Ian,
Saying that the behavior follows some algorithmic rules does not necessitate that the rules exist as anything more than a description of the behavior, as I have already explained.
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Yes it does. To follow rules implicitly supposes their existence.
I am not interested in having a semantic debate with you. I have explained what I meant. You can either choose to ignore it, or accept that I mean what I say I do. Feel free to use your free-will to make this choice.
In any event, that second quote is taken out of context. That comment was specifically made with respect to the question of whether the mind makes its decision arbitrarily, or for a reason. It must do one or the other, because all "arbitrary" means is "for no reason".
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Yes, but you understand it doesn't mean the same as random?
I have deliberately avoided using the term "random", because like deterministic, that is a mathematical term, and can only be appropriately assigned to mathematical descriptions of behavior. Since you are discussing metaphysics, such terms are neither appropriate, nor relevant. The point is that your choice is either inevitable (given your prior mental state), or it is arbitrary, and you have already stated that your conception of free-will requires that it be neither.
Yes, and I have clarified that distinction at least twice now. Determinism just means that the behavior can be mathematically modelled.
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Right, so I have 10 options. Any of which I can choose depending on what I want. Let's for arguments sake suppose all of them can be mathematically modelled. So determinism is correct. How does this contradict my position??
It doesn't. It has no relevance to your position. What contradicts your position is the fact that either your choice is inevitable, given your mental state prior to choosing, or your choice is arbitrary. If the former is the case, then it is not true that you could have chosen differently (although it is true that you could have chosen differently
if you had wanted to). If the latter is the case, then your prior claim that you would always make the same choice, given the same prior mental state, is false.
in which case our choices are inevitable,
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No. Not true. I keep explaining to you why this isn't true.
You have not given any such explanation. You have repeatedly asserted that it is not true, but you have not explained how there is any difference between saying that you would always make the same choice, given the same prior mental state, and saying that the choice was inevitable, given your prior mental state.
Saying that we "chose freely" is an empty statement, unless you explain how this differs from our choices being inevitable, or arbitrary.
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I've already said. We choose according to our intentions or dispositions. This does not mean to say we could not choose otherwise.
Actually, that is exactly what it means. Either we choose according to out intentions, or we do not. It makes absolutely no sense to say that we
do choose according to our intentions, but are free not to. If we always choose according to our intentions, then in what sense can you meaningfully say that we
could choose otherwise?
Then you are not talking about determinism in the mathematical sense. You are talking about something which you have not defined.
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I am not required to define it.
You are not required to define your terms? Well yes, I suppose technically speaking, that you are not. But if you want other people to have any chance of understanding what you are talking about, it would probably be a good idea.
I have no idea what it could possibly mean if one is denying that physical laws govern the behaviour of physical objects (including people). All you've said is that you have no idea why physical objects, including human beings, behave as they do. You've simply said their behaviour can be mathematically described. I do not understand how this can be described as "determinism". If nothing is determining how can it be described as "determinism"??
We can go into that separately, if you want, but right now we are discussing your position, not mine. Specifically, we are discussing the logical consistency of your conception of free-will. Whether or not my own position makes any sense, has absolutely no bearing on the coherency of your conception of free-will. Nor do semantic issue such as how we choose to define "determinism" and "random".
And besides, we are not discussing determinism. I was originally defending my conception of free will. You have said nothing whatsoever to cast any doubt upon this conception.
I have no doubt that I have said nothing that will cause
you to doubt that conception, but then, I never really expected that to be possible.
It is quite simple. If somebody knows me really well, then they could predict a great deal of my behaviour. They could predict what TV programme I will choose to watch amongst competing options, what food I will choose to eat amongst competing options, where I will choose to go out for the night amongst competing options and so on. But it is utterly absurd to suggest that my behaviour is determined. I make these choices because they are what I want to do.
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If this is the case, then given that you want to make choice A, it is inevitable that you will.
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That is meaningless. I'm defining "want" as to behave in a given way. You're in effect saying I do what I do because I do what I do!
You are correct, that is meaningless. Unfortunately, you don't seem to realize that you are the one who has made the meaningless statement. You are the one who just said that you do what you do because you want to, which according to you, simply means that you do what you do because you do what you do.
If that is what you mean by free-will, then by your own word, it is meaningless. It amounts to nothing more than saying that the self behaves the way it does, which is a completely empty and trivial statement.
Since the fact that you want to make choice A is a fact about your prior mental state,
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No it's not. It's a fact about my present mental state.
Are you honestly claiming that your mental states change from instant to instant, without any reason? If so, then once again, your choices are arbitrary. If their changes over time happen for a reason, then again, your present mental state is inevitable given your prior mental state, and the external influences upon it.
If there is a reason, then that mental state followed from a combination of prior physical and mental states (the reasons you wanted to do so). If there is no reason, then by definition, your wanting to make that choice was arbitrary. Again, this contradicts your own conception of free-will.
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I've repeated this part about 3 times, but you don't listen too good, so I will paste it in yet again.
. . . this just leaves the tricky question of whether our behaviour is psychologically determined. Certainly I choose as I want to do. So in this sense my actions are determined by my desires. But are my desires inevitable?...
