You can do this where the probabilities are not the result of reasoning.

You can do this where the probabilities are not the result of reasoning. — Terrapin Station

I’m sure this is logically possible, but I have just never done it that I can remember. Perhaps I have some kind of deficiency because I am always driven by my mental motivators when choosing. Does anyone else here experience what Terrapin Station experiences? I’m curious to know how many of you there are.

But you have mentally assigned the probabilities based on prior beliefs, and this determines your choice. — Relativist

This conclusion is in direct contradiction to risk taking: from buying lottery tickets to deciding what to do when one falls in love with someone they hardly know and could get badly burnt by … with this list of risks being very long.

Even when in theory everything is composed of infinite causal chains and is thereby perfectly determinate, in practice uncertainties abound and, along with them, indeterminacies in respect to the choices we make. And this irrespective of the amount and quality of reasoning we make use of.

Still, I acknowledge, the issue is at base a metaphysical one, directly pertaining to the existential nature of causation. Belief in a stringent causal determinism will always presuppose the impossibility of any causal process that is not itself a link in one or more infinite chains of efficient causation.



I’ve at times chosen between ice-cream flavors without any deliberation—hence in manners devoid of at least conscious reasoning. The choice was still mine and not any others.

A reason can be a cause, a motive (which is basically a teleological cause), or an explanation. What are you addressing by “a reason”? — javra

A reason as such.

If a reason is a reason there is no choice, right? — Heiko

A reason can be a cause, a motive (which is basically a teleological cause), or an explanation. What are you addressing by “a reason”? — javra

A reason as such. — Heiko

Then my answer is "no: choice is yet possible" ... with what I've stated in my previous posts as justification for this answer.

It seems that any deliberative choice is fully determined by brain states — Noah Te Stroete

In the case of the placebo effect, it seems that a predisposition or belief actually has the opposite effect. Say for example you give a patient a placebo that you assure you will cure her headache, which it does, although it reality it was just a sugar pill. So in such cases (which are very widely documented) causation seems to flow 'downward' from belief to physical symptoms, rather than from physical causes to symptoms.

So why then don’t we treat headaches with sugar pills instead of Excedrin? It seems to me the patient is mistaken about qualitatively better states simply by being told it is medicine. Not that the qualitative state really is perceptibly better.

Fascinating.

Actually placebos are often used, but they don't always work. However the point in relation to your original comment about things being detetmined by 'brain states', is that they work sometimes. If everything were physically determined, you would not expect that, would you? That is why placebo effects are rather an uncomfortable anomaly for physicalist views. (And they're only the tip of a very large iceberg.)

Perhaps you didn’t read further down the thread or in other threads I’ve participated in. That’s okay. I believe brain states as well as mental states are fully determined. The mental states supervene on the brain but are determined as well. This gives me the pleasure of giving consciousness real existence while not falling into the physicalist trap. The person anticipates feeling better because the doctor imprinted on his mental state that he would feel better. The doctor’s imprinting and the patient’s belief and openness determine that the patient will be mistaken about a qualitative difference.

I believe brain states as well as mental states are fully determined. — Noah Te Stroete

By what?

beliefs, memories, moods, and needs collectively fully determine subsequent mental states. We can in no way be metaphysically responsible for these, but as long as we are not being coerced by anyone, then we can be said to have free will and be held responsible in the conventional social sense.

Not fully determined, otherwise nothing new would occur.

Sure it would. We have memories of the mental exercise of deliberating. If one is punished or gains no value from a decision, then one can learn to not decide that again. The next time a new memory is formed from the mental exercise (which is fully determined by this and previous memories, beliefs, moods, and needs). People can learn from experience without the need to posit LFW (which I just can’t make sense of).

I always feel that people turn up here and contribute from their own free will. Do you think they're compelled to do it? That no-one really decides to contribute, or not to contribute, or what to say? Do you think everything you say is determined in advance? Seems an awfully sterile worldview if you don't mind me saying.

Not really. I feel compelled by my mental states to practice philosophy and not, say, run marathons. However, experience is always rich with the new, novel, and awe-inspiring. That’s what keeps me interested.

