Fallacies of Strawson's Argument vs. Free Will

Also believe there is a regression here. The “what we are” is a result of a series of actions of ourselves and others, which in turn are the result of actions of others, and so on.

So the argument really is not if an individual act is determined, but if the entire series of acts is determined, which than leads to logical question what or who determined the first act in this series

Actions have consequences, some of those consequences may impact the actions of others.

Quoting Galen Strawson

[1] "When we act, we do what we do because of the way we are, all things considered."

[2} "So, to be truly responsible for what we do when we act, we need to be truly responsible for how we are."

[3] "But, we cannot be ultimately responsible for the way we are."

[4] "So, we cannot be free."

Frankly I find it embarrassing when philosophers forward arguments like this. It's embarrassing to have any association with philosophy if anyone is going to assume that we think such crap arguments are worth anything at all.

He has undefined garbage phrases in there like "truly responsible" and "ultimately responsible."

So aside from lame No True Scotsman moves he might make, (3) doesn't seem at all obviously the case.

Aside from that, it's not clear what sort of free will he's even talking about, and he seems to be conflating what's supposed to be an argument against freedom with comments that are primarily focused on whether we can be considered culpable for our actions. Those are two different ideas.

Quoting Dfpolis

It is true that we do what we do because we have the power to do it, but to say that "the way we are" prior to our choice predetermines that choice is to assume determinism.

Is he even talking about making choices per se? That wasn't clear to me, which is why I said that "it's not clear what sort of free will he's even talking about." I got the impression that maybe he was referring to free will in more of a murky Dennettian sense, but I wasn't sure. (Dennett is a compatibilist. In my opinion, compatibilism can't be made coherent.)

By the way, if we're talking about free will in the sense of simply making choices, the first premise, "When we act, we do what we do because of the way we are, all things considered," is consistent with, "The action in question was making a choice between a turkey and a tuna sandwich. I acted to make that choice because of the way I am--I like both turkey and tuna equally," etc.

And then re the other premises, we can say, "I am the way I am--that is, I like both turkey and tuna equally, because of the way I chose to acclimate myself to turkey and tuna over the years. I didn't use to like either. But I was able to influence my tastes enough that now I like both equally."

As I noted, with the way he set up the argument he could just lamely "No True Scotsman" his way out of it ("you weren't 'truly responsible' for acclimating yourself to both tuna and turkey blah blah blah"), but that would of course be a fallacy.

But again, he might be addressing something different. something like a Dennettian account of free will, which doesn't have anything to do with choosing between turkey and tuna in a manner akin to rolling dice (even weighted dice).

Quoting Dfpolis

As Strawson admits before giving his argument, experience tells us that being a free agent is part of "the way we are." To be a free agent is to be the radical source of new lines of action, where "radical source" means that the new line of action is not fully immanent (pre-determined) before the agent chooses.

Putting your two sentences together, we get the assertion: experience tells us that being the source of new lines of action that are not fully pre-determined before we choose is part of "the way we are".

This isn't true. All that experience tells us is that:
a) approaching a choice, we are aware of more than one new line of action (let's call these lines L1 and L2)
(b) it seems to us that we are free to choose either L1 or L2
(c) after we have chosen (say) L1, it seems to us that we could have chosen L2 instead.

If we lay this out as a logical argument intended to prove that we could in fact have chosen another line of action, it fails:
Premise 1: Approaching the choice, we are aware of L1 and L2.
Premise 2: Approaching the choice, it seems to us that are free to choose between L1 and L2.
Premise 3: After choosing L1, it seems to us that we could have chosen L2 instead.
Conclusion: Therefore the choice between L1 and L2 was not pre-determined, and we could have chosen L2.

Clearly the conclusion does not follow from the premisses. So in fact experience does not tell us what is stated in the conclusion, and therefore experience does not tell us that being a free agent is part of the way we are; it only tells us that seeming to ourselves to be a free agent is part of the way we are.

Quoting Dfpolis

Yesterday on a different forum, I was referred to a video in which Galen Strawson purportedly proved that free will is impossible.

Instead of relying on someone's summary of a Youtube video, you should read some of Strawson's papers, such as The impossibility of moral responsibility (1994)

(I am not on Strawson's side, BTW)

Reply to SophistiCat
Reading the full argument prompts me to observe that responsibility as something that we practice every day has less to do with "making one the way one is, mentally speaking" and more to do with trying to influence other people, events, and the condition of things. Our influence can change outcomes in that regards but usually not in a way that we can own as coming only from our will. As Taoism observes, it can be the result of disowning events.

Quoting Rank Amateur

So the argument really is not if an individual act is determined, but if the entire series of acts is determined, which than leads to logical question what or who determined the first act in this series

I think it is both the individual act and the series that is in question. So, you raise an interesting point.

Quoting Terrapin Station

he seems to be conflating what's supposed to be an argument against freedom with comments that are primarily focused on whether we can be considered culpable for our actions. Those are two different ideas.

Yes, he does seem to be conflating a number of ideas, making his use of "responsible" even more equivocal than I said.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Is he even talking about making choices per se? That wasn't clear to me, which is why I said that "it's not clear what sort of free will he's even talking about." I got the impression that maybe he was referring to free will in more of a murky Dennettian sense, but I wasn't sure. (Dennett is a compatibilist. In my opinion, compatibilism can't be made coherent.)

His argument might work vs. Dennett's position, but I think Dennett is fooling himself in thinking that deterministic avoidance can warrant personal responsibility. Strawson's argument surely does not work vs. the capacity to choose one of a number of equally possible options.

Quoting Herg

This isn't true. All that experience tells us is that:
a) approaching a choice, we are aware of more than one new line of action (let's call these lines L1 and L2)
(b) it seems to us that we are free to choose either L1 or L2
(c) after we have chosen (say) L1, it seems to us that we could have chosen L2 instead.

I experience tells us more than this. It additionally tells us, in many cases, that L1 and L2 are equally in our power. It is equally in my power, for example, to go to the store to buy an ingredient for dinner or to stay home a while longer to discuss philosophy. I know both are equally in my power on the basis of my past experience. This awareness of alternatives being equally in my power, and not "I could have chosen otherwise," is what I mean by free will. Of course, the fact that the alternatives were equally in my power means that I could have chosen otherwise, but that is derivative, and not the critical act of awareness.

There is a further experiential point worthy of reflection. Purely physical systems (as opposed to physical systems with intellect and will) have only one immanent line of action -- that determined by its present state and the laws of nature. Intentional systems, such as humans, are essentially different in that we can have multiple lines of actions immanent before we commit to one. The difference in the number of immanent lines of action is critical, for it means that we differ from purely physical systems. So any analogy to their deterministic nature fails.

Quoting Herg

If we lay this out as a logical argument intended to prove that we could in fact have chosen another line of action, it fails:
Premise 1: Approaching the choice, we are aware of L1 and L2.
Premise 2: Approaching the choice, it seems to us that are free to choose between L1 and L2.
Premise 3: After choosing L1, it seems to us that we could have chosen L2 instead.
Conclusion: Therefore the choice between L1 and L2 was not pre-determined, and we could have chosen L2.

Clearly the conclusion does not follow from the premisses.

Agreed. The argument is unsound, so that is not an argument I would use. My argument is:

1. Approaching the choice, we are aware that incompatible lines of action, L1, L2, ..., are equally in our power.
2. To have free will means that we have incompatible lines of action equally in our power.
3. Therefore, we have free will.

You could deny premise 1, but only dogmatically. First, I know what is and what is not in my power from my experience as a human in the world. It is in my power to walk to the store it is not in my power to walk to the moon. Second, being in my power is a real state, with well-defined truth conditions. Staying home ceases to be in my power once I am on my way to the store.

Quoting SophistiCat

Instead of relying on someone's summary of a Youtube video, you should read some of Strawson's papers, such as The impossibility of moral responsibility (1994)

The video is Strawson presenting his own argument, not a third party summary. Before I posted, I did a brief search for text in which Strawson presented the same argument, but did not find it.

Were I to take up the task of writing a book on free will again, I would read opposing views extensively, as I did for my book on naturalism. Until I do take up that task, Strawson is not likely to be on my reading list.

Reply to Dfpolis

Quoting Dfpolis

2. To have free will means that we have incompatible lines of action equally in our power.

I could just deny your second premise. I believe we are compelled to make the choices we make, and the availability of choices is just a mental exercise. What we choose is what we really want most of all, so is there really a choice? I mean you could've gone out or you could've stayed on this forum typing your post. That is true in the sense that the options occurred to you. However, you really wanted to stay and post more than you wanted to go out, so you were really compelled by your emotions to choose what you chose. It's all in the limbic system.

(Now, I know you won't agree with my assessment as philosophers rarely agree on anything, but I welcome your response.)

Quoting Valentinus

Reading the full argument prompts me to observe that responsibility as something that we practice every day has less to do with "making one the way one is, mentally speaking" and more to do with trying to influence other people, events, and the condition of things.

I don't think that is quite right either. I am actually more in agreement with what [s]Strawson[/s] Strawson's dad wrote in his earlier essay Freedom and Resentment (your utilitarian attitude here could be identified with that of the "optimist" in Strawson's essay).

Edit: Andrewk corrected my blunder.

Quoting Dfpolis

Were I to take up the task of writing a book on free will again, I would read opposing views extensively, as I did for my book on naturalism. Until I do take up that task, Strawson is not likely to be on my reading list.

Suit yourself. Only why would I bother to read what you have to say, whether in a book or in a forum post, given that you don't know what you are talking about?

Quoting SophistiCat

with what Strawson wrote in his earlier essay Freedom and Resentment

That was the other Strawson philosopher - Galen's Dad, Peter. :smile:

Reply to andrewk Oops! That explains the striking change of attitude. Thanks for the correction :)

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

2. To have free will means that we have incompatible lines of action equally in our power. — Dfpolis

I could just deny your second premise.

You could, but as it is a definition, that would buy you little. It would merely mean that we use words in different ways.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

I believe we are compelled to make the choices we make, and the availability of choices is just a mental exercise.

You can believe what you will. The question is how do you justify such a belief? I have offered a justification for my position, and all you have objected to is how I use the term "free will."

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

What we choose is what we really want most of all, so is there really a choice?

This is merely a tautology. The question is, is what we want most predetermined? If it is not, but it is ultimately we who give weigh our incommensurate needs and desires, then we are free. As different people assign different weights to different motives, it is clear that the assignment of weights depends on the agent.

The key here is incommensurability. As each desire is satisfied by different desiderata, there is no predetermined, automatic trade off between different motives. In other words there is no single utility, measure of happiness, or of libido, to be maximized. It is the agent who gives more or less weight to charity, honesty, prestige, power, various physical desires, etc. -- thus valuing one option above another.

Quoting SophistiCat

Only why would I bother to read what you have to say, whether in a book or in a forum post, given that you don't know what you are talking about?

Because if you read what I write, you can decide if I know what I am talking about. You certainly can't rationally decide a priori. I do not need to know everything Galen Strawson and his father ever wrote to know his argument is fallacious.

Reply to Dfpolis Quoting Dfpolis

I believe we are compelled to make the choices we make, and the availability of choices is just a mental exercise.
— Noah Te Stroete

You can believe what you will. The question is how do you justify such a belief? I have offered a justification for my position, and all you have objected to is how I use the term "free will."

I justify it by the fact that the limbic system has been shown by neuroscience to be the driver of our frontal lobe's decision making process.

Quoting Dfpolis

What we choose is what we really want most of all, so is there really a choice?
— Noah Te Stroete

This is merely a tautology. The question is, is what we want most predetermined? If it is not, but it is ultimately we who give weigh our incommensurate needs and desires, then we are free. As different people assign different weights to different motives, it is clear that the assignment of weights depends on the agent.

It is not a tautology because you seem to be claiming that we could've chosen something that we didn't want most of all. It is predetermined by the limbic system which drives the frontal lobe (the "thinking" or "weighing" part which I said is just like "going through a mental exercise").

Quoting Herg

Conclusion: Therefore the choice between L1 and L2 was not pre-determined, and we could have chosen L2.

I don't think he was saying this conclusion. "Experience tells us" is another way of saying "per experience," or "phenomenally, if we're to go by experience," etc.

Your conclusion is written from a perspective outside of experience per se. But the sentence is "experience tells us," The sentence isn't presented as a perspective from outside of experience.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

I justify it by the fact that the limbic system has been shown by neuroscience to be the driver of our frontal lobe's decision making process.

Really? I've studied the question of brain modelling, and discuss in the last chapter of my book. Given our present state of knowledge, such modeling is an impossible task. Our brain has approximately 100,000,000,000 neurons with perhaps 100 times that many connections, and we have 10 times that many glia. We have little idea of how glial cells contribute to data processing, but we know that they do. Depending on how you count, there are 30-100 neurotransmitters, and the function of the majority is unknown.

We know that neurons respond nonlinearly to excitatory and inhibiting inputs, and that their response depends on their long and short term history. Chaos theory tells us that any minor change in the assumed inputs of a nonlinear system can result in completely different outputs. I show in the first chapter of my book that any attempt to determine our actual brain state (needed for input by any predictive brain model) would both fry our brain and require a data processing time much greater than the age of the universe.

We do know that the limbic system (composed mainly of the amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus, hypothalamus, basal ganglia, and cingulate gyrus) is involved in memory, emotion and arousal or stimulation. We do not know, and, in light of the aforementioned data acquisition and modeling difficulties, cannot know, that its outputs determine our brain's neuromotor outputs. Thus, hypotheses of the sort you are advancing are unfalsifiable, and so unscientific.

So, I ask again, why do you think that the limbic system determines, as opposed to influencing, our decisions?

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

What we choose is what we really want most of all, so is there really a choice?
— Noah Te Stroete

This is merely a tautology. The question is, is what we want most predetermined? If it is not, but it is ultimately we who give weigh our incommensurate needs and desires, then we are free. As different people assign different weights to different motives, it is clear that the assignment of weights depends on the agent. — Dfpolis

It is not a tautology because you seem to be claiming that we could've chosen something that we didn't want most of all.

I made no such claim. Let's think about this. How do we know what a person most wants? By observing what they choose. This is true whether or not that choice is predetermined. So, it is a tautology to say that "What we choose is what we really want most of all." Of course we do.

Volitional determinists believe that all human acts are fully immanent in the state of the universe prior to the existence of the human agent. Proponents of free will think that this is false, and that new lines of action have their radical origin in human agents. That is the question that needs to be discussed with regard to the existence of free will, and it is a question that cannot be evaded by compatibilist redefinitions of "free will."

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

It is predetermined by the limbic system which drives the frontal lobe (the "thinking" or "weighing" part which I said is just like "going through a mental exercise").

This makes no evolutionary sense. Why waste time and energy on a process that is merely for show? Who is nature trying to fool and why?

Quoting Dfpolis

hypotheses of the sort you are advancing are unfalsifiable, and so unscientific.

Quoting Dfpolis

Proponents of free will think that this is false, and that new lines of action have their radical origin in human agents.

And this isn't unfalsifiable?

Edit: I believe it is a better explanatory model to say that the limbic system drives our decisions, then to simply assert that we are free agents.

Quoting Dfpolis

So, it is a tautology to say that "What we choose is what we really want most of all." Of course we do.

Then we choose. But what is your evidence that it isn't pre-determined? How do you reconcile free will with everything that we know about the natural world?

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

hypotheses of the sort you are advancing are unfalsifiable, and so unscientific. — Dfpolis

Proponents of free will think that this is false, and that new lines of action have their radical origin in human agents. — Dfpolis

And this isn't unfalsifiable?

Falsifiability is a criterion applicable only to the hypothetico-deductive or scientific method. One cannot apply that method to a hypothesis that is unfalsifiable. It does not apply to either experiential observation or to deduction, which are reliable or not on their own grounds. You presented what, on its face, appears to be a scientific hypothesis. I presented a deductive, experienced-based argument for my position. If you have and experiential/deductive argument for determinism, please advance it.

