Others characterize libertarianism by what it means more generally, — SophistiCat

What does it mean more generally?

For me, "free will" alone, without the term "libertarian" attached, is the general term. Attach "libertarian" and you're talking about the subclass of free will ideas which are not compatible with determinism. Apparently that's consistent with how the word was coined:

The first recorded use of the term libertarianism was in 1789 by William Belsham in a discussion of free will and in opposition to necessitarian or determinist views.

What is it about indeterminism that makes it that way? — tim wood

That's just the actual distinction between a deterministic system and an indeterministic one. In a deterministic system, the future states follow from past states, precisely and without variation. In an indeterministic system, they kinda semi loosey goosey follow from past states but with some wiggle room - a sprinkle of randomness.

From the article and the thread I cannot find the sense of it. — tim wood

Is this the first time you're reading about these terms? Determinism and indeterminism? If it is, I wouldn't recommend you try to learn everything you know about them just from one extremely short article and this thread.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/indeterminism

I find it useful to think of determinism from a programming point of view also. In programming, a function is deterministic if its output only depends on its input, and its output is the same every time you give it the same input. See here. Given a view like that, you could frame a deterministic system as a function of sorts, where the input is the current state and the output is the following state. An indeterministic function, thus, would be described by a function where, at least for some inputs, if you repeatedly call the function many times with that same input the output will sometimes be different.

this conservation started with you saying

liberarianism is not necessarily a subcategory of incompatibalsim

and you used yourself and your beliefs regarding teleological causation as an example, going as far as to call yourself a "libertarian compatibilist"

but now we've come full circle and you're now saying that your particular brand of libertarian free will IS in fact incompatibilist.

an extremely unnecessarily narrow view of determinism fails, perhaps.

I think you're interpreting those words as narrowly as you can, so as to exclude the types of causes you're interested in. I don't interpret them so narrowly.

The last sentence of the first paragraph on the "causally" page is a nice entry point for non efficient causes, if I'm reading and understanding correctly.

The cause of something may also be described as the reason for the event or process.

Are teleological and formal causes the *reason* why some things happen? If so, they are not excluded from what I would consider to be a properly generalized concept of determinism.

Both formal causation and teleological causation directly contradict this proposition. Why? To express it briefly, and I acknowledge imperfectly: Because if these two forms of causation do occur, then some things are necessarily determined by determinants other than (efficient) causes per se. — javra

I don't see why you think that quote excludes those types of causation. It certainly doesn't look like those types of causation are explicitly excluded. It doesn't specify any specific types of causation at all, in fact. Seems like it allows for any type of causation you can imagine.

I don't see why you think they're excluding goal-based determining factors. There's nothing, not one iota as far as I can see, of these definitions of determinism that makes it all about material causation or precludes all non-material causal factors.

Yes it's true that many individual determinists are also materialists/physicalists, but that doesn't mean the *definition* of determinism is so tight.

That's much too opaque for me, sorry. I try to read between those lines, but I don't see anything. Can you spell out for me what you're trying to get at?

I replied to your request already: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/975134
If you're not just repeating the same request, I don't know what you're doing.

So wikipedia got it wrong you think, interesting. And I see people across the internet getting it wrong the same way (perhaps they're all just bouncing the misinformation from wikipedia amongst each other). How do you think that happened? Why is it so common that people think that, pretty much -by definition-, libertarian free will means incompatibilist free will?

-edit- I even see Stanford Encyclopedia saying the same thing. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/#LibeAccoSour

second paragraph: "and ‘incompatibilist’ or ‘libertarian’ accounts of source and self-determination"

And phil papers: https://philpapers.org/browse/libertarianism-about-free-will

"Libertarians believe that free will is incompatible with causal determinism"

And this notre dame philosophy department https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/libertarian-free-will-contemporary-debates/

"Libertarianism is the view that (a) agents are sometimes free and morally responsible and (b) free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with causal determinism."

I succinctly said what determinism is? Can you copy and paste the thing I said that you think is the succinct definition of determinism? If you do that, I suspect there's a really nice way to modify that definition - by adding in a well-placed 'not' perhaps - to produce a good definition for indeterminism. After all, the prefix in- means "not" - not determinism.

