Morality exists regardless of whether free will exists or not. — FreeEmotion
I cannot understand how the fact that only one course of events is possible rules out free will.
Do you have the actual power to do otherwise and believe this power to do otherwise is somehow necessary for moral responsibility? Then you are not a compatibilist, but believe in libertarian free will. — Chany
I cannot understand how the fact that only one course of events is possible rules out free will. — FreeEmotion
It is conceivable that the one course of events is the result of innumerable decisions of free will.
Peter Kreeft, the Catholic theologian, likens life to a novel where the end is known, but the story consists of agents acting freely. — FreeEmotion
I really do not understand the logic of this argument. Morality exists regardless of whether free will exists or not. — FreeEmotion
For example, seeing the presence of two cold beers provides you with an opportunity to pick one, both, or none of them. — jkop
The core idea is that when an agent performs an action in a deterministic world, that doesn't entail that this agent didn't have the ability to do something else — Pierre-Normand
Determinism and free will are not opposites. They are polar complementaries. One does not make sense without the other.
Free will requires predictability to be meaningful, and predictability is dependent on [a degree of] determinism. But absolute determinism (the clockwork universe, down to and including individual decisions and fleeting thoughts) lacks truth-value, since truth is a property of propositions, and the link between the terms in a proposition must be free (else the proposition is not a proposition, but rather a term-disguised-as-proposition).
If we want our dialogues to be meaningful, we must accept both free will and determinism. — Mariner
If they had the ability to do something else then the world in question isn't deterministic. You can't simply rename the ideas and say "There, compatibilism works." — Terrapin Station
In order to adapt this sort of analysis of powers (or dispositions) to the problem of free will, you may have to identify the 'triggering condition' of the agent's practical abilities with some feature of this agent's rational will. In that case, the agent who choses to steal a book didn't actualize her power from refraining to do so. This doesn't show that she didn't have the power from refraining to do so, anymore than a sugar cube remaining dry shows that it isn't soluble. — Pierre-Normand
According to a dispositional analysis of powers, the fact that an object doesn't exercise a power on some occasion doesn't show that the object didn't have this power on that occasion: — Pierre-Normand
We don't say of the sugar cube, when is it kept dry, that it is not soluble at that time, only that it didn't actually dissolve. It's still soluble. — Pierre-Normand
In order to adapt this sort of analysis of powers to the problem of free will, you may have to identify the triggering condition of the agent's abilities with some feature of this agent rational will. — Pierre-Normand
In that case, the agent who choses to steal a book didn't actualize her power from refraining to do so.
This doesn't show that she didn't have the power from refraining to do so, anymore than a sugar cube remaining dry shows that it isn't soluble. — Pierre-Normand
An incompatibilist may object that the triggering condition that was missing for the agent to refrain from stealing the book (having a honest character, say) isn't something that the agent had any control over at the time of acting if the world is deterministic.
But it is far from obvious that rational agents relate to their own rational/moral characters in an extrinsic way such as to restrict their freedom. — Pierre-Normand
A determinist like Schopenhauer simply notes that apriori every event can only have one outcome. If the outcome of a die roll is that the 5 is face up, it is not possible that the 2 is also face up.
Talk of the "power of the die roll to produce a 2 face up" is an analysis of logical possiblity. — Mongrel
For sure, this is a common way to be a determinism. In his book The Refutation of Determinism, Michael Ayers (London: Methuen, 1968) calls this sort of determinism actualism. Actualism, as applied to human and natural powers (e.g. the powers of objects) yields the denial that objects (or humans) have unactualized powers. But the sort of conditional analysis of dispositions and abilities proposed by the new dispositionalists show that actualism isn't the only option. (And their view was anticipated by Michael Ayers) — Pierre-Normand
So then we have to wonder why people are so eager to consider themselves compatibilists when they're simply changing the topic, changing the ideas that the terms represent, while they're still incompatibilists (as they must be if they're to be coherent) when it comes to what the terms traditionally represented. — Terrapin Station
Compatibilism only really requires believing that free will and determinism are compatible. It doesn't require that free will requires the ability to have done otherwise. For some, to have free will is just for one's self to be the cause of one's actions. — Michael
That's fine, but determinism, if we're indeed talking about determinism, DOES imply that the powers in question are not available. Otherwise we're not talking about determinism. We're talking about something else and calling it determinism. — Terrapin Station
When you are saying that the powers in question "are not available" you are merely pointing out that they are not exercised in the actual circumstances, — Pierre-Normand
Which is redefining the libertarian side, and thus one isn't a compatibilist on the traditional senses of the terms. — Terrapin Station
One has merely changed the topic, apparently out of some normative desire to be considered a compatibilist.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Just that compatibilists and libertarians have different conceptions of free will? Sure. — Michael
Or maybe the libertarian and the determinist have merely changed the topic, — Michael
You seem to be suggesting that the definition of free will that is incompatible with determinism is the correct one? — Michael
For sure, this is a common way to be a determinist. In his book The Refutation of Determinism, Michael Ayers (London: Methuen, 1968) calls this sort of determinism actualism. Actualism, as applied to human and natural powers (e.g. the powers of objects) yields the denial that objects (or humans) have unactualized powers. But the sort of conditional analysis of dispositions and abilities proposed by the new dispositionalists show that actualism isn't the only option. (And their view was anticipated by Michael Ayers although he isn't, himself, a compatibilist or a determinist) — Pierre-Normand
Nope. What I'm talking about is what the terms referred to. That was the debate. — Terrapin Station
But yeah, I agree with you that determinists can still back moral responsibility in the sense you're talking about. — Terrapin Station
But I'm not getting how the dispositionalist is offering an option. Determinists don't disagree that talk of logical possibility is valuable. — Mongrel
It's like if someone said (first), (A) "This dress can either be all blue--'dreblue'--or it can be all orange--'dreorange,' but not both."
But then someone comes along afterwards and says, (B) "Wait--it can be both blue and orange. We can make this part blue and that part orange"
Well, that's fine, but it's changing what was being talked about, namely that it could either be all blue or all orange but not both.
So the person who said (B) wasn't really saying something about (A). Maybe they'd use the same terms--the (B) person might say, "So, you see, the dress is both dreblue and dreorange." But it's not. They've changed what "dreblue" and "dreorange" are referring to.
They can obviously do that, but it has nothing to do with the conversation that the person who said (A) was broaching. — Terrapin Station
That depends on what it is that you want them to offer as "an option". Since they are compatibilists, they are not offering "an option" for agents to "chose otherwise" consistently with the past state of the universe (and the laws of nature) remaining the same, as most traditional incompatibilist libertarian required. Rather, they are offering an compatibilist analysis of "could have done otherwise", as opposed to traditional compatibilist who rather deny alternative possibilities and rather argue for the compatibility of free will and responsibility with this denial. — Pierre-Normand
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