Quoting Dfpolis

Falsifiability is a criterion applicable only to the hypothetico-deductive or scientific method. One cannot apply that method to a hypothesis that is unfalsifiable. It does not apply to either experiential observation or to deduction, which are reliable or not on their own grounds. You presented what, on its face, appears to be a scientific hypothesis. I presented a deductive, experienced-based argument for my position. If you have and experiential/deductive argument for determinism, please advance it.

All natural phenomena have sufficient and necessary causes.
Choices are natural phenomena.
Choices have sufficient and necessary causes.

Quoting Dfpolis

Approaching the choice, we are aware that incompatible lines of action, L1, L2, ..., are equally in our power.

Are we aware of this? I don't know that this is true.

Quoting Dfpolis

Approaching the choice, we are aware that incompatible lines of action, L1, L2, ..., are equally in our power.

If you really have free will, then refrain from posting further. EDIT :Or, give up philosophy altogether. Or do you feel compelled to be a philosopher?

Quoting Galen Strawson

[1] "When we act, we do what we do because of the way we are, all things considered."

There is a category mistake inherent within this premise. The "way we are" is a passive state, expressed as a static description. It cannot account for an action, as an action requires an active cause. So if someone asked me why I acted in a particular way, at a particular time, to say "I acted that way because that's the way I am", would be a meaningless category mistake, because it doesn't say why I acted that way. What it is, is an avoidance of the question, which appears like a possible answer to the question, when it's really a category mistake.

To explain an action requires reference to other actions, as cause. So when someone asks why I acted in a particular way, at a particular time, I cannot refer to "the way I am" (as this is a category mistake). I must refer to other activities which were happening or happened at that time, or things which I desired to make happen in the future. To explain an action requires reference to an action, it cannot be explained through reference to a state.

Quoting Dfpolis

There is a further experiential point worthy of reflection. Purely physical systems (as opposed to physical systems with intellect and will) have only one immanent line of action -- that determined by its present state and the laws of nature. Intentional systems, such as humans, are essentially different in that we can have multiple lines of actions immanent before we commit to one. The difference in the number of immanent lines of action is critical, for it means that we differ from purely physical systems. So any analogy to their deterministic nature fails.

So the point to consider here is that the activity of a physical system cannot be explained through reference to its "present state". That would be to make the same category mistake. To explain the activity of a physical system requires reference to the temporal extension of that system, and this means something beyond the "present state".

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

But what is your evidence that it isn't pre-determined? How do you reconcile free will with everything that we know about the natural world?

I provided a positive case for my position. I am prepared to rebut any counter argument. (I have reviewed all that I could find.) That is the best I can do.

I dispute your claim that free will is in any way incompatible "with everything that we know about the natural world." Surely humans are part of nature and our our experiences of ourselves as agents are as natural as our experiences of physical objects. What it is incompatible with is physical determinism.

I have argued previously that although all knowing is a subject-object relation, natural science begins with a fundamental abstraction that focuses on physical objects to the exclusion of the knowing subject. Consequently, the natural sciences are bereft of data on subjective agents, and has, therefore, no means of connecting what it has learned of the physical world with the intentional operations of subject-agents. That means that any attempt to apply purely physical concepts to such agency is an instance of Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplace Concreteness (applying abstractions to situations in which the abstracted context is relevant).

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

All natural phenomena have sufficient and necessary causes.
Choices are natural phenomena.
Choices have sufficient and necessary causes.

Agreed. Still, while it is necessary that every effect have an adequate cause, it is not necessary that the cause that informs the effect be predetermined to a particular effect. The problem with this sort of argument is that modern philosophy has forgotten the distinction between accidental and essential causes.

Accidental causes (which are all most moderns think about) are the time-sequence by rule that occupied the minds of Hume and Kant. They connect two temporally disjoint events, and as the separation allows for intervention, this kind of causality is not necessary -- a point famously made by Hume, but also known to Aristotle, ibn Sina and Aquinas. That is why time-sequenced causality is called "accidental." Since accidental causality is not necessary, it cannot justify determinism.

Essential or concurrent causality is quite different. Aristotle's paradigm case is the builder building the house. The builder building the house is identically the house being built by the builder. Because of this identity and the fact that only a single event is involved, essential causality has an intrinsic necessity that accidental causality lacks. Every happening is a doing, and every doing is a happening. For example, the law of conservation of mass-energy conserving this system's mass-energy is identically this system's mass-energy being conserved by the law of conservation of mass-energy. If the law were not operative here and now, mass-energy would not be conserved here and now -- and vice versa.

Human will acts concurrently. As long as I continue to will my goal, I continue to work toward that goal. Thus, a free will can be the necessary sufficient cause you argue for if it is sufficient to commit to the line of action (say L1) that it in fact commits to. That it is sufficient to commit to L1 does not preclude it from also being sufficient to commit to L2, which it did not commit to.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Approaching the choice, we are aware that incompatible lines of action, L1, L2, ..., are equally in our power. — Dfpolis

Are we aware of this? I don't know that this is true.

Even though I choose to stay home, I am aware that I have the power to walk to the store while I do not have the power to walk to the moon. How could you not know this?

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

If you really have free will, then refrain from posting further.

How would following your dictate prove anything?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So the point to consider here is that the activity of a physical system cannot be explained through reference to its "present state". That would be to make the same category mistake. To explain the activity of a physical system requires reference to the temporal extension of that system, and this means something beyond the "present state".

Yes. Intentionality is revealed by time-development -- whether that intentionality be human or merely physical.

Quoting Dfpolis

Human will acts concurrently. As long as I continue to will my goal, I continue to work toward that goal. Thus, a free will can be the necessary sufficient cause you argue for if it is sufficient to commit to the line of action (say L1) that it in fact commits to. That it is sufficient to commit to L1 does not preclude it from also being sufficient to commit to L2, which it did not commit to.

"As long as I continue to will my goal, I continue to work toward that goal."

Of course! This is a tautology. It's like saying, "As long as I continue to will my goal, I continue to will my goal." So what is will?

"it is sufficient to commit to the line of action (say L1) that it in fact commits to. That it is sufficient to commit to L1 does not preclude it from also being sufficient to commit to L2, which it did not commit to."

So the will is uncaused. How did you refute Strawson again? I'm genuinely confused here. Could you clarify how the will is not accidentally necessarily and sufficiently caused?

Quoting Dfpolis

If you really have free will, then refrain from posting further.
— Noah Te Stroete

How would following your dictate prove anything?

Because you felt compelled to put me in my place.

Quoting Dfpolis

if it is sufficient to commit to the line of action (say L1) that it in fact commits to. That it is sufficient to commit to L1 does not preclude it from also being sufficient to commit to L2, which it did not commit to.

I'm saying it's necessary AND sufficient. Not just sufficient. Where am I going wrong? I'm confused.

Quoting Dfpolis

I have argued previously that although all knowing is a subject-object relation, natural science begins with a fundamental abstraction that focuses on physical objects to the exclusion of the knowing subject.

You are putting it to the point. You are different from the physical object observed, so... why should anyone assume you got something to do with it?

Reply to Dfpolis

If I had a frontal lobotomy (which I'm considering after this exchange), then I couldn't speak coherently no matter how much I willed it. So, is not the will dependent on the physical-natural brain which operates according to necessary AND sufficient causes?

Reply to Heiko Quoting Heiko

You are different from the physical object observed, so... why should anyone assume you got something to do with it?

Because:
1. The intelligibility of the object and the capacity of the subject to be informed are both actualized by the identical act, viz. the subject's awareness of the object, and
2. The object informing the subject is identically the subject being informed by the object.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Of course! This is a tautology. It's like saying, "As long as I continue to will my goal, I continue to will my goal." So what is will?

It is not a tautology as the intention is mental and the working is often physical, so they are not identical.

Will is a power, not a thing. Humans are ostensible unities, one aspect of which is the power to chose and commit. It is that power that we call "will."

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

So the will is uncaused. How did you refute Strawson again? I'm genuinely confused here. Could you clarify how the will is not accidentally necessarily and sufficiently caused?

The will is not determined by accidental causality, which is probably what you mean by "causality." It is, however, caused -- by whatever actualizes its potential to continue in operation, which leads ultimately to an uncaused concurrent cause some call "God." Just as the builder being sufficient to build this house does not mean that he or she is insufficient to build other houses, so the fact that my will is sufficient to instantiate this line of action does not mean that it is insufficient to instantiate other lines of action. So, the principle of sufficient causality is not violated. All that is "violated" is the idea that accidental causes involve necessity -- which was never true to begin with (as Hume showed).

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Could you clarify how the will is not accidentally necessarily and sufficiently caused?

I just discussed this. As Hume showed, accidental causality is not intrinsically necessary. It derives whatever necessity it has from the essential or concurrent causality of the laws of nature. When we integrate their concurrent operation over time, we find initial states are transformed into determinate final states. This requires that the guiding intentionality (the laws of nature) remain constant over the course of the integration. In the case of humans (excluded from physics by the fundamental abstraction), intentionality changes over time in an unpredictable way, and so the required integration cannot be carried out. Thus, we are not subject to determination by accidental causality.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Because you felt compelled to put me in my place.

I see no reason to put anyone "in their place." We are discussing what is, and hopefully we will each teach the other something new. I am quite sure you know things I do not.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

I'm saying it's necessary AND sufficient. Not just sufficient. Where am I going wrong? I'm confused.

It is necessary that every phenomenon have a sufficient cause. It is not necessary that every cause operate to a predetermined end. Houses necessarily have builders, but builders are not predetermined to build particular houses. Their sufficiency as causes does not necessitate a specific effect.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

If I had a frontal lobotomy (which I'm considering after this exchange), then I couldn't speak coherently no matter how much I willed it. So, is not the will dependent on the physical-natural brain which operates according to necessary AND sufficient causes?

Of course the mind has interdependent data processing and intentional subsystems. If the data processing subsystem is compromised, the data we are aware of may be defective, we may lack the means of effecting our intentions,

Quoting Dfpolis

1. The intelligibility of the object and the capacity of the subject to be informed are both actualized by the identical act, viz. the subject's awareness of the object, and

I'm not sure I can not follow you. Are you sure you answered the question? Your "intelligibility" for example either is something I could not care about less or something that science would only be concerned about as far as you pose as an object. Not even Kant would have made the mistake to call his deductions as describing a thing in itself.
Quoting Dfpolis

2. The object informing the subject is identically the subject being informed by the object.

I don't ask if you could prove that statement. I stick with the phenomenological account that you put forth the identity of subject and object on the one hand while implying a sharp distinction on the other.

Quoting Dfpolis

This isn't true. All that experience tells us is that:
a) approaching a choice, we are aware of more than one new line of action (let's call these lines L1 and L2)
(b) it seems to us that we are free to choose either L1 or L2
(c) after we have chosen (say) L1, it seems to us that we could have chosen L2 instead.
— Herg

I experience tells us more than this. It additionally tells us, in many cases, that L1 and L2 are equally in our power.

I used the words "we are free to choose either L1 or L2." You used the words "L1 and L2 are equally in our power." Your words and mine mean exactly the same. So in my (b) I could have written "it seems to us that L1 and L2 are equally in our power", and that would have meant the same as what I actually wrote (and would also be true).

It is equally in my power, for example, to go to the store to buy an ingredient for dinner or to stay home a while longer to discuss philosophy. I know both are equally in my power on the basis of my past experience.

What feature(s) of your past experience do you believe give you this knowledge? I don't believe there are any such features.

This awareness of alternatives being equally in my power, and not "I could have chosen otherwise," is what I mean by free will.

You are not entitled to describe your state of mind as "awareness of alternatives being equally in my power" until it is established that these alternatives actually are equally in your power; and since this is precisely the issue between us, you are begging the question.

Purely physical systems (as opposed to physical systems with intellect and will) have only one immanent line of action -- that determined by its present state and the laws of nature.

This is almost certainly not true of our universe. Nature is probabilistic rather than deterministic at the quantum level, and quantum superposition means that there is usually more than one line of action leading from the present state.

Intentional systems, such as humans, are essentially different in that we can have multiple lines of actions immanent before we commit to one. The difference in the number of immanent lines of action is critical, for it means that we differ from purely physical systems. So any analogy to their deterministic nature fails.

Since, as I have just stated, our universe is almost certainly not deterministic, and there are multiple lines of action in purely physical systems, humans having multiple lines of action does not imply that humans are not purely physical systems. But even if the universe is deterministic, and purely physical systems only have one line of action leading from the present state, while humans see multiple lines of action before them, you still have not shown that we are free to choose between those multiple lines of action.

Quoting Dfpolis

My argument is:

1. Approaching the choice, we are aware that incompatible lines of action, L1, L2, ..., are equally in our power.
2. To have free will means that we have incompatible lines of action equally in our power.
3. Therefore, we have free will.

You could deny premise 1, but only dogmatically.

Your premise 1 begs the question by describing our state of mind as "we are aware that...", as I have already noted.

First, I know what is and what is not in my power from my experience as a human in the world. It is in my power to walk to the store it is not in my power to walk to the moon.

The sense of "in my power" that you use here will not deliver what you need to establish free will. What you mean here is that there are facts about the physical world - such as the gravitational attraction between your body and the earth, and the lack of any surface between the earth and moon on which you could walk - that prevent you walking to the moon, but that do not prevent you walking to the store. That sense of "in my power" is all about the limitations physical laws place upon a body like yours; it has nothing at all to do with free will.

Second, being in my power is a real state, with well-defined truth conditions.

The truth conditions are that you should be free to choose between alternatives; but you are not entitled to say that this is a real state unless we have established that those truth conditions obtain, and since this is precisely the issue between us, you are once again begging the question.

Staying home ceases to be in my power once I am on my way to the store.

Of course. But you cannot validly infer from this that staying home was in your power before you set off to the store.

There is, in fact, not the slightest reason to think that we have free will. We can always only make one choice, and there are never any grounds for thinking that we could have made a different one. If we chose L1 instead of L2, then the only way we could have grounds for thinking that we had the power to choose L2 would be to have actually chosen L2, and of course that was prevented by our choosing L1.

There are two other reasons for denying free will. The first is that we do not need it to explain anything that happens in the world; and the second is that the notion of free will is incoherent, because it requires there to be a third possibility between determinism and indeterminism (which is mere randomness), and there is no such third possibility.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Conclusion: Therefore the choice between L1 and L2 was not pre-determined, and we could have chosen L2.
— Herg

I don't think he was saying this conclusion. "Experience tells us" is another way of saying "per experience," or "phenomenally, if we're to go by experience," etc.

Your conclusion is written from a perspective outside of experience per se. But the sentence is "experience tells us," The sentence isn't presented as a perspective from outside of experience.

I think Dfpolis' sentence was ambiguous. "Experience tells us" could be taken either as the hypothetical "if we're to go by experience", or the categorical "experience gives us good reason to believe that". Dfpolis has now said this:
Quoting Dfpolis

I experience tells us more than this. It additionally tells us, in many cases, that L1 and L2 are equally in our power. It is equally in my power, for example, to go to the store to buy an ingredient for dinner or to stay home a while longer to discuss philosophy. I know both are equally in my power on the basis of my past experience.

I think this makes it clear that Dfpolis is making the categorical claim, not the hypothetical claim.

Quoting Heiko

I'm not sure I can not follow you. Are you sure you answered the question?

No, I'm not sure I answered your question, "You are different from the physical object observed, so... why should anyone assume you got something to do with it?" The reason is that "something to do with it" is rather vague. As I was talking about knowing, I assumed that you were as well. If you had something else in mind, please explain what.

Quoting Heiko

Your "intelligibility" for example either is something I could not care about less or something that science would only be concerned about as far as you pose as an object. Not even Kant would have made the mistake to call his deductions as describing a thing in itself.

None of this rebuts what I said. Whether or not you or science care about intelligibility is irrelevant to the truth of my claim. The same applies to what Kant may or may not have done. If you have a factual objection, please give it.

Quoting Heiko

I stick with the phenomenological account that you put forth the identity of subject and object on the one hand while implying a sharp distinction on the other.

