thoughts on determinism

[iambiguous]

Criticising Strawson’s Compatibilism
Nurana Rajabova is wary of an attempt to dismiss determinism to keep free will

A lack of agency immediately makes a claim of moral responsibility non-applicable. In fact, thanks to the lack of agency and intention, one’s whole conception of the event changes as we take the act altogether away from the object and instead bring it to the agent that was harmed in the process. Thus, in this specific example, instead of saying the sea drowned the child, we say the child got drowned in the sea. The reason is because the sea has no agency. After all, the sea was not acting in any other way than being a sea.

But then those who actually argue that panpsychism itself is the real deal. In other words, even as I type these words, all of the cells and atomic and sub-atomic particules in my brain are preparing me for your reactions. Then my reaction to your reactions.

Like a video game? Or a matrix?

Also due to this lack of agency, we more often relate such experiences to fate or to the flow of the processes rather than blame the particular thing that appeared as the immediate cause.

So, we have all these words…brain, agency, experience, fate, process, responsibility, blame, etc., that “somehow” involve whatever “I” thinks it is able to accomplish more or less of its own volition. But beyond each particular context no one seems to know how all of these factors are intertwined. Let alone how they ought to be.

It follows therefore that our sense of moral responsibility is not based solely on our emotional reactions. It is also based on our judgment, which requires some other criteria for moral responsibility to be applicable – the first and foremost being the judgement that agency is present.

Then noting that this resolves what exactly? In regard to which [if any] of our mental, emotional or psychological reactions to or judgments about moral and political conflagrations.

So despite the pain and negative emotions an event may raise in us, those emotions do not immediately yield the ascription of moral responsibility to the cause of the event.

Click? Cue the objectivists who all but scoff at those here who dare to challenge their own formulary agendas? Even out as far as we can go…metaphysically?

Or, perhaps, cue Mother Nature and all the brains she has already programmed to believe that they do possess some degree of autonomy?

[iambiguous]

Criticising Strawson’s Compatibilism
Nurana Rajabova is wary of an attempt to dismiss determinism to keep free will

In our second scenario we’ll consider a death caused by an animal. Let us take a case in which a child dies as the result of a dog attack. The result being the same – the loss of the child – this will raise a similar degree of pain in the mother. This strong pain again may naturally raise feelings of anger or hatred. The mother may even develop a sense of vengeance toward the dog.

Indeed, and if we had ever been in a situation like that ourselves, it would no doubt seem all the more preposterous that such experiences are all “beyond our control”. Instead, the more powerful our emotional reactions become, the more adament most will be in insisting that the dog and the child and the parent are certainly not just so many dominoes toppling over onto each other on cue re Mother Nature.

But again our question is whether the emotion arising as a reaction to this event is enough to hold the dog morally responsible.

Let’s just say we can’t run this by the dog to get its input. In fact, what seems most intriguing here [to me] is that the dog and the child and the parent all possess conscious minds. But what an extraordinary difference species and age can make.

“Somehow”, when biology went in the direction of monkeys and apes and people, it created brains encompassing matter that [we presume] no other matter can touch. Not only did we become self-conscious, but along the way we invented science and philosophy. And then eventually “civilizations” able to go in any number of different directions pertaining to any number of human interactions.

Thank the Lord? Thank whatever may or may not be encompassed in Pantheism?

In this scenario, unlike the first one, there is some agency. A dog is a doer of its own actions. Yet, experience tells us that dogs, perhaps all animals for that matter, cannot be held morally responsible, because they lack sufficient cognitive capacity to understand the moral dimension of their actions.

Then the part where those who study the brain attempt to translate this “world of words” into chemical and neurological…components?

Once again we see that the reactive attitude deriving from the incident does not immediately justify the attribution of moral responsibility. In short, our reactive attitudes do not justify ascribing moral responsibility to beings with insufficient cognitive capacity to see moral distinctions.

On the other hand, what, for all practical purposes, does it then mean given a particular context for someone to not have sufficient cognitive capacity? Either in regard to our actions or our reactions.

