compatibilism

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Agent Smith
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Re: compatibilism

Post by Agent Smith »

If ___ then, afortiori compatibilism is true.
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

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The Dogmatic Determinism of Daniel Dennett
Eyal Mozes
BOOK REVIEW: Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves.
at The Atlas Society
Dennett very briefly brings up the idea of agent causation—the idea that a human being exercising free will is the cause of his own actions—only to summarily dismiss it with the assertion:

"How does an agent cause an effect without there being an event (in the agent, presumably) that is the cause of that effect (and is itself the effect of an earlier cause, and so forth)? Agent causation is a frankly mysterious doctrine, positing something unparalleled by anything we discover in the causal processes of chemical reactions, nuclear fission and fusion, magnetic attraction, hurricanes, volcanoes, or such biological processes as metabolism, growth, immune reactions, and photosynthesis."
That's always my point. Sure, the human brain may have "somehow" acquired autonomy as biological matter evolved here on planet Earth into us. But, if so, how and why did it happen? And how do the brain scientists among us actually go about taking us step by step through the act of choosing this instead of that? Pointing to the actual chemical and neurological sequences that unequivocally establishes volition.

Especially given the reality of dreams and all of the "beyond our control" conditions that any particular brain can become afflicted with. The sort of things that those like the British neurologist Oliver Sacks explored in his publications. Truly bizarre behaviors that revolve entirely around the brain doing its thing...only pathologically far off the beaten path.

Instead, philosophers like the author here will merely assert things like...
On the view of causality as a relation of an entity to its actions, all causation—including all the processes Dennett lists—involves as cause the entity rather than some earlier event. And all biological processes—including all the ones Dennett lists—are cases of self-generated action. Agent causation, therefore, far from being "mysterious" and "unparalleled by anything," is ubiquitous in nature; it is only Dennett's unquestioning acceptance of the event-event view of causality that makes him blind to this.
As though just insisting that this is true in a world of words makes it true. As though the entity "I" necessarily precludes anything other than the Self itself as the starting point for new behaviors. Agent causation simply being what Ayn Rand demands that we accept is true. Again, as though 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.
...is simply a trivial pursuit in pinning down human autonomy. She "just knows" that she is correct in accumulating her own set of philosophical assumptions regarding how the brain functions.

Then the part where she was able to note in turn that each and every "rugged individual" that became a part of her "collective" just happened to agree as well with every single one of her own moral prescriptions and proscriptions.

Or else.
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

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Daniel Dennett is Wrong About Free Will
by Daniel Miessler
Now, let me show you what’s wrong with his rather clever car example. Here he’s talking about capabilities of the car, and how at any given moment you’re seeing what it is doing, and not what it can do.

Fair enough.

But one problem: Cars don’t press their own gas pedals.

So if you’re arguing that humans are just like cars, then I agree! That’s a problem for you, not for me (or Harris). Yes, you can go 40 MPH, or 60 MPH, or swerve to avoid the pedestrian, or swerve to hit him—but either way there is a cause for that outcome.

For the car it’s the foot on the gas pedal, and for the human it’s a combination of chemicals coming together in his brain based on the laws of physics. Either way, they aren’t making free choices despite having different settings, or “capabilities”.
Back again to human brain matter being unlike any other matter that we know of. And some taking a "philosophical leap" to human autonomy and others [compelled by their brains or not] choosing or "choosing" not to. Then [to me] those particularly surreal compatibilists among us who [to me] seem to argue that even though the laws of matter determined that you would put the pedal to the metal and swerve the car into someone killing him, you are still morally responsible for doing so.

Then this part:
What Dennett is missing here is that most people wouldn’t make the argument he’s making. What they would say is that at any given point, as they’re making a decision, they get complete freedom. So if you replayed the tape you’d get another free choice, which would result in a different outcome.

Cars don’t get that.
Okay, so what is the author here suggesting regarding his own assessment of Dennett? Did his own brain compel him to make that assessment? And is Dennett himself compelled by his own brain to miss what others are compelled by their own brains to argue? In a wholly determined universe as the author is compelled to understand it?