The partial identity of subject and object in the act of knowing is an ontological fact. Distinction belongs to the logical order. Ideas of the identical reality can be distinct if they consider that reality from different perspectives. A change of perspective does not entail a change in what is perceived.

Quoting Dfpolis

As I was talking about knowing, I assumed that you were as well.

I thought, I was. For example we know even the most basic ontological basis' have been put into question numerous times with more or less impact on contemporary philosophy. We know the history and conceptual origins of the words as we use them today to a great extend. Such things weren't proven, they were said. A-priori deductions conclude from certain foundations more or less like mathematics deduces from axioms. Adorno and Horkheimer put this to a point saying at the end of enlightenment even the subject itself is no more than a substrate of the right to set itself as such. Modern society, educated as it is, recognizes this - at least when things get serious.

Quoting Dfpolis

The partial identity of subject and object in the act of knowing is an ontological fact. Distinction belongs to the logical order. Ideas of the identical reality can be distinct if they consider that reality from different perspectives.

Well, when talking about concepts mixing things (read: perspectives) up is pretty contra-productive. It may well be that a natural number is always a real number as well but that doesn't make the natural numbers the real numbers or vice versa. So, to put this to a point, if the sciences of nature managed to say what you were up to do without even asking, what importance would the insistence of being "a deciding subject" make? "You" do what you do, right? This is about perspectives only, we are talking reasons. Reasons may seem compelling or void - who should judge that? Is it enough that someone felt compelled to do something to make the reason sufficient? Is there a higher-than-individual (divine) reason that could judge? We are far away from any "knowing" if we even can argue about such things.

Quoting Herg

I used the words "we are free to choose either L1 or L2." You used the words "L1 and L2 are equally in our power." Your words and mine mean exactly the same.

No, they mean something quite different. I can choose a Maserati over a Fiat, but that does not mean it is in my power to buy a Maserati. Choosing is selecting an intentional state, but if we cannot effect that intentionality, if what we choose is not in our power, then it cannot result in the corresponding new line of action.

Considering this from a different perspective, an epiphenomenalist or a physical determinist might be willing to grant that I can make a number of choices as long as they remain purely intentional, as he or she might hold that only one line of physical action is possible.

Quoting Herg

So in my (b) I could have written "it seems to us that L1 and L2 are equally in our power", and that would have meant the same as what I actually wrote (and would also be true).

The relevant point is not what seems to be true, but your unargued claim that it only seems to be true. A great many things that seem to be true are also known to be true.

So, the question is: how do we know what is possible? There are two ways. First, whatever actually happens must be possible, or it could not happen. The second way is knowledge by analogy, which is how science makes its predictions. For example, in previous cases, mixing vinegar and baking soda has produced carbon dioxide. Even though the present case differs slightly from previous cases, I know, by analogy that, if I have vinegar and baking soda I have the potential to produce carbon dioxide. I know this for a fact, whether or not I actually mix them to produce carbon dioxide.

So, you can choose to say that we only "seem" to have potentials that are not actualized, but in doing so, you reject the structure of science, and specifically, its ability to make reliable predictions.

Quoting Herg

What feature(s) of your past experience do you believe give you this knowledge? I don't believe there are any such features.

The fact that I have gone to the store and stayed at home previously, and have not suffered any relevant disability since.

Quoting Herg

You are not entitled to describe your state of mind as "awareness of alternatives being equally in my power" until it is established that these alternatives actually are equally in your power; and since this is precisely the issue between us, you are begging the question.

But, that has been established by previous analogous cases. There is no question begging, as I have shown how we know unrealized potentials, and that schema applies here. The ball is in your court to show why it applies to mixing vinegar and baking soda, but not to going to the store.

Quoting Herg

This is almost certainly not true of our universe. Nature is probabilistic rather than deterministic at the quantum level, and quantum superposition means that there is usually more than one line of action leading from the present state.

This is a common misunderstanding among non-physicists. Actually, quantum theory says that all unobserved physical processes are fully deterministic. Unpredictability enters only when quantum systems are observed.

Superposition does not mean that there are many states present but that the one state present is can be analyzed into a sum of mathematically independent function. Further, superposition only applies when the dynamics is linear to a good approximation. As electron-electron interactions bind bulk matter and are intrinsically nonlinear, the concept of superposition breaks down for bulk matter.

Quoting Herg

Since, as I have just stated, our universe is almost certainly not deterministic, and there are multiple lines of action in purely physical systems, humans having multiple lines of action does not imply that humans are not purely physical systems.

As I explained, this is based on a misunderstanding of physics. Since there were no quantum observations before the advent of intelligent observers, and even now they are quite rare, no matter what interpretation of quantum measurement you subscribe to, the physical universe is almost completely deterministic.

Further, whether or not you believe in collapse on awareness (I do not), measurement, as the one possible exception to determinism, involves intelligent observers. This undermines your argument, as the possible indeterminism you cite only occurs when intelligent observers become involved.

Finally, if you believe that the universe is not deterministic, how can you object to the reality of incompatible possibilities?

Quoting Herg

But even if the universe is deterministic, and purely physical systems only have one line of action leading from the present state, while humans see multiple lines of action before them, you still have not shown that we are free to choose between those multiple lines of action.

We are free if we are not constrained. We are constrained when we want to do A, but are prevented. This happens many times, so we know how to recognize constraints when we see them. For example, yesterday I wanted to go 70mph or more on the I-15, but traffic constrained me from going more than 0-20 mph. When I decide whether or not to go to the store, I experience no such constraint. So, I am free to choose either.

Quoting Herg

Your premise 1 begs the question by describing our state of mind as "we are aware that...", as I have already noted.

I do not understand what you're claiming. We have to begin any sound line of reasoning with experiential facts -- things we are aware of. I have explained how we know what is possible. So, what, exactly is your objection?

Quoting Herg

The sense of "in my power" that you use here will not deliver what you need to establish free will. What you mean here is that there are facts about the physical world - such as the gravitational attraction between your body and the earth, and the lack of any surface between the earth and moon on which you could walk - that prevent you walking to the moon, but that do not prevent you walking to the store. That sense of "in my power" is all about the limitations physical laws place upon a body like yours; it has nothing at all to do with free will.

It has much to do with free will, but not everything. Mechanistic determinists claim that the laws of nature preclude free will. You have pointed out some of the things the laws of nature prevent, and going to the store is not among them. Let's suppose that the laws of physical nature prevented me, at some micro-level, from going to the store. That would not prevent me from forming and committing to the intention to go to the store. Then I could commit to going to the store, only to find that I was physically unable to do so, as I was physically unable to go over 20 mph on the I-15 yesterday.

Of course, there are other kinds of determinism. For example, motivational determinists claim that we are determined to do whatever will be the most emotionally rewarding, or some variation on that. As you claim that the physical world is not determined, I am not sure what kind of constraint you think prevents us from being free.

Quoting Herg

Second, being in my power is a real state, with well-defined truth conditions.

The truth conditions are that you should be free to choose between alternatives; but you are not entitled to say that this is a real state unless we have established that those truth conditions obtain, and since this is precisely the issue between us, you are once again begging the question.

I have explained how we know unrealized possibilities. I await your response.

Quoting Herg

Staying home ceases to be in my power once I am on my way to the store.

Of course. But you cannot validly infer from this that staying home was in your power before you set off to the store.

No, but it shows that there are well-defined truth conditions for being able to do something that we do not do.

Quoting Herg

If we chose L1 instead of L2, then the only way we could have grounds for thinking that we had the power to choose L2 would be to have actually chosen L2, and of course that was prevented by our choosing L1.

Then, if we do not pour the vinegar on the backing soda, the possibility of producing carbon dioxide never existed? Where does this leave chemistry?

Quoting Herg

The first is that we do not need it to explain anything that happens in the world; and the second is that the notion of free will is incoherent, because it requires there to be a third possibility between determinism and indeterminism (which is mere randomness), and there is no such third possibility.

Free will is necessary to explain the reality of moral responsibility -- which happens in the world. People know that they are responsible for actions they freely choose, and are not responsible for actions when they had no choice. This knowledge has physical consequences -- which also happen in the world.

Your second argument is fallacious. Determinism means that choices are fully immanent in the state of the world before the agent exists. For there to be no middle ground, the Principle of Excluded Middle requires indeterminism to be the strict contradiction of determinism: that choices are not fully immanent in the state of the world before the agent exists. That differs from "mere randomness," which is mindless, for it does not consider the determining operation of the agent's mind.

So, there is a middle ground between fully determined and mindlessly random, viz. the result of mindful action on the part of a free agent.Quoting Herg

I think this makes it clear that Dfpolis is making the categorical claim, not the hypothetical claim.

Exactly right.

Reply to Heiko I read your response. I am unsure what point your first paragraph is making other than many people question human knowledge. I give no weight to group opinions without rational grounds.

Quoting Heiko

It may well be that a natural number is always a real number as well but that doesn't make the natural numbers the real numbers or vice versa.

I never implied that it did, but it remains the case that while 1 is both natural and real, natural and real are distinct concepts.

Quoting Heiko

if the sciences of nature managed to say what you were up to do without even asking, what importance would the insistence of being "a deciding subject" make? "You" do what you do, right? This is about perspectives only, we are talking reasons. Reasons may seem compelling or void - who should judge that? Is it enough that someone felt compelled to do something to make the reason sufficient? Is there a higher-than-individual (divine) reason that could judge? We are far away from any "knowing" if we even can argue about such things.

As with many questions, the answers depend on details not given. If I decide to do x, physical changes will result before I actually do x. It is theoretically possible to detect these, and predict that I will do x, but that does not imply that there was no prior intentional operation.

We each have to decide what reasons we find compelling in light of our experience and background knowledge.

Different reasons may be sufficient to different acts. A feeling of compulsion my be sufficient for some.

We can show, rationally, that there is a God who is the source of intentionality. I do not pretend to know if God makes moral judgements as we think of them. It seems more likely to me that any rewards and punishments are built into the structure of reality.

Quoting Herg

the hypothetical "if we're to go by experience", or the categorical "experience gives us good reason to believe that". Dfpolis has now said this:

I don't agree that it's at all clear that there's a difference there.

Quoting Dfpolis

I read your response. I am unsure what point your first paragraph is making other than many people question human knowledge. I give no weight to group opinions without rational grounds.

Maybe that is part of the problem: You do not even recognize the process you are part of. How could you? It is about intentionality, as you pointed out. To someone like me the resulting contradiction is obvious. Not that there would be anything to discuss - questions are only the beginning. We are beyond this point, aren't we?

As the argument is countenanced at the OP, it sounds like petitio principii at [3] (using as a premise the very point he was to demonstrate).

Quoting Terrapin Station

the hypothetical "if we're to go by experience", or the categorical "experience gives us good reason to believe that". Dfpolis has now said this:
— Herg

I don't agree that it's at all clear that there's a difference there.

The second interpretation asserts that there is good reason to believe what experience is telling us; the first does not.

Quoting Dfpolis

I used the words "we are free to choose either L1 or L2." You used the words "L1 and L2 are equally in our power." Your words and mine mean exactly the same.
— Herg

No, they mean something quite different. I can choose a Maserati over a Fiat, but that does not mean it is in my power to buy a Maserati.

If you can't buy the Maserati, what sense does it make to say that you are choosing it? You must be choosing it for something, or you can't truthfully be said to be choosing it at all. 'I choose the Maserati, but not for anything in particular,' doesn't make sense. In the context of our discussion, choosing L1 means choosing L1 in order to execute L1, and the presumption is that you have the power to execute L1, because if you don't, you cannot truthfully be said to be choosing L1 at all.

Quoting Dfpolis

The relevant point is not what seems to be true, but your unargued claim that it only seems to be true.

We agree that it seems that executing L1 rather than L2 is in your power; the burden of proof is on you, not on me, to prove that both L1 and L2 actually are in your power. As for 'unargued', what do you imagine I have been doing since we started this conversation?

Quoting Dfpolis

So, the question is: how do we know what is possible? There are two ways. First, whatever actually happens must be possible, or it could not happen. The second way is knowledge by analogy, which is how science makes its predictions. For example, in previous cases, mixing vinegar and baking soda has produced carbon dioxide. Even though the present case differs slightly from previous cases, I know, by analogy that, if I have vinegar and baking soda I have the potential to produce carbon dioxide. I know this for a fact, whether or not I actually mix them to produce carbon dioxide.

So, you can choose to say that we only "seem" to have potentials that are not actualised, but in doing so, you reject the structure of science, and specifically, its ability to make reliable predictions.

What an odd argument. Science is able to make reliable predictions precisely because, in cases such as the vinegar and baking soda case, there is no free will; the vinegar and the baking soda, when mixed together, have to make carbon dioxide because they have no choice in the matter. That is how we know that making carbon dioxide in such a situation is possible. So what would be the parallel situation when you are contemplating whether to stay at home or go to the store? It would have to be that we can only predict that you will go to the store, and therefore know that going to the store is possible for you, if you, like the vinegar and the baking soda, have no free will. So your parallel with science is apposite only if you take my side of the argument and hold that humans, like vinegar and baking soda, have no free will.

Quoting Dfpolis

What feature(s) of your past experience do you believe give you this knowledge? I don't believe there are any such features.
— Herg

The fact that I have gone to the store and stayed at home previously, and have not suffered any relevant disability since.

I rather thought you might say this, but of course I did not want to presume that you would, because no philosopher should ever put words into another philosopher's mouth.
You are in effect arguing like this:
Premiss: On some previous occasions I have gone to the store, and on other previous occasions I have stayed at home.
Conclusion: Therefore on this occasion I have it in my power to either go to the store or stay at home.
This is an invalid argument. In order to have free will it is not sufficient for there to be some occasions when a potential action (e.g. going to the store) is actualised; it has to be the case that you have the power to realise the potential action in some particular case. In effect, you are confusing a type of action (going to the store) with a token action (going to the store on this occasion).

Quoting Dfpolis

But, that has been established by previous analogous cases. There is no question begging, as I have shown how we know unrealised potentials, and that schema applies here. The ball is in your court to show why it applies to mixing vinegar and baking soda, but not to going to the store.

I do maintain that what applies to mixing vinegar and baking soda also applies to humans, in that given a certain potential for human action, it is simply a matter of physical law whether the potential is actualised.

Quoting Dfpolis

Actually, quantum theory says that all unobserved physical processes are fully deterministic. Unpredictability enters only when quantum systems are observed.

Since this directly contradicts everything I have ever read about quantum physics, I have no comment to make, and I shall not raise quantum physics with you in the future.

Quoting Dfpolis

We are free if we are not constrained. We are constrained when we want to do A, but are prevented. This happens many times, so we know how to recognise constraints when we see them. For example, yesterday I wanted to go 70mph or more on the I-15, but traffic constrained me from going more than 0-20 mph. When I decide whether or not to go to the store, I experience no such constraint. So, I am free to choose either.

This appears to be compatibilism, and if that is your position, then we have been arguing at cross purposes. I am not a compatibilist. My understanding of free will is that it requires the ability to do otherwise than one actually does.

Quoting Dfpolis

Free will is necessary to explain the reality of moral responsibility -- which happens in the world. People know that they are responsible for actions they freely choose,

No, they don't know this. They believe it, but belief is not knowledge, and therefore there is nothing requiring explanation.

Quoting Dfpolis

Determinism means that choices are fully immanent in the state of the world before the agent exists. For there to be no middle ground, the Principle of Excluded Middle requires indeterminism to be the strict contradiction of determinism: that choices are not fully immanent in the state of the world before the agent exists. That differs from "mere randomness," which is mindless, for it does not consider the determining operation of the agent's mind.

So, there is a middle ground between fully determined and mindlessly random, viz. the result of mindful action on the part of a free agent.

This is just speculation, because you have not established grounds for believing that minds complete the determination of actions.
The point is that to the extent that any event is undetermined, it is random.

Quoting Herg

The second interpretation asserts that there is good reason to believe what experience is telling us; the first does not.

I was talking about a clear difference a la the notion that one claim is about experience per se and the other isn't.

Quoting Heiko

You do not even recognize the process you are part of.