Before we move on, I want to briefly mention the practice of putting down violent animals. Some might argue that this is the result of ascribing moral responsibility to animals, but I would say that it rather for the purpose of getting rid of the danger than from a sense of justice.

Over and again, in films and on TV, you come upon situations where an animal is put down for attacking a human being. As though the animal could have weighed in more carefully and chose not to. But: whether we do or do not ascribe moral responsibility here, the hard determinists tell us that it was for all practical purposes never really anything other than…destined?

[Flannel_Jesus]

@iambiguous

Instead, the more powerful our emotional reactions become, the more adament most will be in insisting that the dog and the child and the parent are certainly not just so many dominoes toppling over onto each other on cue re Mother Nature.

This seems out of touch to me. People absolutely talk about animals as if their behaviour were tantamount to dominos toppling over. A lion eats it’s trainer and people say “well, it was a wild animal after all, it was just doing what lions do”. They don’t moralize about the lion and how bad the lion must be and how disappointed god must be in this bad lion he created. It’s a wild animal and it predictably did what wild animals do.

They might still put the lion down, but not because it was behaving immorally. More just because it’s dangerous to have a lion that’s in the mood to eat people.

[greenfuse]

@iambiguous

Instead, the more powerful our emotional reactions become, the more adament most will be in insisting that the dog and the child and the parent are certainly not just so many dominoes toppling over onto each other on cue re Mother Nature.

1. dominoes topping each other over can even manage to do what a humble worm or single celled bacteria can do. 2) they’d be part of the cue.

@iambiguous

Over and again, in films and on TV, you come upon situations where an animal is put down for attacking a human being. As though the animal could have weighed in more carefully and chose not to. But: whether we do or do not ascribe moral responsibility here, the hard determinists tell us that it was for all practical purposes never really anything other than…destined?

Yeah, that’s determinism. And?
And what do the soft determinists say? How do their beliefs differ from the hard determinists?
And then: who cares what the determinists say? or the free willers?
Why do you point so often to what others say in this way?

[greenfuse]

You’re not reading well. That very quote is saying that agency is not like the free will vs. determinism contrast coming down on the side of free will. Read the damn quote and mull for a bit. Read my original post where I am saying that agency does NOT entail free will. Yes, there is thinking. But this does not entail free will. You might focus on the phrase subtly distinct from the concept of free will. It can be deterministic, even thought it doesn’t consider humans unthinking. You might mull over the last part of that quote, that you requoted:

How humans come to make decisions, by free choice or other processes, is another issue.

See, maybe free choice, maybe other processes - such as deterministic ones.

What pisses me off about you is 1) you don’t read carefully 2) you don’t make arguments, your posts are gestural. 3) you add in smug little, self-congratulatory rejoinders: twirls pigtails & pops a bubble like

I mean, seriously, it’s playing as if you were a little girl, with what is a childish smugness. Irony lost on you, I suppose.

So, I will not respond to you in the future. In one of our first interactions you dumped shit on me for no reason. I let that slide later and engaged in discussion. Given you sparseness of your posts so the context of the discussion doesn’t get carried by you, I had to go back to find the original context for what you were disgreeing with I said.

Your approach takes time, but at the same time you opt not to take time and care yourself.

So, please leave me alone. But obviously even if you don’t, I can ignore you and will. I’d rather not get the notifications however. Make whatever idiotic response to save face, you need to, I won’t be reading or responding.

If you think that agency in philosophy necessarily entails a libertarian free will is being posited, you’re confused. But you can always go to sources that you do actually read and mull over to show this is the case. It’s enough of a pain in the ass dealing with Iambiguous’ inability to read the things he quotes. I’ll keep my goals humble and let others deal with you.

For anyone else:

Ascribing agency to humans in philosophy does not necessarily entail the acceptance of libertarian free will, though the two concepts come up in the same discussions and some people use them interchangeably.

1. Agency: In philosophical terms, agency refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and make choices. This involves the ability to make decisions, to have intentions, and to enact those intentions through actions.

2. Libertarian Free Will: This concept posits that individuals have the freedom to choose differently in any given situation, meaning that their choices are not determined by prior states of the world or by causal laws or even necessarily entailed by their own prior states. They literally could have done a number of different things at any given moment uncaused by anything that went before (and somehow it’s also not random).

