Determinism

[iambiguous]

Our Nietzschean Future
Paul O’Mahoney considers the awful fate Nietzsche predicts for humanity.

Under these conditions [above], the appropriate conception of life would be that of a game: a grand, ongoing, purposeless and all-encompassing piece of play, each person with no more agency than a cast die or caroming billiard ball. The cosmos as a game was a metaphor of which Nietzsche himself was fond. Seeing the cosmos as a game is precisely the kind of god’s-eye view appropriate to the philosopher, who looks down on creation from a standpoint beyond good and evil.

Yeah, that is basically the frame of mind that any number the sociopaths embody in their own day to day interactions with others. The “what’s in it for me?” game in which others are just a means to that end. And it’s beyond good and evil precisely because “in the absence of God all things are permitted.” Providing, of course, you don’t get caught. But that’s human justice. You might get tossed in jail. God and religion are then embraced in order to raise the stakes. Only even the sociopaths are as well wholly in sync with the only possible reality?

On the other hand, Nietzsche is often connected [philosophically or otherwise] to the Overman mentality. And here one chooses one’s behaviors with considerably more deliberation…sophistication. You are on the top and not the bottom because you deserve to be. You triumph because you are among the “masters of the universe”. It may be a game, but you are entitled to make up [and then enforce] the rules.

But then back to the part where Nietzsche is said to be…a determinist?

The idea, along with the thought that not truth but illusion sustains life, is prominent in Nietzsche’s early, unpublished writings from the 1870s (for example in the essay ‘Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks’ and the abandoned Philosophenbuch). Both sentiments also recur prominently in Nietzsche’s mature work, Beyond Good and Evil, which he calls ‘A prelude to a philosophy of the future’.

Or is this just one more attempt to make Nietzsche a compatibilist? The illusion of free will sustains life. But somehow Nietzsche’s own philosophy – his own thinking – is still more insightful than those who refuse to share it. How then is that explained?

It is less of a surprise than one might think that in ruminating on the philosopher’s possible role in the future freedom-free world, Nietzsche, the great anti-Christian, holds in high regard the most genuinely religious nature – the committed mythmaking instinct of the religious leader or founder. It is even less surprising that, against the traditional picture, the future philosopher is no slave to or even servant of truth, and is instead closer to the artist.

The philosopher. The artist. The atheist. The myth-making religionist. And all while interacting with others in a “freedom-free world”.

Or is this all really about word games? Making words mean what you want them to mean [in your head] so that they all fit snuggly into your own “thought up” “objective” assessment of both Nietzsche and the human condition itself? Past, present and future?

Then for all practical purposes whatever this means:

The future philosopher must move in a world where the deadliest knowledge has been disseminated and accepted; he is no longer the repository of dangerous or unendurable wisdom he traditionally was. He will be, says Nietzsche, a tempter and experimenter among humankind – and how indeed could he be otherwise, when the game is all?

The “no free will” game. He’ll move in the world…he’ll be a tempter and experimenter. He’ll do all of this while wholly in sync with the laws of matter…but not really. Only some of us are still rather confused regarding how exactly this “not really” works.

[iambiguous]

Defending Compatibilism
Bruce R. Reichenbach
at the Science, Religion and Culture website
[the focus here being on free will given an omniscient God]

It is a truism that where one starts from and the direction one goes determines where one ends up. This is no less true in philosophy than elsewhere, and certainly no less true in matters dealing with the relationship between God’s foreknowledge and human free actions.

Perhaps. But in regard to God where most of the faithful start is with the assumption that there is one. And that it is their God. And that their God is omniscient. Whereas while of course some philosophers start with the assumption that God installed an autonomous soul in them and that in living a righteous life they will end up in one or another rendition of Heaven, others do not.

In what follows I will argue that the incompatibilist view that [John Martin] Fischer and others stalwartly defend results from the particular starting point they choose, and that if one adopts a different starting point about divine knowledge the logical incompatibility they envision and philosophically anguish over evaporates.

Of course, that’s always my own point as well. Only, again, with God we are talking about a “starting point” pertaining to an entity that is alleged to exist, that is alleged to be omniscient, but that, to the best of my knowledge, has never actually been demonstrated to exist at all. Omniscient or otherwise. So, obviously, your starting point here can simply be something that you think up or others have thought up for you that “in your head” you believe. Anguish subsumed in more or less blind faith.

I will also argue that the path Fischer and others tread has critical ambiguities that lead to conclusions that can be avoided if one clarifies the critical ambiguities. The result will be that choosing a proper starting point and clarifying the ambiguities will show that God’s foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom.

We’ll see.

