As above, this isn't mutually exclusive. It is both the case that head trauma is the cause of death and the case that I killed him by pushing him off the cliff.
Are you honestly going to argue that to be justly convicted and imprisoned for murder one must have either strangled someone or beaten them to death with one's bare hands, and that for everything else "I didn't do it" is true?
This is equivocation. If by "autonomous" you mean "has agent-causal libertarian free will" then in saying that biological organisms are autonomous you are begging the question. If by "autonomous" you don't mean "has agent-causal libertarian free will" then your reasoning is a non sequitur; you are missing a step that gets you from "is autonomous" to "has agent-causal libertarian free will".
As for "autonomous machines" that "self-govern, self-produce, self-differentiate, and maintain themselves", what of von Neumann probes? Would such things have agent-causal libertarian free will?
I honestly don't think you actually understand much about physics or determinism. As I referenced in an earlier comment – that you ignored – agent-causal libertarian free will requires a non-physical substance capable of acting as an uncaused cause. It certainly isn't proven true by the mere existence of plants.
I've been over this so many times. Speech causes the ears to release neurotransmitters to the brain causing certain neurons to behave in certain ways. Given eliminative materialism, certain neurons behaving in certain ways just is what it means for someone's mind to have been changed.
One thing they will not find is that the push was a death blow. — NOS4A2
I’m not speaking of law here. — NOS4A2
Then it should be easy to demonstrate. — NOS4A2
No, by autonomous I mean organisms can self-govern, self-produce, self-differentiate, and maintain themselves. They are capable of creating their own components and structures, continually renewing and reproducing themselves. They can spontaneously create and maintain their complex organization from simpler components. They can maintain their integrity and functionality through ongoing processes of internal regulation and repair, counteracting degradation and external degradation like disease. No need for non-physical entities at all. — NOS4A2
Strawman. I didn’t say it was. I said that I can kill someone by pushing them off a cliff, which is true.
Deflection. I assume because you recognise the absurdity of your position and are just unwilling to admit it.
Non sequitur. That something is possible and sometimes happens isn’t that it’s easy.
Red herring. Plants do not have agent-causal libertarian free will, and neither the existence of plants nor the possible existence of von Neumann probes disprove causal determinism.
It’s just one fallacy after another with you, along with absurd misinterpretations of “cause”, “determinism”, “agent-causal libertarian free will”, and “persuasion”.
And what would a medical examiner say killed him? Is their answer a reduction to the absurd? — NOS4A2
No, you equivocate between “kill” and “murder”. I think you realized your mistake and, once again, we can watch the goalposts widen. — NOS4A2
Then what is the difference between words that compel agreement and those that do not? — NOS4A2
I never said plants have free will. — NOS4A2
Do you actually understand what causal determinism is, and how it differs from something like agent-causal libertarian free will? Some object "spending the energy and doing the work" does not prove that it has agent-causal libertarian free will. — Michael
True, but I’m not just speaking of any object. I’ve long specified my application of agent-causal free will strictly to biological organisms. There are plenty reasonable people who can differentiate between machines and biological organisms. But for some reason you can’t, or refuse to.
Unlike biological organisms, machines are not autonomous. They’re heteronomous. They cannot self-govern, self-produce, self-differentiate, nor maintain themselves. — NOS4A2
Plants are biological organisms. Therefore if plants do not have agent-causal libertarian free will then your comments above are a red herring, and your conclusion a non sequitur. Autonomy as you've defined it is compatible with causal determinism.
I don’t know how biological autonomy is compatible with causal determinism. — NOS4A2
No, by autonomous I mean organisms can self-govern, self-produce, self-differentiate, and maintain themselves. They are capable of creating their own components and structures, continually renewing and reproducing themselves. They can spontaneously create and maintain their complex organization from simpler components. They can maintain their integrity and functionality through ongoing processes of internal regulation and repair, counteracting degradation and external degradation like disease.
Yesterday you made some interesting comments about human beings and it all being too complex, but I see you’ve changed your mind and deleted them. Which external forces caused that behavior? — NOS4A2
Other than your use of the term "spontaneously", which I didn't take to be literal given that you previously denied that uncaused causes occur in the body, nothing here is incompatible with the causal determinist's claim that everything that happens is caused to occur by antecedent events according to the laws of nature.
But I'm curious, if plants do not have free will and if their behaviour is not causally determined, then what is going on with them? Is there some third option?
I value brevity. So I often re-read my comments and then re-write them to slim them down if nobody has replied.
How so? You might be incorrigible, for example.
Either way, once you've (mis)understood words/sentences that you read or heard, then they've already had an effect.
It’s the other way about. We affect words. — NOS4A2
Whether machine, plant, or human, the involuntary behaviour of any sense receptor is causally influenced by external stimuli according to the laws of nature, which may be either deterministic or, if quantum indeterminacy is a factor and is not explained by hidden variables, stochastic. These stimuli are causally responsible for (even if not exclusively) subsequent steps in the causal chain — ended only if something like a non-physical mind interferes.
So there is more to causation than just the immediate transfer of kinetic energy and I can turn on the lights by saying "Siri, turn on the lights".
As such your defence of free speech absolutism fails.
That’s all I have left to say on the matter.
We write/read speak/hear words/sentences.
All part of our social practices, like this comment to you (the reader).
Such socializing can go via light (to eyes), touch, soundwaves (to ears), doesn't matter much which, and the reader/listener may (mis)understand, presumably with an awareness of some writer/speaker, at which point the words/sentences have already had an effect.
Without the writer/speaker and their words/sentences, it wouldn't have happened.
think about them, consider whether I should bother responding, and do so according to my own whim and fancy. — NOS4A2
Well, I am my biology, my brain activity, my thoughts and so on, so to me this is another instance of everything being willed by yours truly.
Good times. — NOS4A2
Not everything our body does is voluntary.
Just as “one’s heartbeat” refers to a particular thing in the body, not the body as a whole, so too is “one’s will”. If eliminative materialism is correct then one’s will is a particular kind of neurological phenomena, and only bodily behaviour caused by that particular neurological phenomena is “being willed by yours truly”.
@NOS4A2, how do (or might) you learn new stuff and correct mistakes? "Move! Car!" never has any effect on you? — What did you make of it, if anything?
This is fun. — AmadeusD
You have almost no control, whatsovever, over your heartbeat. It is separate to even your brain's control center. You do not control the vast, vast, vast majority of what happens in your body. You couldn't possibly...
If anything else in the universe that is not me can be shown to beat my heart I will concede. But if it is the case that the cardiac conduction system controls the heart rate, or branches of the nervous system, you’ll be left trying to prove how I am neither my heart or my nervous system, advocating some sort of dualism. This is why I always repeat that free will is often an issue of identity — NOS4A2
Like I said before, you both control the amount of light that enters your eyes and direct the sounds that enter your ear — NOS4A2
You have explicitly moved the goal post. It is not under your volition. That is the point. You have no control over it (other than by brute force, which is present among all these arguments). You simply don't. It isn't even connected to your brain, so there's no way for you to control it. What's called the "intrinsic pacemaker" is what's making sure your heart keeps beating. You have no knowledge or control of this.
I see you don't grasp reality. That's fine.
Do you believe that I am not my cardiac and nervous systems? — NOS4A2
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