An example there might be conservative Alice, who would never trust the scientific use of partially uninterpretable AI in scientific publications - and thus be agnostic about the conclusions of any paper using them. And cowboy Bob, who believes in the potential of AI and does not withhold belief on that basis. Alice and Bob would react differently to the relatively recent {almost total} solving of protein geometry given their base pair sequence by an AI, Alice would withhold belief, Bob would not.

Then, the applications of that technology happen, and new effective antibiotics are developed with these quick to press designer proteins. If everyone ought act in accordance with Alice's prohibition on trusting any fruits of AI, no one would have jumped ahead to produce the antibiotics, and we would live in a world with more death and pain as well as less scientific discovery. Alice's beliefs would have hampered the discovery of more truths, and that would be one fact among others. — fdrake

My standard complaint about philosophical thought experiments is that they are usually simplistic and unrealistic. Yes, I mean you Trolly Problem. I don't think the way you've laid this out represents how people actually use data. Here's how it would actually work - at least in my imagination. Alice and Bob work together at a pharmaceutical company. They're doing research to identify new candidates for testing as antibiotics. The goal of their work is to prepare a list ordered in terms of the probability that a cost-effective drug can be developed - which are most likely to make the company money. To do that, they search through relevant publications and other sources and come up with a list of possibilities.

Candidates are then evaluated using various criteria including sample size and whether the data source is prepared using AI input, but also cost to manufacture, existence of similar drugs, potential for innovation, possible patent conflicts, and lots of other things I don't know about. Alice and Bob then get together and negotiate the ordering of the list based on each person's epistemic priorities. Perhaps it would be silly to reject data based on one arbitrary standard, but it might make a lot of sense to apply a standard probabilistically as part of a comprehensive evaluation process.

In my experience, discussions like this one often miss the point by focusing on rigid and unrealistic processes for determining what is a fact and what isn't.

I'd wager you are, regardless. Especially since you attempt to throw around the foundation of their thought so readily... a quick search of a few key terms and yeah... you're knee deep homie... hence "Christian." — DifferentiatingEgg

Matthew 27:45–47 - Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And God replied 'what we need here is more dying and less whining.'

Questioning something isn't whining dumbass. But I can see how a "Christian" could confuse the two... — DifferentiatingEgg

There’s a difference between asking a question and whining. And I’m not a Christian, with or without quotations.

I think I'll raise the question as to why this place can't do save as draft functionality when comments are saved... I guess TFP is just hosted by a company not owned by the owner of TFP. — DifferentiatingEgg

Geez, this is a free service run by volunteers. To quote Sideshow Bob, what we need here is more thinking and Les Wynan.

Find the draft button. It’s in various places, depending on the particular device you’re using. Push on that and it will show the things that are drafts which you can then erase.

This took me a lot of time to figure out.

Mathematically, the infinite sum of the series in question is 1.

On my systems posts are automatically saved as drafts unless you erase them. It took me quite a while to figure out how to do that.

Thanks. I appreciate it.

Do we have an inborn nature? Or do we contrive our nature through our interactions with others? — Joshs

Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Stephen Pinker think we have inborn natures. So do I. Others are skeptical.

What do you suppose ‘uncontrived condition of the inborn human nature’ means? — Joshs

Emerson calls it our "genius." Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu call it "Te."

To believe our own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,--and our first thought, is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment...abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. — Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self-Reliance

I sometimes call it my heart, but that's not really right. Our soul? I guess not. It's something I experience all the time. I imagine a spring bubbling up to the surface in a pool in the woods bringing ideas, motivations, metaphors, and memories into consciousness and directly into action without reflection. In Taoism that's known as "wu wei," action without acting, without intention. If that sounds loosey goosey mystical mumbo jumbo, so be it, but I'm a pragmatic engineer used to seeing the world in terms of concrete, abstract constructions. I don't find any conflict in seeing things both ways at the same time. As I said, it's something I personally experience.

So what is our human nature? I'll go out on a limb here. It is a bunch of inborn genetic, biological, neurological, mental, and psychological processes, structures, capacities, drives, and instincts which are modified during development and by experience and socialization. I'll try to be more specific. We are social animals. We like and want to be around each other. We care most for those closest to us - our families and especially our children. We are born with temperaments that express themselves from the very start. We are born with an instinctual drive and capability for language. We are born with an inborn drive to find a mate, usually, but not always of the opposite sex. This is from William James. I'm not sure whether it will seem relevant, but it does to me and I like it.