But what does not change is that the author’s conclusions are still predicated on premises that he may or may not be able to demonstrate to be true regarding that which he construes to be God “in his head”.

[iambiguous]

Here is an interesting article about the [at times] complex, problematic relationship between the human brain and the human mind. A mind that, among our own species, is able to generate a self-conscious “I” that thinks, feels and behaves in any number of different ways.

washingtonpost.com/wellness … -symptoms/

By Richard Sima, Kelyn Soong, Caitlin Gilbert and Marlene Cimons in the Washington Post

[b]Actor Bruce Willis has been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a rare type of dementia, his family announced Thursday. The disease, also known as frontotemporal lobar degeneration, has no treatment or cure.

Willis’s family said in March that he had been diagnosed with aphasia, a communication disorder, and was retiring. In their announcement Thursday, Willis’s family said his “condition has progressed and we now have a more specific diagnosis: frontotemporal dementia.”

“While this is painful, it is a relief to finally have a clear diagnosis,” said their statement posted on the website for the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration. “FTD is a cruel disease that many of us have never heard of and can strike anyone.”[/b]

…

[b]Symptoms can vary and depend on where the abnormal proteins begin to accumulate — in the frontal or temporal lobe. It can take a few years for a patient to be diagnosed with FTD since the symptoms are varied and also may be seen in people with other diseases, the physicians said.

A patient with frontal lobe-focused abnormality would show behavioral issues of impulsivity and disinhibition. That’s called behavioral variant activity, which is the more common subvariant of FTD.

“For example, a polite person may become rude and a kind person may become self-centered,” said Andrew Budson, chief of cognitive and behavioral neurology, associate chief of staff for education, and director of the Center for Translational Cognitive Neuroscience at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System. “There may also be a lack of self-control that sometimes causes overeating of foods, such as an entire jar of mayonnaise, which one of my patients ate.”

Social disinhibition is one symptom, said Ryan Darby, assistant professor of neurology and director of the Frontotemporal Dementia Clinic at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “They may even commit crimes because of their disinhibition and socially inappropriate behaviors,” he said. “They lose empathy and compassion toward others.”[/b]

I often come back to “I” in dreams. We think, feel, say and do things in dreams such that while dreaming it is as though we are not dreaming at all. Instead, we wake up often amazed that the “reality” we had just “experienced” – as we might have experienced in the waking world – was totally manufactured chemically and neurologically by our brains.

But for Bruce Willis and others with this affliction it is the waking world brain as well that can, through this condition, compel them to behave in ways that they never would have freely chosen themselves had they not been stricken. Assuming of course that we do live in a free will universe.

And, as noted, this can happen to any of us. The autonomous self is taken over more and more by a brain that is simply doing it’s thing biologically.

Some determinists merely suggest that everything that we think we are doing of our own volition is just a psychological illusion that “somehow” evolved along with consciousness once biological life itself “somehow” happened.

[MagsJ (Surya Loka)]

_
I’m sure that we can all get a [impermanent] touch of the aphasias, in our lifetime… but permanently so, must be tough to live with.

That does go to show though, that the mind is truly manifested in the brain. I’ve heard some say otherwise. [shrug]

Also… does unpredictability and impulsivity equate to a freer will, in its unrestrictedness of causal actions? Seems so, to me.

[peacegirl]

@MagsJ

_
I’m sure that we can all get a [impermanent] touch of the aphasias, in our lifetime… but permanently so, must be tough to live with.

That does go to show though, that the mind is truly manifested in the brain. I’ve heard some say otherwise. [shrug]

Also… does unpredictability and impulsivity equate to a freer will, in its unrestrictedness of causal actions? Seems so, to me.

Unpredictability and impulsivity do not equate to a freer will. In fact, just because something is unpredictable does not change the direction we must go even if the outcome cannot be predicted with 100 percent accuracy. The same goes for impulsivity. We have all, I’m sure, experienced doing something on impulse without giving it much thought, and may have regretted it afterwards. This in no way takes away from the direction we are compelled, by the law of our nature, to move, which is away from a dissatisfying position to a more satisfying position (even if it’s the lesser of two evils) each and every moment of time.

[HumAnIze]

“Compatibilism” is true simply because the whole problem of free will / determinism isn’t really a problem at all. It is a false problem created by misuse of language and inadequate attempts to define the key terms in the discussion. Basically, sloppy thinking.

Free will / determinism is probably the single biggest time sink and waste of time in philosophy. It is clear that 99% of philosophers care more about picking fights in their own mind and fluffing their ego than they do about actually discovering truth. In fact they shy away from truth because that would mean an end to their fighting.

