unless we have established that those truth conditions obtain, and since this is precisely the issue between us, you are once again begging the question. — Herg

I have explained how we know unrealized possibilities. I await your response.

Staying home ceases to be in my power once I am on my way to the store.

Of course. But you cannot validly infer from this that staying home was in your power before you set off to the store. — Herg

No, but it shows that there are well-defined truth conditions for being able to do something that we do not do.

If we chose L1 instead of L2, then the only way we could have grounds for thinking that we had the power to choose L2 would be to have actually chosen L2, and of course that was prevented by our choosing L1. — Herg

Then, if we do not pour the vinegar on the backing soda, the possibility of producing carbon dioxide never existed? Where does this leave chemistry?

The first is that we do not need it to explain anything that happens in the world; and the second is that the notion of free will is incoherent, because it requires there to be a third possibility between determinism and indeterminism (which is mere randomness), and there is no such third possibility. — Herg

Free will is necessary to explain the reality of moral responsibility -- which happens in the world. People know that they are responsible for actions they freely choose, and are not responsible for actions when they had no choice. This knowledge has physical consequences -- which also happen in the world.

Your second argument is fallacious. Determinism means that choices are fully immanent in the state of the world before the agent exists. For there to be no middle ground, the Principle of Excluded Middle requires indeterminism to be the strict contradiction of determinism: that choices are not fully immanent in the state of the world before the agent exists. That differs from "mere randomness," which is mindless, for it does not consider the determining operation of the agent's mind.

So, there is a middle ground between fully determined and mindlessly random, viz. the result of mindful action on the part of a free agent.

I think this makes it clear that Dfpolis is making the categorical claim, not the hypothetical claim. — Herg

Exactly right.

I'm not sure I can not follow you. Are you sure you answered the question? — Heiko

No, I'm not sure I answered your question, "You are different from the physical object observed, so... why should anyone assume you got something to do with it?" The reason is that "something to do with it" is rather vague. As I was talking about knowing, I assumed that you were as well. If you had something else in mind, please explain what.

Your "intelligibility" for example either is something I could not care about less or something that science would only be concerned about as far as you pose as an object. Not even Kant would have made the mistake to call his deductions as describing a thing in itself. — Heiko

None of this rebuts what I said. Whether or not you or science care about intelligibility is irrelevant to the truth of my claim. The same applies to what Kant may or may not have done. If you have a factual objection, please give it.

I stick with the phenomenological account that you put forth the identity of subject and object on the one hand while implying a sharp distinction on the other. — Heiko

The partial identity of subject and object in the act of knowing is an ontological fact. Distinction belongs to the logical order. Ideas of the identical reality can be distinct if they consider that reality from different perspectives. A change of perspective does not entail a change in what is perceived.

Of course! This is a tautology. It's like saying, "As long as I continue to will my goal, I continue to will my goal." So what is will? — Noah Te Stroete

It is not a tautology as the intention is mental and the working is often physical, so they are not identical.

Will is a power, not a thing. Humans are ostensible unities, one aspect of which is the power to chose and commit. It is that power that we call "will."

So the will is uncaused. How did you refute Strawson again? I'm genuinely confused here. Could you clarify how the will is not accidentally necessarily and sufficiently caused? — Noah Te Stroete

The will is not determined by accidental causality, which is probably what you mean by "causality." It is, however, caused -- by whatever actualizes its potential to continue in operation, which leads ultimately to an uncaused concurrent cause some call "God." Just as the builder being sufficient to build this house does not mean that he or she is insufficient to build other houses, so the fact that my will is sufficient to instantiate this line of action does not mean that it is insufficient to instantiate other lines of action. So, the principle of sufficient causality is not violated. All that is "violated" is the idea that accidental causes involve necessity -- which was never true to begin with (as Hume showed).

Could you clarify how the will is not accidentally necessarily and sufficiently caused? — Noah Te Stroete

I just discussed this. As Hume showed, accidental causality is not intrinsically necessary. It derives whatever necessity it has from the essential or concurrent causality of the laws of nature. When we integrate their concurrent operation over time, we find initial states are transformed into determinate final states. This requires that the guiding intentionality (the laws of nature) remain constant over the course of the integration. In the case of humans (excluded from physics by the fundamental abstraction), intentionality changes over time in an unpredictable way, and so the required integration cannot be carried out. Thus, we are not subject to determination by accidental causality.

Because you felt compelled to put me in my place. — Noah Te Stroete

I see no reason to put anyone "in their place." We are discussing what is, and hopefully we will each teach the other something new. I am quite sure you know things I do not.

I'm saying it's necessary AND sufficient. Not just sufficient. Where am I going wrong? I'm confused. — Noah Te Stroete

It is necessary that every phenomenon have a sufficient cause. It is not necessary that every cause operate to a predetermined end. Houses necessarily have builders, but builders are not predetermined to build particular houses. Their sufficiency as causes does not necessitate a specific effect.