I am sorry you think I am so unreflective. As I see it, it is better to light small candles than lament the darkness.

Reply to Dfpolis No problem. You are the way you are... ;)

Quoting Herg

If you can't buy the Maserati, what sense does it make to say that you are choosing it? You must be choosing it for something, or you can't truthfully be said to be choosing it at all.

Whenever I select or prefer one thing over another, I'm choosing it. Even though I can't implement my choice now, it is still a choice. If I were to win the lottery tomorrow, I would not go through the selection process again, I would simply implement my pre-existing choice. What am I choosing it for? The car I aspire to own.

Quoting Herg

In the context of our discussion, choosing L1 means choosing L1 in order to execute L1, and the presumption is that you have the power to execute L1, because if you don't, you cannot truthfully be said to be choosing L1 at all.

Choosing is an intentional act. It creates a disposition that will be physically implemented if possible, but even if the implementation isn't now possible, the state of the world has changed because I now have a disposition to act that I lacked before my choice. It is a common thing for people to first choose, and then await their chance.

Quoting Herg

The relevant point is not what seems to be true, but your unargued claim that it only seems to be true. — Dfpolis

We agree that it seems that executing L1 rather than L2 is in your power; the burden of proof is on you, not on me, to prove that both L1 and L2 actually are in your power. As for 'unargued', what do you imagine I have been doing since we started this conversation?

I've already shown how we know potentials. As for what you have been doing, as I recall, you have been criticizing the notion of free will, but have offered no reason to believe in determinism.

Quoting Herg

What an odd argument. Science is able to make reliable predictions precisely because, in cases such as the vinegar and baking soda case, there is no free will; the vinegar and the baking soda, when mixed together, have to make carbon dioxide because they have no choice in the matter.

Not quite. There is free will here. I may choose to mix them or not. Still, even if I choose not to mix them, the potential to produce carbon dioxide remains. This is just like choosing not to go to the store. Even though I choose to stay home, the potential to go remains.

Yes, free will does not enter into the reaction, but that's equally true of many choices once implementation begins. Once I step out of the plane door to begin a skydive, there is no going back.

Quoting Herg

That is how we know that making carbon dioxide in such a situation is possible.

No, that is not how we know that producing carbon dioxide is possible. We know acetic acid and sodium bicarbonate will react as they do because previous investigators have have freely chosen to investigate analogous cases. We have never examined, and no one could ever examine, the exact case before us, contextualized as it is. We must rely on reasoning by analogy.

Chemistry is the result of a long history of experiment and analysis in which we find analogies to the case at hand. The same is true of our knowledge of having incompatible options equally in our power.

Quoting Herg

So what would be the parallel situation when you are contemplating whether to stay at home or go to the store? It would have to be that we can only predict that you will go to the store, and therefore know that going to the store is possible for you, if you, like the vinegar and the baking soda, have no free will.

Let's look at the relation between prediction and potential. As I said earlier, the first way of knowing what is possible is to observe what is actual, for it could not be actual if it were not possible. Prediction is just a slight variation on this, in that a reliable prediction tells us what will become actual. Still, to make the prediction, we do not rely on the actuality of the predicted event, but on our knowledge, by analogy, of the determinate potential for that event. The question is, are all potentials determinate (determined to be actualized)? You seem to think that they are. I do not.

Consider our vinegar and baking soda. Do they always have the potential to produce carbon dioxide? I, and most chemists, would say they do. On you theory, they do not unless this vinegar and this baking soda are actually mixed to produce carbon dioxide at some point in the future. I say this because you seem to deny the second way of knowing potential -- by analogy with other cases. A potential that is never realized is, by definition, not a determinate potential -- it is not a potential that can be verified by a confirmed prediction, for ex hypothesis, the mixing will never happen.

Quoting Herg

Premiss: On some previous occasions I have gone to the store, and on other previous occasions I have stayed at home.
Conclusion: Therefore on this occasion I have it in my power to either go to the store or stay at home.

This is an invalid argument. In order to have free will it is not sufficient for there to be some occasions when a potential action (e.g. going to the store) is actualised; it has to be the case that you have the power to realise the potential action in some particular case. In effect, you are confusing a type of action (going to the store) with a token action (going to the store on this occasion).

There are two questions here. First, do you or do you not think that potencies can be known by analogy? If you do, how strong does the evidentiary basis need to be before you are willing to rely on the analogy?

Clearly, if I only went to the store once, and it was a harrowing experience, it might not actually be in my power to go to store now. Perhaps I might freeze on the way, be eaten by a lion or be struck by a car. I am happy to concede that analogical reasoning lacks the reliability of deductive reasoning. I also stipulate that one case is a narrow basis for an analogical conclusion. Having said all that, few of us doubt it is in our power to go the store -- even if we have only gone once, and probably if we'd never gone before.

As Aristotle points out, we must not expect the same certitude in ethics as we do in other sciences. The subject matter is simply too complex. So, I grant that my argument is not deductively sound, but reasoning by analogy never is.

Quoting Herg

I do maintain that what applies to mixing vinegar and baking soda also applies to humans, in that given a certain potential for human action, it is simply a matter of physical law whether the potential is actualised.

This does not cut it. No law of nature precludes the mixing of vinegar and soda that will never in fact be mixed, and no physical law prevents me from going to the store even if I decide to stay home. In both cases, it is the decision of the agent that determines whether or not the potential is actualized.

There appears to be a physicalist subtext here, viz. the assumption that intentions are physically determined. No rational model supports this hypothesis, and reflection on the fundamental abstraction of natural science tells us that there cannot be a reduction of subjective intentional operations to objective physicality for the simple reason that natural science lacks the requisite concepts.

There is no reason to think that human intentions are determined by physics, and sound experimental studies to show that they are not. That being so, we can form intentions that are physically unrealizable, as my example of wanting to go 70 mph when traffic conditions prevented me from going more than 20 mph. When our choices physically constrained (unable to be implemented because of physical conditions), we can recognize it. Since there is no conflict between intentionality and realizability in deciding whether or not to go to the store, I have no reason to believe I am physically constrained.

Of course, one can engage in magical thinking or paranoia, believing that even though we do not see them, there are forces arrayed against us, but such conjectures are hardly parsimonious. It is more rational to say that when we are constrained by physical reality, we are generally aware of it and that when we are unaware of constraints, we are free to act as we will.

Quoting Herg

Actually, quantum theory says that all unobserved physical processes are fully deterministic. Unpredictability enters only when quantum systems are observed. — Dfpolis

Since this directly contradicts everything I have ever read about quantum physics, I have no comment to make, and I shall not raise quantum physics with you in the future.

In the course of acquiring my doctorate in theoretical physics I have probably studied quantum theory more deeply than you. If you like, I can supply you with references to standard texts.

Quoting Herg

We are free if we are not constrained. We are constrained when we want to do A, but are prevented. This happens many times, so we know how to recognise constraints when we see them. For example, yesterday I wanted to go 70mph or more on the I-15, but traffic constrained me from going more than 0-20 mph. When I decide whether or not to go to the store, I experience no such constraint. So, I am free to choose either. — Dfpolis

This appears to be compatibilism, and if that is your position, then we have been arguing at cross purposes. I am not a compatibilist. My understanding of free will is that it requires the ability to do otherwise than one actually does.

I'm not a standard compatibilist. I deny that free decisions are fully immanent in the state of the world before the existence of the agent. At the same time, I affirm that human decisions are adequately caused and mindful, not random. In other words, agents resolve prior indeterminism to fully determine their free decisions. So, before the agent acts, L1 and L2 are equally possible, but after the decision, only one is possible.

I reject the "I could have done otherwise" formulation because I could not have done otherwise and be the person I am. Every decision we make forms who we are. I am the person formed, in part, by the history of my decisions.

Quoting Herg

Free will is necessary to explain the reality of moral responsibility -- which happens in the world. People know that they are responsible for actions they freely choose, — Dfpolis

No, they don't know this. They believe it, but belief is not knowledge, and therefore there is nothing requiring explanation.

I understand that you must say this to be consistent, but it makes no sense. How could we evolve to feel remorseful for what was, in fact, unavoidable? What a waste of biological resources that would be! If I am predetermined to do L1, how could any moral intuitions change this?

Intuitions of responsibility and remorse are actual phenomena -- "something requiring explanation," as you say. You may claim that free will is not the proper explanation, but that is not enough. The phenomena remain. You dislike the standard explanation, but offer nothing better.

Quoting Herg

So, there is a middle ground between fully determined and mindlessly random, viz. the result of mindful action on the part of a free agent. — Dfpolis

This is just speculation, because you have not established grounds for believing that minds complete the determination of actions.

It is a matter of experience and philosophic reflection since Aristotle's discussion of proairesis that humans reflect to determine which of various possible means best reflect their values in effecting their ends. Are you denying that you have weighted, perhaps iteratively, various means of advancing your life? And doesn't such reflection reduce many possible means to the one plan you actually choose to implement?

Reply to Dfpolis

My psychiatrist says my filter, or my left prefrontal cortex, is broken or damaged (I have schizoaffective disorder), so do I have free will? (He wasn’t clear if that has to do with my mental illness diagnosis or if that is something extra.) I almost always if not always feel compelled to do the things I do.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete I have no reason to doubt that you have free will. You may have trouble executing some decisions because of your disorder, but not being a psychiatrist, I'm not really qualified to speak to that. I do know that in the case of OCD, it has been proven (at UCLA, if memory serves) that cognitive therapy can rewire the brain. You may want to read about it, and see if it might help you. If you are interested, I can look up the citation(s).

Reply to Dfpolis

I have to see a therapist starting in the near future because I am using the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation to get training to return to work. I believe they will be using CBT on me.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete The best of luck to you. You might ask your therapist about the UCLA results.

Reply to Dfpolis

Thanks! Will do

Reply to Dfpolis

If I am correct, then one of your objections to determinism was that there would be no evolutionary advantage to perceiving competing options or choices. I believe the evolutionary advantage is just to be able to learn and make more successful choices in the future. I believe the universe compels me to make a particular decision, but the mental exercise is stored in memory so I can determine better decisions in the future. Based on this memory, I can learn to be more successful. However, any particular decision is compelled by my previous memories, my current mood, and whatever basic need I have to satisfy.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete I understand your argument. The question is: how can evolution determine that an unimplemented decision is better than an implemented one? All it can do is select survivors based on the decisions they actually make.

Reply to Dfpolis Trial and error. If you were somehow “punished” by your peers for posting on this forum, you might decide next time that it is better to go to the store first and let your thoughts percolate. If you were “rewarded” by your peers, then you might learn to post first and delay going to the store. However, your hunger or mood might override your desire to be “rewarded” for your thoughtful posts, and you would go to the store first.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete I was being called to dinner when I last responded, so had little time. Let me start again.

Evolution works by selecting successful variant genotypes. It does so by means of "reproductive success," which is a very brutal means, viz. it lets their young live, and kills the deselected variant and/or its young. Let's assume that, suddenly, an individual emerges who is able to think of more than one possible action, but is constrained (on your hypothesis) by the laws of nature to execute only one.

First, one may wonder in what sense the other options are "possible" as opposed to imaginary. Perhaps in some other world I might have gone 70 mph on the I-15, but in this world, it was impossible to do so. What I could have done in some imaginary world is completely irrelevant to what I can do in the real world.

Second, you suggest that the advantage of being able to think of the other option is that we remember it, and make better decisions next time as a result. In the abstract, I find this an interesting observation, and one that may well be true. The question is, does it make sense in the narrow context of evolution? What is "better" in the evolutionary sense is what gives us more viable offspring. What is "worse" is what kills us, or at least gives us fewer viable offspring.

When we come to the second occasion, the one in which we remember the alternative, how does remembering an alternative that was never tested by evolution equip us to make a "better" decision in the evolutionary sense? I do not see that it does. I grant that the knowledge of past alternatives can change what is chosen on the second occasion, because any variation can, but I do not see why it will increase as oppose to decrease the number of viable offspring we have.

Third, it is unclear how you are thinking of decision making. I see it as an intentional process, supported by physical processing, that terminates in an attempt at physical action. Is that how you see it, or do you see it as a purely physical process with an epiphenominal conscious overlay? In other words, does what we think really matter?

I can understand, given that you suffer from a compulsive disorder, you have a hard time seeing yourself as free. Still, I see you as acting freely. Why? Because even though you feel compelled to do x, you have freely decided that you do not want to do x and are seeking the means (via CBT) to avoid doing x. We know that we are committed to a goal when we are actively engaged in means to attain that goal. It seems from what you have said that even though you are compelled to do x, you are working on the means of ceasing to do x.

That brings me back to the case of the UCLA OCD patients. Even though they had their various compulsions, they were committed to breaking those compulsions, sought and found means of doing so, an were able to incarnate their intentionality in new neural pathways.

Yes, reward and punishment can affect behavior. I see no evidence that it can change the goal to which one is committed.

Reply to Dfpolis

So having a goal is a sign of free will? That’s interesting and something I hadn’t thought before. I will have to give it more thought. Thanks.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete You are welcome.

Reply to Dfpolis

I’m still not SURE I agree that a long-term goal is a sign of free will. It is still a choice but a choice that constantly and repeatedly has to be made. I gave my reasons for believing why I think decisions or choices are determined.

As for evolution, the mental exercise of weighing choices is a mechanism nature has chosen that has made humans successful. It is a mischaracterization of what I believe to say that evolution decides which is better, viz. the decision made or the option not taken. The mechanism is what evolution selected for.

As for whether I believe consciousness is merely an epiphenomenon, I don’t know how to put it. I believe consciousness is just as real as matter as I am a spiritual person. I believe consciousness is a manifestation of the life force which can be conceived as spirit or soul. I believe this spirit is dwelling within us as a taking part of the greater Spirit which is dwelling within the matter of the greater universe itself. You seem to believe that this “spirit” has causal efficacy. I believe it is just the force that animates us. Our differences as individuals is due to the structure of the matter of our bodies and brains, but our commonality is that we all take part in the Spirit.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

I’m still not SURE I agree that a long-term goal is a sign of free will. It is still a choice but a choice that constantly and repeatedly has to be made. I gave my reasons for believing why I think decisions or choices are determined.

As for evolution, the mental exercise of weighing choices is a mechanism nature has chosen that has made humans successful. It is a mischaracterization of what I believe to say that evolution decides which is better, viz. the decision made or the option not taken. The mechanism is what evolution selected for.

Not that I agree with the following view, but if determinism is the case, then any goal that someone has, any appearance of weighing of choices are not ontologically free but determined. So those things do not work as counterarguments.

Reply to Terrapin Station What do you mean by “those things do not work as counterarguments” when I am saying that they are indeed not ontologically free.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

"So those things do not work as counterarguments" is not argumentative towards you.

Reply to Terrapin Station Ah. My bad.

Reply to Dfpolis Although the argument in the Op fails because of the equivocal use of "responsibility", premise 1 seems true and constitutes a good reason to believe that our choices are not the product of libertarian free will (LFW).

The choices we make are the product of our beliefs, dispositions, and impulses. These seem to be the cause of the choice. Each belief, disposition, and impulse seem to have been caused. Hence, our choices could not have been different.

As a thought experiment: In the actual world, you are presented with a choice between X and Y. You deliberate on the options, weighing pros &cons consistent with your background beliefs and desires, and you ultimately choose X (possibly influenced by some sudden impulse). Is there a possible world with an identical history to this one, so that you have exactly the same background beliefs, desires and impulses at the point at which the choice is presented - but you instead choose Y?

If yes, then your choice is made for no reason.
If no, then your choice has been caused (consistent with determinism).

Consequently, LFW entails making choices for no reason. I don't think it's reasonable to believe we make choices for no reason, which suggests LFW is false.

Reply to Relativist

I've encountered views similar to yours often, but it always strikes me as odd, because I make plenty of choices that seem akin to using a random number generator or rolling dice, and I can also do that so that it's like using a random number generator with biases built in.

I also like to make choices where I literally do use a random number generator.

