If Hilbert's hotel was full then wouldn't everyone already be in a room? — Michael

Everyone indeed already is in a room both before and after they all are moved to a new room all at once. But after the move (where, e.g. everyone in room n moved to room 2*n), not every room has someone in it. All the odd-numbered room are freed. That's the apparent paradox. But one way to define an infinite set is: a set such that it can be mapped one-to-one to a proper subset of itself.

Since the set of natural numbers is such an infinite set, there are such mappings. For instance the set of even (positive) numbers is a proper subset of the natural numbers and, indeed, the natural numbers can be mapped one-to-one to the set of even numbers. This is what "happens" when all the guest of Hilbert's Hotel (the natural numbers) are mapped to ("moved to") the even numbered rooms, thus freeing an infinite number of odd numbered rooms. Or also, more trivially, when each guest that is currently in room N is moved to room N+1, thus freeing only the first room. This is also a mapping of the set of the rooms that were formerly occupied to a proper subset of itself (i.e. to the set of all the rooms that still are occupied after the move).

(When two sets (that can be finite or infinite) thus have a one-on-one mapping between them, they are said to have the same cardinality. It is one main achievement of Georg Cantor to have shown that there are infinite cardinalities larger that the cardinality of the natural numbers. Such is the case for the cardinality of the real numbers. But there is no set that has "fewer" elements (i.e. a smaller cardinality) than the set of the natural numbers).

But in reality infinity is not infinite, but it has an END. The same applies to the number of Pi. The number of Pi starts with 3,14... and so forth. One would say that this number is "Infinity", but in reality, there will always be a number in the end and a number coming after it 1+n. — Apple

I don't get your argument at all. What make you think that there is "a number in the end"? (Although Pi is both irrational and transcendental, that is irrelevant to your argument about infinity.) The fraction 1/9 (one ninth) is a rational number but it also has an infinite decimal expansion. It can be expressed as 0.11111... where the three dots signify that there isn't any "1" in the decimal expansion that terminates it. And so is it with the set of the natural numbers {1, 2, 3, ...}; there isn't any number N such that N+1 doesn't belong to that set. What motivates you to claim that the ordered sequence of natural numbers has an "END" then?

Your answer, as well written as it is, only reaffirms the presupposition in the performative significance. If personhood (or marriage) is not presupposed to be categorical then the performative significance is altered but not eliminated.

The counterfeit currency example seemingly relies on a mistaken theory of currency value. In representative currencies, a counterfeit note has no value because the promise of the respresentation is false. The counterfeit note can have value not connected to the representation (e.g., as a work of art), but as a representative currency the value is always nil because the note does not have a corresponding good to ground the value. That owes to the nature of the currency, not the accuracy of the symbol of representation. — Soylent

Yes. It is precisely this categorical feature of a representative currency (or of a fiat currency -- the difference is inessential for my purpose) that makes it a suitable example. What you call "the nature of the currency" is conferred, or instituted, by the performative act of its emission. A promise is an archetypal performative act, so is the backing of a currency by a government or financial institution.

A feature of my example that I may not have made clear enough, tough, and which was the main point of the analogy, is the fact that the performative signifiance of the act through which monetary value is conferred has a dual level structure, as it were. On the one hand, a categorical status is conferred and, on the other hand, the complex and multifaceted surrounding practice through which this performative act can be accomplished makes such acts possible in the first place. One can't make a promise (as a performative act) in a social context where the practice of promise-giving and promise-keeping (with all its subtle and tacitly understood expectations, caveats, admissible excuses, etc.) hasn't been instituted. So, what I am claiming to be categorical is the performative act that establishes a banknote as legal tender (such that it thereby acquires some value at all) but not necessarily the amount (or nature) of value thereby conferred. The latter may be pegged to the (variable) value of the gold standard, say (in the case of a representative currency), or to other dynamic features of the surrounding financial practices.

And so is it with personhood, adulthood (or marriage) on the account I am sketching. The performative act through which personhood is conferred to a human being is categorical but doesn't define what it is to be a person anymore that the fiat (or backing) of a financial institution defines what it consists in for the currency it emits to constitute money and to have the sort of value that it thereby acquires. That is rather established by the background practice and economic circumstances. And likewise, what it is to be a person is highly constrained and conditioned by the sorts of social practices, modes of embodiment and specific background circumstances that Bitter Crank, Moliere and Jamalrob have stressed in previous posts.

Hence, if this makes sense, there isn't a contradiction in stressing both the developmental, and hence gradual, character of the actualization of the abilities associated with personhood, and the categorical nature of the performative act through which the status is conferred.

Interestingly enough, while Bitter Crank and Moliere have both stressed the social background that sustains the features associated with the character of personhood (or humanity) that infants or fetuses come to manifest, those considerations have seemed to militate for the categorical attribution of the status of a person being accorded to her both before (Bitter Crank) and after (or no sooner than) she was born (Moliere). That's because one can stress either the concrete social construction of the specific background that serves as a receptive structure which the infant will come to inhabit (as Bitter Crank stressed), or the actual development of her abilities to more fully inhabit her natural and social world (as Moliere stressed).

While it falls short from settling the debate about the time after which abortion is impermissible, I think my suggestion about the dual level structure of the performative act though which personhood is (categorically) conferred to a newborn somewhat alleviates this quasi paradox. Since what is thereby conferred isn't a status that is defined by the performative act, one is thereby free, one the one hand, to recognize personhood as being prefigured, prepared, and partially realized even before the act through which it is conferred, and also, on the other hand to recognize that the characteristic human capabilities associated with personhood can fail to be fully actualized until long after this status has been conferred.

This smells very strongly of John McDowell, whom I understand to be wearing a fine misting of eau de Kant. — Pneumenon

That is, of course, no coincidence since Haugeland was McDowell's colleague at Pittsburgh and he offered two graduate courses on the philosophy of John McDowell (one of them specifically on Mind and World). It also happens that John McDowell is my favorite analytic philosopher.

I think the problem is that we have this rigid notion of causation on the one hand and on the other we have the idea that we do and believe things for reasons. The two ideas are utterly incompatible, we have no idea of how to map them onto one another. — John

What is it then, in the version of compatibilism that I have sketched in my recent posts, that you find unsatisfying? Is it just a matter of it merely being counterintuitive? We both agree that the doctrine of universal determinism is reliant on a flawed conception of causality (and, I also think, correlatively, to a flawed conception of "universal" laws of nature). And this is the reason why I don't fully endorse compatibilism. But it nevertheless seems to me that the compatibilist account of freedom is partially right inasmuch as it dislodges a faulty assumption shared by hard incompatibilists and many libertarians alike, and this flawed assumption is the intuition that freedom requires that some strong form of the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) be true (as I explained recently). The hard incompatibilists and (many) libertarians all are incompatibilists precisely because they believe there to be such a requirement for freedom and they take universal determinism to preclude this strong version of the PAP.

That is why I agree with Hanover that the idea of rigid determinism completely undermines the idea of doing or believing anything for any reasons. People who want to maintain a belief in both of these ideas simultaneously, wriggle and squirm every which way, but to no avail. Personally, I can see no reason not to believe in freedom, (I think it's actually practically impossible not to assume it) but I also think it is unanalyzable; I don't think it is possible to understand how it is related to, or compatible with, indeterminism; but it would seem that, somehow, it must be at least compatible with it.

