My only claim is that two specific forms of causal explanations don't reduce to one another — Pierre-Normand
Re your two different types of possibilities, I'd say that (2) is simply a subset of (1) . . . — Terrapin Station
Unless I'm not understanding something there, and I'd say that whether something is possible in way way rests on an observer
(1) whereas that are typically several mutually incompatible options (powers conjoined with opportunities) from the perspective of an agent
Why must you type such long responses regardless of how short my replies are? Is it some sort of psychological inability to keep things short as if you're having a conversation? — Terrapin Station
Because those are complex issues and there is no point is repeating almost verbatim the same seductive albeit simplistic (and flawed) arguments that have already been expounded uncritically 10,000 times previously in very similar threads.
If you don't want to think deeply about the issue, and prefer twitter-like superficial exchanges, you are of course free to ignore my long responses. I produce them for my own benefit as well. — Pierre-Normand
Okay, and these obtain by virtue of what? The agent simply thinking that they're possibilities? — Terrapin Station
If you can't communicate like you're having a conversation rather than someone with some sort of logorrheic disorder there is something wrong with you. It's not indicative of "deep thought" that you type a lot, especially when a lot of it has been unfocused, gobbledy-gooky word salad. — Terrapin Station
In the post that you elected not to read, I explained why there being thus several options that all are open (and hence possible) for the agent is compatible with the fact of there being only one of them that is possible from the perspective of an external observer. — Pierre-Normand
The laws of nature, as discovered in science, are inviolable and immutable over time and spac — TheMadFool
we want our dialogues to be meaningful, we must accept both free will and determinism. — Mariner
Your exeternal observer is an external ideal observer, right?--Hence Laplacean. So how can it be the case that both there is only one possibility to the Laplacean observer but really and not just mistakenly from a phenomenal/belief perspective, more than one possibility open to the agent? How is that not contradictory? — Terrapin Station
If you can't communicate like you're having a conversation rather than someone with some sort of logorrheic disorder there is something wrong with you. — Terrapin Station
so other participants are under no obligation to conform to your expectations. — Srap Tasmaner
But what it is that the Laplacean observer thereby sees to be necessary is not the intelligible action itself but rather the fine-grained physical realization of this action through bodily motions that are caused by antecedent physical/neurophysiological events. The explanation why those particular motions happen to be realizing a specific sort of intentional action (characterized in high-level purposive terms) isn't supplied by any sort of understanding of physical laws since physics can say nothing about the way practical reason and intentions relate to intelligible action types. It is the deliberation of the agent that makes this determination; which is another way to say that the agent is the cause of her own actions. — Pierre-Normand
This appears to be one of the many beliefs upon which determinism is founded. There is no reason to believe this actually is so, especially since everything is constantly changing. In any case, current understanding of quantum physics (probably the closest we can come to a fundamental understanding of nature and this time) pretty much undermines determinism. — Rich
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 but only that this ability was not actually exercised. — Pierre-Normand
If we want our dialogues to be meaningful, we must accept both free will and determinism. — Mariner
Are you suggesting that we have no reason to believe that the laws of physics are consistent?
(There's ton's of strong evidence for this actually, namely the fact that science keeps working).
What about quantum mechanics actually undermines determinism or supports free will?
You can replace determined will with random will, but "random" does not equate to "free".
In the face of quantum randomness, we might just propose a non-local hidden variable theory and blame that for our actions anyway...
Judge: "Why did you do it?".
Defendant: "The uncertainty in the the "spin" of a quantum particle made me do it."... — VagabondSpectre
I have no idea what a so-called Law of Physics is (a term that is bandied about with absolutely no definition) and since science is changing all the time and our understanding is changing all the time, there is zero evidence for such godlike claims of such a never changing, omnipresent, spiritual-like presence. But it doesn't stop people from using such concepts hoping no one will notice the lack of concreteness. — Rich
Free will is concerned with one's will being responsible for one's actions. — Michael
The analysis is meant as a conspicuous definition that captures how we talk about dispositions of ordinary things. — Pierre-Normand
F=MA it's inapplicable at the quantum level and is at best a good approximation for practical purposes at larger levels. If this is example of a law of physics then it demonstrates my point very nicely. — Rich
Of course, if you change something things change. No one is suggesting it otherwise. However, exactly what will happen it's totally unpredictable, demonstrating once again that determinism is fluffy myth. I wonder why people hold on so tightly to such an idea with zero evidence supporting it. What we are all doing all the time is choosing yet determinists are so desperate they become Buddhists and start declaring the world as we experience it is all an illusion. And what is creating this illusion (there is no who in the world of robots)? Molecules?? — Rich
This is simply a conflation of epistemological and ontological issues. — Terrapin Station
This sounds like obfuscation. The point is not that the ability was not actually exercised, but that, in a deterministic world, if it was not exercised then it was never actually (as opposed to merely logically) possible that it could have been exercised. — John
I was also interested in first-person data, subjective experience... is there a compatibilist perspective that considers that kind of thing? — Mongrel
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