3. Compatibilism: Many philosophers argue for a compatibilist view, where agency can exist alongside a form of determinism. Compatibilists maintain that even if our actions are determined by prior causes (like genetics, environment, and social influences), we can still be considered agents if our actions align with our desires, intentions, and reasoning processes. In this view, having agency does not require libertarian free will.

4. Determinism and Agency: There are also views, such as hard determinism, that reject free will altogether, arguing that every event is determined by preceding events and natural laws. Proponents of this view may still ascribe agency to humans but would define it in a way that does not rely on free will.

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

Any definition of free will that is free of all context incapacitates one to act/choose. You must be able to discriminate between options in a context or you can’t choose at all.

And any definition of agency that doesn’t acknowledge the incompatibility of determinism with one’s capacity to act… does so on pain of rationality. All of time includes our agency as the thing it is. Our agency doesn’t “emerge” from it. Unless you mean in the sense of “the spirit returns to the God who gave it” — the God from which spirit emerged.

An agent without free will is an apple falling from a tree. An agent with free will can be sucker punched and fall to the ground like an apple—and catch itself by putting its hands out to block its fall. An agent with even more free will can also “pro”actively decide how they are going to “re”act regardless of what their fight, flight or … whatever … impulses are urging them to do. An apple doesn’t even have an impulse. Much less the ability to proactively decide to stop falling, or not retaliate against the force of gravity (or whatever).

Let’s see if your impulses boss you around, or if you (freely) boss them around. Or willfully choose to submit. Who/what is the real master here?

[greenfuse]

Ichthus, now on ignore - how nice ILP has this function - said something. I’ll bet she managed not to acknowledge she misread what she quoted and was smug about. I’ll bet it doesn’t justify or explain Iambiguous’ misread of the text he read which was what my orginal post was focused on. Hopefully she’ll manage to contribute actual posts with substance, instead of sniping so vaguely it takes a bunch of roadwork to even know what she’s saying and responding to. Then she’ll have less to somehow manage to avoid conceding as an adult.

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

Good at bullying. Baaaaaad at mind-reading.

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

@greenfuse

Maybe, you could, like, quote something.

I bet you don’t even come from Valley.

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

@Ichthus77

I bet you don’t even come from Valley.

ad hominem poisoning the genetic-memetic gene-meme well / genetic-memetic fallacy

[Flannel_Jesus]

Stop spamming the thread with meaningless drivel please. Add something meaningful to the conversation, or patiently wait for a response before you type another no-relevance goofy post. 3 consecutive posts that say nothing at all is more than enough.

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

Yes, sire.

Ignoring GF, who is ignoring me, I await Biggy’s response, who is also ignoring me:

thoughts on determinism

Free will cannot be without dasein. There has to be a context of values (you call them competing goods) that we are ordering according to (or in divergence from… which is cognitively distorted “freedom”) recognition of personhood, Our thoughts which seek to grasp/classify cannot do so outside a value frame/taxonomy—because where we place our attention is not value-free. However, we can check for incongruities or contradictions, both linguistically/psychologically & practically in the external…

[MagsJ (Surya Loka)]

@greenfuse

@MagsJ

Should humans therefore become slime moulds?

1. what an odd question 2) no, I don’t see any basis for a ‘should’ regarding that 3) how would humans become slime moulds?

You seemed to admire slime moulds’ qualities so much so, that the thought of humans developing more mould-like qualities could be on your evolutionary wish-list.

Very Marvel Comics, I know…

[greenfuse]

@MagsJ

You seemed to admire slime moulds’ qualities so much so, that the thought of humans developing more mould-like qualities could be on your evolutionary wish-list.

Well, no. I don’t want to become things because they can do mazes better than me. And other people can do what they want.

@MagsJ

Would a human want to be anything but human?

