It seems to me the issue for ethics isn’t freedom vs determinism, but what kind of freedom and what kind of determinism. — Joshs
Why am I morally responsible for X if I couldn't have done otherwise? — Hanover
Let’s take , for instance , the neurobiologist Robert Sapolski’s determinatist account. His target is traditional views of free will , and his claim is that they justify a harsh, retributive justice because the free-willing individual is radically arbitrary with respect to an ordered system of natural forces. — Joshs
Man has free-will: otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain. — Aquinas, ST I.83.1
The agent's act had to be caused by something else, either deterministic or random. It couldn't have been caused by the agent himself." — Leontiskos
If every event has a cause, then the agent cannot be the originating cause because the concept of an originating cause makes no sense because that would be a event without a cause and we already said every event has a cause. — Hanover
But, if we are going to go with uncaused causes, then we're talking about neither determinism or indeterminism, but spontaneity, which means things just zap in and out of existence. If you ask me why I killed my neighbor, if my answer is that I did it because the spontaneity switch flipped, I don't see that I should be held responsible for that. — Hanover
I don't see it as rational to simply define agent causation out of existence. "Everything is either random or determined, therefore agent causation (and free will) do not exist." But why accept that everything is either random or determined? That premise seems clearly false. A basic datum of our experience is free agents who are the cause of their own acts (i.e. self-movers). An agent's free act is not uncaused; it is caused precisely by the agent. — Leontiskos
And that brings up another issue. If I am a godlike creature with this ability to create as we might imagine God could, why should I be held responsible for my actions, considering I was just sort of given my godlike state by something else I didn't have control over? — Hanover
The point being that there is no solution to the free will problem other than to just accept it as a necessary condition for comprehension of the world. — Hanover
There is no solution. — Hanover
Sapolski seems to agree with Hanover that <I am morally responsible iff I could have done otherwise>; it's just that whereas someone like Aquinas would use moral responsibility to affirm libertarian free will,* Sapolski would apparently deny libertarian free will in order that he might deny moral responsibility (because moral responsibility and the justification of retributive punishment go hand in hand).
*
Man has free-will: otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain. — Leontiskos
Needless to say, an agent is not an event. — Leontiskos
The proximate question here is whether everything must be either random or determined. Other questions come later, such as how morality works, or whether an infinite regress of event-causes makes any sense. — Leontiskos
What does it mean to say that there is no solution? What is "the problem" to which there is no solution? — Leontiskos
But, like I said, I accept there is free will, but I take it as a given, without which nothing makes sense, not even the ability to reason and decide what to believe. I'm just willing to admit that the concept of free will in logically incoherent upon deep analysis. — Hanover
You seem to be talking about spontaneous events now. — Hanover
Why am I responsible for things that just happen without causes? — Hanover
What causes him to create an event? — Hanover
If everything is determined, then the question of what determines each prior event is the central question in the free will debate. — Hanover
The problem is how we define free will in a way that allows for us to be considered responsible for our actions. — Hanover
If our actions are caused by prior events and those events are pre-determined, probabilistically determined, randomly determined, or are spontaneously determined, none of those actions were within our control. — Hanover
Self-determined is a meaningless concept. — Hanover
This is like asking what caused the Big Bang to suddenly bang and then asking what came before it to make it bang. Except in the free will discussion, you seem to be positing a sudden Big Bang every time a decision is made and then attributing that bang to the banger and still being unable to answer the question of what came before the Bang. — Hanover
This just strikes me as a God question which is obviously unanswerable, as in where did God come from, and what was there before he was there, and how did he make something out of nothing? — Hanover
But, like I said, I accept there is free will, but I take it as a given, without which nothing makes sense, not even the ability to reason and decide what to believe. I'm just willing to admit that the concept of free will in logically incoherent upon deep analysis. — Hanover