[peacegirl]

[quote=“HumAnIze”]
“Compatibilism” is true simply because the whole problem of free will / determinism isn’t really a problem at all.

Peacegirl: It’s a major problem.

HumAnize: It is a false problem created by misuse of language and inadequate attempts to define the key terms in the discussion. Basically, sloppy thinking.

Peacegirl: Very true, and compatibilism makes the most sloppy errors of all.

HumAnize: Free will / determinism is probably the single biggest time sink and waste of time in philosophy. It is clear that 99% of philosophers care more about picking fights in their own mind and fluffing their ego than they do about actually discovering truth. In fact they shy away from truth because that would mean an end to their fighting.

Peacegirl: This discussion is the most important in all of philosophy, although ego could be ruining it for everyone. That’s how destructive ego can be. Peace on earth is possible because of the truth that we have no free will, which is the golden ticket to peace, something we never imagined in our wildest dreams could be possible let alone actually become a reality!

[iambiguous]

Slavoj Zizek and the Case for Compatibilism
Philosophy for the People w/Ben Burgis

Compatibilists such as Daniel Dennett have an elegant solution to the incompatibilists’ complaints about determinism: when incompatibilists complain that our freedom cannot be combined with the fact that all our acts are part of the great chain of natural determinism, they secretly make an unwarranted ontological assumption: first, they assume that we (the Self, the free agent) somehow stand outside reality, then they go on to complain about how they feel oppressed by the notion that reality in its determinism controls them totally.

“Incompatibilism is the thesis that free will is incompatible with the truth of determinism. Incompatibilists divide into libertarianians, who deny that determinism is true and hard determinists who deny that we have free will.” PhilPapershttps://philpapers.org

The “thesis”. Of course.

What on earth does it mean to “secretly make an unwarranted ontological assumption” when all of the assumptions that you do make you make only because you were never able not to?

We become entangled here because once you assume that everything we think, feel, say and do, we think, feel, say and do because we were never able not to think, feel, say and do them, nothing gets excluded. Nothing stands outside the entirely necessary reality embedded in the laws of matter. You may feel oppressed by this, but you were never able to freely opt not to.

But: the fact that matter evolved into human brains able to actually bring this up is easily one of the most profound mysteries of all pertaining to existence itself.

As though Dennett is himself the exception here?

This is what is wrong with the notion of us being “imprisoned” by the chains of natural determinism: we thereby obfuscate the fact that we are part of reality, that the (possible, local) conflict between our “free” striving and the external reality that resists it is a conflict inherent in reality itself.

For the hardcore determinists, how can anything at all be wrong if it was never able to be anything other than what it must be? Facts may be obfuscated by some but only because they were never able not to obfuscate them. One speaks of striving “freely” because the relationship between “I” and the world around me is but an inherent manifestation of nature itself.

It’s just that no other matter that we are familiar with is even close to being as peculiar as brain matter. And most exasperating of all is that it is brain matter itself that has to explain it. Which explains why so many turn to God. The ultimate source for explaining…everything.

That is to say, there is nothing “oppressive” or “constraining” about the fact that our innermost strivings are (pre)determined: when we feel thwarted in our freedom by the pressure of external reality, there must be something in us, some desire or striving, which is thus thwarted, but where do such strivings come from if not this same reality?

Exactly. In a free will world we may not be able to accomplish a task or reach a goal because there are things in the external world thwarting us. We can feel oppressed and constrained by this. But in a wholly determined world 1] the obstacles were never not going to be there and 2] our feelings of “oppression” and “constraint” when confronting them are right on cue.

But [of course] all of this is explored up in the intellectual clouds:

Our “free will” does not in some mysterious way “disturb the natural course of things,” it is part and parcel of this course. For us to be “truly” and “radically” free would entail that there be no positive content involved in our free act—if we want nothing “external” and particular or given to determine our behavior, then “this would involve being free of every part of ourselves.”

Got that?

Okay, explain it to Mary above.

When a determinist claims that our free choice is “determined,” this does not mean that our free will is somehow constrained, that we are forced to act against our will—what is “determined” is the very thing that we want to do “freely,” that is, without being thwarted by external obstacles.

But what of those determinists who claim that our “free will” is but a psychological illusion emanating from a brain that compels us to think, feel, speak and act ever and always in accordance with the laws of matter. There is no internal and external reality. There is only the one ontological reality of what can ever only be.

Whatever “for all practical purposes” that means.

[iambiguous]

Defending Compatibilism
Bruce R. Reichenbach
at the Science, Religion and Culture website
[the focus here being on free will given an omniscient God]

Fischer’s Incompatibilist Argument

We begin with Fischer’s version of the conditional argument for incompatibility between God’s knowledge and human freedom.