I also wonder why you believe there to be a difficulty in combining freedom with indeterminism (where "indeterminism" is understood simply as the negation of universal determinism). Is it troublesome that our actions wouldn't have sufficient causes? Such an alleged requirement (which may be derived from Donald Davidson's idea of the nomological character of causality) is something that you seem to be granting (as do I) as stemming from a flawed conception of causality. Hence, it doesn't seem to threaten freedom, in my view, because it isn't entailed by ordinary conceptions of the explanation of beliefs and actions that trace them back to intelligible causes -- episodes of practical or theoretical reasoning/deliberation -- that explain them but fall short from being sufficient causes (i.e. antecedent circumstances that necessitate their effects).

Is there an argument in favour of viewing personhood as a categorical distinction as opposed to a matter of degree, or are you presupposing that position? — Soylent

I think it is presupposed by society, not by me, rather in the way being married also is a categorical status rather than a measure of the closeness of a relationship between two adults that may or may not have crossed some conventionally defined threshold of commitment or intimacy, say. But it is important to distinguish such categorical social "presupposition" from mere conventional prejudices through recognizing the widespread consequences of the fact that such social recognitions, we had better call them, have performative significance.

One other example could be the value conferred to genuine dollar bills compared with the lack of value of counterfeit dollar bills. It is likewise a collective performative act that constitutes the value of the genuine dollar bill and that marks off any counterfeit specimen has having zero monetary value, quite categorically, (rather than as having a positive value proportional to the likelihood that it could be passed off fraudulently as a real one, say). Yet, it is clear that the exchange practice within which the categorical status is granted to currencies legally issued (and within which counterfeits thereby acquire some parasitic "value") is a prerequisite to their having this categorical status.

Nevertheless, it would be nonsensical to say that whatever suitably resembles a dollar bill has a monetary value that ranges from zero to 1$ in proportion to the degree to which it shares the physical characteristics of a paradigmatic or "genuine" dollar bill -- and that therefore the genuine items themselves owe their value to their high degree of physical conformity with the "standard" or "ideal" dollar bill (in a manner similar to the way some people seek to measure the "personhood" of fetuses by going through a checklist of empirical criteria). This would misconstrue the modal and categorical significance of the genuine/counterfeit ("presupposed") distinction that we are making, that is part and parcel of the practice through which we institute monetary value, and without which this practice would collapse.

If embodiment (having a cellular structure, brain, senses, blood, guts -- all the gory details) doesn't define one's personhood, I am not clear about where you think personhood resides — Bitter Crank

Apart from having senses, which is a form of embodiment shared with other animals, none of the things that you mention constitute embodiment, but rather are prerequisites for the acquisition of embodied capabilities and statuses. Human children acquire most of the forms of embodiment (or come to inhabit those forms) that are characteristically human long after birth (e.g. months or years) -- which doesn't entail that they can't be persons before this, of course. But I would not equate personhood with the acquisition of those capabilities either since the latter is a matter of degree while the former is a categorical distinction.

One of the reasons why there can be rites of passage marking birth (broadly conceived as the acquisition of personhood) or adulthood is because the transition that is thus celebrated is categorical (e.g. one is either a person or isn't, either is an adult with voting rights, etc. or isn't) and not because there is something "objective" and independent of those rites that marks us as persons or adults. Also, when some of the requisite capacities (e.g. "sensori-motor", cognitive, emotional, linguistic, intellectual, etc) aren't yet developed, or fail to develop, the celebrated status that is normally their home usually is nevertheless granted proleptically by mature persons (or adults) both as a form of help ("scaffolding") for the development of the individual being granted this status (and an assistance to the exercises of her incompletely developed capabilities), and as providing a social circumstance that constitutes the fact for that individual having this status. That is, one important dimension of the celebration of birth (or of adulthood) is the fact that it is a performative act, in John Austin's sense, rather than a declarative act.

Finally, I would note that some confusion in these debates, it seems to me, may stem from the inability to distinguish (1) the concept of a human being, which is a sortal concept (or "substance form" concept) that supplies criteria for identifying an individual as being the same one from conception until death, from (2) the concepts of a person, or of an adult, which are "phase sortals" as David Wiggins defines them: concepts that only apply to individuals who are in specific phases of their development -- where "development" can be understood to refer to socially constituted, or socially granted statuses, in many cases. Hence it can make sense, and be consistent, to say that (1) I saw *you* in the womb, when *you* were a fetus (e.g. through ultrasonography), that (2) you are a human being, that (3) killing a human being is categorically wrong (and always constitutes murder), but that (4) had you been aborted at that time this would not have constituted murder. This is a consistent tetrad, in my view. It may be the habitual conflations of a sortal concept (e.g. the concept of a human being) with a phase sortal concept (the concept of a person) that sometimes sustains the judgment that abortion always constitutes murder. (Euthanasia also can be justified in some circumstances, in my view, consistently with the categorical significance of the prohibition of murder, but the reasoning is different since its justification doesn't require the withholding of the status of personhood to the person being euthanized.)

I avoided that suggestion deliberately. Yes, it is true that many of these arguing "Universal (pre)determinism envision the are talking about the absence of alternative possibilities, but how does this make sense? To say something is a possible event is to speak of context where the future is not yet defined. That's why a suggested outcome is a "possible" outcome, as opposed to "The Outcome." — TheWillowOfDarkness

Here I am going to agree with the compatibilist for the sake of argument. I don't know, myself, what to make of the claim that there is one well defined "state of the universe" (a state of the universe, that is, that I am inhabiting presently) such that this state is actual and, conditionally to its being actual, the laws of physics ensure that there only is one possible future unfolding of events. But the compatibilist believes that she can live happily with this idea and I am going to follow through on her reasons for believing that she can be free in such a deterministic universe.

The important distinction for the compatibilist to make is the distinction between (1) what is, in a sense historically necessary, from the standpoint of her historicized and embodied circumstances in the world and (2) what it is up to her to chose to do in those very same circumstances. Such historically necessary circumstances don't consist in whatever determines the "present state of the universe", which is something necessarily inaccessible to her limited perspective as a rational agent, but rather what it is about her past history (and the history of her world) that constrains the range of things she can do conditionally to her seeing to it that she will do them. For instance, her historical circumstances can make it impossible that she will get to work on time if her work shift begins in two minutes and her workplace is 50 miles away. But if her work shift begins in two hours and she has access to suitable means of transportation, then it may be (mostly) up to her whether she will get to work in time. There are thus many options that are open possibilities from the standpoint of her deliberative perspective as a rational agent, and it is precisely the availability of those several options that constitute, according to compatibilism, her freedom to get to work in time (or be late intentionally).

The hard determinist will argue that in the case where the agent takes the means necessary to get to work in time, then it was in fact historically necessary that she would have done so, and hence her belief that there were other options available to her, which she had while she was deliberating what to do, was an illusory belief. An impartial observer who would have been better apprised of the agent's "circumstances" (including every details of her cognitive states), and of every constraints that the laws of physics entail, would have known that the agent could only have gotten to work in time.

