The paper affirms all the science in the contemporary evolutionary synthesis. — Dfpolis

Ya, bullshit. One sentence in and it was already creationist anti-scientific rubbish. I did read on for a while, hence my follow-up. It did not get better.

Did you attend Trump University, or are your prejudices home-grown? — Dfpolis

:fire: Dang, feel that savage burn!

It's not prejudice, btw. I didn't know about that pretend journal so had no clue going in how intellectually bankrupt your paper was going to be. I actually was ready to be impressed. To completely reverse that expectation in a single sentence is, I suppose, kind of impressive in a way, albeit for all the wrong reasons. You and your imaginary friend may go in peace, until you make it your mission to misrepresent science and facts.

Did you not read my refutation of the whole thing recently published in the Journal of Middle-Earth Studies? — Isaac

:rofl: I'm sorry, I did not. I know it's an impressive, popular, and respectable journal but the articles are way too long.

As you are unwilling to engage in rational discourse or even point out anything I wrote that is factually wrong, there is no point in responding to you further. Maybe you could try other TU alumni.

We seem to be agreeing. — Dfpolis

On this issue yes. I believe in evolution though. That's in fact precisely why I believe in what they call 'free will'.

The way we cause in willing is not subject to the determinism of Humean causality. — Dfpolis

Thankfully, as far as my commenting at all herein is concerned, Hume now stands alone. Which makes the statement correct. Which ends my involvement.

I believe in evolution though. That's in fact precisely why I believe in what they call 'free will'. — Olivier5

I accept the modern evolutionary synthesis as sound science. What have I said that would make you think otherwise?

I would like to read the reasoning that leads you from evolution to free will. The fact that you put "free will" in scare quotes makes me wonder what you mean by it.

Thankfully, as far as my commenting at all herein is concerned, Hume now stands alone. — Mww

I am not sure what you mean, but fine.

'Free will' overstates the case in my view. I prefer 'free choice'. But it's a bit of a detail.

The path from evolution to free will goes through cephalization, one of few long term tendencies in evolution. Cephalization is literally "the formation of the head". You will note that most animals have some sort of head. But not all. The species that appeared the earliest exhibit no head. Eg jelly fish. But flat worms and annelides (earth worms) have a sort of proto-head, where about 20% of the nervous system is concentrated, together with a mouth and primitive eyes.

This tendency to concentrate neurons and senses in the front of the animal goes on, eon after eon, because it provides a darwinian advantage, when you can move, to be able to look in the direction toward which you're moving. And concentrating neural power must makes some sense as well.

And at the end of this evolution, there's some 'pilot in the plane' that gets generated, some navigating system for the animal, that allows full integration of sense data, memory, analysis, etc, within the same space to make for better piloting.

From https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/
"Compatibilism offers a solution to the free will problem, which concerns a disputed incompatibility between free will and determinism. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. Because free will is typically taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is sometimes expressed as a thesis about the compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism."

Would some kind soul offer a two or three sentence precis of just what this thread is about? The title of the thread is, "Compatibilism Misunderstands both Free Will and Causality." In as much as most of the words in the title are terms-of-art, and no definitions have been offered (please direct me if I've overlooked them), it is not clear to me the discussion can arise to the level of coherence.

The notion of cause as in cause-and-effect is a presupposition of differing ways of thinking and means different things in the several ways. Thus if one argues with it, one needs the right one, and in the right sense and application. Lacking that the argument cannot be correct. And even when correctly argued, only correct in its home context.

What Aristotle, Hume, Kant, or any modern scientist understands by cause is a matter of (historical - all facts are historical) fact to be known and understood for what it is, certainly not for what it is not. A Whitworth wrench works very well on an old Matchless motorcycle, not-so-much on a Honda, nor a metric on a Harley. But none are the wrong wrench properly used and understood, and each exactly the correct tool on the machine it was intended for.