1. God exists and is essentially omniscient.
   Omniscience might be characterized in two ways. One is that God knows all the facts that can be known (where facts are states of affairs that were, are, or will be the case). This is a claim about what God knows, not how he knows it.

Does it really matter how God became omniscient if in fact He is omniscient? We may as well ask how God came to exist at all. So, for me, it’s not how an omniscient God knew that I would be typing these words but how I can be typing them of my own volition if what I do is to be squared with an omniscient God.

The other is that God knows all true propositions that can be known, leaving open how God knows them. Since facts can be expressed by tensed propositions, for our purposes we will treat for the time being the two as equivalent, though the significance of this distinction is important, for some deny that propositional formulation of knowledge is appropriate to God.

And there you go. No God to the best of my own not omniscient knowledge, has even been demonstrated to exist. So we mere mortals with our mere mortal limitations regarding knowledge of this sort are tasked with suggesting “propositions” about the existential relationship between our behaviors down here and an alleged omniscient God up there.

See the problem?

It’s just the theological rendition of the fact that neither scientists nor philosophers know how or why mindless matter evolved in living matter evolved into us in a No God world.

[iambiguous]

Slavoj Zizek and the Case for Compatibilism
Philosophy for the People w/Ben Burgis

A couple weeks ago, I wrote something here debunking Sam Harris’s arguments against free will. I put my own (compatibilist) cards on the table, but my overall point was a narrow one—that Harris’s arguments don’t touch the most plausible compatibilist or incompatibilist accounts of free will.

With those like Sam Harris, I would ask the same thing: how far do they take determinism? Does it encompass the fact that even their own beliefs…their books, their articles, their YouTube videos, etc… could only have been as they were? And that those who react either for or against their own points of view are equally included in the assumption that all human brains compel all human beings to think, feel, say and do things that are fated, destined. How do they make the distinction between fated, destined and determined?

When that essay came out, a reliably well-read informant—Matthew Rice, to give the man his due shout-out—sent me the compatibilism quote from Less Than Nothing [the excerpt above]. The more I’ve thought about that passage since then, the more it seems to me that there’s an important insight there that can help us make sense of one of the most frustrating things about the free will debate—that compatibilism (a) follows in a straightforward way from some widely and deeply held intuitions about control and responsibility, but (b) seems when looked at from a different angle to be not only false but obviously false and even absurd.

Of course, most here know what I construe to be the most frustrating thing about the free will debate. The fact that the brains debating it still have no full understanding of how or why living, biological matter came to acquire consciousness evolving eventually into us. How the extraordinary matter that is a brain itself – matter able to be conscious of itself as self-conscious matter – could exist at all. Which, as I note, is why many simply assume it can only be explained through God.

To “resolve” it by way of intuition – “I ‘just know’ deep down inside me that I have free will” – works for some. But it can hardly be counted as actual proof of autonomy.

Or, again, so it seems to me “here and now”.

[HumAnIze]

Imagine arguing about this nonsense.

Couldn’t be me.

[iambiguous]

Moral Responsibility Without Libertarianism
Lynne Rudder Baker

After centuries of reflection, philosophers still cannot seem to put to rest the matter of free will.

That’s often my point as well. And it’s the same with science. And, until theologians actually produce a God, the same with religion. Centuries go by and the quandary – antinomy – continues. So, I’m always the first to acknowledge that my own conclusions here are no less hopelessly problematic…sheer conjecture.

The issue of free will remains vital largely because of its connection to moral responsibility. What features are required for moral responsibility? Do we have those features?

This, too, is also of most importance to me. No free will and no moral responsibility. That seems entirely reasonable to me. And I continue to struggle with grasping those who somehow manage to convince themselves that the two are reconcilable. And, in particular, “for all practical purposes”.

Thus…

Questions about moral responsibility are intimately connected to questions about social policy and justice; so, the issue of moral responsibility—of whether or not anyone is ever really praiseworthy or blameworthy—has practical as well as theoretical significance.

That’s me again, isn’t it? Okay, you go up into the intellectual stratosphere and, philosophically, you concoct a theoretical argument revolving around brains and minds and dualism. A world of words as I like to call them. Meanwhile down here on the ground the words we have concocted relating to moral and political value judgments continue to sustain all manner of actual conflicting human behaviors. The part that produces actual consequences.

Moreover, recent work on free will opens the gate for progress on moral responsibility.