Then it’s not fully determined. There’s always an element of chance, whimsy, serendipity, spontaneity. Life is like that ‘all the way down’.

I disagree. Epistemic uncertainty doesn’t entail metaphysical chance.

But you can't say what things are 'determined by' other than

beliefs, memories, moods, and needs — Noah Te Stroete

And what science describes those? You've noted elsewhere that you've broken from the physicalist account; the physicalist view is such things are determined by genetics and neuroscience, or at least things that can be understood in those terms. But if you realise the falsehood of that, which you say you have, then what is the alternative explanatory paradigm for 'beliefs, memories, moods and needs'? If they're not explainable in physicalist terms, then what terms?

Mental states have to be consistent with brain states for them to be fully determinative. Mental states supervene on brain states, each having fully determinative causes that line up so that a change in one necessitates a corresponding change in the other. However, I reject reductionism because it seems to imply that consciousness is merely an epiphenomenon. This goes against my spiritual experiences. I believe consciousness is just as real as matter. I believe this through spiritual experience that I can’t explain away as hallucinations. That said, my ontological experience of mental states strongly suggest to me that LFW is not true. I can’t conceive of myself in another possible world choosing something different given the same exact outside circumstances and the same exact inner mental states as I have in the actual world. To posit that I could seems to me strange, and I don’t understand the mechanism of how this would work.

Generally I’m in agreement, but I think that’s rather a caricatured version of free will. Even those who accept the reality of free will - I certainly do - don’t believe that such freedom is absolute. It’s constrained in some ways but we’re still conscious agents who make responsible decisions which have consequences. And we could always have chosen differently.

That thought-experiment, though, of you being the same person in a different world and making a different choice - I can easily imagine that. One interesting analogy here would be twin studies. As you probably know, twins often share very many elements of their life-stories, even when they’ve been separated at birth. But it’s still not hard to envisage cases in which one twin makes a decision that causes their life to diverge wildly from that of their twin - like, kill someone, or something. So what is that kind of choice being ‘determined’ by?

But I’m very suspicious of the concept of ‘supervenience’. It still relies on the idea that mind is ontologically dependent on the brain even if not fully dependent on it. (There’s a word that comes to mind in this context which I’m not entirely sure of the use of, which is ‘under-determination’.)

I sense that you’re trying to flesh out a worldview, or interpretive framework, which accommodates the spiritual experiences you refer to, which have caused you to reject the physicalist views that you previously had. Any hot leads? Any books, philosophers, gurus, movements, that you think might be promising?

That thought-experiment, though, of you being the same person in a different world and making a different choice - I can easily imagine that. One interesting analogy here would be twin studies. As you probably know, twins often share very many elements of their life-stories, even when they’ve been separated at birth. But it’s still not hard to envisage cases in which one twin makes a decision that causes their life to diverge wildly from that of their twin - like, kill someone, or something. So what is choice being ‘determined’ by? — Wayfarer

But they occupy different spaces and aren’t treated the same and will necessarily have different experiences, shaping each of their respective constitutions.


I have been trying to flesh out a worldview that accommodates my spiritual experiences. I’m learning more everyday from the people on this forum, but no outside leads yet. Any suggestions?

well my guess is I’m probably a generation older, baby-boomer. So I’m a pretty quintessential sixties type, eclectic, picked up ideas from all over the place. Early and major influences were from the kinds of sources that the counter-culture were into - Eastern religions, popular interpretations of quantum physics, ‘new age’ and so on. Zen Buddhism seemed the most pragmatic and direct and I have practiced meditation (zazen) according to Zen guidelines most of my life, although not formally affiliated with any teacher or school. But I’ve also re-discovered an interest in classical Western philosophy, which I think is vastly misunderstood and misrepresented in our materialist culture. (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance made a big impression, even though I only read it once. Likewise for Road Less Travelled and Tao of Physics.)

So my general orientation is contra scientific materialism, although one of the things I have learned in ten years of forum discussions, is that there really aren’t that many hardcore materialists. But on the other hand, a lot of people have incorporated at least some core ideas from that mindset into their worldview even if they don’t think through all the implications. For most people, it’s part of their cultural background.

