“An Argument For Compatibilism”
Jason Streitfeld
from the Specter of Reason website
Think about this.
You argue that the “very notion of free will is incoherent” while convinced that nothing can really be incoherent if it can only ever be what it must be in accordance with the immutable laws of physics.
It’s just another example of how language becomes entangled in itself when it is taken this far out on the metaphysical limb.
Should say? Shouldn’t say? See the mind-boggling problem here once you conclude that everything you say or don’t say is compelled by nature?
Thus…
Indeed, the best way to go about exploring all of this is entirely up in the stratosphere of intellectual abstractions. That way, having or not have free will, or moral responsibility being compatible or not compatible with determinism, can be assessed ever and always academically in a “world of words”.
Still, how can we yank the words down to earth when we have no way of knowing for certain that the yank itself could ever have been other than what it must be?
Of course this exasperates some considerably more than others. On the other hand, how could it have been otherwise?
“An Argument For Compatibilism”
Jason Streitfeld
from the Specter of Reason website
Okay, but they are no less stuck than the compatibilists. Who are no less stuck than the champions of free will. In other words, connecting the dots ontologically [as mere mortals] between what any particular brain thinks and a comprehensive understanding of existence itself. With or without God.
In pondering what may or may not be “beyond our control” we may well be pondering only what we were ever able to ponder.
Yo, peacegirl!
Imagine a tornado bearing down on you. Now, unlike the material elements in the twister itself, the material elements in your brain result in a conscious choice. Matter having evolved to the point where it becomes self-conscious of itself making a choice. A chosen behavior that others may call either rational or not rational. But: the behavior chosen itself like the reactions to that behavior was the only possible behavior and reactions that could have been chosen by brains no less in sync with the laws of nature than any weather phenomenon.
Again, this is the part where I readily admit I am not thinking compatibilism through correctly. But in the manner in which I understand determinism/incompatibilism, I think things through – all things – in the only possible way in which I can think them through.
What then am I missing here in the compatibilist argument?
Well, to me [still] whether or not our behavior is inevitable is the only issue. If it is inevitable than how can “the rational deliberation of patterns which are represented as choices”, leading up to that behavior not in turn be wholly determined by the laws of matter?
“An Argument For Compatibilism”
Jason Streitfeld
from the Specter of Reason website
This may well be be even more difficult to wrap one’s head around. Clearly we live in an either/or world in which interactions appear to be anything but random and uncaused. Distinctions are made between correlation and cause and effect but a “human condition” governed by “evitable” choices would be…what exactly? Things just “happen” out of the blue for no discernable – discoverable – reason at all? Well, maybe in your neighborhood, but it doesn’t appear to be that way at all in mine.
Even using the expression “in essence, random and uncaused” would be random and uncaused. As would be our “beliefs or desires of mental states”.
Huh? Would someone explain that further please.
No, really, instead of demonstrable evidence that brings us closer to the conviction that human autonomy exists only at a minimum, the evidence seemed to suggest that, on the contrary, the outcome of our behaviors were actually dependent more on a maximum of random or accidental encounters. Which would be harder to wrap your head around? And what if it turns out to be that the “human condition” combines both in such a way that we can never know for certain the degree to which we are responsible for the behaviors we choose?
And then into this moral and political quagmire introduce the components of my own thinking here.
But what he can’t conclude definitively is whether his conclusion itself was only as it ever could have been. Or the extent to which in coming to it, he was embedded in an unfolding reality that included “random or accidental outcomes”. Any more than you and I can know beyond all doubt all the factors involved in posting on this thread.
He can only take this particular “intellectual contraption” to the hard guys conducting actual scientific experiments with the human brain in order to determine more substantively – rigorously, phenomenologically – what the final determination is most likely to be “here and now”.
Leaving aside altogether [for now] the things that most intrigue me philosophically: morality here and now, immortality there and then.
Wow. Could there be a God, a Heaven and a Hell, a reincarnated soul, a Nirvana. But all that too just being some murky intermingling of determined and random interactions?
There could be absolutely anything at all that could actually exist even if it might not be understood but whether there is or not will never be known
Omniscience is not something we can ever attain so there will always be gaps in our knowledge and this is a limitation that simply has to be accepted
So, basically, we just have to, well, live with that. If only from the cradle to the grave.