The broadly correct response that the compatibilist can make to the hard determinist, it seems to me, is that the latter is conflating two distinct ranges of historical possibility that hold relative to two distinct agential perspectives. Maybe the "observer", from her own stance, can see that the agent is bound to get to work in time. But that's because her perspective encompasses the fact that the agent is (or will come to be) motivated to get to work in time. From the perspective of the agent, however, her own motivations aren't part of the circumstances that are constraining her action. They are rather part of what she is. So long as those two perspective (i.e. the observer's and the agent's) are properly kept separate, then the fact that from the point of view of the observer the first agent was bound to get to work in time (and thus that it was impossible that she would have gotten to work late) has no bearing on the range of possible outcomes that are genuinely open to her (and hence possible) relative to her own deliberative perspective -- a practical perspective, that is, from within which her own motivations don't constitute external constraints.

In light of those considerations, I just wanted to make clear that the specific feature of the compatibilist account that I am agreeing with is that the idea of a singular outcome that is necessary conditionally to the universe being in a determinate state in the past (or present) of the agent has no bearing on the range of possible courses of actions that this agent can possibly take, consistently with historical necessity, from the point of view of her own deliberative perspective. But I hold, in addition, that there doesn't exist any such perspective, practical, theoretical, or of any other kind (not even in the mind of God) from which our universe can be said to exist in a definite state; though I haven't argued for this here. Any necessity that is knowable or intelligible to us always has the shape of historical necessity -- and hence there doesn't exist any perspective from which freedom is totally absent.

What you described is really basic stuff. — jamalrob

Except for DNA, which is acidic stuff. ;-)

“Universal (pre)determinism” is about claiming an absence of possibility. It's problem is it tries to talk about events while denying they can be. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Don't you mean that it is a claim about the absence of alternative possibilities (alternative to what is actual, that is)? I would rather say that determinism is the doctrine according to which, given the "state of the universe" at any time (and the laws of nature), then there is just one state that the universe can possibly be in at any other given time. Of course, this means that what will in fact occur necessarily will occur given what was the case in the past (or given what is the case now). This doesn't entails actualism (i.e. the idea that only the actual is possible, and hence that possibility entails actuality) since one can still maintain, as compatibilists do, that many future outcomes are possible conditionally on whatever state one (and the universe) might possibly be in at earlier times. Only if the "initial state of the universe" is the only initial state possible, does determinism entail actualism.

I’m afraid to say this rather missies my point. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yes, I must acknowledge that I had (mis)understood your argument to be much simpler than it actually is. But you are working from metaphysical assumptions so radically different from those I am relying on that it is difficult to meaningfully engage; though we may, of course, try.

I couldn't understand your post. — Hanover

Yes, the wording is defective. But I think TWOD may be making an argument similar to mine, targeting the very idea of universal determinism. In a way, I am both a compatibilist and an incompatibilist. That is, I hold the issue of determinism at the level of micro-physical law to be irrelevant to the analyses of free will and of the power of knowledge. Hence, our self-conception qua free cognitive agents ought not to be hostage to whatever discovery physicists might hold in reserve. We can still establish a priori that the doctrine of universal determinism spells trouble for our self-conception, but that this doctrine however is, fortunately, unintelligible. So, I hold free will (and the possibility of knowledge) both to be consistent with the possibility of determinism holding at the level of physical law but to be incompatible with universal determinism; while the latter can't be true anyway.

So, I think TWOD is right to question the coherence of the idea that our beliefs can be determined by the past (in the sense that they would necessarily follow from the past "state of the universe" conjoined with deterministic laws). For sure, our beliefs can be strongly influenced or, to some extent "governed" by intelligible social or cultural or cognitive forces (e.g. strong sources of cognitive bias that social or evolutionary psychologists are studying). Those are conditioning forces, or hurdles, that fall short from absolving us from our cognitive responsibilities and hence, also, from negating our powers to acquire knowledge.

So, there are two sorts of deterministic forces that we are subjected to. Intelligible forces of the first kind (cultural/cognitive, etc.) are sources of bias in our abilities to judge, but they fall short from completely determining us. Our awareness of them doesn't lead to a justified sentiment of powerlessness, but, on the contrary, ought to raise our awareness of our cognitive responsibilities. We have the power to, and therefore are responsible for, defeating our own biases. And then there are sources of "determination" of our "behaviors" that are strict and inescapable. We can't violate the laws of physics, and those laws, in conjunction with the past (physical) "state" of the world govern what it is our physical "bodies" do and how our brains are configured. But the doctrine of universal determinism is incoherent because it attempts to lawfully bridge the gap between (physical) "body" and human bodies, between physical process and human behavior, between brain states and states of knowledge. But there are no such bridging laws. Physics and psychology disclose only partially overlapping empirical domains. The concept of a cause may also bridge them somewhat, but not in accordance with deterministic laws.

To simplify my point:

This is really the Cartesian problem of the brain in the vat. We can't know whether all of our perceptions and judgments are accurate because an evil genius might be probing our brains and inserting all of these ideas in us. Or, using a more modern example, we don't know if we're in the Matrix.

The evil genius planting thoughts in us is a deterministic force. It is that force that negates our ability to know anything about the world. Whether that deterministic force is an evil genius or just the omnipotent power of the causal chain, we can know nothing about the world. — Hanover

Under that scenario our power of knowledge is indeed abolished since, if the belief that a cat is on the mat, say, would be forcefully inserted in us while the cat isn't on the mat (or while there isn't even a cat, or a mat, etc.), then our belief that a cat is on the mat can't constitute knowledge, and that's true even in the case where, accidentally, the outside world is as we believe it to be (assuming that we could so much as make sense of the idea of empirically contentful beliefs in such a brain-in the vat scenario, which we arguably can't). The reason why we can't be ascribed knowledge, in that scenario, is that even in the case where the cat is on the mat, and our belief happens to match the way the world is, this matching isn't an outcome of a power of empirical knowledge but rather the result of an intervention of an evil genius, and the actions of this evil genius, let us assume, are (counterfactually) insensitive to the way the world is. That is, we are assuming that the evil genius would, or would be liable to, insert in us the belief that the cat is on the mat even in cases where it it isn't, or where there is no cat, etc. This is what makes the evil genius evil.

If, however, we imagine that the "evil" genius would merely ensure that (or enable the possibility that) our beliefs reliably have the content that they would have if they were the outcomes of a normal (albeit fallible) power of empirical knowledge, as such a power could also conceivably be realized in a non-deteministic (thought regular) world, then the activity of the genius drops out of the picture. It is a helpful genius of that kind that a compatibilist about the power of knowledge could pictures determinism to be embodying. Such a genius would (effectively) be looking out in the world before inserting into us a matching belief. Hence, in the case where we form the belief that there is a cat on the mat, because the evil genius is aware that there is one (and that there aren't any observational circumstances that would ordinarily defeat our fallible power of knowledge) then the counterfactual conditional claim that we wouldn't hold this belief if the cat weren't on the mat also holds true.