I'm always "stuck" at the part where those who call themselves determinists still seem to make arguments not unlike those who think that they have free will make. It's always about convincing others that they are right regarding the philosophical assumptions they make...assumption that, given their own determinist argument, they were never able not to have.
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

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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
Moving on to Chapters 4 and 5, we find a very interesting discussion of how our actions seemingly depend on a complex network of intentions, reasons for action, and relations with other agents.
Yes, the network is complex. We certainly seem to intend things autonomously. We have our own "thought up" and "felt" and "intuited" reasons for doing what we do. And it often involves others.

Though that can be noted as well in regard to our dreams.

The wide awake me, however, is, in regard to volition, either an entirely different entity or it's not. But, in my view, Tallis is no less stuck here than the rest of us in pinning down whether or not it is one or the other. He takes his philosophical leap and we take ours. And for some here that "world of words" leap need be as far as it goes. And that's the beauty [or the curse] of human belief. To make things like this true all we need do is to believe that it is.

Then back to the "general description intellectual contraption":
Tallis argues that we can see as an aspect of this complexity that our behaviour relies upon a kind of intentionality once again involving envisaged possibilities that mark out human minds as embodied subjects semi-independent from nature: “Actions that take place in the material world draw on the (physically) absent and yet [mentally] present past and are motivated by possibilities… that are located in the [physically] as yet absent future. To this extent agents are not solely the products of material events but requisition them…to bring about other events.
Got that? Is it true? Is arguing that it is enough?

Yes, it's true that not only did the human brain "somehow" acquire the capacity to decide among alternative options "what to do" "here and now", but it also "somehow" is able to draw on a past that no longer exists in order to impact a future that does not now exist itself. How on earth [sans God] could nature "on its own" [whatever that means] have accomplished this?

"Somehow" it just happened and Tallis's own world of words philosophical argument is, well, true.

If "in your head" you believe that it is.
promethean75
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Re: compatibilism

Post by promethean75 »

"Actions that take place in the material world draw on the (physically) absent and yet [mentally] present past and are motivated by possibilities… that are located in the [physically] as yet absent future. To this extent agents are not solely the products of material events but requisition them…to bring about other events."

this is phenomenological gobbledygook. I know cuz I tried some shit like this back in 03 when I wuz readin Sartre and Heidegger. the 'inner' experience of consciousness has to be reducible to material processes of the nervous system or we're talking about some kind of cartesian second substance that transcends and is in some cases uneffected by (at will) material causation and events.

just cuz u 'imagine' going to store and then set to doing so, doesn't mean there is anything mysterious about consciousness... or that there is anything more neurologically complex than the ordered recollection of memories to coordinate some future action, going on; I've been to the store before so i know it's possible and how it's done. i want to go to the store now. abracadabra. I've seen the future.
popeye1945
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Re: compatibilism

Post by popeye1945 »

All organisms are reactionary creatures, there is no such thing as human action. I would be most pleased to hear of an example of human action, there is no such creature.
Belinda
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Re: compatibilism

Post by Belinda »

popeye1945 wrote: Thu Apr 27, 2023 3:24 am All organisms are reactionary creatures, there is no such thing as human action. I would be most pleased to hear of an example of human action, there is no such creature.
Yes, but how are we to cooperate with people who have been indoctrinated otherwise?

BTW, Jesus Christ in his God persona had Free Will, and in his human persona did not have Free Will. Hence his struggle in Gethsemane.
popeye1945
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Re: compatibilism

Post by popeye1945 »

Belinda wrote: Thu Apr 27, 2023 10:54 am
popeye1945 wrote: Thu Apr 27, 2023 3:24 am All organisms are reactionary creatures, there is no such thing as human action. I would be most pleased to hear of an example of human action, there is no such creature.
Yes, but how are we to cooperate with people who have been indoctrinated otherwise?

BTW, Jesus Christ in his God persona had Free Will, and in his human persona did not have Free Will. Hence his struggle in Gethsemane.
Hi Belinda,
Yes, well it is a most unhealthy situation as I see it, those indoctrinated to the human action concept; are not geared to understanding the best way to be in the world. It is not good for understanding between individuals or nations and is detrimental to the state of the environment. I am just basically knowledgeable about the trinity, and Jesus's half-human half-God situation and not familiar with the struggle of Gethsemane.
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

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Did Hitler have free will?
Jerry Coyne
What I found interesting in the new afterword to Ron Rosenbaum’s 1998 book, Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil, was what he said about free will. Rosenbaum appears to have striven mightily to show that Hitler was not just a product of the material forces of the environment—Hitler’s genes, environment, and so on—but made his decisions freely—decisions that produced great evil—as a result of free will. Rosenbaum appears to think that Hitler was somehow free of the laws of physics.
Clearly, the idea that Adolph Hitler was not free of the laws of physics -- matter? nature? -- will disturb many profoundly. After all, would that mean that he was never able not to forge the Final Solution and to bring about the Second World War...resulting in the deaths of up to 50 million men, women and children?