As to the possibility of free will, bumblebees fly and people have the capability for free will. And no account of either is of much real use unless grounded somehow somewhere someway.

An interesting question though, is whether bumblebees have free will.

But not intelligibly answerable absent some at least preliminary definition.

But none are the wrong wrench properly used and understood, and each exactly the correct tool on the machine it was intended for. — tim wood

And there you have it: a worthy, if oft-forgotten, nutshell.

Fair enough.

Bumblebee

A bumblebee (or bumble bee, bumble-bee, or humble-bee) is any of over 250 species in the genus Bombus, part of Apidae [...] Most bumblebees are social insects that form colonies with a single queen. The colonies are smaller than those of honey bees, growing to as few as 50 individuals in a nest.

Free will

Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.

Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, guilt, sin, and other judgements which apply only to actions that are freely chosen. [...] Traditionally, only actions that are freely willed are seen as deserving credit or blame. Whether free will exists, what it is and the implications of whether it exists or not are some of the longest running debates of philosophy and religion.

(from wiki)

So we need free will in order to feel comfortable in administering punishment.

But the purpose of punishment is to change behaviour.

There are other ways to change behaviour.

Hence, we do not need to appeal to free will.

As you are unwilling to engage in rational discourse or even point out anything I wrote that is factually wrong — Dfpolis

I pointed out that the very first sentence of your paper is factually wrong. That I did do is another fact that I suppose your faith obliges you to disregard.

I prefer 'free choice'. — Olivier5

That is my preferred term.

And at the end of this evolution, there's some 'pilot in the plane' that gets generated, some navigating system for the animal, that allows full integration of sense data, memory, analysis, etc, within the same space to make for better piloting. — Olivier5

While I agree with the evolutionary advantages of cephalization for ambulatory organisms, there is no reason to think that the evolutionary advantages lead to anything but superior data processing and response to the environment -- no reason to think that it leads to subjective awareness, and no reason to think it leads to free will/choice.

Would some kind soul offer a two or three sentence precis of just what this thread is about? The title of the thread is, "Compatibilism Misunderstands both Free Will and Causality." In as much as most of the words in the title are terms-of-art, and no definitions have been offered (please direct me if I've overlooked them), it is not clear to me the discussion can arise to the level of coherence. — tim wood

Definitions:
Free will:

To be responsible for an act, one must be the origin of that act. If the act is predetermined before we were born, as determinism claims, clearly it does not originate in us or anything we did. So, compatibilism is fraud. — Dfpolis

While this is not a definition, it implies the kind of free will I am defending, i.e. one that sees acts as having their causal origin in the moral agent. So, "free will" means that at least some of our moral choices are not predetermined, but originate in an informed act of the moral agent.

The Compatibilist Notion of Free Will

... the idea that "free will" means we can do or choose what we desire (or something similar), — Dfpolis

Causality:

for over 1800 years, philosophers distinguished two kinds of efficient causality: accidental (Humean-Kantian time sequence by rule) and essential (the actualization of potency). — Dfpolis

I then go on to discuss each type at length providing examples.

The notion of cause as in cause-and-effect is a presupposition of differing ways of thinking and means different things in the several ways. Thus if one argues with it, one needs the right one, and in the right sense and application. Lacking that the argument cannot be correct. And even when correctly argued, only correct in its home context. — tim wood

That is why the OP is not short.

As to the possibility of free will, bumblebees fly and people have the capability for free will. And no account of either is of much real use unless grounded somehow somewhere someway. — tim wood

There is no evidence that bees have the kind of free will that makes them responsible.

I did not offer evidence that humans do, because whether we actually have free will in the sense I am using is irrelevant to the point under discussion.

My thesis:

Compatibilism is an example of the old "bait and switch" sales tactic applied to moral philosophy. The bait is that you can have your moral cake (responsibility stemming from free-will) and Humean-Kantian causality (time sequence by rule) too. The switch is that the kind of "free will" that is compatible with time sequence by rule does not support human responsibility. — Dfpolis

Still, it is clear that we have the kind of free will that makes us responsible, that makes us the origin of lines of action not fully predetermined. To have free will in the required sense is to be capable of actualizing one of a number of incompatible choices equally in our power. Clearly, it is equally in my power to go to the store or to stay home, and my choice actualizes one of these possibilities.

Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. — Olivier5

On this, I think a person could argue a bumblebee has the capability of free will.

Whether free will exists, — Olivier5

Is this being confused with what, exactly, exhaustively, and reductively free will is? On yours, my, and anyone's exercise of free will, what is the argument that says it wasn't free? Is it? and, what is it? are two different questions.

So we need free will in order to feel comfortable in administering punishment. — Banno

Not at all. Despite free will, we should feel very uncomfortable in administering punishment.
1. The act we might punish might not be a free act. For example, we can't get into other people's minds to know whether they acted freely or as the result of some pathology.
2. Why do we have the moral right to administer punishment?
3. Is committing an evil act a moral warrant for punishment?
4. Even if we are justified in administering it, what is proportional punishment?
I could go on.

Hence, we do not need to appeal to free will. — Banno

Agreed. Whether free will is possible, and whether it is real, have nothing to do with punishment. We might justify negative reinforcement without assuming free will, and we might accept free will without thinking that it justifies the administration of punishment.

I pointed out that the very first sentence of your paper is factually wrong — Kenosha Kid

I suggest you read the works of naturalists such as Huxley and Dawkins, who explicitly argue that we do not need mind in nature as evolution exemplifies order emerging from randomness.

This kind of agent causation is nonsense. Everything that doesn’t happen for a definite cause happens randomly — that’s what randomness is. So the agent’s act of choosing is either caused by something that’s caused by something that’s causes by something ad infinitum, or it happens randomly. The latter is much worse for free will than the former.

@Dfpolis
I plant tomato seeds, and two weeks later I've got tomato plants. You call this accidental cause.
The house's being built by the builder's building the house. Essential cause.

You appear to argue that free choice is essentially caused. But I think there's a slip, here - and I wonder if you mean efficient cause. Because what, exactly, is the essential cause? It is the builder's building of the house being built. It is not in any way the builder's choice/decision to build the house. The choice to build and the building two different things. Taking the building as just the mechanical exercise of building, it itself has no moral worth, nor is it itself a choice.

If you want to associate moral agency with free choice, then you have to decide or figure out when the moral agency kicks in (and what kicks it). And of course to do that you shall have to decide what moral agency means. If an excuse to punish or reward self or other, then it's a matter of legislation, whether for self or other. And you can legislate as you like, or choose - some laws seeming better than others.

A man shoots and kills, murders, another man. He has not murdered anyone until the victim is dead. But I doubt you would argue that only at that point he became morally responsible and not before. And then there is Mathew 5:28, wherein the thought alone would seem to establish moral agency, no choice having been made.

I think free will is trivially demonstrated even as simply as by pointing a finger in this or that direction. Cause, for present purpose only, seems the what-ever-it-is-for-whatever-reason that makes a thing to be done. And moral agency/responsibility seems a capacity people have to assign certain meanings to actions, but not necessarily consistently across populations, or even among individuals. And relativism avoided by appeal to and acceptance of reason, by most people.

On this, I think a person could argue a bumblebee has the capability of free will. — tim wood

IDK, I'm missing the social dimension and the sense of individual decision making. Bumblebees don't punish or reward others. The rules they follow seem genetically coded rather than socially decided. The queen is the queen forever. Insects also seem to lack the flee or fight mechanism, a fundamental decision making mechanism among vertebrates. I'm not convinced bumblebees are free. Theirs seems a very static system in which degrees of freedom are miniscule.

So the agent’s act of choosing is either caused by something that’s caused by something that’s causes by something ad infinitum, or it happens randomly. — Pfhorrest

So what you are saying right now is not really what you are saying? Who is talking when you talk?