Reply to Terrapin Station
There is no such thing as a random number generator*. There are pseudo random number generators. Rolls of dice and coin flops are deterministic. You may think you are picking a number randomly, but it could be due to something in the environment triggering it. It is impossible to judge. Statistical tests can be done, just like those used to assess the quality of pseudorandom generators. I've seen some studies, and it doesn't look good for randomness (I'll try to find a paper).

*(It would theoretically be possible to create one based on quantum indeterminacy, but our minds are probably not uncollapsed quantum systems).

Reply to Relativist

I'm referring to phenomenally or epistemically random, not a commitment to whether it's ontologically random, which is what's at issue.

You're completely missing the point of the comment. You don't make any choices that are phenomenally random? (Whether you think they're really (that is, ontologically) random or not)

Reply to Terrapin Station
Sure. Pseudorandom numbers are epistemically random. They're still deterministic. Making choices that seem free is what compatibilism is all about.

Quoting Relativist

Sure. Pseudorandom numbers are epistemically random. They're still deterministic. Making choices that seem free is what compatibilism is all about.

So if you make some choices that seem random, this shouldn't be the case:

"The choices we make are the product of our beliefs, dispositions, and impulses. These seem to be the cause of the choice. Each belief, disposition, and impulse seem to have been caused. Hence, our choices could not have been different."

Reply to Terrapin Station

How does one make a “random choice” in practice?

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

I’m still not SURE I agree that a long-term goal is a sign of free will. It is still a choice but a choice that constantly and repeatedly has to be made. I gave my reasons for believing why I think decisions or choices are determined.

By itself, a goal is not a sign of free will, but the choice of a goal against a compulsion is a sign that the compulsion is not determining. Consider an alcoholic who habitually goes into every bar he or she passes. One day they commit to being sober. That commitment makes no physical change. Their brain is still wired the same way. Every time they pass a bar, they still start to walk in. So, they remind themselves of their commitment and, by force of will, walk by. Each time they do this, they change their neural connections by a small amount. In time, their new intentionality is incarnated in a new neural pathway. This is the neurophysical reflection of the ancient observation that repeated good behavior leads to habits of right action, aka, virtues.

So, yes, changing your brain wiring is not easy. It does require constant recommitment, and the lack of apparent progress can be discouraging. Still, over time it happens.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

As for evolution, the mental exercise of weighing choices is a mechanism nature has chosen that has made humans successful. It is a mischaracterization of what I believe to say that evolution decides which is better, viz. the decision made or the option not taken. The mechanism is what evolution selected for.

Of course evolution would not be making the individual decisions. Still, we need a mechanism for evolutionary selection of the capacity to represent multiple options -- one that translates into reproductive success -- or evolution does not explain the phenomenon. (Note also that selecting the ability does not explain primary appearence of the capacity, without which it could not be selected.

If evolution does favor the consideration of options, how is this an argument for determinism? Surely, the consideration of options is useless unless we are free to implement the one that we decide is better. It would be very coincidental if the one that we judged to be better mentally were also the only one that was physically realizable. Such a parallel relation reminds me of Leibnitz' monadology and would seem to require a providential God. Isn't it more rational to think that the very fact of commitment to the better option is one of the conditions of physical realization -- just as it is in the above example of the reforming alcoholic? So, if we are free to choose which option we think better, and often free to implement it physically, where does determinism enter?

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

I believe consciousness is just as real as matter as I am a spiritual person.

I agree. I am also a spiritual person. We are fairly close in our beliefs, but differ on some details.

Reply to Terrapin Station Making a seemingly random choice is an impulse.

Quoting Dfpolis

the choice of a goal against a compulsion is a sign that the compulsion is not determining. Consider an alcoholic who habitually goes into every bar he or she passes. One day they commit to being sober. That commitment makes no physical change. Their brain is still wired the same way. Every time they pass a bar, they still start to walk in. So, they remind themselves of their commitment and, by force of will, walk by

But this choice is not made in a vacuum. The alcoholic might have learned that he was being "punished" for consuming too much alcohol in the sense that he hit rock bottom and things weren't going well for him. That choice is a completely natural option that fits in with my model. He probably learned from experience (perhaps the accounts of other reformed alcoholics), and he was compelled to make the choice to stop consuming alcohol. It took many bad consequences for him to learn his lesson, but this just reinforces the concept of necessary causes (necessary for his particular case in that his rock bottom may be different from someone else's).

Quoting Dfpolis

we need a mechanism for evolutionary selection of the capacity to represent multiple options -- one that translates into reproductive success

Isn't the population of the planet evidence of evolutionary success of our characteristics? How does any characteristic get selected for? It's random at first, but successful characteristics are selected for sometimes as riders of other characteristics, sometimes as the primary characteristic.

Quoting Dfpolis

Isn't it more rational to think that the very fact of commitment to the better option is one of the conditions of physical realization

I believe there is a supervenience between the act of commitment and physical realization. But just as the physical realization is deterministic, so are the mental processes.

Now this is not to say that you couldn't still be right about all this, but I still have concerns that need to be addressed.

Quoting Dfpolis

It would be very coincidental if the one that we judged to be better mentally were also the only one that was physically realizable. Such a parallel relation reminds me of Leibnitz' monadology and would seem to require a providential God.

I don't know about this. It seems to be only natural, not coincidental, to me. I'm sure that many who died in the Holocaust had doubts about a providential God.

Quoting Terrapin Station

So if you make some choices that seem random, this shouldn't be the case:

Would computers have free will in your opinion?

Reply to JupiterJess

That question doesn't have anything to do with what you're quoting from me, by the way. I'm talking about phenomenal experience and what sorts of decisions Relativist does and doesn't make, from a phenomenal perspective. You're asking an ontological question rather.

At any rate, no, I don't believe that computers have free will a fortiori because I don't believe they have the will requirement. I don't believe that we've produced artificial consciousness.

Quoting Relativist

Making a seemingly random choice is an impulse.

I could see calling it that, but you're still describing it as two steps. You said that impulses were among the causes of choices. If we call a seemingly random choice an impulse, the impulse would BE the choice. The impulse wouldn't be a cause where the choice is an effect.

We can still have moral responsibility in the absence of freewill in the Libertarian sense. Strawson's approach is interesting, I haven't read the paper yet but I am interested in what he means by 'truly responsible' and if there is an angle of compatibilism there or not.

Quoting Jamesk

We can still have moral responsibility in the absence of freewill in the Libertarian sense.

How? If whatever I do is fully immanent, fully determined, in the state of the world before we are conceived, then our actual existence can play no role in determining how we act. Under what theory/definition of responsibility can a being whose actual existence plays no role in determining an act be responsible for that act?

Of course, being predetermined would allow us a role in our acts. We would be instrumental causes. Thus, your theory would seem to make instruments responsible for what they are used to effect. That being so, are hammers responsible for hammered artifacts?

None of us have freewill. We are 'all in it together' fate believes in equality. We choose to live in societies. Societies need rules to function. Rules need the attachment of responsibility to function. We agree to the rules so we agree to our share of responsibility.

Quoting Jamesk

We can still have moral responsibility in the absence of freewill in the Libertarian sense. Strawson's approach is interesting, I haven't read the paper yet but I am interested in what he means by 'truly responsible' and if there is an angle of compatibilism there or not.

Strawson takes the conventional approach of closely linking free will with moral responsibility, so when he attempts to undermine (his) idea of moral responsibility, he also takes it to be an attack on the idea of free will.

What Strawson means by being 'truly responsible' is being the ultimate causal source of your actions. The key move in his argument against moral responsibility is this:

Quoting The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility

But to be truly responsible for how one is, mentally speaking, in certain respects, one must have brought it about that one is the way one is, mentally speaking, in certain respects. And it is not merely that one must have caused oneself to be the way one is, mentally speaking. One must have consciously and explicitly chosen to be the way one is, mentally speaking, in certain respects, and one must have succeeded in bringing it about that one is that way.

Where Strawson's position is similar to that of compatibilists is in that for him the question of determinism is irrelevant to the question of moral responsibility/free will - only in his case, he argues that "true" moral responsibility is impossible in any event (but those arguments are quite similar to those that have been used by compatibilists).

Sounds like an outright attack on morality to me.

Reply to Terrapin Station It's consistent with determinism either way.

Reply to Dfpolis " If whatever I do is fully immanent, fully determined, in the state of the world before we are conceived, then our actual existence can play no role in determining how we act. "
If A causes B, and B causes C it is still the case that B's existence caused C. If we did not exist, we could not act.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

But this choice is not made in a vacuum. The alcoholic might have learned that he was being "punished" for consuming too much alcohol in the sense that he hit rock bottom and things weren't going well for him.

A free decision is not an unmotivated decision. If I am seriously weighing two options, which ever I choose can be explained in terms of the factors motivating it. Thus, the fact that we can explain decisions in terms of motivating factors does not show that they are determined.

There is a subtext here, viz. the utilitarian assumption that there is an optimal course of action -- one that results in the greatest happiness, is impelled by the most libido, or has the maximal value of some other utility function. However, if you look at the lead up to decisions, what Aristotle calls proairesis, that is not how we choose. I have never assigned a value to each motivating factor and then calculated which option maximizes the resulting utility. In fact, such a calculation cannot be done, implicitly or explicitly. The reason is simple: motivating factors are not commensurate. No amount of sex will satisfy our need for nutrition, and neither will satisfy our need for understanding. Thus, no trade-off is possible.

H. A. Simmon has written about this at length. Human decisions are made using satisficing rather than maximization. We choose courses of action that satisfy as many of our needs as possible, rather than finding one that maximizes some utility function. As there are many courses of action that can satisfy our needs, satisficing, unlike optimizing, does not constrain us to a single line of action.

Of course, at any point in time, we place more weight on some dome needs/motivating factors than others, but the weight we give each is not predetermined. It is a result of us deciding, implicitly or explicitly, what kind of person we want to be. In your example, even after hitting bottom, the alcoholic still has to decide if they are willing to tolerate the collateral damage alcoholism causes, or if they want to commit to being sober.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Isn't the population of the planet evidence of evolutionary success of our characteristics?

Perhaps, but it does not tell us that our characteristics are as you imagine them. You think that we can imagine alternatives, but are still pre-determined to one course of action. I think that being able to conceive alternatives that we cannot effect can have no evolutionary value. What I am asking for is an evolutionary argument showing that the ability to conceive unimplementable alternatives is not a waste of time and energy.

I know that you have said that we can remember our previously examined alternatives, and I grant you that. I also grant that as a result, we may decide differently in the future. What I do not see is how deciding differently will increase reproductive success, given that only one option is physically possible in any event.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

I believe there is a supervenience between the act of commitment and physical realization. But just as the physical realization is deterministic, so are the mental processes.

I think supervenience is an irrational distraction -- one invented to avoid discussions of causal ontology.

Quoting Supervenience by Brian McLaughlin & Karen Bennett in SEP

A set of properties A supervenes upon another set B just in case no two things can differ with respect to A-properties without also differing with respect to their B-properties. In slogan form, “there cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference”.

There can be no historical events without variations in the positions of the moon and planets, but that does not mean that we should all be studying astrology. The critical issue is what causes what, not what supervenes on what -- which is usually totally irrelevant.

So, to return to the central question, how is it that the intentional process of proaiesis just happens to terminate in the one course of action that is physically predetermined -- especially if there is no causal relation between our intentional commitments and our physical behavior?

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Now this is not to say that you couldn't still be right about all this, but I still have concerns that need to be addressed.

As you can see, I an willing to take the time to address them.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

I'm sure that many who died in the Holocaust had doubts about a providential God.

Of course they did. The problem of evil is real, and I know of no solution that can put our feelings of dismay to rest.

Reply to Dfpolis

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I need to study what you wrote and think about it for awhile. God bless you.

Quoting Jamesk

None of us have freewill. We are 'all in it together' fate believes in equality. We choose to live in societies. Societies need rules to function. Rules need the attachment of responsibility to function. We agree to the rules so we agree to our share of responsibility.

You seem to begin with an unargued faith position, and then immediately contradict it by saying that we choose to live in societies. If we have no free will, we can't choose anything.

Ants have rules, and I have yet to read an account of the social behavior of ants that mentions moral responsibility. Do you have a more detailed argument?

Quoting Relativist

If A causes B, and B causes C it is still the case that B's existence caused C. If we did not exist, we could not act.

I addressed that in my second paragraph. Being an instrumental cause does not make one responsible unless one is a willing instrument. Hammers are not responsible for how they are wielded.

Reply to Dfpolis Our choice to live in societies is an evolutionary one. Survival is of prime importance and we survive better in groups, it is not a choice made of freewill. Remaining in society however is a choice although very few could consider living outside of it, as Aristotle said, only a God or a beast.
Your comparison of humanity to ants, well ants do not share our level of sentience or consciousness (as far as we can tell at least), ants also live in a very different type of society than we do, I often wonder if Plato studied ants for the Republic.

Quoting Dfpolis

There is a subtext here, viz. the utilitarian assumption that there is an optimal course of action -- one that results in the greatest happiness, is impelled by the most libido, or has the maximal value of some other utility function. However, if you look at the lead up to decisions, what Aristotle calls proairesis, that is not how we choose. I have never assigned a value to each motivating factor and then calculated which option maximizes the resulting utility. In fact, such a calculation cannot be done, implicitly or explicitly. The reason is simple: motivating factors are not commensurate. No amount of sex will satisfy our need for nutrition, and neither will satisfy our need for understanding. Thus, no trade-off is possible.

H. A. Simmon has written about this at length. Human decisions are made using satisficing rather than maximization. We choose courses of action that satisfy as many of our needs as possible, rather than finding one that maximizes some utility function. As there are many courses of action that can satisfy our needs, satisficing, unlike optimizing, does not constrain us to a single line of action.

I wasn't implying anything like "optimizing". I believe the alternative of stopping drinking occurred to the alcoholic as an option. Perhaps moderation didn't occur to him as his experience and beliefs didn't necessitate it. Perhaps he has "learned", however wrong-headedly, that all-or-nothing approaches are the only two alternatives. I really don't believe that any of us perform a calculus of optimaization. I believe we are taking shots in the dark essentially. Whatever happens to occur to the alcoholic is predetermined based on his memories, beliefs, experience, mood, and whatever need he feels he needs to satisfy. There is no optimization calculus.

Quoting Dfpolis

I think supervenience is an irrational distraction -- one invented to avoid discussions of causal ontology.

Supervenience does not do away with cause and effect. The lower level physical realization is subject to cause and effect as is the higher level mental exercise. It's just that the two levels line up 1:1.

Quoting Dfpolis

There can be no historical events without variations in the positions of the moon and planets, but that does not mean that we should all be studying astrology.

I think you're confused here. I wasn't saying that we should do anything like astrology. The physical determination of the planets does not supervene on human behavior. The lower level biology and physiology of the brain supervenes on the higher level mental processes of the mind.

Reply to Dfpolis
It's subjective how one identifies responsibility. Consider this scenario: a parent raises a child with a lack of discipline, essentially letting the child do whatever she pleases while shielding the child from any negative consequences. The child reaches adulthood and behaves irresponsibly, drinking to excess and driving. One day, the adult child is driving drunk and hits bicyclist; the adult child drives away leaving the bicyclist on the road to die. Is this adult child responsible, or is the parent who failed to teach the child discipline and responsibility? This actually happened in Houston a few years ago. The driver's sister testified that it was their mother's fault for the way she was raised. I'll bet you agree with me that the adult child is responsible.

One can always find someone else to blame, but as a society we hold the actor responsible. By so doing, we impress upon others the need to take responsibility for his actions. Some will learn this and be less likely to behave recklessly. Others won't. Both will be exhibiting behavior that can plausibly considered to have been determined by their beliefs, dispositions, and impulses.

Quoting Jamesk

Survival is of prime importance and we survive better in groups,

Yes. We are social animals.

Quoting Jamesk

it is not a choice made of freewill.

Then, it is not a choice at all. Unless there is more than one possibility open, there is nothing to choose. Did the moon choose the earth as its orbital partner? Of course not.