If he can't be held morally responsible for the things he did what sort of world is that? And that's where some compatibilists among us insist that even though we do live in a determined universe, Hitler was still morally responsible for what he did.

Okay, explain that part to us again, please.
But let me show you by giving a few quotes:
"But something or some things made Hitler want to do what he did. It wasn’t a concatenation of impersonal, external forces, a kind of collective determinism. It required his impassioned personal desire for extermination, even at the potential cost of defeat for Germany. It required him to choose evil. It required free will."
And the proof of this? Of course: Rosenbaum believed it was true. And why did he believe it was true? Because, say some determinists, he was never able to freely opt not to. Then around and around we call go putting in what may or may not be our own wholly compelled two cents.
". . . One of the fascinating things I discovered in the course of writing this book was the reluctance of scholars and savants to use the word “evil” in regard to Hitler."
Of course, from my own frame of mind, even presuming that we do have free will, how can evil itself not be just a subjective frame of mind rooted existentially in dasein? How can there be an objective Evil in the absence of God? Still, given free will, all one need do is to believe that one or another rendition of Humanism or one or another political ideology or one or another deontological moral philosophy establishes Evil. Belief itself here is "for all practical purposes" the only thing that matters.
"Some years after writing the book and studying the question of evil, on a fellowship at Cambridge where I got to converse with scientists and theologians on this tormentingly complex matter, I ended up writing a long essay I called “Rescuing Evil.” It was an attempt to find a rationale for rescuing the idea of freely chosen “wickedness” (the technical philosophical term) from the determinists and materialists who would instead explain away evil as the purely neurochemical, physiological product of the brain."
Again, all he needs to do is to convince himself that he accomplished this of his own volition. Reduce this "tormentingly complex matter" down to what you can rationalize "in your head". After all, there are plenty of examples of that here, aren't there? My own included.
"'Neuromitigation,' the great contrarian writer and physician Raymond Tallis called it in an essay in the London Times Literary Supplement, and alas that is the way “scientific” studies of evildoers are heading. Blame it all on a brain defect. Neuro­scientists would have a field day with their fMRI machines and Hitler’s brain. Sooner or later they’d claim to find some fragment of gray matter responsible for it all. Instead, we have a gray area, a fog, a Night and Fog, to cite Alain Resnais’s groundbreaking Holocaust movie, that we may never penetrate, and physics alone may never explain."
Let's leave it at that? Besides, don't we have to? Until the neuroscientists confirm that the "free will" component of human interactions has finally been pinned down experientially/experimentally what else is there but to acknowledge that in fact this is not the case at all.

Then fall back on philosophical arguments?
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Re: compatibilism

Post by ismailkho »

Although it may be convenient to attribute a subsequent action to a preceding one as its "cause," this approach is secondary. In essence, an action's cause is determined by the inherent nature of the entity carrying it out. For instance, the movements of atoms or ions are caused by their mass, electric charge, and other intrinsic properties, which dictate how they respond to the external forces acting on them. If the nature of these entities were different, their behavior in reaction to the same external forces would also differ.
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

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Did Hitler have free will?
Jerry Coyne
Of course physics may never explain this, for it requires knowledge that is either inaccessible or too complicated to apprehend, but surely physics underlies all of what Hitler did, and his actions were the result of and therefore compatible with the laws of physics. The question, though, is whether Hitler’s deeds were independent of the laws of physics, and that’s what Rosenbaum seems to think.
Of course: Rosenbaum thinks only that which he was never able not to think. But the ultimate explanation is still no less inaccessible. To, for example, philosophers. And what if the evolution of matter into human brains still has a way to go before they have access to the final solution.

For all we know there may well be intelligent life forms on other planets around a lot longer than us who do have brains that have evolved to the point where they have discovered that fabled theory of everything.

In fact, I often think what if the Big One that wiped out the dinosaurs had hit Earth 50,000 years earlier. Is it possible the human species would have been around that much longer? What will we know about human autonomy or the lack thereof 50,000 years from now? Well, providing we don't wipe ourselves out...or are visited by the next extinction event.