Okay, we’ll see…

There are two familiar main camps: one of compatibilists and the other of incompatibilists. Compatibilists take the conditions for moral responsibility to be compatible with determinism—where determinism is the thesis that the future is completely determined by the laws of nature together with antecedent conditions. Incompatibilists take the conditions for moral responsibility to be incompatible with determinism. Incompatibilists divide into two further groups: those who take us to meet the conditions for moral responsibility (called ‘libertarians’), and those who do not (called ‘hard determinists’). My interest here is mainly with the compatibilists and the libertarians, who agree that we are (at times) morally responsible for what we do, although they differ in what they require for moral responsibility.

In other words, truly familiar camps are delineated. Intellectually, philosophically, theoretically. Now, what do those in the various camps here have to say to Mary when she asks if she is in fact morally responsible for killing Jane?

Only, again, it seems to me, we must first assume that in bringing this up, we ourselves are not compelled by our brains to do so. Yet we seemingly have no way in which to establish that this is not the case. We’re in our own rendition of Flatland instead.

[iambiguous]

Thought I’d take a stab [compelled or not] at the article Iwannaplato posted above.

How to think about free will
You can’t escape cause and effect, but there is a way of viewing human agency that is motivating, plausible and humane
by Julian Baggini

How to think about free will?

Okay, but what of those who argue that in regard to how any of us think about free will we think about it as we do only because our material brains wholly in sync with the laws of matter compel us to think of it only as we must?

All I do then is point out that how any of us then react to that is embedded in all that we do not fully understand about this:

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was “somehow” able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter “somehow” became living matter “somehow” became conscious matter “somehow” became self-conscious matter.

Are you reading this as a result of your own free choice? It certainly seems as though you are. After all, surely you could have read something else, or done something completely different. We feel that we are free, the originators of our own choices, not just conduits through which the chain of cause and effect flows. But think about it a little more and this ‘voluntarist’ conception of free will starts to look untenable.

I’m sure there are those here who will insist that this isn’t applicable to me. That, instead, my own peremptory frame of mind regarding determinism doesn’t allow for this at all. But, on the contrary, viscerally, intuitively, a part of me is no less a believer that I possess at least some measure of autonomy.

But then the part where each of us does start to “think about it a little more”. The part where we acknowledge that in a No God world, the human brain is just more matter. That matter obeys “natural laws”. The laws that are embedded in mathematics and physics and chemistry and biology. So, why should the brain be any different?

Yet we grasp immediately why brain matter is like no other matter there has ever been. After all, it is the only matter that has acquired a consciousness of the world around it. And human brain matter has in turn acquired a self-conscious understanding of that. What other matter is there that can ask, “am I myself free to ask if human brain matter acquired free will”?

All your choices are in a sense inevitable

Go back to when you saw the headline or link to this piece. Given the ‘choice environment’ you found yourself in – your history, your personality, the other options open to you, your mood, your schedule – wasn’t it inevitable that you were either going to start reading, save it for later or move on to something else? And as you now decide to continue to read or not, are you really in control of how intrigued or irritated you are by the words in front of you?

Choice environment. For me, the equivalent of dasein. All of the genetic and memetic factors in your lived life that predisposed you existentially to first care about free will philosophically and then to think about it as you now do. The experiences you had [or did not have], the people your met [or did not meet], the information and knowledge you acquired [or did not acquire].

This is applicable to the behaviors we chose overall down through the years and to the behaviors we will choose now or later. All of the factors that come together to either nudge or to shove us in all of the different directions that we can go. The Benjamin Button Syndrome writ large and small.

[iambiguous]

Moral Responsibility Without Libertarianism
Lynne Rudder Baker

The terms ‘compatibilism’ and ‘libertarianism’ standardly refer to positions on the question of free will. However, compatibilist vs. libertarian accounts of free will lead to compatibilist vs. libertarian conditions of moral responsibility. Since, as I said, my concern here is with the conditions for moral responsibility, I’ll use the terms ‘compatibilism’ and ‘libertarianism’ to distinguish two positions on what is required for moral responsibility. As we shall see, what libertarians insist on, and what compatibilists deny, is that moral responsibility for an action requires that the agent be the source or originator of the action in a way that precludes determinism.

So, both embrace moral responsibility. But they disagree regarding the nature of the “agent”? The libertarian agent “somehow” acquired free will when the human brain itself “somehow” acquired it. Free will here being the way most of us imagine it. I do what I do because of my own volition I opted to do it. End of story. Whereas the compatibilist agent is a still a determinist but “somehow” the laws of matter encompassing his or her brain resulted in the agent being the source or originator of an action in a way that precludes determinism?