Oh, I've never heard someone take that position. Wikipedia says

In particular, libertarianism is an incompatibilist position[2][3] which argues that free will is logically incompatible with a deterministic universe. Libertarianism states that since agents have free will, determinism must be false.

Why do you think libertarianism isn't a subcategory of incompatibilism?

I believe in free will my dude

I'm not sure what you mean by "do likewise for indeterminism"

For example, he conflates libertarianism with incompatibilis — SophistiCat

He does? I missed this. I don't think he said incompatibilism at all in his article. Libertarianism is a subcategory of incompatibilism, and that's what he's talking about.

sure. When he's talking about world 1 and world 2, Bob 1 and Bob 2, that only makes sense in an indeterminist context. In a determinist context, Bob 1 and Bob 2 will behave the same way because they are in the same conditions. Only in indeterminism can you start in the same state and end up doing something different.

In the Book vs. Water scenario, which action is a thing you want and are free to do, and which is the result of the machinery? — Patterner

That's not two separate things. The machinery --is you--.

Or at least a physical instantiation of the abstraction of "you" maybe. But probably simpler to leave that out and just say the machinery is you.

How do you have that in a deterministic world? — tim wood

The conversation is about indeterminism. So the answer is, you don't. I think you've possibly misunderstood what's happening here.

I am a decision making machine. I'm free, perhaps in a trivial way, to do (or try to do) the things I want to. The things I, as a decision making machine, decide to.

You should definitely read the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy article on compatibilism. No doubt my concept of compatibilism is not universal among compatibilists.

✨randomness✨

If you account for all facts between world one and world two, and all relevant facts about both worlds are precisely the same, then the difference between those worlds must not be sourced in some fact about those worlds. A casual force that isn't sourced in any existing fact, to me, is exactly what "random" means.

I'm not saying randomness really exists, I'm saying IF this thought experiment goes through as described, that's what randomness would be.

Or is it that you think there is free will, but not libertarian free will? — Patterner

That's right.

I don't think it's strictly logically impossible that Bob2 would do something different. I just think it makes no sense to attribute that difference to him if he's the same as Bob1.

Btw, in the thought experiment, just how exactly do Bob1 and Bob2 act differently?

Bob1 gets a book, Bob2 goes to the kitchen, in the linked article.

because your will is the same. How can you attribute a difference to something that was the same?

Let's say one little kid grows up to be a great athlete, and another little kid grows up to be a serial killer, despite similar upbringings in a similar environment. "Why did they turn out so different?" one asks. "Well," tim wood answers, "they had rich parents."

What do you mean?

Well the person who grew up to be a great athlete had rich parents, that's why he did that.

And the person who grew up to be a serial killer had rich parents, that's why he did that.

You see the problem with that as an explanation? It's... not. It's not an explanation. Their parents being rich can certainly be PART of an explanation for why they each went down the paths that they did, but it can't be the explanation as a whole - in order to explain a difference, you must appeal to a difference. To explain why one kid did something different from another kid, you have to explain it with a difference. This kid did something different because of this different thing he experienced in his life that the other kid didn't, or something.

Likewise with Bob1 and Bob2. Their will was the same prior to the choice, so to explain the difference, you have to find the source of the difference - you have to find a difference. And given that Bob1 is perfectly the same as Bob2 prior to the choice, that difference doesn't come from Bob himself. Because he's the same.

physics has come a long way since newton. Banno is most probably thinking about QM when he says that.

I conceive of compatibilism as quite general, not any specific way of framing the process of choice making. Compatibilism is a classification of a set of beliefs, rather than a specific belief.

A compatibilist belief in free will is one that satisfies this criteria: whatever free will you think we have, you would think we have even if we live in a deterministic extended casual system - regardless of the specifics of how you actually believe our extended casual system works, and also regardless of if the casual system we're in is actually deterministic.

An extended casual system is deterministic if it evolves to the future in a singular way, where given a particular state at t1, you will always arrive at the same t2. Regardless of how that evolution works, regardless of how you choose to frame that evolution - whether you choose to invoke agency or choice or even souls, or you just stick to physics - if t2 will always follow from t1 no matter how many times you replay t1, then it's deterministic.