And I have addressed it each time.
The fact that somebody knows me inside out, and can predict what decisions I will make, does not negate the idea that I could have chosen otherwise.
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No, but the fact that you assert that if the event were repeated, that the same prior state would always result in the same choice, does.
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As I keep repeating. Your point here is completely a vacuous one. You are saying nothing more than I do what I do because I do what I do.
No,
you are saying that. I am saying that either there is a reason you do what you do, or there isn't. Either way, your conception of free-will is contradicted.
You are defining "determinism" so broadly that one would have to act randomly in order for it to be false. But what have you "won" by making the definition of determinism so broad?
What do you mean "won"? This has nothing to do with determinism. I don't care whether your conception of free-will is compatible with determinism or not. I don't even know what you mean by "determinism" any more. My argument is simply that you cannot simultaneously claim that you could have made a different choice than you did, given the same prior states, and that your choice was not arbitrary.
Saying that you could have chosen otherwise, but that it was certain that you would not, is just empty semantics. It does not actually mean anything.
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My behaviour is not at all certain. If I decide to choose a number from 1 to 1000, how can you say it is certain that the number I will choose, say 018, is the one I had to choose?
I can't. That is beside the point. I am not claiming that your choice was predictable.
Nothing compelled me to choose that number. I chose it arbitrarily.
Great. So arbitrary choices are compatible with your conception of free will. You could have chosen differently because your choice was arbitrary. Congratulations, you are a compatibilist. But wait, earlier you said that you would always make the same choice, given the same mental state. So if we were to repeat this little thought experiment of yours many times, each time with exactly the same mental states prior to your choice, would you always make the same choice, or not?
Even someone who knows me inside out couldn't have predicted the number I chose. And even where they can predict my behaviour, as in the scenario where I will take £10 rather than nothing, this cannot possibly have any implications that I had to choose to take the £10, or that I couldn't have chosen to take nothing.
You are right, the predictability does not have any such implications. The fact that you have previously asserted that the choice is not arbitrary, does.
You mean you can't understand my position.
If the Earth started rotating the opposite way then arguably this might falsify the hypothesis that it's behaviour is governed by physical laws. How is one to falsify that my behaviour is governed by physical laws? Whatever I do you will claim it is in accordance with physical laws.
In other words your determinism is unfalsifiable! Actually this ties in nicely with your all-encompassing conception of determinism!
You appear to have me confused with somebody else. I am not a determinist. I do not think that the laws of physics are deterministic. Determinism has absolutely nothing to do with the question of whether your choices are describable by physical laws.
But if you had "been so disposed", that would mean your prior mental state was different! Like I said, this just becomes compatibilism. You could have chosen differently if you had wanted to, but since you did not want to, you could not, in fact, have actually chosen differently!
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What "I want" is not some sort of external agency compelling me to behave in a given manner!
That is
exactly my point! When I say that your mind may operate according to a set of logical rules, I am not saying that there is an external agency compelling it to do so. I am just saying that it behaves that way. When I say that your mind may operate by making decisions arbitrarily, again I am not saying that there is an external agency that compels it to do so. That is just how it behaves.
My behaviour is simply an expression of what I want to do. So if I did behave differently it is because I want to. What more could free will possibly mean??
I don't think it means anything more than that. That is just compatibilist free-will. We do what we choose to do. How does this imply that the decision making process cannot operate according to some algorithm? Or that it cannot involve completely arbitrary influences? How does this in any way require us to imagine that there must be something more to that decision making process, than a brain?
And as I said, I don't understand what compatibilism means. OK, compatible with determinism. But if determinism doesn't mean that all things are determined by physical laws, then I have no idea what it means. Seems pretty vacuous to me
Like I said before, determinism is a mathematical term, which applies to mathematical systems. It is not even
applicable to metaphysical constructs, unless your metaphysic is one which holds that reality is isomorphic to a formal logical system.
Compatibilist free-will is simply the idea that we are not compelled by some external agency to make our decisions. It says nothing about the mechanism by which we make those decisions, only that it is
I who make my decisions, and not some other agency. This is compatible with the idea that
I am a bunch of brain processes. It is also compatible with the idea that
I am some immaterial spirit, or "self" if you prefer, which interacts with my brain.
I won't comment on Libertarian free-will, other that to say that I have still never heard a coherent explanation for how it differs from compatibilist free-will.
I have maintained nothing of the sort. What I have said is that either you had to choose that particular course of action, or the choice was, at least to some degree, arbitrary.
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Yes, so I choose to do something, and no matter what I chose, you'll claim it was in accordance with physical laws! Your so-called "determinism" is unfalsifiable.
If you maintain otherwise tell me how you would ever falsify this?
We are not discussing my position, we are discussing yours. We can discuss my position, if you like, but it is best that we keep the two issues separate, lest we find ourselves mistaking statements about our own positions for arguments against the other person's position.
In any event, I don't think my position belongs in this thread, because my position has no
relevance to the material vs immaterial argument. My position is equally compatible with any metaphysical position which does not contradict scientific epistemology, including some forms of metaphysical materialism, some forms of idealism, and even some forms of dualism. I just have no use for such metaphysical positions.
