Free Will and Determinism Necessitate Eachother

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Terrapin Station
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Re: Free Will and Determinism Necessitate Eachother

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Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 1:53 am
I'm really reading. And I'm very good at reading.
If only it were a request for your self-assessment.
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Re: Free Will and Determinism Necessitate Eachother

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RCSaunders wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 12:57 am
Terrapin Station wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 10:29 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 9:46 pm One very bad mistake being made in this entire discussion is about the nature of, "cause," and what determinism means.

The notion of "cause," was totally corrupted by Hume and the entire intellectual world has since swallowed his misrepresentation of cause, now almost universally described as, "cause and effect," meaning, "the same cause (event) always produces the same effect (event)."

Whatever it's called, in science, "cause," is never identified in those terms because scientific cause is not, "event," causation, but, "entity," causation. The wrong description of cause is, "event A will always result in effect B," or conversely, "effect B is always caused by event A." Three fundamental things are wrong with that view:

1. In the entire history of the word there have never been two identical events as either, "causes," or, "effects."

2. No event in history is isolated and every event is contingent on an infinite number of contributing variables.

3. Every event is the action of entities. What any entity does, how it behaves at any moment is determined by its own nature (the kind of entity it is) and it's immediate context (it's environment or it's relationship to all other entities).

The real meaning of the word, "cause," in the physical sciences, relative to events, is, "the explanation for." It is based on the principle that no physical event happens spontaneously, miraculously, by magic or without an explanation that is not itself physical. It does no mean the simple-minded sixth-grade notion of, "cause and effect."

The correct description of physical cause is based on the fact every entity has a specific nature that determines how it will behave relative to all other entities, which may be stated, "the same entity in the same context will always behave in the same way." Obviously, no two events are identical because there is never a single cause A that results in event B. Same cause same event is simply nonsense. For every event there are an infinite number of variables, any of which being different would result in a different event. In actual practice, very similar entities may be in very similar contexts, similar enough to satisfy any engineering requirements, but none will ever be identical.

What that means for determinism is that every physical event can only ever be what it is, because it is determined by what actually is, which is the nature of every entity which is part of that event. For every entity in every event is what it is and will behave as it does in that context and could never behave in any other way in that context. Every physical event is absolutely determined.

Statistics and probability are totally irrelevant to physical causation. There is no such thing as an indeterminate physical state, and every event that actually occurs had a 100% probability of happening.

Any event that actually occurs had a one hundred percent possibility of occurring, but no statistical method could ever have predicted it.
What you wrote is a complete mess for maybe 20 or 30 different reasons.
Don't worry about it. It wasn't addressed to you. It is only meant for those with attentions spans capable of sustained reason over something longer than your typical university, "text book."
Yeah, longer than a textbook would surely be less of a mess given the numerous problems with just about every sentence.
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Re: Free Will and Determinism Necessitate Eachother

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RCSaunders wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 1:47 am
I think you are confusing probability, and perhaps statistics as well, as having some kind of efficient or efficatious power.
Can you explain how you're reading that into what I wrote?
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Re: Free Will and Determinism Necessitate Eachother

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Terrapin Station wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 11:39 pm The bottom line, by the way, is that people want to know if they can make a choice between at least two options or whether that's just an illusion.
That's just silly. Most people know they consciously choose everything they think and do and the question would never come up if some philosopher or psychologist didn't try to convince them otherwise.

You're the only own wrestling with that question, and there is nothing wrong with that, but I don't think trying to convince everyone else is the solution to your problem.

It's also never an issue for dualists, like IC and Henry, (which I am not,) who just attribute consciousness and volition to something supernatural, while retaining a deterministic view of physical existence. I think it's only a problem if you insist the only properties possible to existence are physical properties and try to make those physical properties non-deterministic, "in some cases," to explain volition.
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Re: Free Will and Determinism Necessitate Eachother

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Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 10:46 am
RCSaunders wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 1:47 am
I think you are confusing probability, and perhaps statistics as well, as having some kind of efficient or efficatious power.
Can you explain how you're reading that into what I wrote?
I didn't read anything into what you wrote, It's what you wrote implies.
So, the next step is that if we're talking about occurrences that are not determined in the sense of there being only one possible outcome (but we're also not talking about equiprobable occurences either), then something--whether a brute fact or something else, is biasing one possibility over the other.
First, probability theory is not about, "possibility," but, "probability," and it does not determine anything. Nothing can be more possible than anything else, only more or less probable.

