The philosophy thread general discussion

From the link: "Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas, and that it is possible to believe both without being logically inconsistent."

If it was shown people made different choices under exactly the same circumstances, including their minds being reset, I would take as a reason to consider them less responsible for their actions good or bad. Want would I be blaming? If they choice B because of some persistent trait, that would be in line with determinism, and if they didn't that choice was basically random noise, not a part of them.

So yes I'd say free will by standard definitions doesn't exist and would be useless anyways.

Because if the physical process is the cause, then you have no influence over it. It's not something that you do, it's something that happens to you. ("You" in this case being the entity that has the subjective experience of consciousness, not the chemical processes that make up the physical basis for that entity.)

If you believe that the chemical processes that make up the physical basis for "you" can affect themselves without any outside stimulus (ie, you could put those physical processes in the exact same situation, down to the subatomic level, multiple times and the results would be — or at least could be — different each time), then that is compatible with free will. It's also physical compatibilism in a nutshell.

This is precisely backwards. If someone could have made a different choice but didn't, then they're responsible for that choice (since they made that choice instead of some other choice). If someone could not have made a different choice, then they're not responsible for that action — they couldn't help doing what they did, so blaming them for it makes no more sense than blaming someone for being subject to gravity. You wouldn't hold someone responsible for the fact that they're pulled back to the ground after jumping upwards, why would you hold someone responsible for acting in a way that the physical laws of nature force them to act?

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Your confusing 2 different "could"s. In order for decisions to be mine, for me to just be causally responsible, never mind free, they have to result from my will and my thought process. Just to make the statement I caused this action" to be true facts about me need to be predictive of the action.

The coulds in decisions aren't anything magical. I imagine options, evaluate them, and the one that ends up scoring highest (whether it should have or not) happens. But those evaluation standards are already there. "I could do A" here means it is in the contest. My will is the contest, it doesn't separately decide which option wins.

If I do different things in the exact same situation, why did I? I could choose to do the wrong thing, but isn't that the result of me being a little too selfish, as a some what persistent trait rather then out of nowhere? I could choose to be more or less selfish, but that just push the question back.

""You" in this case being the entity that has the subjective experience of consciousness, not the chemical processes that make up the physical basis for that entity."

Hands, verses fingers, thump, and palm. Heat verses molecular motion.

I honestly don't see how any of that is a response to what I said.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I'll try again.

You are the physics.

I'm not this leads to the next part.

[[quoteblock]]You could put those physical processes in the exact same situation, down to the subatomic level, multiple times and the results would be — or at least could be — different each time.[[/qoteblock]]

If you resent everything, including the agent's mind, it would do the same thing for the same reasons.

I when I say "I could do A or B" I mean I'm considering both, but for a set consideration standard, there one logically possible answer, unless there's a tie. I mean sometimes I'll choose between standards, but that choice, follows the same rules.

The consequentialist notion of blame fits in just fine. Blame people in situations where blame or the expectation of blame might help. Outside of that, people who do bad things for reasons that can't be removed without making them a different person are more blame worthy then then people who do bad things, because of reasons they don't approve of or wouldn't if they knew about them.

edited 11th Feb '16 9:27:07 AM by supermerlin100

Not in the sense that I'm talking about. You realize that I'm defining my terms in a specific way for a reason, right? You can't just say "I'm using this word differently than you are, so therefore your argument is wrong". I'm using the word the way I'm using it, not the way you use it. That's why I was careful to explicitly define it in the first place.

Then free will doesn't exist and people are just automatons acting as dictated by the laws of physics. The only difference between the human experience and a rock falling to the ground due to gravity is that the former is more complex. This is physical determinism and it is not compatible with free will.

If physical determinism is true, then you aren't actually considering anything. You experience the illusion of considering options, but your subjective experience does not match reality. What's actually happening is that your brain (and every other part of you) is a wind-up toy powered by the laws of physics. You have no agency. You make no decisions. You are a passive observer in your own body who only thinks that they're in the driver's seat.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Determinism is needed for free will. Humans are not puppets outside of physics controlled by physics. We are a part of physics. A part of physics that causes things.

While determinism means that human action are predictable as the process will make decision every time if place in the right place, but to do so you would still have to run the process to determine the result.

This all adds up to reality. People are morally responsible as the outcome of their action is still caused by their mind.

edited 11th Feb '16 9:41:09 AM by higurashimerlin

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

If you think that we can cause things (as opposed to everything proceeding as predicted by the laws of physics given a set of starting conditions), then that's not determinism.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

No we're disagreeing about reality, not word usage. I'm saying that the brain is the thing having experiences, and you think it isn't. For example I'd say philosophical zombies are impossible, for the same reason you can't have a world exactly the same in terms of atoms except heat doesn't exist.

Because of my belief on this matter I don't see the physics part as mattering. The important part is that there's a explanation beyond "I choice A". Even if your decisions didn't have a physical origin or any origin outside of yourself, you still wouldn't be anymore responsible for them. The chain of choices and metachoices, would still lead back to your birth. Only now your initial will, and reasoning, would come from nowhere.