If we are social animals, but we can choose to live alone, isn't that evidence that we are not fully determined by our nature?

I agree with much of what you said, but I still see no answer to my basic question. How can a being who is not the radical origin for a line of action be responsible for that line of action?

Reply to Dfpolis

The drunk driver may have been compelled, but punishment is still necessary to keep dangerous people off the streets and for deterrence.

Reply to Dfpolis ", it is not a choice at all. Unless there is more than one possibility open, there is nothing to choose. "
People engage in a behavior we call "choosing", this is indisputable. Even if a different choice could not have been made, it is still the case that the choice has been made and it is is a direct result of the choosers deliberation. The choice is in the causal chain.

To my estimation, “choices” are the domain of the privileged. Most people do what they do all day out of necessity. When people do the mental exercise of deciding between or among “choices”, they are just AWARE of options. I believe the final decision is usually determined by subconscious motivations. When it’s not determined by subconscious motivations, the decision is sometimes done after long deliberation. This kind of decision is also usually in the purview of the privileged. When they make this kind of “choice”, it is always ultimately determined by memory, beliefs, biases, mood, and need. The particular factors are always necessary and sufficient causes of the particular “choice”. Always. Across the board.

Reply to Dfpolis We may not technically responsible in the sense you are seeking, however our position in the group 'holds' us (and all of the groups members) responsible for their acts. So you are responsible without being responsible and that is fine because we are all the same in this respect. All of us are egalitarian victims of determinism so freedom doesn't really come into it.

Quoting Jamesk

Sounds like an outright attack on morality to me.

Well, the title of the paper is kind of a giveaway... But not really. Strawson talks about "ultimate" moral responsibility (he uses half a dozen more such adjectives throughout the discussion). What this has to do with plain-vanilla moral responsibility that we actually live with is questionable. In my opinion, not nearly as much as Strawson implies. And yet the issue of sourcehood is not entirely irrelevant either. But Strawson with his blunt approach does not do a good job of tackling this question.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Supervenience does not do away with cause and effect. The lower level physical realization is subject to cause and effect as is the higher level mental exercise. It's just that the two levels line up 1:1.

Supervenience is a one-to-many relationship ("No A changes without B changes," but not the other way around).

Reply to SophistiCat There are A differences if and only if there are B differences. It goes both ways. Just Google “supervenience”. “If and only if” doesn’t just mean “if”.

Reply to SophistiCat If you weren’t already aware “A if and only if B” means “If A then B AND if B then A”. Dfpolis’ definition wasn’t clear on this.

Quoting Supervenience by Brian McLaughlin & Karen Bennett in SEP

A set of properties A supervenes upon another set B just in case no two things can differ with respect to A-properties without also differing with respect to their B-properties.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Whatever happens to occur to the alcoholic is predetermined based on his memories, beliefs, experience, mood, and whatever need he feels he needs to satisfy. There is no optimization calculus.

Okay, we agree that there is no optimization. That being the case, what makes the outcome of proairesis deterministic? It seems that if we find many lines of action satisfactory, no one is predetermined. What we decide is based on the kind of person we intend to become.

Knowledge does enter proairesis both in the options considered, and in our estimation of where each will lead. I do not see that either implies determinism. On the contrary, the more we know, the freer we are. Knowledge removes the constraints imposed by ignorance.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Supervenience does not do away with cause and effect.

I didn't say supervenience does away with causality. I said it distracts from it. As statisticians remind us, correlation does not mean causality. Co-occurance is irrelevant. What counts is causal dependence. So, what causal relation guaranties that that our intentionally derived decision will be physically realizable? On my theory, the commitment to a line of action can change how we will behave physically. On your theory the relation seems purely coincidental, rather than causal.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

The physical determination of the planets does not supervene on human behavior.

But, it does! Read the definition of supervenience: "A set of properties A supervenes upon another set B just in case no two things can differ with respect to A-properties without also differing with respect to their B-properties." The human states cannot change without there being a difference in the planetary positions. That is exactly why people invented astrology. The problem is that the connection here, though necessary, is not causal in either direction.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

I wasn't saying that we should do anything like astrology.

I did not mean to suggest that you were. I am criticizing the concept of supervenience as a bargain-basement replacement for causality.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

The physical determination of the planets does not supervene on human behavior.

According to the definition, it does. Neural physical processes play a dynamic role in the operation of the mind. Supervenience, while well-defined, provides us with no assurance that the changing properties bear any important relationship to each other.

Quoting Dfpolis

But, it does! Read the definition of supervenience:

No, there is no supervenience between us and planets. You need to read more of the supervenience entry:

Supervenience claims do not merely say that it just so happens that there is no A-difference without a B-difference; they say that there cannot be one. A-properties supervene on B-properties if and only if a difference in A-properties requires a difference in B-properties—or, equivalently, if and only if exact similarity with respect to B-properties guarantees exact similarity with respect to A-properties. Supervenience claims thus have modal force. The kind of modal force can vary; different supervenience claims might attribute different kinds of necessity to the connection between B-properties and A-properties (see Section 3.1.) Even when the modality is fixed, however, there are a number of distinct claims that might be expressed by the slogan. A good deal of philosophical work has gone into distinguishing these forms of supervenience, and into examining their pairwise logical relations.

In a nutshell the idea of supervenience is the idea of one set of properties "riding on" another set of properties, but it's that idea where we want to avoid an ontological commitment to saying that the two sets of properties are both part of or aspects of or perspectives of a substantial identity (that's not excluded, its just not committed to with supervenience), and where we want to avoid an ontological commitment to saying that there's a causal relationship (again not excluded, but not committed to).

Reply to Dfpolis It seems that we are at an impasse. Not all correlated events supervene on each other. I suggest reading the Wikipedia entry on supervenience. It speaks of higher level and lower level phenomena.

Furthermore, I’m not the one who espouses proairesis. You do. I believe memory, beliefs, mood, and need, etc., are COLLECTIVELY necessary And sufficient causes of our decisions. You keep setting up Straw Men instead of addressing my premises.

Quoting Relativist

Is this adult child responsible, or is the parent who failed to teach the child discipline and responsibility?

If there is free will, the parents are responsible for choosing to raise junior without concern for the larger good. Junior is responsible for choosing to drink and drive, and, depending on how mentally competent junior was at the time of the accident, for fleeing the scene. They are each responsible because the possible consequences of their choices were foreseeable, and there were better options available, that they either knew or had a duty to learn.

If there is no free will, the parents had no real choice in how they raised junior, and junior had no choice but to drink, drive and kill. So, there is no more responsibility in the entire scenario than there is in lightening striking and killing the bicyclist. Both would be purely physical events, devoid of moral responsibility.

You seem to be arguing that since responsibility can be distributed, it is entirely subjective. As my first paragraph shows, I reject that. The Germans who chose to do nothing when their Jewish or gay neighbors disappeared in the night bear partial responsibility, as those who continue to support Trump bear partial responsibility for his family separations, condoning political murder, and further degradation of the environment.

Quoting Relativist

I'll bet you agree with me that the adult child is responsible.

The adult child has the major share of the blame. That does not make the parents blameless.

I am still wondering how you can blame anyone, if no one has a real choice?

Quoting Relativist

Both will be exhibiting behavior that can plausibly considered to have been determined by their beliefs, dispositions, and impulses.

Plausibly. Yet, we choose to commit to our beliefs. I can decide that since God is the author of nature, reading the book of nature may throw light on the book of Genesis. If I'm disposed to drink too much, I can choose to work at being sober. By repeated acts of will, over time I can develop better impulse control. So, while you might plausibly argue that an immediate reaction is determined by beliefs, dispositions, and impulses, that reaction can well be the result of the kind of person we have chosen (or not chosen) to be.

I am still waiting for an account of responsibility that works if we have no free will and all acts are determined.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

The drunk driver may have been compelled, but punishment is still necessary to keep dangerous people off the streets and for deterrence.

I agree, that we may be justified in removing sources of immanent danger from society, even if they did not choose to be as they are. That has nothing to do with the question of moral responsibility.

Quoting Relativist

People engage in a behavior we call "choosing", this is indisputable. Even if a different choice could not have been made, it is still the case that the choice has been made and it is is a direct result of the choosers deliberation. The choice is in the causal chain.

I have no argument with any of this, but it does not (1) show that that only one line of action is in our power, or (2) that we are morally responsible for acts fully determined prior to our conception.

Reply to Dfpolis We are only morally responsible as a matter of convention. Metaphysically we are not responsible.

Quoting Dfpolis

You seem to be arguing that since responsibility can be distributed, it is entirely subjective

If it's not subjective, then it obtains independently of what anyone thinks about it. What would be the evidence of that?

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

The particular factors are always necessary and sufficient causes of the particular “choice”. Always. Across the board.

I understand that this is your belief. I do not see an argument supporting your belief.

I do not think that choice belongs only to the privileged. The poor and homeless can act with charity and kindness, or with anger and hostility as easily as the wealthy and powerful.

It is clear that the cause of anything must be sufficient to effect it. There is no reason to think that the cause of everything must necessitate it as opposed to some other effect it is sufficient to cause. To make your case, you need to establish the necessity you claim.

Reply to Dfpolis I do not believe that mental phenomena cause changes in the brain as you do. If mental phenomena were causally efficacious, then wouldn’t it be possible for telekinesis to occur? It is much more likely that mental phenomena supervenes on the physical brain. This is knowable a fortiori. It is consistent and coherent with neuroscience. Your claim is not.

Quoting Jamesk

We may not technically responsible in the sense you are seeking, however our position in the group 'holds' us (and all of the groups members) responsible for their acts. So you are responsible without being responsible and that is fine because we are all the same in this respect. All of us are egalitarian victims of determinism so freedom doesn't really come into it.

This is why I brought up ants. They and bees have social roles and follow rules of contingent behavior, but because they have no choice of role or contingent behavior, they have no need for the concept of responsibility. It is only because we can choose new roles and violate the social expectations (an intentional concept) by the exercise of free will that the concept of moral responsibility arises. In other words, being social animals does not necessitate the dynamic of responsibility. So, being free agents explains the need for the concept of responsibility, while being fully determined social animals does not.

Thus, the two weaknesses of your position are: (1) you have provided no reason to believe that we are determined, and (2) you have provided no reason for the existence of the responsibility dynamic you admit exists.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Supervenience claims do not merely say that it just so happens that there is no A-difference without a B-difference; they say that there cannot be one.

Yes, I see the modal "can." Our biological existence depends on living in the kind of universe that we do. If the laws of nature, the physical constants and the initial state of the universe were different (so that the planets were not as they are) we would not be here to act as we do. Thus, there is a necessary link between human behavioral changes and the planetary movements, but not a causal relation. That is why supervenience is a philosophical distraction, and a poor substitute for causality.

Of course one can read "can" more narrowly, as having something to do with causality, but the definition does not require it, and, in my opinion, the whole point of supervenience is to avoid discussing causality. Consider:

Quoting Supervenience by Brian McLaughlin & Karen Bennett in SEP

Supervenience is a central notion in analytic philosophy. It has been invoked in almost every corner of the field. For example, it has been claimed that aesthetic, moral, and mental properties supervene upon physical properties.

The implication would seem to be that since these non-physical properties supervene on physical properties, that there must be an (unknown) dynamic by which the non-physical are manifestations of the physical. As I have shown by my astrological example, logically there is no such implication. Of course, the philosophers pointing out this supervenience would say that no such implication was ever asserted, only supervenience. That is certainly true, but the question is what motivates a discussion of the supervenience of the non-physical on the physical if not the hope/desire/implication of a dynamic connection? Yet, without a dynamical connection all there really is, is a distraction, for almost everything supervenes on almost everything else.

Quoting Terrapin Station

if and only if exact similarity with respect to B-properties guarantees exact similarity with respect to A-properties.

Yes. Let's look at history again. Go back to 0437 GMT 1835. Whatever the historical state of the world then, it cannot be that state without the planets having the exact state they had. If we look at the actual changes that happened between then and 0438 GMT, those historical changes cannot have occurred without corresponding changes in orbital positions. Such is the nature of supervenience.

Quoting Terrapin Station

A good deal of philosophical work has gone into distinguishing these forms of supervenience, and into examining their pairwise logical relations.

It is certainly true that there are different kinds of modality, but the differences in kinds of modality do not depend on supervenience, but on the underlying dynamics of the case.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

There are A differences if and only if there are B differences. It goes both ways. Just Google “supervenience”. “If and only if” doesn’t just mean “if”.

You are misreading the definition that, I assume, you got from Google:

Supervenience - Wikipedia:X is said to supervene on Y if and only if some difference in Y is necessary for any difference in X to be possible.

Note the placement of IFF in the wiki definition.

Quoting Dfpolis

Yes, I see the modal "can." Our biological existence depends on living in the kind of universe that we do. If the laws of nature, the physical constants and the initial state of the universe were different (so that the planets were not as they are) we would not be here to act as we do. Thus, there is a necessary link between human behavioral changes and the planetary movements, but not a causal relation

No, you're not getting the idea. If there's a supervenience relation, one can't obtain without the other. Planets could still exist if we didn't.

Quoting Dfpolis

The implication would seem to be that since these non-physical properties supervene on physical properties,

I would say that mental, aesthetic, etc. properties supervene on physical properties, but in that I am not saying that mental, aesthetic etc. properties are non-physical. A supervenience relation there doesn't exclude either the notion that mental, aesthetic properties are physical or nonphysical.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Furthermore, I’m not the one who espouses proairesis. You do. I believe memory, beliefs, mood, and need, etc., are necessary And sufficient causes of our decisions. You keep setting up Straw Men instead of addressing my premises.

Proairesis merely names the process leading to a decision. It literally beans "before choice." So, there is nothing to espouse with regard to its existence unless you believe that there is no thought leading to a decision, which would seem to ignore the relevant phenomenology.

What Aristotle noted about proariesis is that it is an iterative process. One begins with a goal to be effected, then finds means of effecting that goal, then finds means of effecting those means and so on. These observations are compatible with both deterministic and libertarian views of choice, and they certainly do not rule out a role for memory, beliefs, mood, need, etc.

I have no problem with the causes of a decision being both necessary and sufficient. That is a very different matter than the choice being necessitated. Necessarily, these factors are in involved, and the factors effecting a decision are sufficient to the actual decision does not mean that the decision is necessary. For example, necessarily I need skills sufficient to house building to build this house does not mean that having those necessary and sufficient skills compels me to build this house rather than that.

If you still feel we are at an impasse, then my best to you.

Reply to Dfpolis Hive society animals have a completely different form than our own so I feel your comparison is unfair. You use hive insects as the example for all social animals and that is a mistake, at the very best we could be compared to other primates but not insects.

Unless you think that morals are a natural feature of the world, which i do not, I also don't think comparing us to other species is helpful either,

Reply to SophistiCat My claim is that mental phenomena supervene on the physical brain. Some difference in the brain is necessary for a change in the mental processes. Also the brain supervenes on mental processes. Any change in mental processes necessitate changes in the brain. Hence, my assertion that there is supervenience BETWEEN mental processes and the brain.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

We are only morally responsible as a matter of convention. Metaphysically we are not responsible.

I don't think this quite cuts it. If responsibility were an arbitrary convention, how can it play a dynamic role in our personal and social life? Again, what would motivate anyone to give an arbitrary convention a central role in social interaction? Wouldn't such centrality be completely irrational and long-since recognized as such?

Reply to Dfpolis

Responsibility is a social convention simply because people believe in free will, not because it is metaphysically true.

Quoting Dfpolis

I don't think this quite cuts it. If responsibility were an arbitrary convention, how can it play a dynamic role in our personal and social life? Again, what would motivate anyone to give an arbitrary convention a central role in social interaction? Wouldn't such centrality be completely irrational and long-since recognized as such?

I'd be careful how you're using "arbitrary" there. Something being conventional or subjective doesn't imply that it's "arbitrary" in the sense of "random" or "per (fleeting) whim," Neither implies that the thing in question is irrational either.

