Re: Compatibilism
On Nov 26, 6:01 am, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 4:12 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On Nov 21, 6:43 pm, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 7:36 AM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: No-one is. They are just valid descriptions. There is no argument to the effect that logic is causal or it is nothing. It is not the case that causal explanation is the only form of explanagion “Valid descriptions” don’t account for why things are this way rather than some other way. If a higher level description is a valid description of some microphysics, then it will be an explanation of why the result happened given the initial conditions It won't solve the trilemma, but neither will microphysical causality So Agrippa's Trilemma revolves around the question of how we can justify our beliefs. It seems to me that an entirely acceptable solution is just to accept that we can't justify our beliefs. ..in an absolute way. We still can relative to other beliefs. And that isn;t a problem specific to higher-level categories such as reason and logic. The Trilemma applies just as much to microphysical causality As I said before, materialism could conceivably explain human ability and behavior, but in my opinion runs aground at human consciousness. Therefore, I doubt that humans are a complex sort of robot. Is human consciousness causally effective? I don't believe so, no. Then the sense in which we are not robots is somewhat honorific: we are not because we have consciousness, but consc. doesn't explain out behaviour since it doesn't cause anything , so we behave as determined... And claiming that consciousness is itself caused just runs into infinite regress, as you then need to explain what causes the cause of conscious experience, and so on. The claim is more that it causes. And it could be causal under interactive dualism (brain causes consc causes different brains state) and it could be causal under mind brain identity: mind is identical to brain; brain causes; therefore mind identically causes. Therefore, taking the same approach as with Agrippa's Trilemma, it seems best to just accept that there is no cause for conscious experience either. Again, the trillema only means there is no non-arbitrary ultimate cause. The trillema does not mean that nothing whatsoever is caused. In any case it is a rather poor reason for dismissing the causal efficacy of consciousness. You are saing that you are not causally responsible for what you have written here, for instance Is it a useful answer? Maybe not. But where does it say that all answers have to be useful? If true knowledge is unobtainable, it makes a lot of sense to settle for useful knowledge. Besides, what causes you to care about usefulness? Evolution. What causes evolution? Initial conditions and causal laws. What causes initial conditions and causal laws? And so on. We've been through this before I think. Yep. That it is in a sense caused by evolution does not make it wrong. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Compatibilism
On Nov 26, 6:31 am, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 4:20 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On Nov 21, 6:35 pm, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 7:28 AM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On Nov 18, 6:31 am, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: If there is a reason, then the reason determined the choice. No free will. Unless you determined the reason. How would you do that? By what means? According to what rule? Using what process? If you determined the reason, what determined you? Why are you in the particular state you're in? If there exists some rule that translates your specific state into some particular choice, then there's still no free will. The rule determined the choice. And if there isn't...you have an action that is reasoned yet undetermined, as required If there is no rule that translates your specific state into some particular choice, then what is it connects the state to the choice? What needs to? Actions need to be connected to reasons, and they can be. That you cannot trace reasons back in an infinite chain doesn;t affect that. The state occurs. Then the choice occurs. But nothing connects them? That is accidentalism isn't it? I.1.v Libertarianism — A Prima Facie case for free will As for the rest of it, I read it, but didn't find it convincing on any level. RIG + SIS Free Will A random process coupled to a deterministic process isn't free will. It's just a random process coupled to a deterministic process. If you insist that FW is a Tertium Datur that is fundamenally different from both determinism and causation, then you won't accept a mixture. However, I don;t think Tertium Datur is a good definition of DW sinc e it is too question begging It seems to me that when people discuss free will, they are always really interested in ultimate responsibility for actions. Any defense of free will must allow for ultimate responsibility for actions. Mine does I say that ultimate responsibility is impossible, because neither caused actions nor random actions nor any combination of cause and randomness seems to result in ultimate responsibility. That is the essence of the libertarian's claim to be able to provide a stronger basis for our intuitions about responsibility than any variety of compatibilist. The missing factor the