Is that not free enough for you? Do you insist that true freedom entails being sufficiently free to make a different choice given exactly the same set of deciding factors? That seems absurd - because it implies a freedom to make choices for no reason at all. — Relativist
It is free, because it is a product of the agent's mental processes. — Relativist
Could the agent have decided differently? Yes, if there were some difference in the factors contributing to his decision. This is sufficiently free to be classified as "free will," and sufficiently free to be held morally culpable. — Relativist
That seems absurd - because it implies a freedom to make choices for no reason at all. — Relativist
I think you are absolutely right that this sort 'contra causal' criterion for freedom seems to threaten the intelligibility of rational action and hence to undermine what it seeks to salvage. — Pierre-Normand
But that's just changing what we're referring to in the conversation. No one in the debate was using "free" to refer to whether a choice is a product of the agent's mental processes or not.
So it's not compatibilism, it's "redefining what the words are referring to so that we can use both of them in conjunction with each other." — Terrapin Station
But that's just changing what we're referring to in the conversation. No one in the debate was using "free" to refer to whether a choice is a product of the agent's mental processes or not. — Terrapin Station
I don't see the point as trying to "salvage" anything. We're simply wondering whether ontological freedom obtains in relation to "will phenomena," so that more than one option is a possible consequent state given identical antecedent states. It seems to some of us that such ontological freedom does obtain. We're not campaigning for anything in this, not issuing value judgments about anything, etc. — Terrapin Station
What would be a "robust concept" of ontological freedom? — Terrapin Station
No. It has to involve will (which is conscious), or we're just talking about ontological freedom in general. — Terrapin Station
"Ontological freedom" is your term. Relativist and I had issued a challenge for your own conception is what it might be, since it appears to us to amount to nothing over and above mere indeterministic randomness in the production of bodily movements, while severing their connections with the will construed as a psychological faculty. — Pierre-Normand
Even a quark jumping around wildly and a-causal cannot be called free without raping the concept. Trancendental freedom is defined in terms of subjectivity. — Heiko
I'm simply referring to the conventional conversation re focusing on the ontological question re whether one sort of phenomena or another (can) obtain in conjunction with will. — Terrapin Station
helpful at all to the ordinary conception of personal freedom. — Pierre-Normand
If we're talking about free will it's obviously not severed from will phenomena. But yes, the issue (freedom a la free will vs detereminism) is only coherent as wondering about whether it's possible for at least two different consequent states to follow the same antecedent state. — Terrapin Station
seem not to secure the kind of freedom that we intuitively ascribe to the will. — Pierre-Normand
What different sort of freedom would you say we intuitively ascribe to the will? (Do I do this if I don't know the answer to it)? — Terrapin Station
The common intuitive conception of free action, which seems to me to be broadly correct, rests on a form of agent causation rather than event causation. Agent causation tends to give Humean philosophers headaches, while Aristotelian philosophers account for it more easily. Free actions are actualizations of the powers of practical rationality possessed by mature rational animals. Hence, the causal antecedents of free actions are substances (e.g. rational animals) and their freely (and responsibly) endorsed reasons rather than fixed antecedent circumstances and blind laws of nature. — Pierre-Normand
Without getting into the many issues I have with that, it doesn't seem to be specifying a different sort of freedom, with a focus on what exactly "free" is referring to ontologically in different cases. — Terrapin Station
(By the way, (b) is actually what I'm calling the "antecendent" and (c) is the consequent, but I'm guessing you know that and there's a reason you're inserting an extra step, which is fine) — Terrapin Station
Let's try it this way.
On your account, we have, in temporal order
(a) the antecedent conditions of the agent
(b) the agent's reasons for doing x
(c) the decision based on (b)
Now, was (c) determined by (b), or was freedom involved somehow between (b) and (c), and was (b) determined by (a), or was freedom involved somehow between (b) and (a)? — Terrapin Station
It is also not something that can be construed as an event in time — Pierre-Normand
?? On my view the idea of there being anything divorced from time (and space/location for that matter) is incoherent. — Terrapin Station
So on my view it's incoherent to say that (b) isn't particular events in time, with a location in the world, and more specifically, that (b) isn't dynamic processes of material stuff (namely the agent's brain).
It doesn't seem like you're talking about this, though. It sounds like on your view, the agent's rationality is some mysterious who-knows-what that's not part of the material world and that can somehow operate independently of it?
Is that not free enough for you? Do you insist that true freedom entails being sufficiently free to make a different choice given exactly the same set of deciding factors? That seems absurd - because it implies a freedom to make choices for no reason at all. — Relativist
But that doesn't make them suitable to being themselves located in particular places or times (any more than numbers or premises of arguments can be). That would be a category error. — Pierre-Normand
I am acknowledging the existence (and necessity) of some such dynamical processes as enabling conditions (and hence part of (a)) for an agent grasping (b). — Pierre-Normand
But they are distinguishable from the material processes that implement them — Pierre-Normand
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