I’m a late gen Xer. My dad was a Christian with some very literal interpretations of the Bible. He did also for a time dabble in eastern philosophy, viz. Buddhism and Taoism. My mom grew up Catholic but hasn’t been religious since her days at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I have a Bachelor of Science in philosophy degree, and I have read Genesis, the Gospels, and Revelation a few times each. I have also read the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the Tao Te Ching, and a book called The World’s Religions by Huston Smith. I have also read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance but only once. I really love Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and someone once told me that I have a Hamlet complex. I took that with a grain of salt, though.

Anything in particular you recommend that I read next?

I don't know, it's a pretty good list! At this period in life, I am trying to concentrate on a few seminal classical texts, chiefly Mahayana Buddhist, the Buddha Nature Treatise and related texts (right now I'm reading this).

As I said, I'm also very drawn to classical philosophy. What has happened, through my reading, even though it's been a bit scattershot, is that I am seeing these - how to say - it's like seams of gold, running through the ancient lore. The three that most interest me are Christian Platonism, Mahayana Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. (And I suppose Tao, as well, although I really think you have to know Chinese to understand it properly.)

The two most recent modern philosophical books I have most valued, are Thomas Nagel, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, and a book by an English science writer, James le Fanu, called Why Us? It's hard to bring anything else particular to mind. Just read Adam Becker's What is Real which is another review of the interpretations of quantum physics; three stars. But I'm constantly reading snippets, essays, reviews, and articles. So, nothing in particular, or revelatory, at this point in time!

No worries. I think I am going to reread the several religious texts I mentioned since it has been a few years. I think I will start with The Bhagavad Ghita.

https://nyti.ms/2ud1lMv

I didn’t pay back my student loans, but that “choice” was fully determined by circumstances beyond my control. The stress of living in the ghetto where gunshots rang outside, drug deals in the parking lot outside my window, the paper-thin walls that made it impossible to differentiate outside voices from the voices inside my head; all contributed to my already fragile mind (I have schizoaffective disorder), fully determining my need to be proclaimed disabled and unable to work. In no possible universe given all of these factors as still holding true would I be able to work. So, I reject your view that “intelligible” actions are not fully determined. — Noah Te Stroete

The problem is that mental disorders tend to be underlying just waiting to get out. It is very possible that even if you had a perfect time as a student, good neighborhood, enough money to study without going into debt etc you still could have ended up in the same condition.

I didn’t pay back my student loans, but that “choice” was fully determined by circumstances beyond my control. The stress of living in the ghetto where gunshots rang outside, drug deals in the parking lot outside my window, the paper-thin walls that made it impossible to differentiate outside voices from the voices inside my head; all contributed to my already fragile mind (I have schizoaffective disorder), fully determining my need to be proclaimed disabled and unable to work. In no possible universe given all of these factors as still holding true would I be able to work. So, I reject your view that “intelligible” actions are not fully determined. — Noah Te Stroete

For sure, there are many cases in which an agent acts badly and in which, because of the specificity of the circumstances, we hold her responsibility to be attenuated. This is why, for instance, the law provides for mitigating factors (or extenuating circumstances), which mitigate personal responsibility. The recognition of such circumstances constitutes an acknowledgement that the agent's action were, at least in part, determined by circumstances that were outside of her control.

But there also are cases where we hold that, although external circumstances account causally for the agent having made a bad choice, this influence on her action isn't best construed as a factor that severely diminished the agent's ability to do the right thing but rather is better construed as having provided an occasion for the agent to display a character flaw for which she remains responsible. Oftentimes, it is a matter of ethical (or legal) judgement whether the agent's responsibility for her irrational, unethical or illegal action is better construed as being mitigated, or not, by the specific circumstances (including features of her life history) that led her to make this wrong choice.

But there also are cases where we hold that, although external circumstances account causally for the agent having made a bad choice, this influence on her action isn't best construed as a factor that severely diminished the agent's ability to do the right thing but rather is better construed as having provided an occasion for the agent to display a character flaw for which she remains responsible. — Pierre-Normand

So we are responsible for our character? What is character? I know the traditional sense, but what does it mean philosophically?