The transhumans, the furries, otherkin, walkins, Therians, Virtual identity enthusiasts, Vampire/Immortal subcultures, certain kinds of alien (extraterrestrial) identifiers and upploaders - a kind of transhumanism, but well beyond being a cyborg, say, or having a human/AI chip in the head - Ecosexuals (can be disidentifiers with humans), certain Dollers or Living Dolls, certain parts of the Gothic or Vampiric subcultures, Shifters (Mental or Spiritual) and some neorprimitives.

[iambiguous]

Criticising Strawson’s Compatibilism
Nurana Rajabova is wary of an attempt to dismiss determinism to keep free will

Now, in the third scenario, I refer to a similar incident, but this time caused by a human agent.

Just a reminder that, for particularly hard determinists, there could be 10 scenarios or 100 scenarios. In fact, every single one of us might embody our very own uniquely existential scenario.

So what?

If the laws of matter compel our brains to compel us to believe “in our heads” that we either have or do not have autonomy, what really changes?

Once again, the death of the child causes the same pain, and the same emotions or reactive attitudes. Yet here we immediately see the sense of claims of moral responsibility. However, even in such a case, the assigning of moral responsibility is not a straightforward consequence of the emotional reactions, and requires some other criteria to be met.

Suppose, however, the child’s pain and our emotional reaction to it are…for whatever compelled reasons…part and parcel of Mother Nature’s – or God’s? – paint by numbers reflection of “that’s just the way things are”.

We don’t hold the earthquake or the dog morally responsible because we presume there is no moral agency involved. And yet “somehow”, it’s presumed further, we acquired that. God say many. But not all. Now, most of what goes on inside our brains and inside our bodies do indeed obey the laws of matter autonomically. But the part where we evolved into civilizations able to invent science and philosophy and smart phones?

Given that a human being is already viewed as a moral agent, we can say that one of the criteria for moral responsibility is immediately met. However, this is not enough.

On the contrary say any number of objectivists, it is certainly enough for them. Not only do they themselves embody moral agency, but many will insist in turn that if you know what’s good for you you’ll embody it too. Become “one of us”. Or else.

[MagsJ (Surya Loka)]

@greenfuse

well, no. I don’t want to become things because they can do mazes better than me. And other people can do what they want.

Clarification on your position, appreciated.
.
Would a human want to be anything but human?

[felix_dakat]

Philosophy depends on freedom of thought, so if determinism is the case, philosophy is over.

[iambiguous]

Criticising Strawson’s Compatibilism
Nurana Rajabova is wary of an attempt to dismiss determinism to keep free will

…our sense of moral responsibility also requires a relevant intention. So if the mother knows that the killer never intended to harm the child, that the incident was purely an awful accident, then at a personal level she may forgive him. At the social and legal levels, intention may not have such a resolving effect, although it may result for instance in a reduced sentence.

All of this unfolding given the assumption that what the mother comes to know about the intention of the killer and that the intention of the killer himself have “somehow” acquired an element of autonomy.

Intention then becoming one of those “internal components” of the human brain that “somehow” sort of transcends determinism in that, the compatibilists tell us, even though the mother and the killer are determined to intend and to react only as they ever could have, they are still responsible for it.

Focusing then on the “social and legal levels” changes none of that for the hard determinists. It’s all an inherent manifestation of the only possible reality.

A real-life example like this happened a few years ago in my home town. A grandfather, while parking, not seeing his little grandchild playing behind the car, accidently hit him, and as a result the child died. This is indeed one example that clearly shows the discontinuity between moral responsibility and our reactive attitudes. The grandfather was held accountable on a legal basis, because he met the two main criteria of legal accountability, which are, a wrong action committed by a moral agent. Therefore, the reactive attitude towards this man happened to be more one of pity than resentment. Because everyone familiar with the story knew that he did not have any intention to harm the child.

Okay, again, imagine that this was the plot of a movie you were watching. The grandfather and the child and all the other characters are merely being scripted to sustain the plot created by the screenwriter and/or director. Reactions to it, legal and otherwise, are all intertwined in the only possible world.

This situation reminds me somewhat of another one: Death of Conrad Roy - Wikipedia

What if all of these “characters” are but more dominoes toppling over onto each other just as we continue to do so today.