What I am saying is what I am saying. But why am I saying it? If there is some answer to that question, then that's a cause of me saying it. If there is no answer to that question, then I'm saying it for no reason -- at random.

Me saying this at random makes it much less my choice to say it than if I said it for some reason. That's why indeterminism is a much bigger threat to freedom than determinism.

What I am asking is: who is talking though your mouth? Neurons? Molecules? Atoms? Particles? Society? Culture? Ancestors? God?

I'd like to know whom I am talking too.

I am talking.

I am made of neurons, molecules, atoms, and particles.

They, and so I who am made of them, are shaped in part by society and culture, including our ancestors.

Where is the university? All you've shown me are buildings and grounds and students and faculty and books and equipment. Where in all of that is the university you promised to show me?

While I agree with the evolutionary advantages of cephalization for ambulatory organisms, there is no reason to think that the evolutionary advantages lead to anything but superior data processing and response to the environment -- no reason to think that it leads to subjective awareness, and no reason to think it leads to free will/choice. — Dfpolis

A 'superior data processing and response' system must include self-reference. A predator for instance needs to know where he himself is compared to his pray, what's their relative speed, etc. This requires a mental 3D map, the modelisation of movements within that 3D map, and therefore I think some sense of self vs the rest of the world.

Note that some animals are commonly thought to have a strong sense of self-preservation. They fight, they flee, they hide. Self preservation requires a sense of self.

If your talk is fully determined by your molecules, then I'm now reading from and talking to your molecules.

Nice to meet you, girls!

You appear to argue that free choice is essentially caused. But I think there's a slip, here - and I wonder if you mean efficient cause — tim wood

I think I said in the OP that essential and accidental are two types of efficient causality.

Because what, exactly, is the essential cause? It is the builder's building of the house being built. It is not in any way the builder's choice/decision to build the house. — tim wood

The difference Aristotle is illustrating is that while accidental causality links successive events, essential causality occurs in a single event. It is an agent actualizing some potential here and now. Not every instance of essential causality is a willed choice, but every willed choice is an instance of essential causality. So, the building example illustrates the general concept of essential causality, not willing in particular.

The choice to build and the building two different things. — tim wood

Yes, but building willingly and willing to build ate inseparable

If you want to associate moral agency with free choice, then you have to decide or figure out when the moral agency kicks in (and what kicks it). — tim wood

It kicks in as soon as one commits to a line of action and continues as long as one continues to be committed. What commits is a unified person. We abstract out of that unity the capacity to commit and call it "the will," but the will is not a thing, it is only a person's capacity to make commitments. So, we should not reify the will.

you shall have to decide what moral agency means. — tim wood

It means that we can make rational commitments. It is not an artifact of legislation, but legislation can reflect the fact that persons can and do act as moral agents.

And then there is Mathew 5:28, wherein the thought alone would seem to establish moral agency, no choice having been made. — tim wood

Matt 5:28: "But I say unto you, that whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart."

Note that the text envisions actually looking as a means to the end of lusting. It does not condemn looking, or feeling, but acting to an immoral end. We know that we are committed to an end when we are executing the means to that end. (Walking the walk, not merely talking the talk.) This is not thinking of the act only, but starting to act on the thought.

And moral agency/responsibility seems a capacity people have to assign certain meanings to actions, — tim wood

No, I can assign a meaning to an act without committing to the act. I can think <if I get closer, that would violate the Jane's personal space> and then commit to staying where I am.

And relativism avoided by appeal to and acceptance of reason, by most people. — tim wood

One can commit in the framework of a universalist ethics, or in that of a relativistic ethics, so relativism is irrelevant to the fact of moral agency.

I suggest you read the works of naturalists such as Huxley and Dawkins, who explicitly argue that we do not need mind in nature as evolution exemplifies order emerging from randomness. — Dfpolis

I suggest you read them, esp. Dawkins who takes great pains to explain that evolution is not, nor could be, a random process, you charlatan.