If I had a frontal lobotomy (which I'm considering after this exchange), then I couldn't speak coherently no matter how much I willed it. So, is not the will dependent on the physical-natural brain which operates according to necessary AND sufficient causes? — Noah Te Stroete

Of course the mind has interdependent data processing and intentional subsystems. If the data processing subsystem is compromised, the data we are aware of may be defective, we may lack the means of effecting our intentions,

You are different from the physical object observed, so... why should anyone assume you got something to do with it? — Heiko

Because:
1. The intelligibility of the object and the capacity of the subject to be informed are both actualized by the identical act, viz. the subject's awareness of the object, and
2. The object informing the subject is identically the subject being informed by the object.

So the point to consider here is that the activity of a physical system cannot be explained through reference to its "present state". That would be to make the same category mistake. To explain the activity of a physical system requires reference to the temporal extension of that system, and this means something beyond the "present state". — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. Intentionality is revealed by time-development -- whether that intentionality be human or merely physical.

But what is your evidence that it isn't pre-determined? How do you reconcile free will with everything that we know about the natural world? — Noah Te Stroete

I provided a positive case for my position. I am prepared to rebut any counter argument. (I have reviewed all that I could find.) That is the best I can do.

I dispute your claim that free will is in any way incompatible "with everything that we know about the natural world." Surely humans are part of nature and our our experiences of ourselves as agents are as natural as our experiences of physical objects. What it is incompatible with is physical determinism.

I have argued previously that although all knowing is a subject-object relation, natural science begins with a fundamental abstraction that focuses on physical objects to the exclusion of the knowing subject. Consequently, the natural sciences are bereft of data on subjective agents, and has, therefore, no means of connecting what it has learned of the physical world with the intentional operations of subject-agents. That means that any attempt to apply purely physical concepts to such agency is an instance of Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplace Concreteness (applying abstractions to situations in which the abstracted context is relevant).

All natural phenomena have sufficient and necessary causes.
Choices are natural phenomena.
Choices have sufficient and necessary causes. — Noah Te Stroete

Agreed. Still, while it is necessary that every effect have an adequate cause, it is not necessary that the cause that informs the effect be predetermined to a particular effect. The problem with this sort of argument is that modern philosophy has forgotten the distinction between accidental and essential causes.

Accidental causes (which are all most moderns think about) are the time-sequence by rule that occupied the minds of Hume and Kant. They connect two temporally disjoint events, and as the separation allows for intervention, this kind of causality is not necessary -- a point famously made by Hume, but also known to Aristotle, ibn Sina and Aquinas. That is why time-sequenced causality is called "accidental." Since accidental causality is not necessary, it cannot justify determinism.

Essential or concurrent causality is quite different. Aristotle's paradigm case is the builder building the house. The builder building the house is identically the house being built by the builder. Because of this identity and the fact that only a single event is involved, essential causality has an intrinsic necessity that accidental causality lacks. Every happening is a doing, and every doing is a happening. For example, the law of conservation of mass-energy conserving this system's mass-energy is identically this system's mass-energy being conserved by the law of conservation of mass-energy. If the law were not operative here and now, mass-energy would not be conserved here and now -- and vice versa.

Human will acts concurrently. As long as I continue to will my goal, I continue to work toward that goal. Thus, a free will can be the necessary sufficient cause you argue for if it is sufficient to commit to the line of action (say L1) that it in fact commits to. That it is sufficient to commit to L1 does not preclude it from also being sufficient to commit to L2, which it did not commit to.

Approaching the choice, we are aware that incompatible lines of action, L1, L2, ..., are equally in our power. — Dfpolis

Are we aware of this? I don't know that this is true. — Noah Te Stroete

Even though I choose to stay home, I am aware that I have the power to walk to the store while I do not have the power to walk to the moon. How could you not know this?

If you really have free will, then refrain from posting further. — Noah Te Stroete

How would following your dictate prove anything?

hypotheses of the sort you are advancing are unfalsifiable, and so unscientific. — Dfpolis

Proponents of free will think that this is false, and that new lines of action have their radical origin in human agents. — Dfpolis

And this isn't unfalsifiable? — Noah Te Stroete

Falsifiability is a criterion applicable only to the hypothetico-deductive or scientific method. One cannot apply that method to a hypothesis that is unfalsifiable. It does not apply to either experiential observation or to deduction, which are reliable or not on their own grounds. You presented what, on its face, appears to be a scientific hypothesis. I presented a deductive, experienced-based argument for my position. If you have and experiential/deductive argument for determinism, please advance it.

I justify it by the fact that the limbic system has been shown by neuroscience to be the driver of our frontal lobe's decision making process. — Noah Te Stroete

Really? I've studied the question of brain modelling, and discuss in the last chapter of my book. Given our present state of knowledge, such modeling is an impossible task. Our brain has approximately 100,000,000,000 neurons with perhaps 100 times that many connections, and we have 10 times that many glia. We have little idea of how glial cells contribute to data processing, but we know that they do. Depending on how you count, there are 30-100 neurotransmitters, and the function of the majority is unknown.