The part that still makes no sense to me. Although, again, I’m always willing to admit that it does make sense and – click – I am simply unable to grasp it.

On the other hand, neither one is actually able to explain how the human brain did evolve biologically into whatever it is that “in their head” they think it is when we do this instead of doing that.

And just once I’d like the author of an article like this [one defending compatibilism] to tackle head on the question of whether what they write about they themselves were the source or originator of in a way that includes determinism. Given how their brain actually functions here while they are writing it, what for all practical purposes does that mean?

I shall defend compatibilism in two steps: First, I shall argue that libertarianism is false: no one has libertarian freedom. So, if moral responsibility entails libertarianism, then we are never morally responsible for anything that we do.

Here, of course, I suggest that, even given libertarian freedom as many understand it in the is/ought world, this often revolves around dasein. We are free to opt for particular behaviors, but…but the behaviors that we do opt for are rooted existentially [more or less] in our indoctrination as children and in the historical and cultural contexts in which we acquire experiences as adults.

And, even in the either/or world, the Benjamin Button Syndrome can have a profound impact on how our lives unfolds.

Second, since I do believe that we are morally responsible for certain of our actions, I shall propose nonlibertarian (i.e., compatibilist) conditions for moral responsibility—a Reflective­Endorsement view. I shall add to Harry Frankfurt’s compatibilist conditions to make them sufficient for moral responsibility. Then, I shall defend compatibilism against a recent sustained attack by Derk Pereboom. Finally, I shall comment on the pervasiveness of luck. Along the way, I shall show how compatibilism can accommodate certain libertarian intuitions.

Okay, but given particular contexts?

Stay tuned.

[peacegirl]

@iambiguous

Moral Responsibility Without Libertarianism
Lynne Rudder Baker

The terms ‘compatibilism’ and ‘libertarianism’ standardly refer to positions on the question of free will. However, compatibilist vs. libertarian accounts of free will lead to compatibilist vs. libertarian conditions of moral responsibility. Since, as I said, my concern here is with the conditions for moral responsibility, I’ll use the terms ‘compatibilism’ and ‘libertarianism’ to distinguish two positions on what is required for moral responsibility. As we shall see, what libertarians insist on, and what compatibilists deny, is that moral responsibility for an action requires that the agent be the source or originator of the action in a way that precludes determinism.

So, both embrace moral responsibility. But they disagree regarding the nature of the “agent”? The libertarian agent “somehow” acquired free will when the human brain itself “somehow” acquired it. Free will here being the way most of us imagine it. I do what I do because of my own volition I opted to do it. End of story. Whereas the compatibilist agent is a still a determinist but “somehow” the laws of matter encompassing his or her brain resulted in the agent being the source or originator of an action in a way that precludes determinism?

The part that still makes no sense to me. Although, again, I’m always willing to admit that it does make sense and – click – I am simply unable to grasp it.

On the other hand, neither one is actually able to explain how the human brain did evolve biologically into whatever it is that “in their head” they think it is when we do this instead of doing that.

And just once I’d like the author of an article like this [one defending compatibilism] to tackle head on the question of whether what they write about they themselves were the source or originator of in a way that includes determinism. Given how their brain actually functions here while they are writing it, what for all practical purposes does that mean?

I shall defend compatibilism in two steps: First, I shall argue that libertarianism is false: no one has libertarian freedom. So, if moral responsibility entails libertarianism, then we are never morally responsible for anything that we do.

Here, of course, I suggest that, even given libertarian freedom as many understand it in the is/ought world, this often revolves around dasein. We are free to opt for particular behaviors, but…but the behaviors that we do opt for are rooted existentially [more or less] in our indoctrination as children and in the historical and cultural contexts in which we acquire experiences as adults.

And, even in the either/or world, the Benjamin Button Syndrome can have a profound impact on how our lives unfolds.

Second, since I do believe that we are morally responsible for certain of our actions, I shall propose nonlibertarian (i.e., compatibilist) conditions for moral responsibility—a Reflective­Endorsement view. I shall add to Harry Frankfurt’s compatibilist conditions to make them sufficient for moral responsibility. Then, I shall defend compatibilism against a recent sustained attack by Derk Pereboom. Finally, I shall comment on the pervasiveness of luck. Along the way, I shall show how compatibilism can accommodate certain libertarian intuitions.

Determinism and moral responsibility are not mutually exclusive. Libertarianism and compatibilism are not needed to try to reconcile these two positions.