Consider again the deterministic robot that I discussed earlier. If the robot is designed to detect and pick up empty soda cans, and can reliably do so in some particular kind of environment, then it is irrelevant if the laws that govern the robot's interactions with its environment also are deterministic (such that the robot+environment constitute jointly a single deterministic system). The robot can still be credited with an ability to form true beliefs about the locations of empty soda cans (and manifest this ability through picking them up reliably) even though, in each case, it was already "determined" what the robot would do, even before the robot saw any soda cans, and that it would form the true belief that there is a soda can there. The compatibilist thus may view determinism as an enabling rather than coercitive "force" in relation to the robot's cognitive powers. And so can the compatibilist view our situation qua naturally evolved cognitive engines embodied in flesh in a deterministic world. This is how the compatibilist accommodates the externalist requirement about epistemic justification.

In order to rebut this account, you must, I think, either question the coherence of the view of universal determinism tacitly assumed (to be intelligible) by the compatibilist or target her ability to accommodate the internalist requirement for epistemic justification (or both).

Determinism would seem to negate the possibility, not of knowing anything, but of having any justifiable confidence in the rationality of judgements. Of course if you are one of those who is determined by nature to have confidence in the rationality of judgements, and determined to think that confidence justified, then... — John

A view similar to the one that you are expressing is called internalism about epistemic justification. It is the view that knowledge requires not only that beliefs issue from the actualization of a reliable method (or mechanism) of belief formation (in order that they would qualify as knowledge), but also that the epistemic agent be justified (in each separate case of belief formation) in believing that her belief is issued from such a reliable power. If the agent thus has a power of knowledge, this very power must include this specific reflective ability (at least tacitly).

The first condition -- of the reliability of the method of belief formation -- is the only one required by externalists about epistemic justification. This externalist condition is easily endorsed by compatibilists with an account similar to the one that I sketched in my previous post (without quite endorsing it). One could compatibly have one's belief that there is a cat on the mat determined by conditions that held one billion years ago and, also, conceive of this belief being the actualisation of the reliable power to form true beliefs about cats and mats when one encounters them. (Likewise in the case of compatibilist free will, it could have been determined one billion years ago that I would chose vanilla ice cream today, while, compatibly with this fact, my choice can be regarded as the actualization, today, of my "free" power to chose, and obtain, the ice cream flavor that I want.)

So, the area where compatibilism might clash with the possibility of knowledge concerns the specific condition of internalism about epistemic justification that you are alluding to. This would be troublesome for the compatibilist if it could be shown that belief in determinism (or lack of knowledge that determinism is false) isn't consistent with one being justified in holding the (second order) belief that one's empirical beliefs are, on a case by case basis, actualizations of a power of knowledge.

I don't endorse such a compatibilist conception myself (while I do endorse internalism about epistemic justification) but that's because, as is the case with compatibilism about free will, the idea of universal determinism, which such conceptions incorporate, seems flawed for reasons that I alluded to in a previous post. If one, however, grants such an idea of (universal) determinism to the compatibilist, then, it seems to me, it might be rather more difficult to argue that belief in determinism is inconsistent with the condition of internalism about epistemic justification, as this inconsistency would need to be demonstrated in order to find fault with a compatibilist conception of knowledge in the way you are proposing. (And also, the compatibilist could be an externalist about epistemic justification, but the shortcomings of such an externalism can be argued separately from any consideration about determinism).

Your position is plainly ridiculous. — Hanover

One could possibly be some sort of a compatibilist for the case of belief formation too (though I am usure if this resembles what TGW is thinking). That's not my view but a determinist could argue for that. On such a view our beliefs are indeed settled by antecedent causes that lie beyond our control. But it wouldn't follow that what beliefs we have can't be (broadly) explained through reference to deterministic cognitive mechanisms that "implement" our best epistemic principles, as it were. What follows from this, analogously with the case of free will, is the denial of the principle of alternative possibilities: which is something that compatibilists believe they can dispense with (dispense with the PAP, that is).

That is, if one comes to believe that P, in some antecedent "circumstances" (including inner "states" of the cognitive agent), then it isn't possible that, in those very same circumstances, she could have failed to come to believe that P. But that would fall short from showing that her coming to believe that P isn't the actualization of an efficient cognitive power. We can imagine programming a deterministic robot that would explore its environment and come to form true beliefs about it, non accidentally. It would thereby be true that the beliefs of this robot are fully determined by antecedent circumstances that the robot has no power over, and also that the robot has the power to form true beliefs (and that those beliefs thereby can come to constitute knowledge, on many accounts).

Again, that isn't my view, but it seems to be a view that a compatibilist about free will would find agreeable enough, and isn't obviously ridiculous. I just don't know if it is consistent with TGW's other commitments.

Any casual relationship, by definition, has one state relating out of another. Agents are states. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Agents, I would have thought, are rational animals and thus belong to the category of substance (ousia). A state is a particular determination (in one specific respect) of a substance. It is expressed by a predicate, whereas an agent is typically designated by a proper name (or demonstrative), and characterized as the sort of substance that it is by a "substance form" concept, (e.g. the concept of a human being). I don't know what it could possibly mean to say that agents are states. What would they be states of?

Determinism is a concept that applies to certain sorts of systems: those, namely, that evolve according to deterministic laws. The system as a whole, (or the totality of the object that make it up) can be in a determinate state at a time, and if its being in this state at a time in conjunction with the laws that govern its evolution uniquely determine its state at any other time then we say that the system is deterministic. Systems, thus defined, belong to the category of substance since they are what states are predicated of. Thus the doctrine of determinism is the thesis that the universe as a whole constitutes a deterministic system. I doubt that the doctrine is intelligible or coherent because it relies on the concept of the state of the universe at a time, and I don't think there is any such thing. Real systems are deterministic relative to a set of laws that characterizes the connections between some definite set of predicates (that make up the vocabulary of a specific science or empirical domain). But the very idea of the universe -- the set of everything that exists in space and time -- isn't restricted to a particular set of predicates (e.g. it isn't restricted to the set of physical properties).

The doctrine of determinism thus may rely on the flawed intuition that all the predicates that designate real properties somehow can be defined in term of physical predicates, and that the laws of physics are (broadly) deterministic (modulo quantum indeterminacies). In other words, the doctrine of determinism relies on the intuition that all the genuine empirical properties of all the "real" entities in the world supervene on physical properties. Even if we accept that this idea can be cashed out and made plausible (which I doubt) it still would no follow that just because the universe qua physical system is deterministic therefore all supervening sets of predicates must designate properties (possible states of real objects) that evolve deterministically. Denying this still is consistent with the idea that any "event" -- described in whatever vocabulary (e.g. the vocabulary of chemistry, geology or psychology) -- has a cause (or several causes). But this denial of determinism also is consistent with the idea that there are no sets of deterministic laws that connect states with earlier states, as those states are singled out by this "supervening" vocabulary. Davidson't anomalous monism is a instance of this idea of supervenience of the mental on the physical that doesn't carry the determinism holding at the supervened upon level to the supervenient level.