Nothing more can be said than that these are human ways, and that every creature likes its own ways, and takes to the following them as a matter of course. Science may come and consider these ways, and find that most of them are useful. But it is not for the sake of their utility that they are followed, but because at the moment of following them we feel that that is the only appropriate and natural thing to do. .. It takes, in short, what Berkeley calls a mind debauched by learning to carry the process of making the natural seem strange so far as to ask for the why of any instinctive human act...

...Why are we unable to talk to a crowd as we talk to a single friend? Why does a particular maiden turn our wits so upside down? The common man can only say, “of course we smile, of course our heart palpitates at the sight of the crowd, of course we love the maiden, that beautiful soul clad in that perfect form, so palpably and flagrantly made from all eternity to be loved!” And so probably does each animal feel about the particular things it tends to do in presence of particular objects. They, too, are a priori syntheses. To the lion it is the lioness which is made to be loved; to the bear, the she-bear. To the broody hen the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom a nestful of eggs was not the utterly fascinating and precious and never-to-be-too-much-sat-upon object which it is to her. — William James - What is an Instinct?

For what it's worth, as I noted, there are a lot of people who don't see things this way.

Sorry, I don't get it. It seems self-evidently goofy. That's a technical philosophical term. Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems like a simple issue. We can leave it at that.

now read the Pincock paper (also linked)! — J

Boy, I tried. I found it impenetrable.

I think both Chakravartty and Pincock would agree that it is useful. Pincock, though, would add that it has the additional virtue of being real or true. — J

As I understand it, the idea of objective reality is metaphysics. It's not our only choice of the way to see things, even for science. This is something I've discussed often since I joined the forum. I'm not the only one who sees things that way - it's not goofy philosophy. I'll take it further, I think reality and truth are also metaphysical concepts.

Perhaps we've taken this as far as we can. Focusing on metaphysics rather than epistemology is taking us farther and farther from the OP.

Deciding something is false is different to it's being logically falsifiable. — Banno

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. As I see it, if I can determine a proposition is false, it must be logically falsifiable.

For Popper, basic statements ("protocol sentences") are unfalsifiable. — Banno

I had never heard the term "protocol sentence" before, so I looked it up. This is from Britannica.

protocol sentence, in the philosophy of Logical Positivism, a statement that describes immediate experience or perception and as such is held to be the ultimate ground for knowledge... It is thought to be irrefutable and therefore the ultimate justification for other more complex statements, particularly for statements of science. — Britannica

Irrefutable is not the same as unfalsifiable.

there are bits of science that have a logical structure that bars them from falsification by a basic statement, and so count as metaphysics. — Banno

You still haven't given me an example of a "bit of science" that I think demonstrates your point. As I have explained, your example of conservation of energy does not.

"All events have causes" is a different proposition to "events have causes", since the second allows for uncaused events. So saying "things have cases" is not the same as saying that physics is deterministic. — Banno

I agree, but how is this relevant to our discussion. I wasn't talking about the statement "events have causes."

Welcome to the forum.

Well... I agree with everything you've written, but you'd probably like something more than just that. Like you, I find most philosophical discussions of morality pointless for exactly the reasons you give. Here's how I've come to think about it. First, the morality I care about is personal. How should I behave. As you note "the layman already has a fairly solid intuitive grasp of how to act ethically based off sheer compassion and, for want of a better term, 'common sense'" I count myself among the laymen.

The formal systems of so-called morality you discuss are more about how someone thinks other people should behave. As I see it, that's not morality at all, it's social control - the rules and practices a society sets up to protect it's members and make sure things run smoothly. Murder is prohibited not because it's wrong, but because it hurts people that a community is obligated to protect.

Philosophically, the principles expressed in the "Tao Te Ching" and "Chuang Tzu," the founding documents of Taoism, are the ones I feel most at home in. This is from Ziporyn's translation of the Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi).

What I call good is not humankindness and responsible conduct, but just being good at what is done by your own intrinsic virtuosities. Goodness, as I understand it, certainly does not mean humankindness and responsible conduct! It is just fully allowing the uncontrived condition of the inborn nature and allotment of life to play itself out. What I call sharp hearing is not hearkening to others, but rather hearkening to oneself, nothing more. — Chuang Tzu

I hope you find time to read the two papers. — J

I read the paper you linked and I enjoyed it. The guy writes really well, which isn't the same as saying I understood everything he wrote. What he writes is familiar, but it's different enough from the way I usually talk about it that I get a bit lost. It feels like he's mixing metaphysics and science while I think of them as entirely different things. A metaphor I like is that metaphysics is the traffic laws, science is driving your car.