Second, probability is only an observation of the likelihood of some event when only some, but not all the elements bearing on that event are known. Probability does not make anything happen. The only way a probability can be changed is by changing one or more of the elements that determine that event.

Thirdly, probability does not determine or predict any event. Only the physical state of all the elements related to any event have any causative relationship to the event. Probability can only make the evaluation, before the event and only if one is ignorant of the actual cause. When an event has occurred, it could not have been otherwise.

What you wrote implies that changing probability can change an outcome without changing the actual causes of the outcome, as though probability had something to do with determining the event. It doesn't.
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Re: Free Will and Determinism Necessitate Eachother

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RCSaunders wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 11:48 am That's just silly. Most people know they consciously choose everything they think
That can't be the case if determinism is true, and science long suggested that determinism is true. Hence the dilemma.
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Re: Free Will and Determinism Necessitate Eachother

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RCSaunders wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 12:27 pm I didn't read anything into what you wrote, It's what you wrote implies.
So, the next step is that if we're talking about occurrences that are not determined in the sense of there being only one possible outcome (but we're also not talking about equiprobable occurences either), then something--whether a brute fact or something else, is biasing one possibility over the other.
What I wrote there says nothing about probability determining anything. If you think what I wrote implies that, you'd have to explain it.
First, probability theory is not about, "possibility,"
I wasn't writing about probability theory per se, especially not some standard account of it.

When we're talking about two things with some non-zero probability for each, where they're following an immediately antecedent state, we're talking about two different possibilities.

The whole gist of the free will issue is whether there is more than one possibility following an antecedent state--or at least that's the minimum ontological fact necessary for it.
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Re: Free Will and Determinism Necessitate Eachother

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Janoah wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 6:11 pm
henry quirk wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 7:33 pm
Janoah wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 6:33 pm

The actions of the "agent", and everything that happens in it, including thinking, processes in neurons, everything obeys the laws of nature, and is "limited" by them. Is there a scientific opinion that something does not obey the laws of nature? After all, no.
Has it been established that mind, will, intent, purpose, personality, identity, etc. are processes in neurons? If so, then I'd like to see the map of it all along with the relevant explanations of how the brain generates mind, will, intent, purpose, personality, identity, etc.
Higher cerebral functions
The neurons of the cerebral cortex constitute the highest level of control in the hierarchy of the nervous system. Consequently, the terms higher cerebral functions and higher cortical functions are used by neurologists and neuroscientists to refer to all conscious mental activity, such as thinking, remembering, and reasoning, and to complex volitional behaviour such as speaking and carrying out purposive movement.

https://www.britannica.com/science/huma ... -functions

The frontal lobe is associated with executive functions including self-control, planning, reasoning, and abstract thought
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain
Yeah, not seein' diddly in either piece establishin', as fact, that mind, will, intent, purpose, personality, identity, etc. are processes in neurons.

As I say up-thread: The brain...does its share of the work, attending to -- autonomic-like -- all the various processes that physically comprise a person, regulating thru feedback all the bio-machinery from the sub-cellular on up to organs and how all the organs seamlessly work together as a whole unit. From the top of my bald head to the tips of my neanderthal toes, my brain is a fantastic manager.

But it's not me, not all on its lonesome.
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Re: Free Will and Determinism Necessitate Eachother

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RCSaunders wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 11:48 am
Terrapin Station wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 11:39 pm The bottom line, by the way, is that people want to know if they can make a choice between at least two options or whether that's just an illusion.
That's just silly. Most people know they consciously choose everything they think and do and the question would never come up if some philosopher or psychologist didn't try to convince them otherwise.

You're the only own wrestling with that question, and there is nothing wrong with that, but I don't think trying to convince everyone else is the solution to your problem.