We know that neurons respond nonlinearly to excitatory and inhibiting inputs, and that their response depends on their long and short term history. Chaos theory tells us that any minor change in the assumed inputs of a nonlinear system can result in completely different outputs. I show in the first chapter of my book that any attempt to determine our actual brain state (needed for input by any predictive brain model) would both fry our brain and require a data processing time much greater than the age of the universe.

We do know that the limbic system (composed mainly of the amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus, hypothalamus, basal ganglia, and cingulate gyrus) is involved in memory, emotion and arousal or stimulation. We do not know, and, in light of the aforementioned data acquisition and modeling difficulties, cannot know, that its outputs determine our brain's neuromotor outputs. Thus, hypotheses of the sort you are advancing are unfalsifiable, and so unscientific.

So, I ask again, why do you think that the limbic system determines, as opposed to influencing, our decisions?

What we choose is what we really want most of all, so is there really a choice?
— Noah Te Stroete

This is merely a tautology. The question is, is what we want most predetermined? If it is not, but it is ultimately we who give weigh our incommensurate needs and desires, then we are free. As different people assign different weights to different motives, it is clear that the assignment of weights depends on the agent. — Dfpolis

It is not a tautology because you seem to be claiming that we could've chosen something that we didn't want most of all. — Noah Te Stroete

I made no such claim. Let's think about this. How do we know what a person most wants? By observing what they choose. This is true whether or not that choice is predetermined. So, it is a tautology to say that "What we choose is what we really want most of all." Of course we do.

Volitional determinists believe that all human acts are fully immanent in the state of the universe prior to the existence of the human agent. Proponents of free will think that this is false, and that new lines of action have their radical origin in human agents. That is the question that needs to be discussed with regard to the existence of free will, and it is a question that cannot be evaded by compatibilist redefinitions of "free will."

It is predetermined by the limbic system which drives the frontal lobe (the "thinking" or "weighing" part which I said is just like "going through a mental exercise"). — Noah Te Stroete

This makes no evolutionary sense. Why waste time and energy on a process that is merely for show? Who is nature trying to fool and why?

Only why would I bother to read what you have to say, whether in a book or in a forum post, given that you don't know what you are talking about? — SophistiCat

Because if you read what I write, you can decide if I know what I am talking about. You certainly can't rationally decide a priori. I do not need to know everything Galen Strawson and his father ever wrote to know his argument is fallacious.

2. To have free will means that we have incompatible lines of action equally in our power. — Dfpolis

I could just deny your second premise. — Noah Te Stroete

You could, but as it is a definition, that would buy you little. It would merely mean that we use words in different ways.

I believe we are compelled to make the choices we make, and the availability of choices is just a mental exercise. — Noah Te Stroete

You can believe what you will. The question is how do you justify such a belief? I have offered a justification for my position, and all you have objected to is how I use the term "free will."

What we choose is what we really want most of all, so is there really a choice? — Noah Te Stroete

This is merely a tautology. The question is, is what we want most predetermined? If it is not, but it is ultimately we who give weigh our incommensurate needs and desires, then we are free. As different people assign different weights to different motives, it is clear that the assignment of weights depends on the agent.

The key here is incommensurability. As each desire is satisfied by different desiderata, there is no predetermined, automatic trade off between different motives. In other words there is no single utility, measure of happiness, or of libido, to be maximized. It is the agent who gives more or less weight to charity, honesty, prestige, power, various physical desires, etc. -- thus valuing one option above another.

So the argument really is not if an individual act is determined, but if the entire series of acts is determined, which than leads to logical question what or who determined the first act in this series — Rank Amateur

I think it is both the individual act and the series that is in question. So, you raise an interesting point.

he seems to be conflating what's supposed to be an argument against freedom with comments that are primarily focused on whether we can be considered culpable for our actions. Those are two different ideas. — Terrapin Station

Yes, he does seem to be conflating a number of ideas, making his use of "responsible" even more equivocal than I said.

Is he even talking about making choices per se? That wasn't clear to me, which is why I said that "it's not clear what sort of free will he's even talking about." I got the impression that maybe he was referring to free will in more of a murky Dennettian sense, but I wasn't sure. (Dennett is a compatibilist. In my opinion, compatibilism can't be made coherent.) — Terrapin Station

His argument might work vs. Dennett's position, but I think Dennett is fooling himself in thinking that deterministic avoidance can warrant personal responsibility. Strawson's argument surely does not work vs. the capacity to choose one of a number of equally possible options.