Also unclear to me is what you mean to signify with "laws of reality". Are the principles of theoretical rationality, and of practical reason, that we (often though not always) hold our beliefs, deliberations and intentions answerable to, laws of reality in that sense?

Free will is necessarily deterministic and requires the absence of absolute "freedom." — TheWillowOfDarkness

One can distinguish two concepts, or two conditions, maybe, of freedom, called liberty of indifference and liberty of spontaneity. Liberty of indifference is the condition under which human actions aren't fully determined by their antecedent circumstances conjoined with deterministic laws. This is the stringent incompatibilist requirement that if someone freely performed some actions A, in given antecedent circumstances, then it should have been possible for this person to have refrained from doing A, or done something else, in those exact same circumstances. The requirement that you are stressing is the requirement of liberty of spontaneity. This is the requirement that actions not occur at random but rather conform with what the agent wants or decides. For this requirement to be satisfied there indeed seems to be required an effective causal link between, on the one hand, the agent's decision (or, broadly, her antecedent motivations and beliefs) and, on the second hand, her subsequent actions. Her action must be intelligible in light of her reasons and motivations in order that it could be ascribed to her qua agent, let alone be ascribed to her as her free action

It's not clear that the second requirement entails that determinism must be true, however, since the sort of law of causation at issue, which links an agent's motivations and practical deliberation abilities to her subsequent actions, need not have the same form as deterministic and exceptionless laws of natures (assuming there are any such things). They may rather be principles of practical rationality, and there is no reason why one ought to assimilate such principles to deterministic laws. Under some accounts of action, the causal model that links antecedent psychological states of agent, including states of the will, to actions, is indirect. It is a model of agent causation, where the antecedent cause is an agent -- a substance -- rather than events or states. Hence, one can have liberty of spontaneity consistently with the negation of determinism. The negation of determinism mustn't be assimilated, though, with the idea that events or processes (or actions) that aren't determined by the conjunction of laws of nature and antecedents circumstances thereby are uncaused or random. It may be the case that the stringent requirement from the incompatibilist libertarian is indeed too stringent, and that it is not possible that the agent who did A could have done something different in the exact same circumstances. But it need not follow from this that her action was determined by those circumstances since there is no law of nature that links those circumstances with the action.

In the Third Antinomy of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes the empirical character of causality from the intelligible character of causality. The former reveals empirical "events" in nature to follow from antecedent "events" in accordance with deterministic laws. The latter reveals other "events" (i.e. actions) to follow intelligibly from non-deterministic principles of practical rationality, on the basis of an agent's assessment of her own practical situation (not quite Kant's own formulation, but rather my gloss on it). The two sorts of accounts seem to conflict when actions are identified with (some of) the "events" that natural sciences disclose as conforming with deterministic laws. But it is unclear that human actions can be disclosed through such an empirical stances, and hence that they can be identified at all outside of the proper hermeneutical context within which alone they are disclosed as intelligible occurrences in the life of rational animals.

Right on the button. Just what I needed. — Pneumenon

I hope this will fuel some discussions here.

We generally agree that if one is in a coercive institution that restricts one's choice to such a complete extent that they have no non-trivial choices left to make on pain of violence, forcible restraint, etc. then they are not free in any interesting sense, as with going to prison.

I am simply pointing out that birth is such an institution, though people do not acknowledge this. — The Great Whatever

That would be something worth acknowledging if all the choices that anyone makes in life are trivial and inconsequential. But this thesis more resemble a philosophically loaded nihilistic view of human existence than it does resemble a truism that one can simply "point out".

I never said any of those things. Why respond if you're not going to read what I write? — The Great Whatever

You denied that there is any significant gradation in between the series of examples that I offered for your consideration: from being forcibly jailed in Alcatraz to being born on Earth. You implied that my suggestion that there might be a significant gradation that your are failing to acknowledge is merely a pointless verbal dispute -- a symptom of exposure to philosophy. This means that, in your view, it is indisputable that being put in jail is the same as being born on Earth. This is precisely the question begging premise that you are pushing.

If the gradation isn't significant, then it doesn't affect the argument in an interesting way. If you want a verbal dispute, okay, but I don't. Too much philosophy will do that to you. — The Great Whatever

I don't see an argument. There is just equivocation. If your premise is that any restriction in the scope of freedom, however tiny, is the same as the total annihilation of freedom akin to coercion to do one sigle thing, then your premise is question begging. It is just a rephrasing of your contentious conclusion.

What options worth the name does someone in prison have? Seriously? — The Great Whatever

That would depend on the prison you have been forcefully put or born into. Have you been born in Alcatraz? Or in North Korea? Or in Norway? Or on Earth (while being free to move to any country, or to a desert island)? Don't you see some gradation in point of freedom? For your argument to run through you have to call them all prisons and deny any gradation. But what justification do you have for calling them all "prisons" without begging the question?

Maybe your problem is that you have a schizophrenic way of making claims: they are either philosophical or non-philosophical. But I don't see that as something that I have to answer for; rather you do. — The Great Whatever

Forget about philosophy and philosophical theses, then. Let us stick to the ordinary senses of freedom at issue when we say (1) that jailed people are deprived of freedom and (2) that people coerced to act in some specific way aren't free to act differently. They are still two distinct uses of the concept of freedom. It's not quite the same thing (1) to have some of your basic freedoms curtailed (e.g. being coerced to remain in jail) and (2) to have all of your options removed, at any single time, except one unique course of action (e.g. being coerced to eat your broccoli). You are trading on this equivocation between two ordinary, albeit distinct, uses of "being free" in order to slide from the premise than jailed people "aren't free" to the conclusion that people who simply have been born "aren't free" in whatever they do.

What do you want me to say? That people in prison are free to go to the bathroom right when they feel like they have to pee, or several minutes after? — The Great Whatever

I've already acknowledged that people in prison may have the scope of their freedom severely restricted. This doesn't help you much in securing your wild extrapolation to the claim that being born is akin to being restricted to just the sorts of actions comparable to the fulfillment of passive bodily functions. You never defend the wild extrapolation beyond reasserting the very weak premise from which it doesn't follow.

That's exactly what I just said. I didn't think claiming that jailed people aren't free would be so controversial. — The Great Whatever

It's not controversial at all. One one natural reading of the claim, it's a truism. On another, more contentious, reading of the claims, it is quite disputable. Your argument trades on a equivocation between those two readings, as I've already explained a few times. What is questionable is the claim that *any* action preformed by a person who is jailed is thereby also "coerced". Also questionable is the claim that being born is akin to being jailed in the relevant respect required for your argument to go through.

If I thought it was beyond discussion, I wouldn't be discussing it. What are you even talking about? — The Great Whatever

You lopsided view of "discussion" seems to me just as extravagant as your view of "coercion". In this thread, you mainly reasserted your disputed claims while systematically ignoring my objections and requests for clarification.

Lots of liberties are restricted in jail. — darthbarracuda

Yes, it also seems true to me that jailing someone severely restricts the scope of her freedom of action but doesn't necessarily obliterate it, or absolve her from all responsibility for anything that she might do while jailed. (I also hold that responsibility entails freedom).