As for Hitler's deeds, it's not what anyone thinks but what they can demonstrate as in fact true.
Now it’s not absolutely clear from these passages whether Rosenbaum is a dualist, but it sure seems that way. After all, even compatibilists, who are mostly of the “determinism rules; you-couldn’t-have-done-otherwise” stripe, would agree that all human behavior is “a concatenation of impersonal, external forces, a kind of collective determinism”; that Hitler’s deeds were “neurochemical, physiological product[s] of the brain”; and, I think, would “blame it on a brain defect,” or at least on the neurological wiring produced by Hitler’s genes and circumstances. Rosenbaum’s dissing of neuroscience is telling.
Again, confusion reigns here in my brain. If determinism rules and Hitler could never have done other than what he must do given the immutable laws of matter hardwiring his brain to set up the dominoes and topple them on cue, what does it mean to speak of a brain defect?

Hitler's genes and Hitler's circumstances are six of one, half a dozen of the other to nature. Which is why from my frame of mind the only reason someone is still able to hold him morally responsible for the Holocaust is because they were never able not to. And not that Hitler is morally responsible as the advocates of free will insist. Other than that they are advocates of free will only because they were never able not to be.
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

Post by iambiguous »

Did Hitler have free will?
Jerry Coyne
I suspect Rosenbaum really does think that Hitler could have “chosen” to do otherwise, and that gives him a reason to say that Hitler had “chosen wickedness”—in other words, Hitler was morally evil.
On the other hand, imagine if "somehow" scientists and philosophers were able to pin this age-old conundrum down and demonstrate that none of us have free will. That everything and anything that we think, feel, say and do, we were never able not to. I'd ask how would you wrap your head around that but, of course, you'd wrap it around it in the only possible way that you can.

And then those like me. Loathed by some for suggesting that even if it was in fact the other way around and it was determined that we do have free will, human interactions would still be beyond good and evil in a No God world.

The horror! The horror!

Well, unless you're a sociopath.
As I’ve said before (and others have disagreed, most vociferously Dan Dennett), if our behaviors are determined, the word “moral choice” loses meaning—except in the sense of meaning “determinism led somebody to do something that society deems immoral”.
And that society was in turn unable not to deem it immoral. The part I always come back to: that absolutely nothing is not determined.
As I’ve written before, at least one study shows that most folks feel that a fully deterministic view of human behavior means that “people would not be considered fully morally responsible for their actions”. For them, and for me, “moral responsibility” means “you had the possibility of making either a moral or immoral choice.”
And yet the compatibilists are telling us that in spite of determinism we are still responsible. But telling us this only because unbeknownst to them they are entirely compelled to.

Then one or another "world of words" to "resolve" it.
Well, even without moral responsibility, we still bear responsibility for our actions, as we are the beings who committed them.
Yes, and you can say that the lion is responsible for killing the zebra because it did in fact kill the zebra.
Hitler, like every other evildoer, had to be punished for his injurious (murderous!) behavior—for reformation, to sequester him from society, and as a deterrent (deterrents are of course completely compatible with pure determinism). Reformation seems out of the question, and surely Hitler would have been hanged had he been caught, but he chose to kill himself. (I’m not a fan of capital punishment, and would have put him away for life.)
And on and on and on we go arguing for or against things like this. As though the deterrents themselves were "somehow" out of "the only possible reality" loop in a wholly determined universe.
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

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Trouble with Compatibilism
Marcus Arvan at the Philosopher's Cocoon
So I just finished reading Carolina Sartorio's new paper in Phil Review, "Making a Difference in a Deterministic World", and I'm puzzled. I'm not puzzled by the paper -- which is clear and well-argued enough -- so much as I am puzzled by the entire view it is concerned with: compatibilism.
As I would be regarding a paper that argues one can make a difference in a determined world. On the other hand, let me bring back those hypothetical aliens observing Earthlings in their own free will slice of the universe. Earthlings themselves inhabiting the wholly determined slice of the universe. Now, they note that John has chosen to have sex with Mary and after Mary's birth control device fails she gets pregnant. She then chooses to have an abortion. Now both John and Mary make choices that then make all the difference in the world. Mary gets pregnant and then she kills her unborn baby.