libertarian can supply is origination. Responsibility lies with human agents (acting intentionally and without duress) — the buck stops with them — because that is where the (intention behind the) action originated. An indeterministic cause is an event which is not itself the effect of a prior cause. Thus, if you trace a cause-effect chain backwards it will come to a halt at an indeterministic cause; the indeterministic cause stands at the head of a cause-effect chain. Thus, such causes can pin down the originative power, of agents. There are two important things to realise at this point: Firstly, we are not saying that indeterministic causes correspond one- to-one to human decisions or actions. It takes(at least) billions of basic physical events to produce a human action or decision. The claim that indeterminism is part of this complex process does not mean that individual decisions are just random. (As we expand in (Section III. 1)). We will go onto propose that there are other mechanisms which filter out random impulses, so that there is rational self-control as well as causal originative power, and thus both criteria for UR are met. Second, we are also not saying that indeterminism by itself is a fully sufficient criterion for agenthood. If physical indeterminism is widespread (as argued in section IV.2), that would attribute free will to all sorts of unlikely agents, such as decaying atoms. Our theory requires some additional criteria. There is no reason why these should not be largely the same criteria used by compatibilists and supercompatibilists — rule-following rationality, lack of external compulsion, etc. Where their criteria do not go far enough, we can supplement them with UR and AP. Where their criteria attribute free will too widely to entities, our supplementary criteria will narrow the domain. It is worth mentioning some of the exaggerated, perhaps supernatural ideas that can get confused with indeterminism-based Origination. One is causa sui, the idea of an entity creating or causing itself out of nothing. Naturalistically this is impossible — an entity has to exist in the first place to cause something. Associating self- determination with self-causation is a route to a superficially convincing argument against free will, but the two/o ideas are really distinct. Self-determination — self-control — is not just naturalistically acceptable, it has its own branch of science, cybernetics. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To
Re: Compatibilism
On 25 Nov 2010, at 22:38, Rex Allen wrote: On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 11:40 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 21 Nov 2010, at 19:47, Rex Allen wrote: On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 8:32 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: But your reasoning does not apply to free will in the sense I gave: the ability to choose among alternatives that *I* cannot predict in advance (so that *from my personal perspective* it is not entirely due to reason nor do to randomness). So that is a good description of the subjective feeling of free will. I was not describing the subjective feeling of free will, which is another matter, and which may accompany or not the experience of free will. Free-will is the ability to choose among alternatives that *I* cannot genuinely predict in advance so that reason fails, and yet it is not random. The ability to choose among unpredictable alternatives? What??? The ability to choose among alternatives which are unpredictable by me right now. The possibility to hesitate, to recognize inner contradictory pulsions and tendencies, and to act without being able to justify precisely why we act this way or in some other way yet able to measure some risk in harming oneself or the others, for examples. With your definition of free will, it does not exist. I think we agree. In no way does “ability to choose from unpredictable alternatives” match my conception of free will. It might be felt as counter-intuitive, like most truth is the mechanist theory. That should be expected. I guess it is your non- mechanism assumption which prevents you to pursue such a line of investigation. Nor would you find many people in agreement amongst the general populace. That is not an argument. Yet many compatibilists reason along similar lines, but this is not an argument either. Few people agree that mechanism entails that physics is a branch of theology, and that matter is an emerging pattern. Few people understand that QM = Many worlds. At each epoch few people swallow the new ideas / theories. Science is not working like politics. it is not democratic. Usually the majority is wrong as science history illustrates well. Many people today find hard the idea that they are machine (except perhaps in the DM large sense for people with a bit of education). You’re just redefining “free will” in a way that allows you to claim that it exists but which bears little relation to the original conception. In a deterministic universe, there are no alternatives. There are alternatives of many kinds based on many notion of randomness and indeterminacy which appears from all points of view except the God's eyes, or view of nowhere, or truth, or assumed ultimate reality, etc. You are collapsing all the notion of person points of view. Things can only unfold one way. Not necessarily from the observer's view. Both in QM and DM, it is provably not the case