Some thoughts.

I agree, this is in the same family as "epistemic stance," as used by Chakravartty and Pincock.
(@tim wood, above, also noticed the resemblance to Collingwood.). One difference may lie in the idea of an "absolute presupposition," which I think is too strong. For Chakravartty, at least, an epistemic stance is tentative, flexible, and dependent on a lot more than what I think you're calling metaphysics. — J

I was thinking something like this when I first read your OP. You quoted Chakravartty as saying "An epistemic stance is an orientation, a collection of attitudes, values, aims, and other commitments relevant to thinking about scientific ontology, including policies or guidelines for the production of putatively factual beliefs . . " That does seem broader and less stringent than what I usually think of as metaphysics. That's one of the things I was wrestling with as I tried to figure out how they compared.

As for the article itself, what bothered me the most is that realism and antirealism are set up as mutually exclusive and incomprehensible. Fact is, you can use both. I come from science and engineering. When I deal with those types of issues, I generally toe the realist line, but I recognize that approach has limitations. One of the first discussions I started six or seven years ago addressed whether the idea of objective reality is a useful one.

From a broader philosophical perspective, I'm definitely an anti-realist. I don't know if you've ever read any of my posts about Taoism. In Taoist cosmology, we bring the everyday world into existence by naming things, making distinctions. Boiling that down into a less mystical and esoteric sounding message, the world we humans see and know is constrained by our human nature - the physical, biological, genetic, and neurological nature of our bodies, established by evolution and development; and the cognitive/psychological nature of our minds, established by learning and the structure of our nervous system. There is significant overlap between those factors.

I don't feel any conflict between those two ways of seeing things. I can have an intelligent, if limited, conversation about hard physics and also a philosophical discussion about Taoist principles.

I'm not sure where to go from here or whether I have anything else to offer.

In a recent paper, Anjan Chakravartty discusses the concept of “epistemic stances.” This idea is not new, but Chakravartty provides a good description of what such a stance would be:

An epistemic stance is an orientation, a collection of attitudes, values, aims, and other commitments relevant to thinking about scientific ontology, including policies or guidelines for the production of putatively factual beliefs . . .

A stance is not a claim about the world. Stances are not believed so much as adopted and exemplified in assessments of evidence, producing interpretations of scientific work that yield claims about scientific ontology, and claims regarding matters about which it would be better to be agnostic instead.
— Chakravartty, 1308-9 — J

As the saying goes, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. A corollary might go - to a metaphysician, everything looks like metaphysics. I'll now stretch the truth by calling myself a metaphysician.

What you and Chakravartty call "epistemic stances," I might call "metaphysical positions." Here's what R.G. Collingwood says about metaphysics in "An Essay on Metaphysics."

"Metaphysics is the attempt to find out what absolute presuppositions have been made by this or that person or group of persons, on this or that occasion or group of occasions, in the course of this or that piece of thinking." — R.G. Collingwood - An Essay on Metaphysics

A presupposition is an assumption that establishes the context for a philosophical or scientific discussion. Here's what Collingwood says about absolute presuppositions:

"An absolute presupposition is one which stands, relatively to all questions to which it is related, as a presupposition, never as an answer."

"Absolute presuppositions are not verifiable. This does not mean that we should like to verify them but are not able to; it means that the idea of verification is an idea which does not apply to them...." — R.G. Collingwood - An Essay on Metaphysics

Reading your post, I was trying to figure out how what you are describing is different from what I am. They don't seem exactly the same, but very similar. I don't want to clutter up your thread with a discussion of the differences or similarities, but there is one aspect I think is worth mentioning.