But does anything make sense under "deep analysis"? It seems to me that when any totalizing paradigm is pushed too far one falls into nonsense. So when one falls into Scientism they tend to deny (libertarian) free will, and when ancient peoples favored an anthropocentric agent causation they tended to attribute this sort of causation to everything. Maybe we can have both, where neither needs to dominate the other. Maybe there is a middle ground between materialism and idealism. — Leontiskos
So the formal cause of a deliberate choice is rationality and rational motives. Why does an engineer build a bridge one way and not another? Because he (freely) reasons that this is the best way to build a bridge in such-and-such a circumstance. But there are a thousand different ways to build a bridge, and he might have built it differently. He is doubtless aware of all sorts of different ways that he could have built it. The final blueprint (or bridge) is not accounted for by randomness/spontaneity or determinism, for randomness does not produce bridges, and determinism cannot make sense of the fact that he was able—though his rationality—to build the bridge in a thousand different ways — Leontiskos
Would you argue that we must divorce rational human creativity from the evolutionary engine of biological creativity? Is the freedom of human motive and thought completely absent from the rest of the living sphere, is it an emergent function, are there degrees of freedom at different levels of biological complexity? Or did a god gift humans with a freedom which he denied the rest of nature ( in which case we would exist apart from nature)? — Joshs
If blameful retributive justice is a function of a belief in the potential arbitrariness, randomness and capriciousness of motive, then what makes Cartesian desert-based approaches , which are assumed to arise from the deliberately willed actions of an autonomous, morally responsible subject, harsher and more ‘blameful' in their views of justice than deterministic , non-desert based modernist approaches and postmodern accounts, which rest on shaping influences (bodily-affective and social) outside of an agent's control? Aren't the latter accounts more ‘arbitrary' interpretations of behavior than the former? On the contrary, the very autonomy of the Cartesian subject presupposes a profound arbitrariness to free will. We say that the subject who has free will wills of their own accord, chooses what they want to choose , and as such has autonomy with respect to ‘foreign' social and internal bodily influences. The machinations of the free will amount to a self-enclosed system. — Joshs
This solipsist self functions via an internal logic of values that, while rational within the internal bounds of its own subjectivity, is walled off from the wider community of selves and therefore can choose value in a profoundly irrational or immoral manner with respect to social consensus. Therefore, the very autonomy of the Cartesian subject presupposes a profound potential laxity and arbitrariness to individual free will in relation to the moral norms of a wider social community. — Joshs
It’s not as if punitive justice is absent from Sapolski’s deterministic account. If human behavior is assumed to be the product of both biological and environmental conditioning influences, then it stands to reason that it is possible to rehabilitate and recondition a person who is exhibiting anti-social behavior. — Joshs
No, this conclusion is based on the false dichotomy that if an event isn't deterministic then it must be random/spontaneous. That is the false dilemma I addressed in my first post to you. — Leontiskos
So the formal cause of a deliberate choice is rationality and rational motives. Why does an engineer build a bridge one way and not another? Because he (freely) reasons that this is the best way to build a bridge in such-and-such a circumstance. — Leontiskos
But there are a thousand different ways to build a bridge, and he might have built it differently. He is doubtless aware of all sorts of different ways that he could have built it. — Leontiskos
If we say that everything is determined then the free will debate is already over. — Leontiskos
I disagree. As a lawyer I find it odd that you would say that agents cannot be self-moving. — Leontiskos
Agents are not events. — Leontiskos
The person could have chosen 100 ways to build a bridge, but he chose Choice 87 and the reason he chose Choice 87 was because the various pool balls slamming together in his brain led him to Choice 87. How do you propose he chose Choice 87? — Hanover
Global organizations produce meaningful normative expectations, out of which creative possibilities emerge. When we try to trace back this behavior to the behavior of its parts, we find that these parts have no identity beyond their role in the global patterns , and as these patterns change, so does the role of the parts. — Joshs
Random and spontaneous are not the same thing. We can say that quantum movement is random to the extent we can't predict it, but we don't go so far as to say it is uncaused. With spontaneity, you're talking about something just blipping into reality from nothingness.
So now it's a false trilemma I suppose. — Hanover
What cannot be a false dilemma is the statement "Something is either caused or it is not caused." That statement encompasses every logical possibility.