*It's also never an issue for dualists, like IC and Henry, (which I am not,) who just attribute consciousness and volition to something supernatural, while retaining **a deterministic view of physical existence. I think it's only a problem if you insist the only properties possible to existence are physical properties and try to make those physical properties non-deterministic, "in some cases," to explain volition.
*I think my bein' a free will, a causal agent, is perfectly natural.

Event causation, the vast interweave of causal chains we call Reality, is the norm.

Agent causation is the exception.

Exception is not synonymous with supernatural.

**Cause and effect underlyin' all those countless, twisted together, causal chains is obvious.The ubiquity of C & E, of event causation, makes discrete agent causation possible.
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Re: Free Will and Determinism Necessitate Eachother

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Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 1:35 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 11:48 am That can't be the case if determinism is true, and science long suggested that determinism is true. Hence the dilemma.
In physical science determinism must be true, or there is no science.

There's only a dilemma if you've decided consciousness is some kind of phenomena produced by the physical.
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Re: Free Will and Determinism Necessitate Eachother

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RCSaunders wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 6:00 pm In physical science determinism must be true, or there is no science.
What are you basing this on?

It's not the case, and once again, the consensus isn't that the world is deterministic any longer. That hasn't been the consensus for a long time.

Also, "the world is deterministic/there is free will" doesn't map to "the world is physical/there are nonphysical things."

I keep correcting these ignorant claims (not just from you), but I have to keep repeating the corrections, because no one around here is capable of learning anything.
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Re: Free Will and Determinism Necessitate Eachother

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Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 1:39 pm When we're talking about two things with some non-zero probability for each, where they're following an immediately antecedent state, we're talking about two different possibilities.
That's two different things.

A probability only means, "within the limits of what I do not know about this situation the likelihood of event A happening is ..." If you knew everything that an event was contingent on, there would be no, "probability," there would be certainty.

The second thing is supposing cause means some, "state," causes some subsequent, "state," like a clocked computer. In real life there is no demarcation between cause and effect and in science they are usually only different ways of looking at the same phenomenon. There is no, "cause and effect," in the formula for DC current and voltage, E=IR, only a relationship which means for any current in a circuit with a given resistance the voltage will be the product of the current and resistance values. Any of those values can be considered either a, "cause," or, "effect," R=E/I, I=E/R.
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 1:39 pm The whole gist of the free will issue is whether there is more than one possibility following an antecedent state--or at least that's the minimum ontological fact necessary for it.
Only you have an issue, because you want everything to be explained in terms of physics, and your issue is, either there is no volition because the physical is deterministic, or for there to be volition, something must be slipped in that in some cases makes the physical non-deterministic. I don't believe the latter can be true without undercutting the validity of science.

If science is valid, there cannot be exceptions to the principles that determine physical phenomena. If there could be exceptions to that determinism, then nothing in science is reliable and just anything could be or happen, and we're back to supernaturalism.
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Re: Free Will and Determinism Necessitate Eachother

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RCSaunders wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 6:31 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 1:39 pm When we're talking about two things with some non-zero probability for each, where they're following an immediately antecedent state, we're talking about two different possibilities.
That's two different things.
Holy crap you can't read.

No one said they're the same thing.
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Re: Free Will and Determinism Necessitate Eachother

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Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 6:03 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 6:00 pm In physical science determinism must be true, or there is no science.
What are you basing this on?

It's not the case, and once again, the consensus isn't that the world is deterministic any longer. That hasn't been the consensus for a long time.
Of course if you believe just anything is true if enough people agree with it, it's unlikely your views of science will be very objective.

I really don't care if every academic who has an opinion about science who has never actually done or achieved anything in science in their life, wants to reduce it to some statistical inductive nonsense based and consensus. I do not regard anything as science which cannot be explained in terms of inviolable principles discovered by objective research. If reality is not determined by principles, if just anything can happen, there is no science.
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 6:03 pm ... no one around here is capable of learning anything.
Most don't want to, apparently.
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Re: Free Will and Determinism Necessitate Eachother

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RCSaunders wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 6:47 pm Of course if you believe just anything is true if enough people agree with it, it's unlikely your views of science will be very objective.
Views can't be objective.

I'm cutting off your posts at the first you stay that's stupid. (And not reading the rest of the post.)
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