This isn't true. All that experience tells us is that:
a) approaching a choice, we are aware of more than one new line of action (let's call these lines L1 and L2)
(b) it seems to us that we are free to choose either L1 or L2
(c) after we have chosen (say) L1, it seems to us that we could have chosen L2 instead. — Herg

I experience tells us more than this. It additionally tells us, in many cases, that L1 and L2 are equally in our power. It is equally in my power, for example, to go to the store to buy an ingredient for dinner or to stay home a while longer to discuss philosophy. I know both are equally in my power on the basis of my past experience. This awareness of alternatives being equally in my power, and not "I could have chosen otherwise," is what I mean by free will. Of course, the fact that the alternatives were equally in my power means that I could have chosen otherwise, but that is derivative, and not the critical act of awareness.

There is a further experiential point worthy of reflection. Purely physical systems (as opposed to physical systems with intellect and will) have only one immanent line of action -- that determined by its present state and the laws of nature. Intentional systems, such as humans, are essentially different in that we can have multiple lines of actions immanent before we commit to one. The difference in the number of immanent lines of action is critical, for it means that we differ from purely physical systems. So any analogy to their deterministic nature fails.

If we lay this out as a logical argument intended to prove that we could in fact have chosen another line of action, it fails:
Premise 1: Approaching the choice, we are aware of L1 and L2.
Premise 2: Approaching the choice, it seems to us that are free to choose between L1 and L2.
Premise 3: After choosing L1, it seems to us that we could have chosen L2 instead.
Conclusion: Therefore the choice between L1 and L2 was not pre-determined, and we could have chosen L2.

Clearly the conclusion does not follow from the premisses. — Herg

Agreed. The argument is unsound, so that is not an argument I would use. My argument is:

1. Approaching the choice, we are aware that incompatible lines of action, L1, L2, ..., are equally in our power.
2. To have free will means that we have incompatible lines of action equally in our power.
3. Therefore, we have free will.

You could deny premise 1, but only dogmatically. First, I know what is and what is not in my power from my experience as a human in the world. It is in my power to walk to the store it is not in my power to walk to the moon. Second, being in my power is a real state, with well-defined truth conditions. Staying home ceases to be in my power once I am on my way to the store.

Instead of relying on someone's summary of a Youtube video, you should read some of Strawson's papers, such as The impossibility of moral responsibility (1994) — SophistiCat

The video is Strawson presenting his own argument, not a third party summary. Before I posted, I did a brief search for text in which Strawson presented the same argument, but did not find it.

Were I to take up the task of writing a book on free will again, I would read opposing views extensively, as I did for my book on naturalism. Until I do take up that task, Strawson is not likely to be on my reading list.

It seems to me that "perception" itself entails using symbolism to symbolize other things, including other symbols. The symbols are just as real as what they symbolize. Why would it matter if you get at the symbols or the real thing? Isn't the information what you need to get at - what those symbols symbolize (red apples mean ripe apples, black apples mean rotten apples)? Isn't it the information that is real and useful? — Harry Hindu

I think this is close to the mark, except that ideas are not like other symbols. In the case of words and physical signs we first have to grasp the form of the symbolic object before we can discern its meaning. In the case of ideas, we do not have to grasp that we have an idea and which idea it is before it means its referent. Rather, mental signs (formal signs) signify directly, with no need for us to grasp what they are before they refer.

maybe that means that I kind of agree with you, or at least with this: perception is sometimes direct and sometimes indirect — jamalrob

While I agree with what you say about confusing the forms of perception with the thing perceived, I don't think that the difference between sensation without and with awareness has anything to do with whether or not perception is direct. To deal with the question of directness, we first have to agree on what "direct perception" means. It seems to me to be a matter of degree. If we perceive at all, then the object is acting on us, modifying our neural state. The fact that this involves the mediation of instrumental causes seems no more relevant to the role of the object than the sculptor's use of hammer and chisel to the agency of the artist.

However, when I'm conscious of driving, the content of my perception is a conscious experience, which is mental. I'm no longer directly perceiving the car on the road. Instead, I'm perceiving a world of feels, sounds, colors, smells, and so on. The phenomenal objects of my consciousness are made up these sensations. The road, the car, the wheel, the air and so on are not made up of colors, sounds, smells and so on. They are not phenomenal objects, but rather real, physical ones.

Therefore, I cannot be directly perceiving the real, physical objects when I'm conscious. — Marchesk

This seems confused to me. The qualia of colors, sounds, smells and so on are the forms of conscious perception. The fact that your perception has such forms does not mean that it is not the perception of its object. We have essentially the same the same sensations whether or not we are aware of them. The fact that our awareness of various sensory modalities has correlative forms (qualia) does not change this.

Eventually things are timelessly better, and I agree on that. But I’m just saying that, at the time when the horrors are happening, that’s still pretty bad, isn’t it? And it likely seems like a long time. I’m saying that Benevolence wouldn’t and didn’t make there be that. — Michael Ossipoff

i agree on the pain. As I said, I don't see God as the author of moral evil, but moral agents who can choose evil acts. As for physical evils, yes, it is a problem, but the Gnostic solution does not work.