Having chosen an epistemic stance, one can deploy reason, logic, evidence, et al. to form judgments within that stance, and to continue to clarify the implications and use of that stance. But choosing the stance itself can never be a matter of rationality alone. This is why a stance is not so much believed (which would imply assenting to its truth) as adopted. This is also why, in Chakravartty’s view, disputes between realism and antirealism are rationally unresolvable. It’s important, though, to note that the realism/antirealism debate (which is the focus of Chakravartty’s paper) is only one place where the question of dueling epistemic stances arises. — J

A lot of what you've written here is consistent with what I think Collingwood might agree with some qualifications. I especially like "This is why a stance is not so much believed (which would imply assenting to its truth) as adopted." First, I don't think we typically choose our metaphysical positions, or whatever you call them. Unless real effort is put into them people are usually unaware of them.

Also, to go back to my quote from Collingwood - "...absolute presuppositions have been made by this or that person or group of persons, on this or that occasion or group of occasions, in the course of this or that piece of thinking." You don't have to choose. It is appropriate to use different absolute presuppositions in different situations depending on what is the most useful point of view. Beyond that, they don't have to be, and usually aren't, adopted based on rational criteria.

As I noted, I don't want to disrupt you discussion, so I won't take this any further.

@fdrake

I'll give an example, which doesn't address your quantum mechanics comments. I got this from "The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science" by E.A. Burtt which I recommend. — T Clark

I was looking for something in Burtt's book and came across something that I think explains what I was trying to say in my first post better than the quotes I gave you.

For the dominant trend in medieval thought, man occupied a more significant and determinative place in the universe than the realm of physical nature, while for the main current of modern thought, nature holds a more independent, more determinative, and more permanent place than man. It will be helpful to analyse this contrast more specifically. For the Middle Ages man was in every sense the centre of the universe. The whole world of nature was believed to be teleologically subordinate to him and his eternal destiny. Toward this conviction the two great movements which had become united in the medieval synthesis, Greek philosophy and Judeo-Christian theology, had irresistibly led. The prevailing world-view of the period was marked by a deep and persistent assurance that man, with his hopes and ideals, was the all-important, even controlling fact in the universe. — E.A. Burtt

Modally though, the mere possibility of a dispute between this interpretation of a physical process is enough to undermine the idea that the metaphysical is closed off from the way of things. It's a paradigmatic case of the possibility that how things are constraints how we may talk about them in the abstract. It thus undermines the claim that we necessarily cannot relate metaphysics and how stuff happens, by providing the possibility of a relation. — fdrake

And now for the hard part. To start - and I don't think this is directly related to my argument - if you look on the web you'll find that opinion is about evenly split over whether quantum mechanics is deterministic. I have a hard time following the arguments. It seems that some interpretations are and others aren't. That underlines my thoughts that the interpretations are metaphysics and not science. That will be true unless someone can find a way to distinguish among them empirically.

Now the hard hard part. Let's look at the instance you discuss - beta emissions. Does that mean that if the whole world reran that things would have worked out differently - a particular particle would not be emitted at the same time? It's not clear to me that it does. Again, I don't think that's really important. If I understand correctly, the idea of strict determinism had already been undermined in the late 1800s before QM arrived by thermodynamics and engineering mechanics, i.e. considering the behavior of matter and energy as statistical macroscopic phenomena rather than microscopic. Bertrand Russell wrote a paper in 1912 - "On the Notion of Cause" - which called into question the value of causation as an organizing principle. Engineering mechanical explanations are what allows quantum mechanics to be applied to the world as we know it.

So, where does this leave us? Well... when we use science, we still have to be able to say "If I do this, that will happen." You can talk about uncertainty, but physicists can make incredibly precise predictions about how the world works at atomic scale. It's not the strict billiard ball determinism of pre-QM days, but it's still determinism. So - strict determinism is and has always been bonehead metaphysics, but loosey goosey determinism makes the world work.

This is a good, thoughtful response. You're making me work. Thanks.

Yeah. And it surprises me that you believe how stuff happens has no bearing on how we can, or should, talk about how stuff happens. It's an incredibly incautious claim, that things which happen necessarily don't influence how we talk about stuff in the abstract. A defeater of the claim would be a single example of something which possibly can have this influence. And there are examples. — fdrake

I'll give an example, which doesn't address your quantum mechanics comments. I got this from "The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science" by E.A. Burtt which I recommend. Forgive me if I don't get the details right. The metaphysics of scholastic science, which is what they call it from ancient Greece up through the end of the Middle Ages, focused on human involvement in the world. The universe revolved around the Earth - us. The principles of science were focused on human involvement and logical connections. Explanations were teleological in terms of human purpose. Here's what Burtt had to say:

In particular it is difficult for the modern mind, accustomed to think so largely in terms of space and time, to realize how unimportant these entities were for scholastic science. Spatial and temporal relations were accidental, not essential characteristics. Instead of spatial connexions of things, men were seeking their logical connexions; instead of the onward march of time, men thought of the eternal passage of potentiality into actuality. — E.A. Burtt

In the 1500s and 1600s, scientists started to focus on different factors. I was really impressed by Kepler. He was one of the first to identify and focus on the mathematical nature of the world, in particular cosmology. He also was one of the first to propose relativity, i.e. we don't have to stand on the earth or use a human perspective. Things we know and see can be studied from any perspective. This again from Burtt.