So, when I choose to pull the trigger, that choice was either (a) caused or (b) not caused. If it was not caused, then I cannot be responsible for it because it occurred from nothing. If I'm walking about and then I pull a trigger with no preceeding cause initiating it, what did I do other than suddenly finding myself pulling a trigger. — Hanover
This is just special pleading. You're trying to deny reasons are causes and then trying to claim that an event can occur without a cause because it was a reason, not a cause that brought it about. — Hanover
The person could have chosen 100 ways to build a bridge, but he chose Choice 87 and the reason he chose Choice 87 was because the various pool balls slamming together in his brain led him to Choice 87. How do you propose he chose Choice 87? — Hanover
Assuming State of the Universe A, which includes every fact of the universe, will on some occasions in State A the actor choose Choice 87 and sometimes he choose Choice 88? If so, what varied that resulted in Choice 88? Was it an indeterminate force that offers a degree of randomness to the universe from time to time? If so, is that your Free Will Generator? If it is, how does that impose responsibility on the actor? — Hanover
Exactly. Everything is caused by something. That's what determinism is. — Hanover
All causes are events and all events are causes. An event is just the word we use to describe the cause that immediately followed a prior cause. — Hanover
So we're clearly not disagreeing on whether the event has a cause; you are merely asserting that an agent cannot be a cause of an event (and this begs the question I first raised). More precisely, you seem to be committed to the position that only events can cause events. Needless to say, an agent is not an event. — Leontiskos
If you claim an agent is not an event, you are claiming he had no cause... — Hanover
and if you claim he had no cause, then when he does something, he did it for no reason. — Hanover
Why did the Agent pull the trigger? Your answer would have to be He pulled it beCAUSE of nothing. I'm not following why I should hold the Agent responsible for something from nothing. — Hanover
This just shows that my occupation isn't causative of my beliefs in this instance, — Hanover
The only way out is to accept a pragmatism or just say there is free will and it's all magic. I'm good with either actually. — Hanover
The modern period becomes very focused on instrumental reason, and to say that we do not have thoughts would seem to imply that we are not able to affect the world in rational and intelligent ways. "If I press this gas pedal the car will accelerate." That is a thought that is true or false, and undergirding it is a great deal of engineering, which also presupposes true thoughts. The truth or falsity of the engineering thoughts will influence the truth or falsity of the acceleration thought. If thoughts had no causal efficacy, then they would play no part in the claim about the accelerator, but this is clearly false. Thus thoughts have causal efficacy. — Leontiskos
For free will, you need to be causally closed. You have to actually be causally separate from the rest of the universe. In other words, determinism/free will is essentially: causally monolithic universe vs. causal dualism, or primal unity vs duality. For free will, you have to be supernatural. There's no way around it. — frank
A system with no external structure—no environment with which it interacts—is a closed and isolated system. Only the entire universe is closed and isolated. A system's external structure can affect its internal structure and not just as efficient cause. This feature falsifies the thesis that secondary or relational properties are epiphenomenal and subjective. That kind of interaction between open systems and their environment also marks the limits of modern scientific methodology. It is possible to get only so far (pretty far, to be sure, with some processes—but not with others) by isolating a system from the context to which it belongs.
Once Newton's and Descartes' writings became widespread after the mid 17th century our understanding of causality changed drastically. Organisms, which the Aristotelian tradition had treated as systemic totalities, became reducible to causally inert aggregates located but not embedded in their context or environment. Once wholes were reduced to the epiphenomenal sum of their constituent parts and all causality effectively limited to efficient causes that are, moreover, reversible-in-principle, bottom-up causality was eviscerated of any power to create truly emergent new forms, and all forms of top-down causation—from wholes to parts—were disallowed.
Juerrero discusses this distinction between a closed and an open system. The key point concerning emergent freedom is that it is made possible top-down self-organizing constraints. — Joshs
Is that what you do in court? When you are defending someone accused of murder do you say to the judge, "His choice to pull the trigger was either caused or uncaused. If it was uncaused then it's not his fault. If it was caused then it was the result of spontaneity or pool balls in his brain, and therefore also not his fault. Therefore in no case could the pulling of the trigger be his fault"? You are a lawyer, right? — Leontiskos
Reason is an indeterminate cause which is neither determined, random, nor spontaneous. It is free, irreducible to these other options. — Leontiskos
If you think it was just the result of "pool balls slamming together in his brain," how do you propose he could have chosen anything else? Do you even believe in choice? — Leontiskos
and if you claim he had no cause, then when he does something, he did it for no reason.
— Hanover
...and how does that follow!? :yikes: — Leontiskos
He pulled it because he reasoned that by killing the witness his crime would go unpunished, and he is on trial because reason is not deterministic (i.e. he could have reasoned differently and chosen a different course of action, both in committing the initial crime as well as in committing the murder coverup). Are you in the right profession? — Leontiskos
To deny that free agents have any causal effect on the world is just to deny free will. It is farcical to claim that freedom exists and exercises no influence on the world whatsoever. — Leontiskos
Sure, that's what I argue because my concern in court centers around exposing the philosophical implications of determinism upon free will as opposed to protecting my client's interests. It's always good to talk about what you feel like talking about as opposed to focusing on the task at hand. — Hanover
Anyway, to the extent this slippery slope actually does occur in court, a typical gap between the left and the right on personal responsibility does center around how much freedom, if any, someone has over their actions. — Hanover
And I'm saying you have no meaningful definition of freedom. — Hanover
"Nothing makes sense without free will and free will is logically incoherent upon deep analysis." Is this a substantial criticism? What does it even mean to give a "deep analysis"?
[...]