I have never understood how reincarnation makes sense. How can one be the same person/being

You won’t be the same person in every regard, but you will still be you, because there’s continuity of experience, as I answer about directly below. — Michael Ossipoff

But, I have no continuity of experience with a former life. If I did, I would agree that reincarnation is real.

Among the infinity of hypothetical experience-stories, there’s one whose protagonist and his experience are the same as you and your experience at that time. — Michael Ossipoff

Hypotheticals have no cognitive value beyond being notions to consider and test. If they are confirmed, they have practical value, but no intrinsic certainty. On the other hand, my life, and everyone else's, is an experiential reality.

, when there is no physical or intentional continuity between the old and the new self?

But there is intentional continuity. There’s continuity of experience. And there isn’t a new self.
...
Though you’re unconscious at that time, you still have subconscious perceptions of need, want, inclination, predisposition, future-orientation and Will-to-Life. …like someone who is in (some part of) a life. — Michael Ossipoff

I do not see either innate or learned inclinations, etc., as evidence of a former life. There are much simpler explanations. I can see that they might motivate a faith commitment, but that is not a conclusion.

you can’t claim any proof that it has some kind of absolute, noncontextual, context-independent reality. — Michael Ossipoff

I am happy to agree that reality is contextual. The difference between what I judge to be real and what is merely hypothetical, is that the real acts (directly or indirectly) on me, while that there is no reason to think the merely hypothetical does. That is a manifest difference.

Such a hypothetical story has the requirement of consistency. That requirement is satisfied if the continuation of your experience is consistent with your current experience, including your subconscious feelings. — Michael Ossipoff

No, it is not. There is nothing inconsistent in rejecting previous lives.

If that sounds like something made up, or unsupportedly believed-in, I’ll just say that reincarnation is a natural and expected consequence of my Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism metaphysics. — Michael Ossipoff

How does that help convince others who do not agree with your metaphysics?

If there’s a reason why you’re in a life, and if, at the end of this life, that reason remains, then what does that suggest? It suggests that you’ll again be in a life. — Michael Ossipoff

That I am who I am, is no reason for me to have other lives. Also, there is no separate "me." I am a single, unified being (body and soul). If I survive death, it will not be the whole of me that survives, but only my subjectivity -- my intentional core.

The reason I am who I am is that I was created a unique person, individuated by the network of relationships into which I was conceived. I am the one who relates to my correlative relata -- you are the one who relates to yours.

So, among that infinity of abstract logical systems, one of those, with suitable renaming of its things, has a description that is the same as a description of the experience of someone who is just like you — Michael Ossipoff

Yes, and I know that one is real because I experience it. The overwhelming majority of the others are completely unparsimonious and irrelevant. Why create this vast structure, when experiential reality is ever so much more compact and relevant?

I claim that, among the things of the describable realm, there’s no such thing as absolute-existence. — Michael Ossipoff

You may claim whatever you like, but the rest of us need evidence and analysis.

That person/story-protagonist, and that person’s “Will-to-Life” is a necessary complementary part of that hypothetical life-experience-story. — Michael Ossipoff

Think about this. Our “Will-to-Life” cannot be the reason we are alive because, absent life, we can't will anything. Also, as evidenced by suicide, many people do not have a “Will-to-Life."

Because there are no mutually-inconsistent facts, consistency is the requirement of your experience-story. So, the physical world that is the setting of that life-experience story will of course be one that is consistent with the person that you are. — Michael Ossipoff

I think you have this backward. Consistence is not a requirement, but a consequence of the nature of reality, of being. No putative thing can both be and not be at one and the same time in one and the same way. On the other hand, hypotheticals, as mental constructs, can have implicit inconsistencies. We can imagine living in a world with slightly different physical constants, but, as the physics behind the fine tuning argument shows, such a world would not support our life.

At the end-of-lives (or at the end of this life, if there weren’t reincarnation) of course there’s sleep, — Michael Ossipoff

How do you know? Mystics claim that there is an experiential state of non-empirical awareness that isw not sleep.

What I mean is that each kind of being has its own good

But there’s temporary unnecessary experience of suffering. — Michael Ossipoff

Pain is not evil in itself. It is a warning that something is wrong and a motivation to take corrective action, and so good in itself.

just as there logically can’t be a true-and-false proposition, so there logically couldn’t not be the abstract facts that comprise our hypothetical life-experience-stories. — Michael Ossipoff

I have no idea what this means.

“unloving” is an understatement for the worst people — Michael Ossipoff

I agree, the term is not forceful enough.

It’s more meaningful, definable and philosophically-supportable, to speak of us as purposefully-responsive devices. — Michael Ossipoff

Doing so ignores our experience of being subjects,which is how we know we are conscious.

I emphasize that I don’t claim any existence for them. As I said:
.
I’m talking about inevitable timeless logical relations and inter-reference among timeless abstract facts about propositions about hypothetical things. — Michael Ossipoff

But, there are no relations except existential relations.