Instead of treating things in terms of substance, accident, and causality, essence and idea, matter and form, potentiality and actuality, we now treat them in terms of forces, motions, and laws, changes of mass in space and time, and the like. Pick up the works of any modern philosopher, and note how complete the shift has been. To be sure, works in general philosophy may show little use of such a term as mass, but the other words will abundantly dot their pages as fundamental categories of explanation. — E.A. Burtt

So, metaphysics gives us the words to talk about how the world works. I'm going to leave it at that for this post so it doesn't get too long. I'll be back to talk about your quantum mechanics examples.

I'm not ignoring your post, just thinking through an answer. And also tending to my hurt feelings because you called me incautious and metaphysically gluttonous.

Sure. True but irrelevant. Choose whatever conservation principle you want. The issue is that there are parts of science that are logically unfalsifiable - they embed one quantification in another so that accepting a basic statement does not show them to be false. — Banno

You wrote that the conservation of energy is unfalsifiable. I pointed out that it has already been falsified. How is that irrelevant?

The issue is that there are parts of science that are logically unfalsifiable — Banno

As far as I know, that's not true. Can you point out an instance?

Whereas the conservation laws are metaphysical and true and helpful, determinism is metaphysical and potentially false and not helpful. — Banno

As I understand it, conservation of matter and energy has been established as a valid principle in physics. That doesn't necessarily mean it's correct, but we are justified in using it unless it is falsified in the future. It's not metaphysics, it's science. Determinism is metaphysics and can be useful.

Saying "things have cases" is not the same as saying that physics is deterministic. — Banno

How is saying that all events have causes not describing determinism? To be clear, that statement is also metaphysics, not science.

Otherwise it just looks like the medieval prejudice that every event has a cause - a classic bit of bad metaphysics that is almost certainly wrong. — Banno

It is metaphysics, but it's not medieval and it's not necessarily bad.

So, one reason why I agree with T Clark that determinism is a metaphysical thesis is because its falsity, according to me, isn't contingent on such things as the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics. My stance would have been the same if some hidden variable interpretation had turned out to be empirically vindicated, or QM had never been developed (and our view of the physical world would still be broadly classical). I think the fallacious move from the causal closure of the physical (also assuming no bifurcations in phase space) to unqualified determinism depends on physicalist theses that are metaphysical in nature (and misguided to boot). — Pierre-Normand

I agree with you it is wrongheaded to use science to try to demonstrate that the world is deterministic. As you note, this would have been the same back in 1904 before quantum mechanics was developed. A quibble - determinism isn't false, but it's not true either. It's metaphysics.

I took this as implying that metaphysical statements are not factual, not issues of truth or falsehood. In contrast, I think it might be false that physics is deterministic. — Banno

Methodologically, scientists have had to assume, presuppose, that the world is deterministic - that things have causes - in order to do their work. Determinism isn't false, but it may be less useful than it was in the past in some instances.

Conservation of energy is neither falsifiable nor provable, — Banno

This is not true - it had already been falsified in 1905 by Albert Einstein. E = mc^2. Energy and matter are equivalent. Conservation of energy has been superceded by conservation of matter and energy.

That you find such questions irritating is not a fault of mine, I'm just asking questions. No need to be rude. — Banno

You don't just ask questions. You take pleasure in disrupting discussions and annoying people, generally without adding anything substantive to the discussion.

They haven't stuck in my memory. So for you conservation of energy is not a fact, and not true? — Banno

The law of conservation of energy is not metaphysics. It’s physics. You should work on not being such a putz.

What I'm saying is that if someone has some metaphysical idea, and if that idea tells you something about how stuff happens, how stuff happens then must influence what they will believe about that metaphysical idea. — fdrake

[PEDANTRY WARNING] Metaphysical ideas don't tell you about how stuff happens, they tell you how to talk about how stuff happens.