But that won’t stop the moral and political objectivists among us from concluding that not only is their own “real me” in sync with “the right thing to do” in the either/or world, but in the world of moral and political value judgments too. There is practically nothing they are not absolutely convinced starts and stops with what they think, feel, say and do.
Though, sure, they may well be no less compelled by nature to conclude this than I am to conclude what I do. But what of a world in which what we think, feel, say and do really is embedded in the random and accidental interactions of matter?
That is really over my head. Here and now, for example.
I think its probably a lot deeper than the mere machinations of matter so its possible it is beyond our comprehension
We cannot know what new knowledge we will discover in the future but we do know that that process will never stop
At least until we become extinct at which point our knowledge generating capacity stops functioning for the rest of time
Other intelligent species - if they exist - may carry on where we have left off but we will be not be here to witness them
Well, to the best of my current knowledge, unraveling all of this and finally resolving it once and for all still seems to be beyond our comprehension. It is certainly still beyond mine. Only for folks like Peacegirl and others, their own intellectual contraptions here do in fact work as the “final solution” for them.
And, as I see it, a factor embedded in the “human condition” if there is some measure of autonomy is this: believing something is enough.
Peacegirl is convinced of her far more hopeful future for mankind. As laid out in The Book. This comforts and consoles her.
I’m not. Here and now, I am still of the opinion [compelled by nature or not] that the past, the present and the future are part and parcel of an essentially meaningless human existence that ends for each of us one by one in oblivion. If there is any comfort and consolation for me at all it lies in my own acknowledgment that this assessment itself is but the embodiment of “I” as an existential contraption rooted in dasein.
And, yes, imagine all of the other possible civilizations out in the staggering vastness of the universe. The multiverse? Civilizations far in advance of our own. What have they come to conclude about all of this.
In fact I often imagine what hypothetically might have happened if that asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 60 odd million years ago, paving the way for us, had come, say, a hundred thousand years earlier. Would we be a hundred thousand years more advanced than we are now? What would those discussions of determinism be like?
“An Argument For Compatibilism”
Jason Streitfeld
from the Specter of Reason website
Okay. For those here who subscribe to compatibilism, please explain, beyond intellectual contraptions like the one above, the point being made as it is applicable to, say, me typing these words and you reading them. How do you understand determinism and free will in a way different from how I do. The way that I do revolving around the assumption that even in defending compatibilism there was never any possibility of your not defending it.
What on earth do I keep missing here?
And that is exactly what I focus on as well. Moral responsibility in a world in which it is assumed that, unlike components of nature that lack the capacity to choose, we do in fact opt for these things instead of those.
Thus, given human biological imperatives, if the sex act is performed, one of the possibilities is a pregnancy. And once a new life is created in a particular womb, it goes through what it must go through in order to slide down out of the vagina and out into the world of new born babies. And none of us to my knowledge while in the womb chose to do the things that were needed to be done to bring all of this to fruition in a birth.
And, once we are born, there are any number of things that we do that are basically beyond our control. Others do things to and for us instead.
But eventually we reach the point where we begin to make a distinction between “I” and others. We choose things because we become aware that choosing different things results in different consequences. But how much of this is demonstrably autonomous? And then further we reach the point where we choose things that are judged by others as either the right thing or the wrong thing to do. Or is this too all just a manifestation of a wholly determined universe.
“An Argument For Compatibilism”
Jason Streitfeld
from the Specter of Reason website
What does it mean to speak of a coherent frame of mind here when God is introduced into the assessment? And if this God can create the human species, know whether they are naughty or nice and then reward or punish them accordingly, how on Earth is the “supernatural” part dispensed with. I must not be understanding his point.
My point though revolves around the extent to which this God is seen to be omniscient. Once He becomes all-knowing, we get into the age old debate in which human autonomy itself is somehow reconciled with that.
Things get all twisted into any number of imagined assumptions regarding His knowing here. Some claim He knows everything that we do but the act of choosing itself is still our own. Then I drag that frame of mind into the individual choosing in the is/ought world as “I” embodied in dasein. And then hundreds and hundreds of both genetic and memetic variables get thrown into the mix. Each mix then embedded in a particular context construed in a particular way. Parts of which are readily communicated and parts of which are not.