You have established the self as the first mover: that which is not caused by anything else, but which causes other things to behave as they do. But all this means is that nothing external to the self constrains its actions. It does not mean that the self's behavior is not constrained, by its own nature, to behave in a particular algorithmic way. And if it is not, then that means that its behavior is, and least to some degree, arbitrary.
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How can a self be constrained by its own nature?? This is nonsensical! This would mean the self's nature is something distinct from the self!
No, it does not. What possible logical reason could you have for claiming that something's behavior cannot be constrained by its own nature? That is what we mean when we talk about something's nature: What is it capable of? What is it not capable of? How will it behave in a given set of circumstances?
You can choose to call this determinism, or not. It makes no difference. The point is that it is still a fact that your choices are either inevitable, or arbitrary. Inventing an immaterial self to make your choices for you, does not allow your will to be any more free than it would be if your choices were made by the brain. All it does is complicate the issue, making it less obvious that your intuitive notion of free-will is not realistic.
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Nonsense! Under your metaphysic my choices are constrained by physical laws. Ones behaviour is governed by physical laws just as much as the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. Under my metaphysic I am not "constrained" by what I want to do!
1) I have no metaphysic.
2) We are not discussing my position.
3) The position that your decisions are made by the brain, does not imply that you are constrained by what you want to do, any more than your idealism does. Nothing external to the brain is forcing it to make any particular decision. It makes its decisions in accordance with its nature, just as your "self" makes its decisions in accordance with its nature. I do not believe that physical laws are a "thing" which controls physical objects, remember? So under my paradigm, the brain is every bit as "free" as your "self" is.
I am afraid you are using the word "possible" in a way I have never heard of. To say that you invariably will not do so, sounds to me exactly like saying that for you to not do so is impossible.
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Well, you claim this, but when faced with the choice, it seems to all the world that I most definitely could decline the million. It's just that I would not want to, so invariably I will take the million.
What things
seem like, and the way they really are, are not always the same.
You cannot say the same situation applies to the Earth going around the Sun! I imagine it would be very clear to most people that me not taking the million, and the Earth reversing its direction, are 2 different types of impossible! Anyway, you need to demonstrate that the meaning of impossible here is precisely the same.
This argument amounts to nothing more than taking a relatively simple system, which we understand very well, and a very complicated system, which we do not understand very well at all, comparing them, and then concluding that they must be fundamentally different in how they work. It is a fallacious argument, to say the least.
It is also clear, assuming that not all objects in the Universe are sentient, that the behaviour of the Earth in orbiting the Sun is not due to its intentions. Thus the behaviour of sentient beings has a differing origin than from all other objects in the Universe.
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That conclusion does not follow from the premise. In fact, that conclusion only follows if you also assume that intentions are somehow distinct from the rest of the Universe. You have in no way established this.
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If the Earth doesn't orbit the Sun because of its intentions, and we behave because of our intentions, this is inconsistent with your position.
No, it is not. Not unless, as I said, you assert that our intentions are somehow different than the rest of the Universe.
So do you either say the Earth does in fact have intentions, or do you say that we don't have intentions, or alternatively they are causally inefficacious??
None of the above. I say that our intentions are states of physical processes occurring in our brains.
This seems to me to then refute your metaphysic (i.e materialism).
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1) I have no metaphysic. I am not a metaphysical materialist.
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I have never heard of the term "metaphysical materialist". By definition, materialism is a metaphysical position. If you dispute this then you do not understand either what metaphysics means, or what materialism means.
As I said before, I have no intention of engaging in semantic arguments with you. It is a simple
fact that many people use the term "materialism" to refer to a purely epistemological position. You can assert that this is an improper use of the term all you like. Nobody cares whether you approve of their choice of terms, or not. Nor do they need your permission to call their position "materialism".
Look, here is a quick experimental proof that determinism is pragmatically self-refuting: If determinism were true, then your brain and body would just do whatever it is going to do anyway, without your having to will it to do things. So, tomorrow morning, when you wake up, you don't have to exert yourself at all. You can just relax, and your body will get up out of bed and have breakfast and go to work -- all by itself! Amazing! Well, I tried this experiment several times and it always failed. My body did not get out of bed. Each time, I eventually had to use my free will to make the body get out of bed.
Please tell me that you do not actually believe this to be a valid argument. If you do, then we are done.
That's how I know I have free will.
Christ on a crutch, you really
do think that is a valid argument, don't you? I am truly amazed.
Hammegk,
Well, it's appearing you don't believe "materialist" has any meaning, although we can try this; materialist = 100% certain god cannot exist ; atheist = has 100% faith god does not exist ; scientist = 100% certain that rationalization can explain "what-is" with no need for god.
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I surrender. There are no materialists here, since they would be required by logic to agree with those definitions I provided.
A clearer example of the no-true-Scotsman fallacy, I never did see.
Are you all actually illogical dualists, or are you actually Idealists but didn't realize it until right now?
Did it ever occur to you that maybe your idea of what materialism is just isn't what materialists actually believe? Certainly you don't think that your idea of materialism, idealism, and dualism, are the only possible options?
Dr. Stupid