But, as the aliens note, given that neither John nor Mary are actually opting of their own volition to do what they do, the differences that they are making are differences that are entirely in sync with the only possible reality on Earth. And that makes all the difference in the world when it comes to holding them responsible for what they do.

Some on Earth might in fact do precisely that. But, again, only because they were never of their own free will responsible for doing so. Nothing, as the aliens note, is ever other than what it can only ever be on planet Earth.
Here, in a nutshell, is Sartorio's main thesis: even if everything in the universe is fully determined in advance, there is nevertheless a sense in which our actions can make a difference in the world. Sartorio's argument then is that because "difference-making" is intuitively tied to moral responsibility, and compatibilists prior to her paper haven't made adequate sense of how our actions can make a difference in a deterministic world, she has provided a better compatibilist account of how we can be morally responsible for our actions.
So, the aliens interject...

"Yes, Sartorio's main thesis is what it is. But that is because she was never herself able to opt freely not to make it. Our actions clearly do make a difference in the world. And we are responsible in the sense that had we not been around we would not have chosen the behavior that makes a difference. But we are only around because we were never able not to be around. And though we are around everything that we do that makes a difference is in turn a difference that could never have been otherwise."

Responsibility can get tricky.

As I once noted:
Years ago, I was walking to work when a dog ran out from around a corner, encountered me and, startled, ran out into the street where a pickup truck hit and killed him. Now, strictly speaking, I wasn't morally responsible for that because, in terms of intention, it was beyond my control. On the other hand, my being there then did cause the dog to bolt into the street and get killed.

Only from my frame of mind nothing that unfolded that morning was ever going to not unfold because nothing that unfolded that morning was not wholly in sync with the laws of matter unfolding only as they ever could have.
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Agent Smith
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Re: compatibilism

Post by Agent Smith »

Who says philosophy hasn't made progress, good progress some might say?!

There's, ex mea (humble) sententia, an urgent need to simplify the issue to a manageable size, something a (true) philosopher would notice in the blink of an eye. How so fascinating, oui?

I can easily craft a decent argument for compatibilism but it would belong to a certain class of arguments that philosophers, presumably, have a low opinion of for obvious reasons, but quite interesting reasons.
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

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The Dogmatic Determinism of Daniel Dennett
Eyal Mozes
BOOK REVIEW: Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves.
at The Atlas Society
DENNETT'S FOIL: ROBERT KANE'S VIEW OF FREE WILL

That the nature of causality is vitally important for the free will versus determinism issue is highlighted by Dennett's critique of what he regards as "the best attempt so far" to defend free will against determinism: that of Robert Kane in his book The Significance of Free Will. Kane recognizes that free will is relevant to action in those cases in which a person has to choose between two contradictory courses of action and has strong reasons for both.
Back to Schopenhauer here. Yes, each of us as individuals choose over and over and over again for reasons that unfold over and over and over again in our brains. Just as over and over and over again we want things. But if we cannot freely want what we want than why should it be true that we can freely reason towards that we choose? In regard to anything that we think, feel, say and do, where is it demonstrated [by philosophers, scientists or theologians] how and why this necessarily derives from autonomy in our brains?

Instead, in a world of words, the philosophers here "define" this and "deduce" that based on a mere set of assumptions that may well in turn be entirely determined by the brain. At least the scientists are probing it phenomenologically. And the theologians [along with the flocks] take their leaps of faith to God or make their wagers.

A classic example of a philosopher tackling this up in the intellectual clouds:
However, he shares Dennett's event-event view of causality and dogmatic rejection of agent causation. To avoid acknowledging agent causation while also avoiding determinism, Kane tries to base free will on quantum indeterminacies that may occur in the atoms of the brain during the process of deliberating on the reasons for alternative actions, which make the person's final choice of action undetermined.
Okay, how then do the 100,000,000,000,000 mindless atoms aggregate into a single mindful human brain? Then working altogether with the rest of the body aggregate into 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms that constitute each of us going about the business of choosing behaviors in going from event to event? How is autonomy actually pinpointed here?
Dennett easily demolishes the theory, correctly demonstrating that such quantum indeterminacies do not in any way help give the person control of his actions or provide support for holding the person responsible for them.
To understand that you need to freely choose to become an Objectivist and then freely choose to worship and adore Ayn Rand as the ultimate source for understanding everything.

Again, or else.
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