I think we can take it as a rule that that thing which nothing makes sense without, is never susceptible to "deep analysis." This is because analysis is an act of dividing or reducing, and the most fundamental and essential realities are always indivisible or irreducible. The Atomists say that nothing makes sense without atoms, but they do not complain that atoms cannot be further analyzed; they recognize it as an irresistible conclusion. The spat between the idealists and the materialists is a spat premised upon the search for a unified theory, where there is only one irreducible reality. — Leontiskos
You couldn't have chosen anything other than you did if determinism is true. You could have done otherwise if determinism isn't true, but you wouldn't be responsible for a random or spontaneous event. And there are no other choices, despite you saying there are. That is, if determinism is true or if determinism is false, you are not responsible for what you do. — Hanover
I do believe in choice. It's pragmatism. I don't think the world is decipherable without maintaining a superficial acceptance of freedom. — Hanover
It's superficial because upon analysis it fails. — Hanover
I also subscribe to a certain theism that just decrees it. — Hanover
But I don't think any of the explanations provided show how it could possibly exist. — Hanover
As I stated, your fallacy is special pleading. You have for no reason for saying that "reasons" are not causes other than so that you can treat them differently, but a reason is a cause. If I pull the trigger beCAUSE I hate the man, the reason is the cause. So, substitute the word "cause" in for "reason" in my above sentence and you'll understand how it's logically entailed. — Hanover
That is, " if you claim he had no cause, then when he does something, he did it for no cause." — Hanover
You are doing this very strange thing where every time I say, "X is caused by a free agent," you conclude, "Right, so X is uncaused!" This is a failure to understand even the basic contours of an agent-causal worldview. If—as you continue to implicitly assert—free agents do not exist, then you must reject the claim that "X is caused by a free agent." But what you ought to do is say that the claim is false, not that it means that X is uncaused. It manifestly does not mean that X is uncaused. — Leontiskos
The law reflects the beliefs of those who passed it, which means those who passed the laws likely believed in free will. That doesn't make free will the case. I can imagine there are countries that pass laws based upon all sorts of myths and religious beliefs I don't agree with, but I don't know what that adds to truth. — Hanover
I'm saying that free will is not provable and that it's incoherent under analysis. — Hanover
You couldn't have chosen anything other than you did if determinism is true. You could have done otherwise if determinism isn't true, but you wouldn't be responsible for a random or spontaneous event. And there are no other choices, despite you saying there are. That is, if determinism is true or if determinism is false, you are not responsible for what you do. — Hanover
Anyway, to the extent this slippery slope actually does occur in court, a typical gap between the left and the right on personal responsibility does center around how much freedom, if any, someone has over their actions. Arguments related to upbringing, general environment, intelligence, prior exposures with violence, etc are often better received by those on the left that believe that behavior is better informed by external circumstances than the right, who hold firmly to responsibility coming entirely from within.
These differences in ideology are just that, usually based upon political leanings and the like, but not upon any real analysis of what the implications of determinism are. — Hanover
If it's strong emergence, it's dualism. Weak emergent freedom is a contradiction in terms.
A causally closed system doesn't have to be one that has no environment with which it interacts. Robert Rosen devotes most of his book Life Itself to that. Also, how the heck do you whip out a quote regarding any topic you happen to be talking about? That's amazing. — frank
…the crucial property of an autonomous system is its operational closure. In an autonomous system, every constituent process is conditioned by some other process in the system; hence, if we analyse the enabling conditions for any constituent process of the system, we will always be led to other processes in the system. ( Mog Stapleton)
how the heck do you whip out a quote regarding any topic you happen to be talking about? That's amazing. — frank
Er, the implication was that you were defending someone who pulled the trigger. That's why I wrote, "When you are defending someone accused of murder..." It's like you're not even reading my posts. — Leontiskos
Yes, but my point is that everyone agrees that if someone has no freedom over their action then they cannot be punished for that action, and you are leaning strongly in the direction which says that no one has any freedom over their actions. — Leontiskos
I am glad the dogmatism is becoming more brazen and visible. So it seems that you are committed to the very strange idea that engineers do not have it within their power to build bridges differently than they did in fact build them. — Leontiskos
I asked above what you meant by "deep analysis" quite a few times but you always neglected to give any answer. I don't think you know what you mean, and therefore I don't think yours is a substantial critique. — Leontiskos
It decrees that there are other choices, even though you are adamant that "there are no other choices"? If there are no other choices then your theism is wrong, and to subscribe to it is to contradict yourself. — Leontiskos
Is it more irrational for me to say that the engineer could have built the bridge differently, or is it more irrational for you to say that the engineer was determined to build the bridge according to blueprint 87? — Leontiskos