The physical laws, and the things that they describe, are figments of logic, and, as such, need no explanation. — Michael Ossipoff

Not quite. The laws of physics are not fictions, but describe an aspect of reality. They are approximate descriptions of laws observed to be operative in nature, and so quite real. It is continued operation of the laws of/in nature that requires an explanation.

I suggest that God didn’t create us, didn’t and doesn’t make there be the inevitable apparent worldly-lives, but, rather, made there be overall good, with the apparent worldly lives as good as possible under their inevitable circumstances. — Michael Ossipoff

Sound reasoning requires that God sustain the continuing existence of all finite being. This is the classical creatio contunuo. So, your solution does not work.

We use observed data to determine “physical” facts within the logical/mathematical relational structure of our experience-stories.
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That doesn’t mean that the whole experience-story is other than a hypothetical story, consisting of the relational-structure among a hypothetical complex system of inter-referring abstract-implications about propositions about hypothetical things. — Michael Ossipoff

Of course it means exactly that it is more than hypothetical. Once we observe a reality, it ceases to be merely hypothetical.

You might be interested in The Idea of the Holy by Rudolf Otto. He discusses the kind of feelings I think you have in mind.

Well, the point is that "form" in the sense of what is in the knowing subject is "form' in the sense of essence, and "form" in the sense of what is in the material object is a different meaning, of "form", including accidentals. Therefore your claim that the form of the object is the form in the knowing subject is nothing but equivocation. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have explained in detail why it is not an equivocation. Repeating your claims does not help. You need to show why the arguments I have made are unsound.

But the form in the mind of the artist is not the same form as the form in the work. — Metaphysician Undercover

Only to the extent that the work is poorly executed. To the extent that the work is well-done, it embodies the very form in the mind of its maker.

It is not the case that the artist takes the form out of the mind and puts it into the matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

But, it is, except it need not leave the mind of the artist in being embodied in the work.

The artist does not take the material and inform it with the form in the mind, the artist takes the material and changes the form which it has, to correspond with what's in the mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

And the difference is? In any change, the matter is informed with the new form.

See here is evidence of that very mistake. The artist cannot give the stone whatever form is desired, being limited by the form which the stone already has. — Metaphysician Undercover

You're right, but you're taking my claim out of context, The context was that the matter is proportionate and suitable to the desired form. Obviously, you can't make the Eiffel Tower out of a hair pin. However, given that amount of metal Eiffel could have made many other things.

The notes are not numerically one though, that's the point. Each note is different between the object and the mind, one having accidentals, the other not. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, the notes are things that can be predicated of the object, and so accidents, not substances that can have accidents predicated of them.

Each note of intelligibility in the mind is an abstraction, therefore not the same as the intelligibility of the thing abstracted from. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is exactly wrong. As Aristotle observed the mind being inform by the object is identically the object being informing the mind. The notes of comprehension in our mind are our awareness of the notes of intelligibility in the object. What else could they be?

So in relation to your example, the "humanity" in me is not the same as the "humanity" in you because of the differences in accidentals. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is confused. You and I do have different accidents, but they are what is left behind in abstracting our common humanity. Accidents belong to individuals, not to the universals they instantiate.

"Relational" is formal. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, but not the form of one thing in isolation.

This isn't the thread for it, but I think the idea that meaning significantly lives in individual words is still fairly dominant --which contributes to lots of uncharitable interpretation. — macrosoft

Yes. I think we can be more charitable if we try to stand beside our dialogue partner and try to see what he or she is seeing, rather than taking their words on face value. I have to admit that I often fail in this.

In Aristotle though, quiddity is a sense of "form". Aristotle doesn't make the clear distinction between form and essence which you refer to in Aquinas. In Aristotle this is just two senses of "form". — Metaphysician Undercover

We are concerned with reality, not with what may or may not have been anyone's historical position per se. I am only citing these authors to credit them and to define terms.

You ought to recognize that the word "essence" did not exist for Aristotle. — Metaphysician Undercover

‘Essence’ is the standard English translation of Aristotle’s curious phrase to ti ên einai, literally “the what it was to be” for a thing. This phrase so boggled his Roman translators that they coined the word essentia to render the entire phrase, and it is from this Latin word that ours derives. Aristotle also sometimes uses the shorter phrase to ti esti, literally “the what it is,” for approximately the same idea.) In his logical works, Aristotle links the notion of essence to that of definition (horismos)—“a definition is an account (logos) that signifies an essence” (Topics 102a3) — SEP: Aristotle's Metaphysics by S. Marc Cohen

And clearly there are many instances when "form" is used to indicate formula, or essence. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, but this does not advance you case that the form of the object is not also partially in the knowing subject.

I still don't understand how you can say that form informs matter without assuming separate forms. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am sorry that you do not see this. Consider a piece of abstract art. It's form occurred first in the mind of the artist, then in the work. The artist takes material and informs it according to the intended form. In natural bodies, the prior state of the matter is informed by the laws of nature, which play the intentional role. There is no reason in either case to assume a separate form.

