Noax wrote: ↑Mon Jul 17, 2017 11:11 pm
Sorry to dredge new life into this tired thread, but I only recently realized that it had become interesting after 800 posts of the usual trolling. There are lots of sidetracks, but this one is on subject. I didn't think the core of this post was addressed.
This was taken from post 906:
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 05, 2017 3:04 pm
...So Determinism follows inevitably from Materialism. I see no way to escape it. It is, as Max Weber has called it, "the iron cage."
davidm pretty much countered this assertion. Determinism does not follow from materialism and if it was, the universe is still not computable even in principle.
Actually, what davidm argues, even if conceded entirely, would only deliver the Materialist to a different mechanical process known as "randomness." The situation of the individual will would be no less Deterministic: it would just be determined by forces of another name. Nothing about "randomness" makes it more genuinely human or free-will-producing than simple causality: it's just a process that is even less predictable.
For that reason, some philosophers worry that things like quantum dynamics, far from being an improvement on mechanical causality, are actually even one step
worse.
After all, wouldn't you rather be a cog in a
predictable machine than a toy of mere capricious chance? Either way, there is no power in the individual will.
What we're talking about here is physical monism. It is the view that it is a closed system, determined or not. Choice is a function of physical process. I think that is what you say there.
"Closed" with regard to human will? Yes, that is the entailment of Materialism. It's not the universe I think we live in, but it's the one that Materialism has to posit.
Now for free will: It seems difficult to define a non-begging definition of the concept. The ability to do otherwise is a matter of assertion. I can say that choice existed but I freely chose A and not B. This is true, monist or not. If no choice existed, then I would not require the mechanism for making a good choice since it would happen anyway.
Not quite. The Materialist has, by definition, to hold that "choice" itself is a mechanical phenomenon. To simplify, it might look like this: you "chose" to respond to this message, at this time, because of (perhaps) a combination of neurochemicals that happened in your brain. Why did they happen? Because of the combination of the stimuli acting upon you immediately prior, including the earlier message, the breakfast you ate, the thing your spouse said to you last night...and so on. So your "choice" was nothing but the sum of previous events, and involved no independent volitional action emanating from personhood.
To find common ground, I looked to the conclusion always drawn by a one's favorite begging free-will definition. It always seems to come to morals. If you don't have free will, you cannot be held morally responsible for your actions. Thus, if I should be held morally responsible, I must have free will.
Well, the "ought implies can" argument
follows, rather than
causes the Determinist-Materialist argument. We may not
like that Materialism deprives us of morals, of personhood, of volition, and so on...but our not-liking will not justify us believing it's not true,
if it is true. So that's not my argument.
So in what way is a physical being not responsible for his actions?
In the same way an earthquake, a volcano or a tsunami is not morally culpable for all the people it kills. It is mechanically the cause of their deaths, but having no volition or malice, nor any capability of such things, it cannot be attributed moral responsibility. These natural forces cannot do otherwise than then did; and if they could not do otherwise, they are not responsible for what they did.
It would not be better to make a choice not based on the prior events.
That's an odd claim, for a couple of reasons. One is that according to Materialism, you
cannot "make a choice not [entirely] based on prior" causes.
Another is that there is no independent agent capable of generating such a "choice." Personhood and volition, like everything else, are latter manifestations of previous processes.
For instance, while driving, a pedestrian is crossing up ahead. I can react to this physical event, or dissociate myself from that state of affairs and continue on my way not letting the detection of the pedestrian influence my decision.
Materialistic Determinists have been aware of such objections for a long time. Their response tends to be to say that your "decision" is not genuine. Even the feeling of "deciding" is nothing but the latter manifestation of earlier processes, and likewise, your perceived moment of deliberation is just an odd side-phenomenon of the causal process. In other words, you're just fooling yourself.
Now, of course, I don't believe this is so. Their explanation is reductional and untrue, I would say. Nevertheless, you've got to give them this much: that it's very hard to think of how one would prove decisively that they have an impossible explanation.
Keep in mind, though, that to say an explanation is "possible" is not the same as to concede it's the
right explanation. An explanation can be plausible without being accurate or truthful.
It seems to me that this is how the typical argument is presented. I cannot have free will if I let the presence of the physical pedestrian influence my choice to evade.
I think it's one step worse. I think they'd argue that you have no genuine choice as to whether or not you "let" the presence of the physical pedestrian "influence" your decision at all. Your decision, whatever it is, was actually predetermined for you; and your sensation of deliberating whether or not to regard the pedestrian was just one of these weird, inexplicable side-sensations that Material Determinism creates in the cosmos.
This is of course absurd, but then I'm not sure what is claimed by the argument that decisions based on prior events cannot have moral implications. On what should the decisions be based if not the inputs relevant to the choice? Why is it not choice if the system is closed?
That's what I mean. Materialists would have to say "decisions" aren't "based" on anything. A "decision" is nothing but the combination of prior events and causes determining a subsequent outcome. There was no
volitional agent, no special middle ground upon which the "decision" could teeter. "Volition" is just an epiphenomenon: a weird sensation produced by the causal process itself, but not indicating an agent capable of inputing anything distinct to that causal process by his or her judgment.
That's an inelegant way to put it. But then, Materialist Determinism is a very inelegant theory whenever it tries to account for personhood or volition.