I don't have two sets of beliefs, one for common sense truisms and one for philosophical theses. I just try to say what's true. — The Great Whatever

So, in your view it is simply true that having been born is akin to having been jailed, and you are inferring from this allegedly true premise the conclusion that no human action is free. You should have said in the OP that you hold your premise to be beyond discussion and that you also are unwilling to address any challenge to the validity of your inference.

I don't think you can be said to do anything freely if you're in jail. — The Great Whatever

Why? Is that meant as a philosophical thesis or a common sense truism? If the latter, then that would seem to depend on the nature of the jail. If you are hanging with all four limbs shackled to the wall of your cell then there isn't much you can do, let alone do it freely, indeed. In some other jails prisoners can work for money, socialize, and pursue an education. You would have to argue that even in those cases none of their actions are free before you are allowed to slide to the argument that human life is akin to a life sentence to jail, just because we don't chose to be born, and that, therefore, none or our actions are free.

I believe we have free will and I believe that we can be subjected to coercion and be forced to act against what we wish to do. I believe that there are some impersonal (and no so impersonal) determinative factors that powerfully shape our behavior. This is the compatibilist position, as I understand it. I am not at all sure I can prove that I freely willed something, decided to perform an act without influence. — Bitter Crank

This view of freedom that you ascribe to compatibilists can be contrasted with a specific libertarian construal of the principle of alternate possibilitities (PAP) according to which an act can only be free if there was a possibility, in the specific circumstances in which one acted, that one might have acted differently. That is, whenever one does A, one can only be said to have done so freely if one had the power, to refrain from doing it, or to do something else, in the exact same circumstances. Further, in this particular libertarian construal of the PAP, the circumstances at issue include the agent's character and states of mind as they were up to the moment of decision. Compatibilists are right, it seems to me, to reject this construal of freedom as too stringent. The PAP can nevertheless be salvaged by them through allowing that internal circumstances that make up the motivational state of the agent be allowed to vary in the alternative possibilities under consideration. So, on that view, one can be powerfully conditioned to chose to do A over B, proceed to do A, and still be free just because if one rether had (counterfactually) been conditioned to chose to do B over A, then one would have done B instead, in the same external circumstances.

I think this view of "powerful conditioning" is suspect and you are right to be skeptical of the possibility for one to rule out that one can know not to be under the influence of any such conditionings. You nevertheless accept the possibility of freedom in ordinary cases of (seemingly) free decision making. But this means that you are rejecting the strong libertarian construal of the PAP, as well you should. This rejection is consistent with a rather more moderate view of libertarian freedom -- which still contrasts with the compatibilist version sketched above -- and according to which conditioning circumstances that determine our preferences or desires aren't all freedom conferring (as the strong compatibilist would claim) or freedom negating (as the strong libertarian would claim) but are sources both of the makeup of our volitional character (which is partly constitutive of our free agency) and of specific cognitive dysfunction that can sometimes provide exculpation from some acts through diminishing our freedom.

Hence, although it may be difficult to assess whether someone acted freely on the basis of motives reasonably acted upon, or under the compulsion of desires that clouded her good judgment through no fault of her own, the crucial point is that this uncertainty doesn't concern the strength of the antecedent conditionings but rather their roles as either partly constitutive of practical rationality (and hence of freedom) or as providing impediments to its exercise. Further, in the case where "strong" conditionings are sources of impediment to the exercise of practical reason, it must still be decided whether, in the circumstances, the bad choices that resulted are or aren't excusable. This is highly context dependent. Only when their presence provides exculpation can we say that the action wasn't free.

As I mention in the OP, I'm specifically responding to a compatibilist claim that does think that coercion negates freedom, and defines the weak notion of freedom that may nonetheless be metaphysically determined as that which is uncoerced. — The Great Whatever

Didn't we already go over that? You also say in the OP that "Unfortunately, life itself is such a coercive situation, since it is impossible to consent to being born, and all 'decisions' made while alive are within the context of that coercive establishment."

This seems to fallaciously slide from (1) the idea of being put against one's will in a situation in which one is restricted to chose among a range of options that is narrower that one might have wished to have been put into to (2) the quite different idea of being coerced to do something specific.

For instance, a prisoner is, in a sense, coerced into remaining in her jail. But then she might steal an apple from a fellow prisoner. Just because she might not have stolen the apple from her fellow prisoner if she had not been put in jail doesn't entail that she was coerced into stealing it. This gloss on the situation may or may not be reasonable depending on further assumptions. Was she malnourished (while the fellow prisoner was well fed) to a degree such that the stealing of the apple was reasonable? In that case, yes, her having been put in jail could be said to constitute circumstances that deprived her from the opportunity freely not to steal the apple, according the weak notion of freedom that you ascribe to the compatibilist.

But then, in slightly different circumstances, a different gloss on the situation would also agree with this compatibilist conception on freedom. This is the case where the prisoner had reasonable options, white still being constrained to staying in jail, other than to steal the apple. We imagine that she would still have preferred not to be jailed, and hence not to "have to" steal the apple, but she still isn't "coerced" to do it just on this ground alone. To pretend that she would thus be unfree (or coerced) not to steal the apple just because she would have done something else had she not been coerced to remain in jail (as she indeed was) is an unjustified inference, even when your weak conception of compatibilist freedom is the chosen measure of freedom.

A free act cannot be performed under coercion. — The Great Whatever

In the sense of "free" that is at issue in most debates about free will, determinism and responsibility, coercion doesn't negate freedom. To say of an act that it was coerced just is to say that the agent likely wouldn't have been motivated to do it in the absence of the coercion, and that the coercitive circumstance exculpates the agent, that is, makes her action permissible and rational.

Rational and irrational actions both can be performed freely according to compatibilists and libertarians. It is precisely because there are (and only when there are) alternate possibilities for and agent to have acted irrationally, in the (external) circumstances where she actually acted rationally, and vice versa, that she is deemed responsible for her action, and that it is therefore qualified as free. One can be motivated to act irrationally, and do so. The main difference between the compatibilist and incompatibilist (i.e. libertarian) conceptions of freedom is that the former holds even free actions to be entirely determined by antecedent circumstances (including internal "circumstances" that pertain to the agents character and motivations), while the latter views the agent herself, rather than antecedent circumstances outside of the scope of her power of agency at the time of acting, as the source of her free action. Compatibilists tend to have a impersonal event-causative view of causality while libertarians are more prone to endorse an agent-causative view.

I'd take my description a bit further. Free will is not even at stake here. These legal categories are measuring specific coercive factors on an agent, not whether their act was freely defined. What it at stake here is not whether anyone had a choice or not, but rather the circumstances of the choice and how it relates to legal and moral culpability. What we are trying to work out is not whether someone was free to choose otherwise. It is whether they chose in a certain way so that we know how to respond to them and the risk they might pose in the future. — TheWillowOfDarkness

This rather sounds to me like an attempt to redefine, or salvage, traditional legal categories in the framework of an utilitarian conception of justice that aims to accommodate the metaphysical doctrine of causal determinism. This move is equally available to the hard incompatibilist since they also are determinists -- and, indeed, Sam Harris sometimes argues similarly, though he also sometimes argues, like Galen Strawson, for the medicalization of the "justice" system. What distinguishes the compatibilist from the hard determinist, thought, is her pretension to salvage the idea of free will, not explain it away, or attempt to retain it as a flawed concept that it is useful for us to (pretend to) believe in. Saying that it is practically on point, because socially useful, to sentence criminals because, though their actions are entirely governed by their circumstances, sentencing them has a useful effect on their subsequent behavior, is a move that also is available to the compatibilist precisely because she marks out those circumstances where sentencing, or the threat of sentencing, is effective as those in which actions constitute act of free will in the compatibilist sense.