As for how something that's only a convention, or only a way we think can play a dynamic role in our personal and social life, it's hard to believe that you're even asking that question, because why would you think that something that's just a way that we think or just a convention wouldn't be able to play a dynamic role in our personal and social life? You might as well wonder how love can play a dynamic role in our personal and social life. If someone wondered that, we'd have to wonder why in the world they'd think there would be something difficult to explain there.

Reply to Dfpolis if A is a necessary cause of B, then B could not happen without A. If A is also a sufficient cause of B, then A is also not possible without B. How does necessity not enter here?

Furthermore, no one in their right mind would claim that behavior supervenes on the planets. Where did you get that from?

Quoting Terrapin Station

If it's not subjective, then it obtains independently of what anyone thinks about it. What would be the evidence of that?

I am not saying that responsibility has no subjective element, but that it is not entirely subjective. Responsibility is a relation between a subject and a forseeable, objective state of affairs that would not be, had the subject not acted as he or she did.

This relation exists whether or not it is known to exist. Suppose I bully a person online and as a result that person decides to commit suicide. I may never know that happened, still, I'm partly responsible for it.

Quoting Dfpolis

I am not saying that responsibility has no subjective element, but that it is not entirely subjective. Responsibility is a relation between a subject and a forseeable, objective state of affairs that would not be, had the subject not acted as he or she did.

I'd agree that there's an objective fact a la x only happened because of y, where y is the result of a decision that some subject made, and information, ability to understand it, etc. was available to the subject so they could have had knowledge that x would obtain, but if you're using the term "responsibility" for that objective fact, you'd have to be careful to remove all normative/evaluative connotation from the term . . . which would be difficult to do outside of a specialized academic context,

Reply to Dfpolis At any rate, I wish you the best of luck with your book on free will. I give up on this pissing match. God bless you.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

I do not believe that mental phenomena cause changes in the brain as you do. If mental phenomena were causally efficacious, then wouldn’t it be possible for telekinesis to occur? It is much more likely that mental phenomena supervenes on the physical brain. This is knowable a fortiori. It is consistent and coherent with neuroscience. Your claim is not.

Clearly, mental phenomena have physical effects. In the placebo effect, telling the patient that a drug is efficacious makes it more efficacious. This is a proven fact. In the UCLA study I mentioned earlier, cognitive therapy of OCD patients resulted in substantial rewiring of their brains as shown by before and after MRIs.

As for telekinesis, Dean Radin and Roger Nelson (1989) reviewed 832 experiments by 68 investigators in which subjects were asked to control random number generators, typically driven by radioactive decay. They subjected the results to meta-analysis, a method for combining data from many experiments. While control runs showed no significant effect, the mean effect of subjects trying to influence the outcome was 3.2 x 10^-4 with Stouffer’s z = 4.1. In other words, subjects controlled an average of 32 of every 100,000 random numbers, and this effect is 4.1 standard deviations from pure chance. The odds against this are about 24,000 to 1.

Radin and Diane C. Ferrari (1991) analyzed 148 studies of dice throwing by 52 investigators involving 2,592,817 throws, found an effect size (weighted by methodological quality ) of 0.00723 ± 0.00071 with z = 18.2 (1.94 x 10^73 to 1). Radin and Nelson (2003) updated their 1989 work by adding 84 studies missed earlier and 92 studies published from 1987 to mid-2000. This gave 515 experiments by 91 different principal investigators with a total of 1.4 billion random numbers. They calculated an average effect size of 0.007 with z = 16.1 (3.92 x 10^57 to 1).

Bösch, Steinkamp, and Boller (2006) did a meta-analysis of 380 studies in an article placing experiments in the context spoon bending and séances. They excluded two-thirds of the studies considered. Nonetheless, they found high methodological quality, and a small, but statistically significant effect. Unsatisfied, they attacked the data for lacking a predictive theory, and suggested that workers find a stronger effect. Such demands are not scientific. General relativity was confirmed by minuscule effects, e.g. a 43 arc second per century anomaly in perihelion of Mercury discovered in 1859, but unexplained until 1916. Further, no objective effect can be adjusted to meet skeptics’ demands.

In sum, for anyone committed to the scientific method, and willing to follow the data where it leads, there can be no doubt that mental states can modify physical states.

I have no doubt that most mental states supervene on physical states as well as on planetary positions. More importantly, I think that neural and glial processing play an essential role in human thought. Just because intentionality is not reducible to physicality does not mean that the two exist independently. The sphericity of a ball is not reducible to its material, but that does not mean that the sphericity and rubberiness are separate substances.

Descartes drew his line in the wrong place. The mind has an essential physical subsystem. This was recognized by Aristotle, Aquinas and most other pre-Cartesian thinkers. The problem is that we have no reason to believe that intentional operations are reducible to physical operations, and very good reason to think that they are not.

Nothing actually known to neuroscience contradicts anything I have said. If you think otherwise, please be specific.

Quoting Terrapin Station

No, you're not getting the idea. If there's a supervenience relation, one can't obtain without the other. Planets could still exist if we didn't.

Your "can't" is about physical, not logical or metaphysical, necessity. Your "could" has the force of an imagined state, not physical possibility. We know, for example, that the Moon plays a protective role with respect to asteroid collisions. On the other hand, we do not know that the earth could have formed outside of an environment that also led to the formation of the other planets. Our specific evolution depended on the solar system being as it is, with asteroid collisions occurring when and how they did, and with the laws of nature, physical constants, and initial state of the universe being as they are.

Your ability to imagine something physically unrealizable does not make the imagined state physically possible.

Reply to Dfpolis

People, or the entire Earth, could disappear. That's not just imaginary in the sense of fantastical, it could easily happen for a number of different reasons.

The (other) planets would not be affected (if we disappear, and if the Earth does, they're future states would in no way depend on people per se)

Hence, there's no supervenience relation.

Quoting Terrapin Station

A supervenience relation there doesn't exclude either the notion that mental, aesthetic properties are physical or nonphysical.

Agreed. So what philosophic value does the supervenience relation have? How does it help us develop a consistent understanding of human experience?

Quoting Dfpolis

Agreed. So what philosophic value does the supervenience relation have? How does it help us develop a consistent understanding of human experience?

Well, first, not everything is developed as a tool for some other purpose.

Supervenience is handy as a way of talking about a certain kind of dependence relation, without restricting the relation to situations where we're claiming either a substantial identity or a causal relationship.

Quoting Jamesk

Hive society animals have a completely different form than our own so I feel your comparison is unfair. You use hive insects as the example for all social animals and that is a mistake, at the very best we could be compared to other primates but not insects.

Of course we are much different than hive insects, but that does not undermine my point. The thesis was that responsibility is explained by us being social animals. If this were true, then a responsibility relation would be a feature of all social animal groups. That is not the case, so, the concept requires more than us being social animals to explain it.

Quoting Jamesk

Unless you think that morals are a natural feature of the world, which i do not, I also don't think comparing us to other species is helpful either,

I always find such statements puzzling. Aren't we, with all of our intellectual and social complexity, part of the natural world? Isn't intentionality as natural as physicality -- even if they are not reducible, one to the other? Of course we are very different than other species and ignoring our differences can invalidate conclusions, especially when thought is involved.

I think there is a natural basis for morality, but that it's elaboration is social, cultural and historical, if that is what you mean.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Responsibility is a social convention simply because people believe in free will, not because it is metaphysically true.

OK. Responsibility came up because I was asked what free will would explain. It seems to me that if there is no free will, then there would be no reason to believe there is, because no one would feel responsible. That brings us back to asking how the feeling of responsibility could evolve, given that it can serve no purpose if people are physically compelled to act as they do?

Also, if intentions can have no physical effect, how can we talk about them, for surely talking about them is a physical process that necessarily depends on operation of the intentions we discuss? But, if intentions did have no physical effect how could the intentional state of feeling responsible change what we do in the future?

Quoting Dfpolis

The thesis was that responsibility is explained by us being social animals. If this were true, then a responsibility relation would be a feature of all social animal groups.

Humans are social animals
Humans have developed the concept of morality and responsibility
Therefore all social animals will develop the same concept.

All humans are social animals
If humans develop morality because they are social animals then
All social animals would do the same.

How do your premises lead to that conclusion? Your argument is neither sound nor valid.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

My claim is that mental phenomena supervene on the physical brain. Some difference in the brain is necessary for a change in the mental processes. Also the brain supervenes on mental processes. Any change in mental processes necessitate changes in the brain. Hence, my assertion that there is supervenience BETWEEN mental processes and the brain.

Some difference in the brain is necessary for a change in the mental processes and Any change in mental processes necessitate changes in the brain mean exactly the same thing: that mental processes supervene on brain processes. Not the other way around.

Anyway, I just wanted to draw your attention to your basic misunderstanding of supervenience in general.

Reply to SophistiCat You’re correct! However, it has no bearing on my overall argument. Thanks. God bless you!

Reply to Dfpolis I have a question. Have these experiments been replicated with the same results? It seems they would have to be replicated a few times with the same results to be cogent.

Also, the placebo effect can be explained by brain states. Is placebo treatment sustainable?

It seems to me that a person can be said to have an absolutely free will only if that person is in some mysterious sense self-created; that is, only if that person, in some way, was able to choose who they are (their character).
For, ultimately, it is the person's character which determines the motives to which he/she responds, or does not respond, and it is their character for which he/she feels responsible.
This I learned from Arthur Schopenhauer!

Reply to Dfpolis "I am still waiting for an account of responsibility that works if we have no free will and all acts are determined. "
Here's two compatibilist accounts of responsibility:

1.The natural reaction to hearing about the drunk driver killing the bicyclist is a reactive attitude that the driver is guilty. In most cases, a perpetrator has a feeling of guilt after recognizing a consequence of a bad choice (e.g. the girl expressed this to friends, and it was these friends who reported the crime).These morally reactive attitudes are the basis of our moral responsibility practices. They are natural responses, not mere social convention.They are an aspect of interpersonal relations and expectations, and of our internal feelings. It is inconceivable that we would stop holding such people morally accountable, or stop feeling guilty, even if it were somehow proven that determinism is true. Indeed, the fact that we have these attitudes contributes to our behavior, because we generally prefer to avoid guilt and social approbation, and enjoy pride and respect.

2. Could the drunk driver have done differently? Yes she could have, if she had held the strong belief that the risk of driving drunk was so great that it outweighed her impulse to do so. This could only have occurred had there been something different about the past (formation of that belief), but that's reasonable. If our choices aren't the result of our personal beliefs, dispositions, and impulses - what are they? Random?

When she is released from prison, let’s hope she will actually have learned this, and doesn’t repeat the risky behavior. Our beliefs and dispositions are part of what we are - we own the results, and this makes us accountable. We can learn new beliefs, and these will influence our behavior.

#1 and #2 are more or less independent, but in tandem they provide not only a coherent account of moral responsibility, they also explain why normal functioning people strive for generally moral behavior. We want to avoid guilt, fit in, and we want to avoid approbation by others. We CAN always do better, but it requires learning things. Social consequences (positive and negative) and internal guilt/pride provide incentives to learn what is needed to behave morally. Calvinists believe our lives are fully determined and we can't really change what we are destined to do. However, each Calvinist strives to prove to everyone, including themselves, that they are among the saved - they prove this by their behavior.
[i]
I am going to post this in a new thread, to solicit input from more than the one or two that will read this buried in the current thread.[/i]

The drunk driver could have behaved differently only if the drunk driver had possessed a different character; viz., a character which was able to respond positively, rather than negatively or not at all, to the cognitive realization (motive) that the risk of driving drunk was so great that it outweighed the impulse to do so. Over a lifetime, we all become better acquainted gradually with who we are (our character) by experiencing what we actually do or omit doing, how we actually behave or do not behave, when presented with different motives and circumstances. It is not the person's deeds, per se, which we praise or condemn. They are merely indicators of the person's moral character. And, in the final analysis, it is the person's moral character which bears the responsibility, guilt, praise, or blame for what was done or left undone. It is our character for which we feel responsible. And this responsibility makes sense and has meaning only if we were absolutely free to choose who we are. And when did this choice occur??? Now it gets metaphysical!

Quoting charles ferraro

It seems to me that a person can be said to have an absolutely free will only if that person is in some mysterious sense self-created; that is, only if that person, in some way, was able to choose who they are (their character).
For, ultimately, it is the person's character which determines the motives to which he/she responds, or does not respond, and it is their character for which he/she feels responsible.
This I learned from Arthur Schopenhauer!

This is also what Strawson Jr. is arguing. But my question is - so what? If that's how you define "absolutely free will," then, obviously, that's how it is. But how is this "absolutely free will" - a made-up thing that cannot possibly exist - relevant to any human concerns?

Quoting SophistiCat

This is also what Strawson Jr. is arguing. But my question is - so what? If that's how you define "absolutely free will," then, obviously, that's how it is. But how is this "absolutely free will" - a made-up thing that cannot possibly exist - relevant to any human concerns?

You could say this with almost any "problem" of philosophy. That's why the average person couldn't care less about philosophy.

Reply to Dfpolis
If anyone wishes to demonstrate that "mental phenomena have physical effects," one needn't appeal to such arcana as experiments purporting to demonstrate telekinesis: anyone who has had a desire for some peanuts and gotten up to kitchen to get some has ably demonstrated that mental states can have physical effects.

Quoting SophistiCat

This is also what Strawson Jr. is arguing. But my question is - so what? ... [H]ow is this "absolutely free will" ... relevant to any human concerns?

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

You could say this with almost any "problem" of philosophy. That's why the average person couldn't care less about philosophy.

I disagree. Good philosophical analysis should be relevant to its subject. This is why I think Galen Strawson's analysis fails: ostensibly, it is about something that is very relevant to us: moral responsibility, free will. But in actuality, the artificial construct around which Strawson builds his argument has rather little to do with those subjects. This, by the way, characterizes many discussions related to free will.

But it doesn't have to be so. And indeed, if you look around for philosophical literature on these subjects, you will find better examples. (Earlier in the thread I cited what I consider to be a better example from Peter Strawson, Galen's father.)

Quoting SophistiCat

H]ow is this "absolutely free will" ... relevant to any human concerns?

Wasn't Strawson saying that we are not ultimately responsible for our actions? This seems to be a radical claim, and it has huge implications for human concerns. At least I think so.

Quoting Arkady

If anyone wishes to demonstrate that "mental phenomena have physical effects," one needn't appeal to such arcana as experiments purporting to demonstrate telekinesis: anyone who has had a desire for some peanuts and gotten up to kitchen to get some has ably demonstrated that mental states can have physical effects.

One problem with your theory is proving that mental states exist at all. Most recent research shows that on average our sub-conscious sends the message the body to get up and get peanuts about half a second before you think you have decided to do it.

The mental state to get the peanuts has been caused by something else, hunger, boredom, habit etc. As has is your choice for peanuts rather than something less salty. The fact you have where to sit and a kitchen to go to that has peanuts in it is also dependent on many things that have affected your life until then and will continue to after.

Reply to SophistiCat We don't need to defend compatibilism against hard determinism such as Strawson's. The libertarian argument needs to justify why freewill makes us morally responsible and why not having it should free us from any responsibility. Why is there a necessary connection between the two?

Quoting Jamesk

One problem with your theory is proving that mental states exist at all. Most recent research shows that on average our sub-conscious sends the message the body to get up and get peanuts about half a second before you think you have decided to do it.

If we think that mental states might not exist, then what the heck are we even talking about in the "before you think you have decided to do it" part?

Quoting Terrapin Station

If we think that mental states might not exist, then what the heck are we even talking about in the "before you think you have decided to do it" part?

We still cannot accurately prove which brain processes relate to which mental states so even if we accept mental states we don't really understand them either biologically or psychologically.

Let's accept that they exist, that still doesn't really tell us anything about what they do. That was the point of my example. No one is saying that our thoughts do not cause us to act, the question is what caused our minds to cause an act?
There seem to be only two choices, one, that it was determined and the other that it was random or spontaneous. Can you think of any other options? I can't.

Quoting Jamesk

There seem to be only two choices, one, that it was determined and the other that it was random or spontaneous.