[iambiguous]

Freedom: An Impossible Reality by Raymond Tallis
This issue we consider ultimate human realities as Raymond Tallis has the intention of proving free will.
Book Review
Jonathan Head

In the subtitle of his highly intriguing new book, Prof. Raymond Tallis calls free will ‘an impossible reality’. Though presumably somewhat tongue-in-cheek, this phrase is appropriate in capturing something of what has fascinated philosophers about free will over the centuries: it seems it cannot be, and yet nevertheless it must be.

Exactly.

Or, rather, if it actually is.

But isn’t that how many of us react to it? Deep down inside, intuitively, viscerally we “just know” that we have free will. There is no way I can really believe that I am not choosing these words to type here and now. That, instead, it’s all just my brain doing its thing such that there was never a possibility I could have opted to choose different words. Or chose to do something other than to read and react to the author’s words above. I’m convinced that “as I decide” I can stop typing here and go fix myself a sandwich or drive to the grocery store or watch a movie. Or plan something for a tomorrow that is still hours and hours away. How can the laws of matter possibly come to grasp a thing like “the future”?

On the other hand…

Given that all events in the natural world seem to follow the unbreakable patterns which we call ‘laws of nature’, it might appear that our actions could not be free, at least in the significant sense of having genuine alternative options for action available to us. If all natural events follow natural laws without exception, our actions could never have been otherwise, and thus cannot be freely chosen.

Now, of course, there is how we struggle to reconcile this with autonomy “philosophically” and how those in the scientific community actually attempt to explore the human brain experientially/experimentally in the act of actually choosing/“choosing” itself. Here we tell each other what the words we use in our arguments mean and then combine them into “theoretical” deductions regarding what we think is true. There, however, it’s approached more, well, scientifically.

But, either way, nothing has been pinned down yet. From neither community has there actually come the definitive conclusion. Or, rather, not that I am aware of.

Then back to this…

Such a conclusion, though, is antithetical to our cherished self-image as beings with genuine agency, and thus it seems to many to be unacceptable. If philosophy declares human beings to be unfree, then so much the worse for philosophy.

Yes, we cherish our autonomy, our genuine agency. Determinism is clearly deemed unacceptable. Particularly by those who are sustaining a successful and rewarding life filled with great accomplishments. No one is more responsible for that outcome than they themselves.

As though this too cannot be a wholly determined outcome. Simply because we don’t want it to be doesn’t make it an autonomous frame of mind. Not if we can’t want what we want.

[iambiguous]

The Dogmatic Determinism of Daniel Dennett
Eyal Mozes
BOOK REVIEW: Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves.
at The Atlas Society

When it comes to free will, the Ayn Randoid Objectivists are Libertarians on steroids. Not only are they fanatical about it, they make no distinction whatsoever between human autonomy in the either/or world and human autonomy in the is/ought world. Providing, of course, you agree entirely with Ayn Rand regarding what is good and what is evil. You do? Then you too are necessarily Rational and Virtuous.

The “virtue of selfishness” Rand called it.

And here they go after the “dogged determinist” Daniel Dennett.

Daniel Dennett is a philosopher known for advocating a reductionistic view of consciousness, and for promoting the theory of evolution as of central importance to understanding man and his place in the universe. His most recent book is devoted to the issue of whether free will can be integrated with evolution.

Whether free will can be integrated into the evolution of biological life here on planet Earth? Is there anyone here [other than the Creationists] who would deny that “somehow” human consciousness did come into existence as a result of the biological evolution of living matter here on Earth? True, we don’t know how or why this matter became self-conscious of itself as matter. And we can’t pin down how or why it acquired the capacity to invent philosophy and the internet. But “somehow” it did.

The idea of free will, as normally understood, means that man generally has more than one action possible to him, with his actual action the result, directly or indirectly, of his own choices. Man is in some cases free to choose between several alternatives, all of which are possible, with the choice between them directly under his control and his actions, directly or indirectly, the result of these choices.

On the other hand, how do we pin down definitively that the ideas we do think up in our brain, we were free to think up? How do we know beyond all doubt whatsoever that the brain itself did not evolve to create the psychological illusion of autonomy here?

Well, because Ayn Rand thought otherwise.

And then the part where – click – any Libertarians or Objectivists among us confront the points I raise in this thread: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=176529

In regard to the role that dasein plays in our acquiring subjective, rooted existentially in the life we lived/live value judgments.

[iambiguous]

Daniel Dennett is Wrong About Free Will
by Daniel Miessler

I am exceedingly frustrated by Daniel Dennett’s response to Sam Harris’ recent book on free will.

It serves as the most elaborate, learned, and desperate hand-waving I’ve ever witnessed. It was such a weak argument that it looked more like an example that a brilliant philosophy professor, like Daniel Dennett, might use to highlight poor arguments to his students. Sadly it wasn’t a strawman used for instruction—it was his real position.