On edit: Let me note, also, that Anthony Kenny argues, (in Frewill and Responsibility, Routledge, 1978,) for an interpretation of the concept of mens rea in criminal law that is also quasi-utilitarian and rests on a compatibilist view of free will. His interpretation also highlights the deterrence function of sentencing, but emphasizes particularly the deterrence effect on the public at large rather than its effect on potential recidivists who already have been caught. Awareness of the potential threat of sentencing is thus viewed as a sort of scaffolding to the flawed practical deliberation of agents who haven't quite internalized moral principles well enough to be motivated not to wrong their fellows merely on ground of the fact that doing so wrongs them (or society).

The serious point: we can't know whether a behavior is determined or freely chosen. No matter what I claimed, or you claimed, the claim would be open to challenge.

"Deterministic factors forced me to eat the whole quart of Hagen Dazs ice cream." "I freely chose to eat the whole quart of Hagen Dazs ice cream." I can't finally be certain myself, you can't be certain as an observer, whether this dessert debauchery was freely chosen or whether I was compelled (by learned behavior, by insatiable hunger, by an unpleasant desire to make sure nobody else got so much as a spoon full).

But just because we can be sure, doesn't exclude determinism, it doesn't exclude free will. What it excludes is certainty that we can tell the difference. — Bitter Crank

You are arguing that we can't know whether an action is free as soon as the claim regarding its motive is open to challenge, of if we can't be certain what the motive is. What kind of epistemology is at play here? Cartesian epistemology demands that knowledge be certain. But the ordinary concept of knowledge doesn't demand it. All empirical knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is uncertain. It still can be considered knowledge when it issues from a faculty that normally enables one to gather, fallibly, knowledge about the world.

For sure, there are cases where we are uncertain, misguided or clueless (or repressive, or self-delusional) regarding what motivates certain human actions. In some cases, for purpose of ascription of responsibility, the motive may be fuzzy or even irrelevant, because nothing much of significance hangs on the choice that has been made. There just isn't any point to evaluating it rationally or morally. In other cases the choice is significant (i.e. it is rationally or morally appraisable) and it can also be as certain as anything ever is what motivated someone to indulge in ice cream eating in spite of a dietary restriction. This may be a case where that person can't disown (and wouldn't even be tempted to disown) responsibility merely on the ground that the causal chain that underlies her gluttony extends further in the past. It's just irrelevant that it so extends, and the point regarding determinism just is orthogonal to the point about epistemology.

For purposes of "justice", we make the assumption that the person found guilty of a crime voluntarily, of their own free will, decided to pull the trigger and kill the victim. The defense may suggest that the crime was determined (couldn't be a free choice) by insanity. During the sentencing phase the defense will bring out all sorts of relevant factors showing that determinism was in play from infancy foreword. The prosecution will stick with free will.

I disagree that anyone (except maybe some philosophically inclined expert witnesses) assume that the accused acted freely rather than under the impetus of unconscious factors that absolve her from responsibility (and hence also undercut the ascription of free will, in the particular case under trial). The prosecution may be biased towards drawing this conclusion (on the basis of available evidence) while the defense may be biased towards drawing the contrary conclusion. But the regulative standards of the judicial process enjoins finding out whether the accused indeed acted freely, and culpably, or can be exculpated on ground of insanity (or rational incapacity). It's not two incompatible philosophical doctrines about free will that are put on trial, it is a human agent. It is an assumption made by both the prosecution and defense (and also, more importantly, by the judge or jury) that free will is possible but can be undercut in specific cases or circumstances by medical factors that fall outside of the scope of an agent's responsibility. In criminal cases, and many jurisdictions, certainty isn't required either, only evidence beyond reasonable doubt.

It does not, once you make the move, as I am doing, to considering birth, which on the ordinary use coerces individuals in much the same way (perhaps even more drastically) as imprisonment. — The Great Whatever

It is still not remotely plausible to argue, on the basis of the ordinary usage of the word "coerced", for the idea that all our actions are coerced just because we haven't freely chosen to be born. You claim your view of coercion to be quite ordinary and uncontaminated by contentious metaphysical prejudice. But on the ordinary view, whether a practical choice, and the action that has issued from this choice, has been made freely or not -- and/or is or isn't coerced -- doesn't require that *everything* that led to the specific range of options that are open to the agent must have been in her control. Hence, on the ordinary view, whether or not the action performed by someone, seemingly under duress, is or isn't free, doesn't depend on the circumstances of that person's birth.

It is still unclear, since you've declined to argue for your point, and merely asserted that your view rests on the ordinary concept of coercion, whether your view depends on a requirement about ultimate responsibility or, rather, a requirement that genuine freedom must be freedom from any (involuntary) narrowing of the range of possibilities open to one. Maybe you have a third argument but you haven't stated it.

Your view of coerced action also seem to neglect an essential feature of the evaluation of action. You earlier dismissed the concept of responsibility, and this may symptomatic of a conceptual problem, it seems to me. The main reason why we don't hold someone who acted under duress accountable -- when we don't -- is because the circumstance of the duress marks the choice to disobey as unreasonable. It is always relative to some alternative, or range of alternatives, genuinely open to one, that we evaluate responsibility for actions. It is when someone acts irrationally, immorally (or illegally, etc.) in the face of reasonable alternatives that we condemn someone. We further require that the person who chose badly must have been aware of the existence of alternative (and better) options, or that she could be held accountable for her lack of awareness of them (e.g. in the case of negligence).

Hence, a compatibilist can argue that even though all actions are determined by antecedent "circumstances" (including the character and states of mind of the agent) her choice can be deemed free if it is rationally (or morally, etc.) appraisable in light of the range of opportunities that were open to her from the point of view of her practical deliberative circumstances, at the time when she was called to choose. The alternatives compared in the appraisal of the actions never are the actual action compared with the possibility for the agent not having been born. The fact that one was born without having had any say in the matter doesn't absolves one from the responsibility to choose among the alternatives that later become open to one.

No, it doesn't have to be unconstrained by anything, but the circumstances of birth determine our possibilities so completely that there is no real difference between the 'freedom' of acting once born and the 'freedom' (by analogy) of giving someone your wallet 'freely' when they point a gun at you. Systematically coercive circumstances remove the possibility of free action; birth is such a circumstance. — The Great Whatever

You did not disambiguate in between the two possible interpretations of your argument that I highlighted. You have an heterodox view of coercion according to which it threatens the possibility for action to be free. Is this so because acts are "coerced", in your view, that we aren't "ultimately responsible" for, as hard incompatibilists such as G. Strawson argue -- such that we never have more than one genuinely open "option" before us at any given time -- or because the unchosen antecedent circumstances of our lives merely narrow the range of our options?

the prisoner may freely chose to remain in her cell because she values life more than "freedom".
— Pierre-Normand

That is not a free action, it is obviously coerced.