This is not intelligible to me. How does one really discuss God, given any degree of “supernatural” power, until one grasps reality going back to the existence of existence itself. Either an ever existing God created the Universe, then us with or without autonomy, or…or what? What’s crucial for me of course is that a God, the God is able to create rules that we are free to obey or not obey and and then depending on what we choose of our own volition, He will either reward or punish us. On both sides of the grave.
“An Argument For Compatibilism”
Jason Streitfeld
from the Specter of Reason website
Again, what on earth is this supposed to mean?
Joe is a rabid carnivore. He meets Jane who is a rabid vegan. Jane is convinced that eating animal flesh is immoral. That those who do so deserve to be punished and never rewarded. She’s even willing to go so far as to endorse laws that punished the eating of animal flesh as a crime. Now how is moral responsibility to be understood here by the compatibilists? If both Joe and Jane think, feel, say and do things because their brains are wholly in sync with the laws of matter, the ultimate cause of the behaviors they choose would necessarily be in sync with the ultimate cause of others reacting to those behaviors as either deserving to be rewarded or punished: with nature itself.
Unless of course in a manner that no one yet understands, “nature itself” [b]re the world of quantum interactions[/b] is able somehow to “choose” different outcomes.
And psycho-social matters in a wholly determined universe…how exactly is that not just another manifestation of the only possible reality? Same with human roles and relationships.
What are the compatibilists arguing here that I keep missing? And how would you determine that your own explanation in and of itself is or is not “beyond your control” in the manner in which we react to that expression in a world where human autonomy does in fact exist.
Of course what is this but another “general description intellectual contraption”…a world of words that, in no way shape or form, is connected to any substantive empirical evidence derived from actual human experiences, or from any data collected as a result of conducting experiments.
Anyone here able to link us to this sort of thing? Something that settles this age old debate conclusively.
Your version of philosophy seems to be 1) making unsupported assertions 2) making appeals to incredulity and 3) being an ass. You can’t have much internet experience. There are millions and millions of people who are your kind of philosopher.
First of all, given my own own understanding of a wholly determined universe…a universe in which the human brain/mind/“I” is but one more inherent/necessary component of the only possible material truth/reality…you typing the words above then and me reading them now could never have not been the case.
So, in a way that is difficult to explain, say, scientifically, I have to assume that instead we have at least some measure of autonomy in order to argue the point in a way that those who believe in free will insist these things are discussed and debated. Of our own volition.
All the while acknowledging that this in and of itself is only explicable going back to that which wholly explains the existence of existence itself.
Consequently, how would any advocates of compatibilism here react to that?
godoftroof, you’re right on. As sam harris once put it, ‘freewill’ is an impossibility for any conceivable material universe. This argument was over a century ago, and yet these philostophers still bang on about it.
Yes, deterministic causalism is another word for logic.
The facts, that things are determined more interestingly than humans can generally know, and that causes are more profound than humans dare to know, and that general human grasp on logic is wanting, are not due to any flaws deterministic causalism as such.
To argue against deterministic causalism using logic, which is deterministic causalism, is clearly not going to yield much fruit.
Still and all in order to make a proper logical argument one needs sound knowledge and understanding of all things considered to begin with. And such knowledge and understanding has emerged only quite recently in philosophy.
The fact wisdom exists, defeats what determinism is as a whole really. The system itself cannot be understood by itself, which leads to free will. The choice when the ability is had, to understand such system. The world used to be determinism ruled, until consciousness. Determinism effects the subconscious state much more.
In other words, the fact that your brain worked this out proves that your brain worked it out of your mind’s “I” own free will.
A world of words in which the words are true because they are defined and defended by more words still.
And if you took this intellectual contraption to the neuroscientists who are actually engaging the “scientific method” in probing the brain here experimentally, they would confirm beyond all possible doubt that this is true. Some even being able to go all the way back to explaining how the existence of the human species itself fits into a definitive understanding of why something exists rather than nothing, and why this something and not something else.
As a linear thing yes, but in a Relativistic universe causality is rounded on all sides, it is just a matter of where you begin attributing cause.
Some philosophers relinquish the will to know a first cause and simply posit their own wisdom as the central cause.
The mind contains future and past and brews them into something which exists in the present but is different from the present; a kind of antagonistic, very limited representation of the factors that go into and come out of the present which attacks it from both the past and the future. Inspiration is in allowing this attack to happen and orchestrate a part in it for oneself indifferently to anything other than the fact of attack.