Wouldn't the possible forms which the matter chooses from, necessarily have separate existence? Otherwise that matter which is choosing, would already have all these different forms at once, and that's contradictory. — Metaphysician Undercover

Matter is not intelligent and makes no choices. As I just said, the intentional role is played by the laws of nature.

There is no contradiction in having multiple possibilities. The artist can give the stone whatever form is desired. It is only a contradiction if something actually is and actually is not at the same time.

If there were no moon, I would see no image of the moon. So, clearly the moon acts (via mediation) to form its image on my retina. — Dfpolis

Your logic is faulty here. You do not have the required premise to say that if you see something, that thing is necessarily acting. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not arguing a priori, but a posteriori. We know of no instance in which we see an object in which the object does not act on us by scattering light into our eyes. If you have a counterexample please give it.

The moon might be completely passive, with an active medium, and then it would be wrong to say that the moon acts. — Metaphysician Undercover

Whatever might be, a priori, what actually is, is an active moon. I studied electrodynamics. It shows that scattering occurs because incident light oscillates the atomic electrons (of the moon) and they re-radiate light as a result. If the moon's electrons did not act to radiate light, we would not see the moon. So, whatever grammatical form you use, the moon acts in being seen.

The medium is an instrumental, not an efficient or formal, cause. It is absurd to argue that the sculptor does not sculpt because she uses a hammer and chisel to cut the stone.

We describe a thing as "what it is", it's form — Metaphysician Undercover

No. A human being is not an abstract human form, but a material body with human form.

So if you want to define a thing by "its present powers", then to account for its ability to act, which require a specific type of temporal relation, you need to refer to something other than "what it is". — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I don't. As I said, humans are rational animals even when we are not being rational. Our essence is our nature, which defines the kind of things we can do, even if we are not doing them at the moment.

You're begging the question again, with your assumption that objects act, when really they might only be passive, acted on. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I am arguing from the data of experience. Nothing can be purely passive, for if it did not re-act when we act on it, then, however much we exerted ourselves, we would not be acting on it at all.

Right, my assumptions concerning activity are not the same as your assumptions, but I think mine are more realistic. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is not an assumption on my part, but an empirical fact that the moon acts in many ways here on earth. It scatters light into our eyes and it acts on the oceans to produce tides.

This is contrary to the fundamental laws of logic. — Metaphysician Undercover

Specifically?

There are two beings, "the object and the subject". You are claiming that these two distinct beings have one and the same (numerically identical) form. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not the same form in the sense of having all the notes of intelligibility, but the same in the sense that they notes they do share are numerically one. That is the nature of universals. Every instance of a note of intelligibility is an instance of the identical note or it would not be an instance. The instances (tokens) are different, but what they are instances of (their type) is identical. For example, the abstraction <humanity> is one, even though many individuals have humanity.

But the very principle (the law of identity) which allows us to say that two distinct things have different matter, disallows us from saying that they have the same form — Metaphysician Undercover

How? Further, I do not see that the law of identity ("What ever is, is") enters into differentiating individuals.

It is only by the fact that they have different forms, that we can say that they have different matter. Matter is only distinguishable as this or that particular matter by its form, so you cannot say that the subject and object have different matter without respecting that they have different forms. So the subject and object can in no way share have same form. — Metaphysician Undercover

I can't agree with a word of this analysis. We can have two quite indistinguishable objects and still know that they are two, not one, in light of their relation to each other and to us. One is on the right, the other on the left. One is closer, the other further.

Of course they would not be objects if they had no form. That is why they are countable, but the reason they aren't one is relational.

No note is a perfect, ideal, or absolute understanding. — Metaphysician Undercover

No human understanding of being is "perfect, ideal, or absolute" because we apprehend some notes and not others. Still, the notes we do grasp are notes in the object.

In Aristotle's philosophy "form" refers to "what a thing is". There are two distinct senses of "form". One is the essence of a thing, how we know a thing, and this is without the accidents which we do not observe. The other is the form of the thing in itself, the complete "what a thing is", including all aspect which are missed by us. In his physics, a thing consists of two aspects, the matter and the form. This form is complete with accidents. — Metaphysician Undercover

As I argue in my hyle paper, in Aristotle "form" refers to what a thing is now, while hyle refers to its tendency to be something else. Classically, "what a thing is" (its quidity) is not its form, but its essence. Essences are the foundation in reality for essential definitions. In De ente et essentia Aquinas explains that form and essence are different. As it would be an error to leave out a body's materiality in defining it, the essence of a material thing includes both its form and matter.

"Form" can mean mean either a thing's entire present reality, which includes all of its accidents, or it can mean "substantial form" which is what it has in common with other instances of its species, and which excludes variable accidents.

"Accident" also means two things: (1) An aspect that is not essential, and so can vary both between individuals of the same species, and in the same individual over time. (2) What can be predicated of a substance (of a ostensible unity). As we cannot truly predicate anything of a being that is not an aspect of it, accidents in this second sense can be either essential or accidental in sense (1).