This also glosses over another distinction that I was making. In what sense is it coerced? Obviously, it answers to the ordinary language use of the term, but your own philosophical use of the term deviates significantly from the ordinary use. This case is arguably extreme, but it is an extreme along a spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum can be found cases such as one having to chose between chocolate or strawberry ice cream. Suppose after some reflection and hesitation, I settle for chocolate. Was my choice "coerced" by my antecedent preferences and prejudices? Maybe on your view of coercion it was. But then this would deviate from ordinary use. And if you wish to appeal to ordinary use to characterize the agent's choice to remain in jail rather than being shot as being coerced, then that still leaves much room for freedom in ordinary life where most choices are uncoerced like that.

I'm not a secondary source; I give my own opinions. — The Great Whatever

I sense a false dichotomy here: either one thinks for oneself or one slavishly attempts to interpret original thinkers without doubting anything that they said (rather in the the way Justice Scalia meant to interpret the U.S. Constitution.) Why it is not possible for a piece of secondary literature to express what its author meant as, in part, explanation/appropriation of the text commented upon and, in part, criticism and elaboration on it? Much of the secondary literature traditions in philosophy take the form of protracted dialogues, it seem to me. The only amount of reverence to the original text that is required is the amount necessary not to get it completely wrong (and that's already a lot, hence the need for exegesis).

I think compatibilism is nonsense. This topic is not about its merits. Rather, I want to look a little at something compatibilists often claim -- that the important notion of free will is that we are not being coerced by anyone, not that we are metaphysically non-determined. I think this is plainly false, but whatever, let's look at the weaker version of free will. — The Great Whatever

(Note: I am quoting this from the OP, but I read the whole thread before responding)

It is unclear to me why your ideas about coercion ought to trouble compatibilists. The main debate between compatibilism and incompatibilism concern, precisely, the idea of the compatibility of free will and determinism. It is true that some compatibilists will differentiate among acts that are causally determined (in a world governed by deterministic laws) those that are, at the moment of deliberating or choosing, coerced from those that aren't coerced. What you are referring to as the "weaker version of free will" thus is the compatibilist version that identified free actions with actions that aren't coerced (even though they are causally determined). You are objecting that this weaker version is empty or near empty since the situation in which we assess alternatives is severely restricted, on your view, by the circumstances of our birth.

What is unclear though is whether you mean (1) to be making an argument from ultimate responsibility, or (2) rather wish to insist that the "weak" compatibilist freedom falls short from some stronger version that would be the only one, on your view, worth having or worthy of being called freedom at all.

On the first construal, you would be making an argument on the lines of Galen Strawson's "Basic Argument" for hard incompatibilism according to which an act can only be free if, not only is it uncoerced at the moment when it is chosen, but also, all the antecedent causal circumstances of the choice (including the character and states of mind of the agent) would also fall (directly or indirectly) under the responsibilty of the agent.

On the second construal, you would seem to be arguing for a conception of freedom according to which an act is freely chosen not just if the agent is free and responsible to chose among the options open to her (that is, the options that only are directly constrained by her own choice) but also if her range of options is unconstrained by anything. On that view, maybe she can't fly because she has been born a human being rather than a bird and hence doesn't have the ability to fly. Or, she wish that she would be able to live a life free of any suffering and human life isn't like that, and hence she isn't free.

Those two arguments are importantly different. The first one centers on the notion of ultimate responsibility -- which a libertarian incompatibilist may wish to salvage -- while the second one advocates for a notion of freedom that seems extravagant even from the point of view of most libertarians.

I would also wish to note that both incompatibilist and compatibilist libertarians can construe coerced act as free inasmuch as the source of the coercition has the form of a threat or incentive rather than a hard physical constraint. Hence there is a categorical difference between being constrained to remain in jail because of the thick walls and the lock on the door, and being constrained to remain on pain of being shot. In the later case, the prisoner may freely chose to remain in her cell because she values life more than "freedom". But that doesn't entail that her choice among the two alternatives wasn't free. Circumstances outside of her control merely restricted her options to two unpleasant ones; whereas in the first case, she doesn't have any option to get out, though she may still have an open range of options regarding how she is going to spend time in her cell.

You can't ever know if you're getting a "perfectly good introduction" to the thought of some guy unless you actually read that guy for yourself. I'd rather think for myself and make up my own mind than have someone else do it for me in tortured "academese." — Thorongil

I don't understand this debate at all. It seems obvious to me that both primary and secondary literature are essential. Indeed, the only thing that truly demarcates "primary literature", so called, from secondary literature, is that it mainly consists in works that have become classics, for better or worse. Almost all primary literature has begun as secondary literature. Few philosophers have endeavored to reinvent the wheel or have abstained from commentating on contemporaries or predecessors. Hence, while Sturgeon's law applies to so called secondary literature, it doesn't apply to primary literature since in that case most of the crap already has been sifted out. If, however, one is able to be selective in one's selection of secondary literature sources, then this criterion becomes irrelevant. Aristotle makes up part of the secondary literature on Plato, and likewise for Kant and Hume, Heidegger and Husserl, Wittgenstein and Frege, etc.

On edit: I am currently reading Sebastian Rödl's Categories of the Temporal: An Inquiry into the Forms of the Finite Intellect for the third time. Is it secondary literature on Kant, or is it an original work? It is both. The distinction is pointless. On account of its specific topic, if it weren't informed by Kant (and by Aristotle), then it would be misinformed. If it weren't original then it would be redundant and pointless -- but it is neither.

Yes, it seems plausible to me too that, while we distinguish, in some contexts, the literal meaning of an expression from the metaphorical uses that can be made of it in this context, the notions of the literal and of the metaphorical don't mark a dichotomy. In order to explain the literal use of an expression (e.g. a concept name) one has to convey a practical understanding of its proper use. But in order to convey this to someone else, one must rely on an already shared background of tendencies to demarcate the domain (circumstances) in which the expression, and other expressions used to explain it, can be sensibly used to say or convey how thing are.

When the expression is used in a way such that there is a high degree of context sensitivity to its understanding, then we way that it is used in a metaphorical way. When it is used in a way such that the features of the context that are relevant to its understanding aren't salient anymore, because we have become habituated to adjust to them in a conventional way, then the contribution that those features make to the meaning of the expression tend to be ignored and we say that the expression is used literally. (If we are reminded of the genealogy of this use, we then may recognize the expression as a "dead metaphor".) And then, in such cases, we forget that what delimits the range of circumstances (including the nature of the communicative intentions) in which the use of the expression is literal from the circumstances where it is creative and fuzzy. But since it is precisely the location of this boundary that define the concepts referred to by our expressions (because this boundary demarcates what the concept applies to from what it doesn't apply to), and since this boundary can't be sharp, then the literal meaning can't be explicated without making reference to the potential metaphorical uses that lie at the periphery. But since this is inexhaustible, the literal meaning can never be fully explicated.