Eg "Humans always can choose otherwise, regardless of circumstance"
+ "An addict's capacity for choice can be eroded so much it can be unfeasible for them not to take their drug of choice" = "Maybe what I think about how humans can choose needs to change, maybe how I understand can, there, isn't about practical possibility" — fdrake

Maybe I still don't understand. I'm making a distinction between metaphysical free will and regular old my daddy beat me and now I can't help but beat my own kids free will. The idea of metaphysical free will grows out of a materialistic view of the world. If the world is a machine and everything is caused, then the future can be precisely predicted given an adequately accurate and detailed knowledge of current conditions. In that case, all human decisions and actions can be predicted and are, therefore, determined in advance. Thus - no free will.

Regular old everyday free will is called into question by regular old everyday determinism, which is a product of human biology, psychology, and social conditioning.

I apologize for this post.

I'm just suggesting that a bit of flexibility in our language within mathematics is helpful. The important point is that when we develop/invent rules and make decisions about how to apply them, we are not totally "in charge". Put it this way - our agreements can lead to undesired consequjences and disagreements, which need to be resolved. We don't invent those - we would much rather they didn't happen, so we don't invent them. — Ludwig V

That makes sense.

But I don't think that "invent" is the appropriate description. The story of the irrationals shows that when we set up the rules of a language-game (and that description of numbers is also an idealization), we may find that there are situations (applications of the rules) that surprise us. Hence it is more appropriate to say that we discover these. When these situations arise, we have to decide what to do, in the relevant context - note that there can be no rules, in the normal sense, about what decision we should make, so I would classify these decisions, not as arbtrary or irrational, but as pragmatic and so rational in that sense. — Ludwig V

As for "But I don't think that "invent" is the appropriate description...Hence it is more appropriate to say that we discover these." I guess I disagree, but not strongly. I like "invent" better because it underlines the fact that, as I see it, mathematics is a human invention, a language, and not a fundamental aspect of the universe.

As for the rest of the quoted passage, it seems a like very good description of how mathematics grew from counting to where we find it today. It's much better than the answer I gave @frank.

If the world is deterministic, you may or may not convince someone of that. It just depends upon whether they were determined to be convinced.

Determinism is stupid. If you disagree, that's just the way it has to be. — Hanover

I don't have much patience for people who want to question the existence of free will in our everyday lives. I guess it is an interesting metaphysical question for some, but not for me. Determinism, on the other hand, has some epistemological value, e.g. some science, especially classical science, depends on an assumption of causation.

So metaphysics is not about facts... — Banno

I know you've read my diatribes on metaphysics before, so you should know that, in my view, metaphysical positions, i.e. absolute presuppositions, are not facts. The are not true or false. They have no truth value.

I think that's over general...

......if people report that coercion impacts their ability to choose... that's an empirical connection between choice as a construct and an event. If you end up believing that choice isn't inferentially connected to anything that occurs? — fdrake

Yes, you're right. Of course we are influenced by our environment and our human nature. That kind of influence is addressable by empirical methods. But I stick with my judgment the overall question of determinism and free will is metaphysical. I wrote this earlier in the thread in a response to @Hanover.

Of course, that only applies to the metaphysical question. At a human-scale, everyday, psychological level, of course our decisions are influenced by things outside of us, usually without our awareness and you might say without our control or intention. Because my father didn't love me, I have an obsession with beating Donald Trump Jr. with a stick. — T Clark

That's just to say you're normal. Ordinary really. Beige. — Hanover

And lucky to be.

How did that happen? If it's based on counting, how did it give rise to things that can't be counted? — frank

How did we get zero? How did we get negative numbers from natural numbers? How did we get rational numbers from integers? How did we get real numbers from rational numbers? How did we get complex numbers from real numbers? Humans invented them.

What do we do with numbers like pi that go on forever? I can't deny that I live in a world where there are such shenanigans: numbers that can't be completed.

It's definitely not an aspect of counting, because I can't count to pi. I could say it's just a matter of arithmetic, but but what about that endless thing going on? — frank

There are infinitely more irrational numbers then there are rational ones, so it's not just pi. They're just regular old Joe Sixpack numbers. I guess we should get used to dealing with them. It is my understanding that all mathematics is based on counting, but there are many, many instances where it has gone beyond it.