Same with us and nature? Through the laws of matter, human intentions, human behaviors and human reactions to those behaviors are hard-wired into our brains from the cradle to the grave. If actions and reactions are all just manifestations of fated existence, that doesn’t “somehow” stop with us.

[iambiguous]

Criticising Strawson’s Compatibilism
Nurana Rajabova is wary of an attempt to dismiss determinism to keep free will

Needless to mention the cognitive ability of a human actor will also have a great effect on claims of moral responsibility. For instance, if a killer has a serious cognitive disability, such that they really can’t recognise what they’ve done, their victim’s family may take a more forgiving position in consideration of their lack of understanding.

More to the point [perhaps] how did cognitive ability come to be at all? And, in regard to it, why is there such an enormous gap between human beings and all the rest of the animal kingdom?

Also, the biggest imponderable of them all may be this: just how many other advanced civilizations are there “out there” in the universe?

As for the killer, that’s just one more moral quandary unless determinism is the real deal. Then the part where, given free will, my own moral philosophy may well be, what, the grimmest of them all? No God and the killer may never get caught, or he may succeed in framing someone else, or the killing itself may be widely applauded in the community, or the killer may be able to get away with murder because he is power and might makes right. And on and on.

However, in this case too measures will be taken by legal institutions, not so much for punishment as for the purpose of reducing the potential danger.

Back to the part [for me] where some here make a distinction between actions and reactions. As though those who react by punishing someone for an act they deem to be dangerous are not as well reacting on Nature’s cue.

Unless, of course, that is a prime example of something I am just not able to grasp “here and now”.

We can see that despite the fact that the degree of pain and the initial emotional reaction remains the same in all three scenarios, these reactive attitudes do not themselves fully justify the claim of moral responsibility. That claim is based purely on rational judgement, and requires the fulfilment of three criteria: agency, intention, and adequate cognitive capacity.

I certainly don’t believe they do. At least not until someone is able – click – to demonstrate how the demonstration itself is both determined and compatible with moral responsibility?

Then the part where the 3 criteria somehow fit into The Gap and Rummy’s Rule. Frivolous to some, perhaps, but absolutely vital to others.

Accordingly, in response to the first point of Strawson’s argument, I conclude that the natural human disposition for reactive emotional attitudes towards events happening to them or around them cannot on its own justify the ascription of moral responsibility. This is because ascribing moral responsibility is not based on emotions. Rather, it is based on judgement.

On the contrary, say many in possession of an Intrinsic Self. That deep down inside them intuitive, spiritual, natural, “I just know” reaction to many things that renders rational thinking as…of less importance?

Strawson’s argument and her reaction to it are either interchangeable in the only possible world or they’re not? How is the author’s own assessment of judgment not in and of itself wholly determined?

[HumAnIze]

Why would a so-called unmotivated action be needed to support the concept of free will? Everything has reasons for being what it is, that is an undeniable fact. Nothing “just is” for literally no reason because that entails obvious contradiction. The problem here is that in philosophy they try to frame the idea of free will in terms of opposition to determinism/having reasons for doing things. That is silly, and a trick to define free will out of existence. Rather, we need to define what we mean by free will FIRST in order to see if any of that stuff really makes sense or not.

If the initial definition of free will we are using is something like “pure action as such without reacting to anything else; no reasons or causes for why it did what it did” then we simply define the debate into absurdity from the very start. The principle of sufficient reason alone should be enough for us to discount the idea of uncaused things. So why would we begin a discussion about free will by trying to define it as some kind of uncaused thing? Only if we were really ignorant of the mistake we are making, or else as a clever tactic to subvert the issue from the very start.

“Consciousness is the working of the machine/organism, not the machine itself, and that working is reaction through and through.” ← yes, this. The consciousness is the ‘action’ or moving parts but as the movement itself of the system. That is how I see it, at least in terms of the simplest materialistic explanation that doesn’t stray into anything metaphysical. And this is able to account for consciousness in a basic way, if you ignore metaphysics and other weird stuff like supernatural phenomena and any and all possibilities of stuff like that. Since this is philosophy I think it’s useful to first understand consciousness in this way, as purely naturalist and mechanistic. Once we get that down we are free to start exploring other, larger possibilities.