that things unfold in one way. We might be multiplied at the third person level, and feel indeterminacy at the first person level. This happens in both QM and DM. (but plays no direct role in the emergence of free will) Our being unable to predict that unfolding is neither here nor there. Again, ignorance is not free will. Ignorance is just ignorance. Free will is the ability to act with that ignorance. I have never said that free will is ignorance. That ignorance is what makes free-will genuine, because that ignorance is unavoidable, and can be known (metaknown if you prefer). Free will is closed to the ability to take decision in presence of partial information, like those studied in some AI technic. Like consciousness it accelerates (relatively to a universal number) the decision. But if you question most people closely, this isn't what they mean by “free will”. You have interpret too much quickly what I was describing. Free- will as I define it is not the subjective feeling of having free-will. It is really due to the fact that the choice I will make is not based on reason, nor on randomness from my (real) perspective (which exists). I didn’t say that the options were choices based on “reason or randomness” I said: “Either there is *a reason* for what I choose to do, or there isn't.” By “a reason” I mean “a cause”. I don’t mean “reason” in the sense of rationality. I know that. This does not answer my remark. Subjective does not mean inexisting. Free-will is subjective or better subject-related, but it exists and has observable consequences, like purposeful murdering, existence of jails, etc. It is the root of moral consciousness, or conscience. How does my inability to predict my choices or alternatives in advance serve as the root for moral conscience? Because free-will gives you the actual possibility to do bad things knowing that they are illegal or even really bad, and if the judge can argue
Re: Compatibilism
On 11/26/2010 12:33 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Nov 2010, at 22:38, Rex Allen wrote: How does ignorance of what choice you will make lead to ultimate responsibility for that choice? Because I can have a pretty good pictures of the alternatives. Usually the conflict will be in instantaneous reward against long term rewards. I can speed my car and look at TV, or respect the speed limits and miss the TV. I can stop smoking tobacco and live older, or I can enjoy tobacco here and now, and die sooner, etc. I do have an amount of choice and information, but I am ignorant of the details (notably of my brain functioning, my 'unconscious', etc.), and can act accordingly as a responsible person. I deny the possibility of ultimate responsibility and I’m not a eliminative materialist. I follow you that ultimate responsibility is asking too much. Even a sadist murderer is usually not responsible for the existence of its pulsion, but this does not preclude him to be responsible for its action, in some spectrum. Reasons can be multiple. A sadist could commit an act in a society where sadism is repressed, and not commit an act if sadism is sublimated through art and movies, so the society or system can share responsibility with some act without preventing such act to be done. Free will is not ultimate: i can choose between tea and coffee, but I have not chose to be a drinking entity. But I also deny that mechanism can account for consciousness (except by fiat declaration that it does). That is a subtle point. Many mechanist are wrong on this. The expression mechanism can account for consciousness is highly ambiguous. That is why I present mechanism in the operational form of saying yes to a doctor who proposes you a digital brain copying your brain or body or universe at some level of description. No theory can account for truth, which is independent on any theory or observers, yet truth is what will eventually select a theory or an observer. Likewise, if my consciousness is preserved by a mechanist substitution of my brain, this might be due to a relationship between consciousness and truth which typically will not been accounted by mechanism per se, like a theory cannot account for its own consistency already. That is why mechanism per se is unbelievable by sound machine, and asks for a type of act of faith. You are free, and necessarily free, to say no to the doctor. The theory mechanism explains why it has to be a religion, in a sense. It is akin to a belief in reincarnation, if you think about it. Calling on my favorite intuition pump, the artificially intelligent Mars Rover, I can imagine it faced with a decision about which way to go to complete its mission. It tries to make predictions of success for different paths, calling on it's experience with past maneuvers. Thus it develops alternatives, but they are not decisive - no probability is 1.0 and some are equivalent within its estimates of uncertainty. This I think corresponds to the narrative of consciousness. Having estimated probabilities and finding no clear winner, the Rover selects one of the better alternatives at random. This is an exercise of will - whether you want to call it free or not, it must *seem* free because otherwise it would be part of the narrative. Responsibility only seems to be important in social terms - whom shall we punish or reward? That only requires that the punishment/reward has the desired effect on the person and others. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