We live our lives partially on autopilot, halfway paying attention to much of anything. — Hanover

Although I think the driving example is a good one to address the issue we were discussing, there are better ones. Taoism has a concept of wu wei, acting without acting, without intention but with attention. In my experience, that covers many, perhaps most, of my own decisions and actions. Most of the time, there is not the little voice of my consciousness talking to me and telling me what to do.

What then is free will? The argument here is that it's just a feeling one has, much like the feeling one has of a gentle breeze up one's kilt. Free will, under this discussion (which I'm trying to pepper with ridiculous comments to keep you interested) is not a divine spark, a something from nothing, or a sudden spontaneous force. It's just a feeling fuck heads have when they do something. If it feel free, it is free. Nothing more, nothing less. There is no ontological, metaphysical difference. — Hanover

It doesn't make sense to me that the feeling of intention and agency you are referring to is the free will. We make decisions and take voluntary action all the time without that feeling. The cliche example is driving our car on a route we are familiar with while thinking about beating Donald Trump Jr. with a stick. And now we have an example from the article you linked where we have the feeling of intention and agency without actually having voluntary control. So - the feeling, i.e. our conscious awareness - is not the important part - the part that verifies our choices are freely made. Then what is? I think that's where the whole question just dissolves. You might say there's no way we can know. I would say there's nothing to know.

Of course, that only applies to the metaphysical question. At a human-scale, everyday, psychological level, of course our decisions are influenced by things outside of us, usually without our awareness and you might say without our control or intention. Because my father didn't love me, I have an obsession with beating Donald Trump Jr. with a stick. And that's the name of that tune.

"And that's the name of that tune" was one of Tony Baretta's catchphrases. "Baretta" was a TV police show from the 1970s. Baretta was played by Robert Blake back before he murdered his wife. His other catchphrase was "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time," but that wouldn't have made sense in my response.

I think you could make the case I am stealing your schtick again - using non-sequiturs to send a discussion off on a tangent. Even me using Yiddish words like "schtick" could be considered stealing your schtick. And that's the name of that tune.

In this, a subject's brain was stimulated which caused him to want to move his arm and he actually thought he moved his arm (although he did not). This would suggest the feeling of volition is simply a sensation that precedes certain activity, but not that it has special ontological status.

That is, the feeling of free will that precedes the act is just that - a feeling - and not s cause. Our attribution of the will as the cause is just our programmed interpretation. — Hanover

An interesting article, but I don't think it really says anything about whether or not there is free will. Why is it significant that "the feeling of volition is simply a sensation that precedes certain activity, but not that it has special ontological status," in this context?

That would hold so long as what constitutes the choice to move that leg as it was moved, in the body, is causally implicated in the leg movement and vice versa. Whether it construes choice as a spectator on what's already happened, or whether some actions count as choices and some don't based on other bodily processes. — fdrake

Yes. I think this whole issue is troublesome because of disagreement on what actually "constitutes the choice."

I think the paper Hanover linked ultimately sides against seeing choice as purely post hoc, since the experiment elicited a greater degree of intention to actions when a subtle pain signal was given to the body prior to making a choice. A bit like someone almost imperceptibly shouting "GO!" at the beginning of a race, you'll find your body moving as if on its own, even though you choose to run. "GO!" makes you experience your legs moving of their own accord as an act of your will. — fdrake

As you've heard me say many times, this issue cannot be addressed empirically. It's metaphysics.

How would you convince one of them that they're mistaken? — flannel jesus

Here's one of the songs I sing - over and over. Whether or not the world is deterministic is a matter of metaphysics, not a matter of fact. I'm not sure I can convince anyone of that.

There is a genuine need to look at the problem of masculinity. — Tobias

This says it all - "the problem of masculinity." Keeping in mind I'm a registered Democrat and a liberal who thinks Biden was the best president in my adult life, here are what I see as the root of the problem, at least in part.

• White men are tired of being treated with contempt and blamed for all our society's problems.
• The Democratic Party has failed to address the issues that affect working people.
• Conservative people are tired of having radical changes in social and political values rammed down their throats.

Problematizing 'masculinity' and men in general is no different than what certain cultures have done to women historically. It's just as archaic. Just as damaging. — Tzeentch

I almost never agree with you when we talk politics or social philosophy, but I agree with what you say in this post.