Law in itself presupposes that humans are responsible actors. It is odd for a lawyer to engage in a practice that presupposes personal responsibility if they do not believe in personal responsibility. — Leontiskos
…the crucial property of an autonomous system is its operational closure. In an autonomous system, every constituent process is conditioned by some other process in the system; hence, if we analyse the enabling conditions for any constituent process of the system, we will always be led to other processes in the system. ( Mog Stapleton)
But doesn’t Rosen accept that emergence within dynamical
systems represents a kind of freedom without dualism? Isnt that the point of such systems? — Joshs
I just make it up. I figure nobody will check. — Joshs
But what are the implications of determinism for the courtroom? — Joshs
They might tell you they convicted because of facts A, B and C, and they may beleive that, but the reason they convicted and the reason they believe facts A, B and C mattered are just because of other causes in their head. That is, free will is necessary for meaningful decision making, and if it doesn't exist, then all decisions are either pre-determined or random. — Hanover
It depends upon the purpose of punishment. If the purpose of the punishment is corrective or rehabilitative, punishment could be argued as appropriate. — Hanover
Nor do computers have any way to process data other than the way they do in fact process them. The sun rises and sets in a predictable pattern in a way that results in trees growing and insects flourishing. The fact that an intricate system can work and can result in complex ways doesn't implicate freedom. The honeybee can't make honey a different way. — Hanover
Maybe my theistic beliefs are wrong if I subjected them to strict logic. I'm not defending my faith. It might be stupid, but it is what it is. — Hanover
I suppose either determinism or indeterminism could be true, but neither allow a basis for placing responsibility on the agent. — Hanover
I do believe in personal responsibility. I told you that. — Hanover
You couldn't have chosen anything other than you did if determinism is true. You could have done otherwise if determinism isn't true, but you wouldn't be responsible for a random or spontaneous event. And there are no other choices, despite you saying there are. That is, if determinism is true or if determinism is false, you are not responsible for what you do. — Hanover
If you posit free will as being a mystery, then you should be logically committed to the idea that the localization of that mystery will necessarily be vague (note too that a mystery could be defined as something which is not explicable in terms of your familiar categories: in your case randomness, spontaneity, and determinism). Likewise, when you fart we can't point to the fart in any exact way. It is diffuse, it spreads, it permeates. Only to the extent that we understand something perfectly can we identify and discern it perfectly.
Free will exercises influence on the world through free agents, and free agents exercise influence through rational deliberation, and rational deliberation results in the arts, sciences, technology, political arrangements, etc. It doesn't make a lot of sense to say that humans are free but reason is deterministic. That would be unduly localizing the "mystery," much like claiming to specify the exact location of your fart. If you think freedom is a mystery, then how are you so certain about where it begins and ends? If you think we are truly free, then don't you also think that that freedom exercises an influence on reality in one way or another? If so, then it makes no sense to hold that all of reality is perfectly deterministic, including reason and everything that follows from it. — Leontiskos
What I'm rejecting is that there are logical and scientific anchors for much of what we take for granted, including such things as free will, moral truths, or purpose generally. — Hanover
As I've said, fundamental realities cannot be explained by secondary realities. Numbers are not explained by addition, because addition presupposes numbers. That we think everything should be scientifically or "logically" analyzable is a symptom of our intellectual biases. Science and logic both presuppose free will, they don't explain it — Leontiskos
This is not to say that science and logic deal only with secondary realities. — Joshs
That is , an aspect of what science does, the philosophical aspect that allows it to move from one scheme to alternative schemes , frees it from remaining stuck within any particular secondary logic. — Joshs
Meanwhile, there are primary philosophical logics (Hegel’s dialectic, Husserl’s transcendental logic) that describe fundamental realities. — Joshs
I would say that the scientific approaches Hanover has in mind don’t destroy freedom in nature (quantum indeterminacy) , but question the coherence of certain unitary notions of the will. I would also question those unitary notions, preferring to see the will as a differential system. But unlike Hanover I don’t see this system as operating via the unfreedom of efficient causality. — Joshs
I think we can take it as a rule that that thing which nothing makes sense without, is never susceptible to "deep analysis." This is because analysis is an act of dividing or reducing, and the most fundamental and essential realities are always indivisible or irreducible. The Atomists say that nothing makes sense without atoms, but they do not complain that atoms cannot be further analyzed; they recognize it as an irresistible conclusion. The spat between the idealists and the materialists is a spat premised upon the search for a unified theory, where there is only one irreducible reality. — Leontiskos
If free will were reducible to such events then not only would things make sense without it; but everything could be fully explained without it. — Leontiskos
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