It is certainly true that we do not know all that a thing is. Still, the object as known is not what Aristotle means by "form."

I don't know what you mean by forms are "what informs matter". This is not Aristotelian, but more like Neo-Platonist, perhaps. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is nothing Neoplatonic in saying that form informs matter, unless you mean that forms exist without matter -- which I do not. Matter can be many things, but at any point in time it has one determinate form, which can be said to "inform it." Just as information is the reduction of possibility, so informing matter selects out of its possibilities the one it actually has. It does not mean that the form exists prior to matter being informed.

As to what informs matter, it is a determinate intentionality rather than a Platonic form. That is the role of final causality.

I do not believe that the moon is acting on your retina when you see the moon. — Metaphysician Undercover

If there were no moon, I would see no image of the moon. So, clearly the moon acts (via mediation) to form its image on my retina. In the same way, if I knock over a row of dominoes, I knock over every domino in the row, even though I only push the first.

"Form" refers to actuality, what is actual, not "capabilities", what is potential. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are confusing two kinds of potential here: the proximate potencies inherent in being the kind of thing a being is (which is its form), and the remote potential to stop being what it is, and become something else (which is its matter). The form of a thing is what it is now, defined by its present powers -- a living person, not a dead body; or an acorn, not an oak tree. What something is now is defined by all the things it can do now, even though it is not doing them. Thus, human beings are rational animals even when they are acting irrationally.

But the issue is the "form" that the moon has independently of the sphere we draw, and what exists within us. These two are really reducible to the same. The sphere we draw, is really within us. For Aristotle the object has a form which makes it the object which it is, independently of how we perceive it, and the sphere we draw. — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course objects exist (or not) independently of how we think of them. My point about the sphere was that thinking of the moon only as that within the sphere does not mean that the moon is only within the sphere. It has a radiance of action that extends to everything it influences. The moon as an object with a tidy boundary is an abstraction. The real moon is that, and every effect it has. We can see this because if we remove the effects, say the tides, then we are no longer thinking of the moon as it is, but an abstraction that does not act like the real moon. Removing any effect diminishes the reality of the moon.

But whether or not that light is received into the eye of an observer on earth, has no effect on the moon. So simple observation, in itself, does not affect the object. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is because your idea of the moon is a circumscribed abstraction, not the real being with its web of interactions.

The ambiguity of P1 is created by you, not me. I clearly mean numerical identity. You introduce ambiguity, suggesting a different meaning of "very same", in order to dismiss the argument by equivocation. The equivocation is yours, not mine, created with the intent to reject the argument. — Metaphysician Undercover

But, I affirmed the sense of numerical Identity, which is what you intended.

Your objection to p2, I cannot even understand because you are talking about informing this and that, which as I explained above, I don't understand this usage. We are talking about the form of the object, what the object is, not "informing the object" whatever you mean by that. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a question about how to count. I count one form, you count two forms. Let me explain why there is one, not two forms. Clearly, there are two informed beings: the object and the subject. Does that mean that there are two forms? No! Why? Because the basis of the twoness is the different matter of the subject and the object. But, we are not talking about the informed matter of the object, or the informed matter in my brain, but about the form in abstraction from matter.

Because the form is specifically immaterial, we cannot use different matter or places to multiply its count. We have to count based on properties intrinsic to the form the form(s) we are counting. What are these properties? Notes of intelligibility or of comprehension. So, the only basis for saying one form is not another is if they have different notes of comprehension. In the same way, the only basis for saying one note of comprehension is not another is if they have different information.

I've said that the form in the subject does not exhaust the form in the object. So, they differ in light of having different notes of intelligibility/comprehension. Still, as the notes of comprehension we do have are identical with notes in the object, they (the notes we have) are one with those of the object.

Here is a good example of a non sequitur argument. Your conclusion here "only one individual is needed to abstract a universal concept", does not support your claim "abstractions are not generalizations". — Metaphysician Undercover

I seem to have erred in interpreting what you were saying. I apologize. I was thinking of the Hume-Mill model of induction, in which generalization is the result of repeated experience, not abstraction. That is not what you were saying.

The problem is that the generalization based on only one instance of occurrence is much more likely to be faulty, though it still is a generalization — Metaphysician Undercover

This confuses generalization on the Hume-Mill model, in which we constructively add the hypothesis that future cases will be like past cases with abstraction in which we add nothing, but subtract notes of comprehension that are individuating.

What accounts for the universality of concepts is the objective capacity (intelligibility) of many individuals to elicit the same concept. — Dfpolis

Huh? What is "objective capacity' supposed to mean? — Metaphysician Undercover

It means that each instance has the objective notes of intelligibility required to elicit the concept.

Thank you for your appreciative comment on behalf of myself and my dialogue partners. If you have questions, you should feel free to ask them. It is not necessary that you take a "position" to be part of the conversation.