Considering doesn't require fucking magic. It's an actually process. Determining what the odds of this will kill me or how much harm will this do to Jeb, or how hard is this going to be don't require weird unexplainable metaphysics.

It actually isn't that different then what chess programs do. That we can make choices about our coding and do double takes are biggest differences.

Edit: "The big bang did it" and "i did it" are both correct. I'm also the more immediate cause and still would have done it, if last Thursdayish was true.

Edit2: The past does reach around the present and keep the present from doing anything. The only control the past has is through the present.

edited 11th Feb '16 11:37:48 AM by supermerlin100

To make those prediction you still have to run the process or a simpler version of the process. To know what choice a chess program will make you have to run the code or carry out the algorithm inside your head. Either way the process has to run and then chose.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

Kinkiest philosophical discussion ever. Socrates would be proud how it went back to its greek roots.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

No, I was deliberately phrasing the example to avoid that question entirely. It doesn't matter whether the mind is the brain or merely seated in it. The distinction I was drawing wasn't between "the brain, a physical object subject to the laws of physics" and "the mind, a mental construct unbound by physical laws", but between "you, a lump of matter and energy" and "you, a collection of memories with a subjective experience of reality". Even if you believe that they're the same thing, it's still important to distinguish between talking about the physical aspects of the system and the mental aspects of it.

Does a computer program have free will, in your view?

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Some would.

.

I know that's what you meant, and that what I'm disagreeing with. I was saying that you the feeler and you the thinker are the same thing, and are the brain. If the brain really was something else, then you wouldn't be in control. I'll agree to that much.

If they're the same there's literally no distinction to make. The physical description is just more detailed.

Yes. A chess program isn't written with pre-program moves, that would be horrible design.A chess program is a process that finds move that fits it's preference and selects them.

You have to run the code to know what it moves it will select or carry out the algorithm in your head. Either way the process has to actually be carried out in some form or another to know how it will end.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

I know that, and I'm not disagreeing. (I'm not agreeing, either, though.) What I'm getting at is that there are different ways to consider the same thing. I'm trying to call attention to one specific aspect, and you're just repeating "but that's not the only aspect to it!" I know that, but the other aspect isn't what I'm talking about right now.

It's like I'm saying "let's consider the number 3, as it's the square root of 9" and you keep saying "but it's not just the square root of 9, it's also a prime number!" Yes, that's true, but that's not what I'm trying to talk about right now, so when you keep harping on that you're missing the point.

Then you're not using the definition of free will that I, or most other people, use in terms of conversations like this.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Okay I just reread the whole discussion and I still don't get it. We agree that free will could work under dualism without physical determinism and couldn't with physical determinism. So all that left are the non-dualistic options (hence why I keep bringing it up). Is that right?

edited 11th Feb '16 3:06:04 PM by supermerlin100

Well here what I mean exactly.

You could in theory predict a person's actions as resulting from a chain of causality starting from the big bang.

The issue is that to perform this, you have to model everything from the big bang onward. Say the chess program makes a move. The chain starts in the big bang but you still have to run the code to see what happens next.

The simulator you are using has to run the code as it is a part of the physical world it is simulating. Your actions and will still chain back from you even if you chains back to something else.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

My theory on determinism is that, because time is relative, thus it all exists at once from a certain perspective, all things that happen always happen, have always happened and will always happen. Which means any decision that is made is the only decision that can be made, has been made, is being made and will be made forever and ever. That doesn't preclude the existence of "will", but it does mean that that will isn't really "free". The decisions you make are indeed made by you and you're responsible for their repercussions and such, but it's a decision that's already been made and is always being made

"Rules are rules, get in the fuckin' wagon."

This[1] is what my main problem with philosophical free will (independent of physicalism)comes down to.

As the article itself points out, that argument only works if you assume that the homunculus is itself a physical entity of the same type as the primary body. If you're talking about a mental construct rather than a physical one, then it makes sense to talk about an entity separate from the physical body that "watches" what's going on.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

In that analogy, I think your brain is closer to being the projector than the little man.

Firstly that's basically saying "it's magic I don't need to explain it". It's like responding to "it's turtles all the way down" by say there's one flying turtle.

The soul runs into the same "problem" as the brain. All your decisions lead back to your birth and then what? An infinity recursion is the only way to avoid, all of your decisions being "decided" by whatever determined your original character and instincts, even if the source was random.

Only if you take it as given that your view of reality is correct, which you've been doing consistently. That's honestly why I've stopped responding to the conversation.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I'm not the only one. I'm really not sure what your model even looks like.

Ontologically what are options and decisions?

edited 14th Feb '16 7:11:50 PM by supermerlin100

Apparently the idea of Individualism as we know it only became popular 200 years ago. Do you guys think that, looking back, things would be better without it? Today for example, in America at least, there's a social stigma against young adults who still live with their parents, and lots of seniors end up living on their own or in nursing homes, when they'd be safer living with their families. I imagine in a society that put less emphasis on individualism, these issues wouldn't exist.

Edit: I guess it can't be argued objectively whether things would be 'better' one way or the other, but what do you think would be different?

edited 4th Mar '16 7:46:00 AM by Xopher001