Clearly, not all folks are on the same page here regarding Dennett. But that hardly surprises me because assessments of this sort are, in my view, rooted existentially in dasein.

Well, click, of course.

What I would be inclined to explore with Dennett is the manner in which he himself construed the meaning of determinism. Did his own understanding of it encompass the belief that even his own understanding of it itself was determined by his brain wholly in sync with the laws of matter?

Here’s what he basically said:

It seems like we make choices, so we do. It’s useful to hold people responsible for their actions, so moral responsibility is real.

In other words, intuitively, viscerally, deep down in our gut, we “just know” that we have free will. So, we must have it. And who can deny that that it is useful for society to punish the bad guys. So, our feeling that it is useful must be the real deal.

[peacegirl]

@iambiguous

Freedom: An Impossible Reality by Raymond Tallis
This issue we consider ultimate human realities as Raymond Tallis has the intention of proving free will.
Book Review
Jonathan Head

In the subtitle of his highly intriguing new book, Prof. Raymond Tallis calls free will ‘an impossible reality’. Though presumably somewhat tongue-in-cheek, this phrase is appropriate in capturing something of what has fascinated philosophers about free will over the centuries: it seems it cannot be, and yet nevertheless it must be.

Or, rather, if it actually is.

NO, it actually isn’t, and it does not have to be nevertheless, as he puts it. He’s basing his ideas on a flawed definition, like everyone else.

@iambiguous

But isn’t that how many of us react to it? Deep down inside, intuitively, viscerally we “just know” that we have free will. There is no way I can really believe that I am not choosing these words to type here and now.

YOU are choosing these words, no one else, but that does not mean you have the free will to choose what you like less.

@iambiguous

That, instead, it’s all just my brain doing its thing such that there was never a possibility I could have opted to choose different words.

You could have opted to choose different words, if you had wanted to, but at that moment you didn’t want to. Determinism doesn’t take that freedom away. You are just as confused as everyone else.

@iambiguous

Or chose to do something other than to read and react to the author’s words above. I’m convinced that “as I decide” I can stop typing here and go fix myself a sandwich or drive to the grocery store or watch a movie. Or plan something for a tomorrow that is still hours and hours away. How can the laws of matter possibly come to grasp a thing like “the future”?

You can stop typing here and now, if that’s what you want to do. It is not fixed before you make a choice. Why are you keeping up the pretense? To keep the mystery going? It’s no mystery, sorry.

@iambiguous

On the other hand…

Given that all events in the natural world seem to follow the unbreakable patterns which we call ‘laws of nature’, it might appear that our actions could not be free, at least in the significant sense of having genuine alternative options for action available to us. If all natural events follow natural laws without exception, our actions could never have been otherwise, and thus cannot be freely chosen.

You can say they were freely chosen if you qualify the term “freely.” This only means that nothing external is restricting your choice. It does not mean your choice is free and that you could have chosen otherwise at that moment.

@iambiguous

Now, of course, there is how we struggle to reconcile this with autonomy “philosophically” and how those in the scientific community actually attempt to explore the human brain experientially/experimentally in the act of actually choosing/“choosing” itself.

We have attempted to explore the human brain experientially/experimentally in the act of “choosing” "itself, and the answer is staring right at us if we care to listen.

@iambiguous

Here we tell each other what the words we use in our arguments mean and then combine them into “theoretical” deductions regarding what we think is true. There, however, it’s approached more, well, scientifically.

The words we use in our arguments are the basis of clear communication. Our words have to be defined accurately, or they will just be word salad.

@iambiguous

But, either way, nothing has been pinned down yet. From neither community has there actually come the definitive conclusion. Or, rather, not that I am aware of.

You are wrong.

@iambiguous

Then back to this…

Such a conclusion, though, is antithetical to our cherished self-image as beings with genuine agency, and thus it seems to many to be unacceptable. If philosophy declares human beings to be unfree, then so much the worse for philosophy.

@iambiguous

Yes, we cherish our autonomy, our genuine agency. Determinism is clearly deemed unacceptable. Particularly by those who are sustaining a successful and rewarding life filled with great accomplishments. No one is more responsible for that outcome than they themselves.

They are responsible for their accomplishments, it was they who accomplished, no one else, but it was not of their own free will.

@iambiguous

As though this too cannot be a wholly determined outcome. Simply because we don’t want it to be doesn’t make it an autonomous frame of mind. Not if we can’t want what we want.

True. Just because people don’t want to think there are laws that govern us, doesn’t take away the laws that govern us.

[iambiguous]

No, seriously.