And I think everything you've laid out fits within that criteria.

I think we just have a difference in vocabulary, because my beliefs are really similar to yours, but I just call it compatibilism.

whereas the prior state of the "physical universe," characterized in physical terms, although it is such that knowing it precisely would in principle enable someone to predict with perfect accuracy what action the agent will actually choose to do, fails to make it necessary that the agent would chose to perform this action. — Pierre-Normand

Wait, it could be predicted with perfect accuracy, but it isn't necessary? Are you sure this isn't a distinction without a difference?

If something has 100% chance of happening, to me, that's what it means to be "necessary". I don't think there's a difference between those two things. If Y follows from X 100% of the time, that's the same as saying Y necessarily follows from X. No?

It sounds like you think, given the same state, the same future will follow. And it sounds like you believe we have free will anyway. I guess, to me, that just tautologically looks like what it means to be compatibilist. I accept that you interpret it differently though.

what makes your view libertarian, instead of compatibilist?

Is it random? — Patterner

In my view, yeah, that's really the alternative to determinism. If we have a system evolving over time, it seems to me that any given change in that evolution must either be determined or be at least in part random.

That's not what the article in the op is about

you really don't think I've captured just about everything you've said, much more succinctly and clearly, in my plain language paraphrasings? Dang dude. If I can't paraphrase it then I definitely am not understanding it.

mate, I can't do these crazy sentences. It seems like you're going out of your way to make the most basic concepts sound as complex as possible. You've just said a sentence that basically amounts to "each alternative you choose between, you choose between". My dude, I'm going to actually go crazy if your wording is going to stay like this.

You make choices to achieve your end goal, and some of those choices are themselves smaller goals. Is that it?

Honestly it just sounds like you can skip all the jargon and say,

You've imagined a statue that you want to make. It becomes your goal to make it. You make choices to achieve that goal. The desire to achieve your goal is part of what determines your actions, while you still haven't achieved it yet.

Is that right? Is that it in a nutshell? I'm gonna get lost in the sauce if you try to force in a whole new vocabulary, especially if there's no benefit to the vocabulary over just normal words.

it's very jargon heavy. "Distal end" sounds like a fancy way of saying end goal. Is that right?

What does "not yet actualized future actualized statue" mean? That's a very difficult phrase to parse.

No, not familiar with any of it, that's why i'm asking you to explain it from the beginning my bro.

I would love to but your question doesn't make sense to me.

I can't maintain that if I don't understand what your teleological reasoning is.

Do you still maintain that there can be no teleological reasoning or determinacy? — javra

I don't think I even know what you mean. What I love about the op article is how remarkably clear and unambiguous it is. I don't think you're making yourself nearly as clear as that.

Maybe take it 1 step at a time, talk me through why teleological reasoning means that the explanation for why Bob2 did something different from Bob1 is sourced in bob himself, despite them being perfectly identical. Pretend like you never said anything before, start from the beginning. Really from the beginning, pretend I don't even know what the word teleological means.

Anyway, the article lays out a clear scenario - a Bob1 and a Bob2 who are both entirely the same as each other and in entirely the same circumstances before some decision. Then, that decision comes up and, despite the fact that they're perfectly the same and in entirely the same scenario, they choose something different from each other. Bob1 choose a different thing from Bob2 in that moment.

Now, the reasoning in that article is pretty crystal-clear as far as I'm concerned: if we're accepting that Bob1 and Bob2 are the same, then the explanation for why Bob2 chose something different can't be found inside Bob. Because nothing inside Bob2 was different from Bob1. Right? Does that make sense? Like, even if you don't think it's true, do you at least understand the reasoning there?

the "thank god" was meant to be a joke

I thought you said "theological" lol.

To be clearer, if will, volition - be it conscious or unconscious - has nothing to do with intentioning and hence with teleology (succinctly, the movement toward ends such that the not yet actualized ends pursued to some measure determine the actions taken in the present), then what is "the will" to you? — javra

None of that looks to me like it has anything to do with what I said. I never said any of those things at all, I don't think.