Yeah, I'd agree those seem to be the only two options, but if randomness is involved, it could be that we can bias the outcomes, so that there's a 10% chance of x, a 15% chance of y, etc.

Re this: "We still cannot accurately prove . . ." We can't prove empirical claims period. However, proof aside, we have lots of evidence just how the third-person observable aspects of brains correlate to the first-person, mental aspects.

Reply to Terrapin Station Could we not also bias deterministic influences as well? Using freewill to make uniform types of determined choices (not all choices are black or white) on a constant basis could also influence the chains of influence that influence us. In other words we can take some part in causality, even if it is a small one. Shifting towards our preferred spectrum of gray.

Quoting Jamesk

?Terrapin Station Could we not also bias deterministic influences as well? Using freewill to make uniform types of determined choices (not all choices are black or white) on a constant basis could also influence the chains of influence that influence us. In other words we can take some part in causality, even if it is a small one. Shifting towards our preferred spectrum of gray.

Insofar as I understand what you are saying there, sure.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Wasn't Strawson saying that we are not ultimately responsible for our actions? This seems to be a radical claim, and it has huge implications for human concerns. At least I think so.

Yes, he is saying that we are not ultimately responsible. But Strawson's ultimate responsibility is not the same as what we usually think of as moral responsibility. To paraphrase Dennett, it is not the moral responsibility worth having. It is irrelevant to our concerns.

Reply to SophistiCat I see what you’re saying.

Reply to Jamesk
You make a valid point that some preliminary research on motivation and decision-making does indicate that our brain makes at least some decisions prior to our becoming consciously aware of it, as demonstrated by, for instance, Benjamin Libet's experiments. There have also been experiments with split-brain patients which apparently demonstrate that at least some of our explanations for why we acted in a certain manner are post hoc confabulations.

However, it would seem to be a non sequitur to move from these experimental results to inferring that there are no such things as mental states. Even if my desire for peanuts (and subsequent motor functions aimed at obtaining peanuts) was preceded by neurological activity of which I was not consciously aware, that does not impugn the reality of my mental state . Whatever the causal or neurobiological origin of said desire, there is no reason to doubt it exists, unless one holds the rather idiosyncratic view that mental states can only be genuine if they have no causal precedents whatsoever.

Quoting Arkady

However, it would seem to be a non sequitur to move from these experimental results to inferring that there are no such things as mental states.

That wasn't my intention, I do not deny that mental states exist. My problem is that 'mental sates' are largely mysterious, at least as much as deterministic forces and causality.

Reply to Jamesk
The first line of your post was "One problem with your theory is proving that mental states exist at all," which I took to be your questioning the existence of mental states. Perhaps I misunderstood, then.

Reply to Arkady Reply to Arkady I wasn't being clear, the lesser problem is empirically detecting them whereas the greater problem is knowing what they do, how they do it etc.

Please forgive my absence and the consequent delay in responding. Mea culpa.

Quoting Terrapin Station

I don't think this quite cuts it. If responsibility were an arbitrary convention, how can it play a dynamic role in our personal and social life? ... — Dfpolis

I'd be careful how you're using "arbitrary" there. Something being conventional or subjective doesn't imply that it's "arbitrary" in the sense of "random" or "per (fleeting) whim," Neither implies that the thing in question is irrational either.

First, conventional and subjective are completely different concepts. Things are subjective because they are properties of subjects as such, not because they are inadequately grounded in reality. In other words, the reality they're grounded in is at the subjective pole of the subject-object relation. Conversely, things exist by convention if they result from some explicit or implicit social covenant or agreement.

Second, the common understanding of covenants or agreements is that they are shared acts of will. If one denies the existence of effective acts of will, it is hard to see how anything could ultimately be the result of common consent. In a deterministic world, everything exists by necessity, with nothing ultimately depending on acts of will. It seems disingenuous, then, to say that responsibility does not require free will because it is explained by common consent, i.e. by acts of will. In sum, if you hold that that conventional consent isn't free, then responsibility exists by necessity.

Third, I certainly agree that the concept of responsibility is rational, but it is hard to see how a determinist can agree. What would it mean, socially, to hold Jane responsible for her acts? Would it justify punishment? Social disapproval? How would that be just if Jane were foreordained to do what she did? You might argue that it would deter others from acting in the same way by increasing the weight of negative consequences in their considerations, but would that really justify the consequences of blaming Jane?

Quoting Terrapin Station

As for how something that's only a convention, or only a way we think can play a dynamic role in our personal and social life, it's hard to believe that you're even asking that question, because why would you think that something that's just a way that we think or just a convention wouldn't be able to play a dynamic role in our personal and social life?

I don't think that, but I don't see how you could not. I'm confused about your model of decision making. I can understand the notion of physical determinism. In fact, I'm a determinist with respect to purely physical systems. If you believe that we are purely physical beings, fully describable in principle by physics, then being a determinist makes some sense. The problem is that when you appeal to rationality, as though intentional considerations make some difference in human actions, I am confused. Why should rationality make any difference in a world fully determined by its physics? It seems very odd that what we decide to do rationally should be the exact same thing that physics determines that we will do. This is even more peculiar given that the initial state determining the physical outcome is an existent, but largely unknown, distribution of field strengths, while the premises of our proairsis are unrelated intentional commitments (beliefs) that may or may be true.

So, does you model of decision making involves some Leibnitzian parallelism, a kind of monadology? Or do you think, as I do, that the intentional state that terminates or decision making process is ipso facto physically effective? If the latter, then on what do you base your determinism? Certainly most of our practical reasoning is not syllogistic, and so logically indeterminate. What actually determines our decisions is the weight we freely give to competing considerations.

Quoting Terrapin Station

if you're using the term "responsibility" for that objective fact, you'd have to be careful to remove all normative/evaluative connotation from the term . . . which would be difficult to do outside of a specialized academic context,

No, I see the normative implications of responsibility as quite rational, because I see the agent as the radical origin of a new line of action that resulted in, or at least contributed to, the result for which the agent is responsible.

What I do not see is how responsibility can play any just role in a deterministic system of ethics.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Furthermore, no one in their right mind would claim that behavior supervenes on the planets. Where did you get that from?

By applying the standard definition I quoted from the SEP. My point is not what anyone would do,. but what the definition allows. That the definition allows such unrelated and irrelevant facts to be supervenient shows the irrelevance and distractive nature of the concept.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete Thank you.

I am not wring such a book now. I wrote a 400 page manuscript back in the late 80s and early 90s that was well-received in private distribution.

I am sorry that you saw this as a pissing contest. I see it as a dialog in which we each do the best to defend our positions.

Quoting Terrapin Station

People, or the entire Earth, could disappear. That's not just imaginary in the sense of fantastical, it could easily happen for a number of different reasons.

Yes, it could happen. However supervenience is an asymmetrical relation, so if A supervenes on B, it need not be the case that B supervenes on A.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Supervenience is handy as a way of talking about a certain kind of dependence relation, without restricting the relation to situations where we're claiming either a substantial identity or a causal relationship.

I didn't say that supervenience was ill-defined. Just that it was a distraction, especially in the context of the mind body problem. I used astrology, which involves supervenience, but not causality, to illustrate my point. Let us focus on dependencies that give us insight into problems of interest rather then being distracted by supervenience.

Quoting Jamesk

Humans are social animals
Humans have developed the concept of morality and responsibility
Therefore all social animals will develop the same concept.

All humans are social animals
If humans develop morality because they are social animals then
All social animals would do the same.

How do your premises lead to that conclusion? Your argument is neither sound nor valid.

These are not my arguments. If being a social animal explains responsibility, we have the following argument, valid by the modus ponens:

If an animal species is a social, then it has a responsibility dynamic.
Ants are social animals.
Ants have a responsibility dynamic.

I do not deny that being social animals enters into the dynamics of human responsibility. Clearly it does. I am saying that being a social animal is not sufficient to explain the human responsibility dynamic.

Quoting Dfpolis

No, I see the normative implications of responsibility as quite rational

The problem is that there are no objective normatives.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Have these experiments been replicated with the same results? It seems they would have to be replicated a few times with the same results to be cogent.

What I cited were meta-analyses of hundreds of experiments. Meta-analysis is a technique developed in physics to refine the accuracy of physical constants. It involves both reviewing experiments' methodology and the statistical aggregation of the results of many similar experiments. Given that the effects here are small, any single experiment can show no effect or or a negative effect due to random fluctuations. That is why it is important to aggregate the results of many experiments.

A possible source of error in meta-analyses is the so-called "file drawer effect." It happens when researchers looking for, say, a positive effect, find no effect or a negative effect and decide to file their work away rather than publish it. The meta-studies I cited considered possible file drawer studies and found that the number required to reduce the results to insignificance was unreasonably high -- many times the number published. So, it seems that the result is well confirmed.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Also, the placebo effect can be explained by brain states. Is placebo treatment sustainable?

I have no doubt that the brain plays a role in the placebo effect. Still, initiating cause of the effect is intentional, not physical. It is a belief on the part of the patient that the placebo will help -- and not some physical manipulation of the patient. As the effect works with different languages and cultures its explanatory invariant is a common intentionality, rather than an common physical instantiation.

I have not read any studies on sustainability. Anecdotally, one hears of patients being on placebos for years.

Quoting Dfpolis

First, conventional and subjective are completely different concepts

I wasn't using "or" in the sense of "here's another word for the same thing." I was using it in the sense of "cats or dogs"--two different things we could be talking about.

At any rate, conventions aren't arbitrary.

Quoting Dfpolis

What I cited were meta-analyses of hundreds of experiments. Meta-analysis is a technique developed in physics to refine the accuracy of physical constants. It involves both reviewing experiments' methodology and the statistical aggregation of the results of many similar experiments. Given that the effects here are small, any single experiment can show no effect or or a negative effect due to random fluctuations. That is why it is important to aggregate the results of many experiments.

A possible source of error in meta-analyses is the so-called "file drawer effect." It happens when researchers looking for, say, a positive effect, find no effect or a negative effect and decide to file their work away rather than publish it. The meta-studies I cited considered possible file drawer studies and found that the number required to reduce the results to insignificance was unreasonably high -- many times the number published. So, it seems that the result is well confirmed.

Very interesting. Are brain waves emitted photons?

Reply to Dfpolis And if we change the wording from social animals to social mammals would that make it clearer for you?

Reply to Relativist Thank you for the compatibilist accounts.

Quoting Relativist

1. The natural reaction to hearing about the drunk driver killing the bicyclist is a reactive attitude that the driver is guilty. In most cases, a perpetrator has a feeling of guilt after recognizing a consequence of a bad choice

That is not in dispute.

Quoting Relativist

It is inconceivable that we would stop holding such people morally accountable, or stop feeling guilty, even if it were somehow proven that determinism is true.

This is the very point in question. Personally, I hold no one responsible for actions in which they played no determining role. So, based on my contrary conception, factually, it is simply not inconceivable. As I recall, Clarence Darrow convinced one or more juries to acquit by convincing them that his clients were determined to act as they did. So, this claim is false.

Quoting Relativist

Indeed, the fact that we have these attitudes contributes to our behavior, because we generally prefer to avoid guilt and social approbation, and enjoy pride and respect.

No one is disputing that feelings of responsibility help guide our behavior. The question is are such feelings well-founded. The argument fails to show that they are not.

Quoting Relativist

2. Could the drunk driver have done differently? Yes she could have, if she had held the strong belief that the risk of driving drunk was so great that it outweighed her impulse to do so. This could only have occurred had there been something different about the past (formation of that belief), but that's reasonable. If our choices aren't the result of our personal beliefs, dispositions, and impulses - what are they? Random?

As it stands, 2 is not a compatibilist account of responsibility, but an argument for why a drunk driver should not be held responsible. One might decide to send her to jail to change their behavior, but that does not mean that she is responsible for what she did, only that we might, by this crude means, re-program her.

No one is denying the role of experience or of beliefs in the decision making process. Practically everyone knows, intellectually, that drunk driving involves grave risks. The question is not about acquired knowledge, but about how the agent weighs the incompatible factors that motivate driving drunk or not. There is no numerical trade-off between the relevant factors, so despite utilitarian objections, no algorithmic maximization can determine the decision. I think we can agree, further, that the decision is made in light of a subjective weighting process -- one that is neither algorithmic nor syllogistically conclusive.

Can't we also agree that how a person weighs such factors is not merely backward looking, not merely a matter of past experience and belief, but also forward looking -- a matter of what kind of person the agent wishes to be? And, if that is so, then the past is not fully determinative. We know, as a matter of experience, of cases of metanoia, of changes in past beliefs and life styles. While this does not disprove determination by the past, it makes it very questionable.

As for being "random," that depends on how you define the term. If you mean not predictable, not fully immanent in the prior state, free acts are random in that sense. But, if you take "random" to mean "mindless," no account of well-considered decisions can hold they are random in that sense. Personal beliefs, dispositions, and impulses all enter proairesis, but they alone cannot be determinative because they are intrinsically incommensurate. They are materials awaiting the impress of form. It is not what we consider, but the weight we give to what we are consider, that is determinative. And, we give that weight, not in view of the past alone, but in view of the kind of person we want to emerge in shaping our identity.

Quoting Relativist

#1 and #2 are more or less independent, but in tandem they provide not only a coherent account of moral responsibility, they also explain why normal functioning people strive for generally moral behavior. We want to avoid guilt, fit in, and we want to avoid approbation by others.

I don't think the arguments given do this. They begin by noting that we feel responsible, and show how this plays a role in our behavior -- none of which is in dispute. The question of why would we have a false belief in responsibility if we are not responsible is simply not addressed. Why couldn't we reprogram the drunk driver with prison or a scarlet "D" because reprogramming works (if it does), and not because of an irrelevant responsibility narrative?

Reply to Arkady Re peanut eating: Agreed.

Quoting Terrapin Station

The problem is that there are no objective normatives.

Really? Why?

Human beings have a hierarchy of needs that must be met to become fully realized. Thus, norms (this system of needs) is built into our empirically discoverable nature.

Quoting Terrapin Station

I wasn't using "or" in the sense of "here's another word for the same thing." I was using it in the sense of "cats or dogs"--two different things we could be talking about.

At any rate, conventions aren't arbitrary.

Fair enough. As for conventions being arbitrary, some are, like what an ABBABABA computer state means. Others may be a bit less so, but the fact that they require agreement means they are not predetermined, and so are arbitrary in that sense.

Reply to Dfpolis

Yeah, really. Because that's the way the world is. No matter where you look in the mind-independent world, you'll not find any normatives.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Are brain waves emitted photons?

Brain waves are electrical voltage variations detected on the scalp. They result from the collective firing of neurons, which is an electrochemical process. As all electromagnetic field changes are associated with photons, so are brain waves, but their frequency is so low they have virtually no energy.

Quoting Dfpolis

Brain waves are electrical voltage variations detected on the scalp. They result from the collective firing of neurons, which is an electrochemical process. As all electromagnetic field changes are associated with photons, so are brain waves, but their frequency is so low they have virtually no energy.

Thanks. I always wondered how to explain them.

Quoting Jamesk

And if we change the wording from social animals to social mammals would that make it clearer for you?

It would certainly rule out social insects, but it would not explain why being social would require a responsibility dynamic in the sense we experience it. As I said, if we were not free, we might need re-programming, but that does not require a concept of responsibility. We see such reprogramming in the training of animals, which are not held responsible for the behaviors we are trying to modify.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Yeah, really. Because that's the way the world is. No matter where you look in the mind-independent world, you'll not find any normatives.

But, we do find them in society, which is objective and observable. So, I deny your claim. Perhaps it would help if you define what you mean by a "norm."

Reply to Noah Te Stroete You are welcome.

Reply to Dfpolis

What's an example of them occurring mind-independently in society?

Reply to Terrapin Station Norms are intentional, for they are goals. So, they are not independent of mind in the sense of being physical states; however, they they exist in nature, as actual intentional states found in other natural persons, independently of us knowing or positing them.

Quoting Dfpolis

No one is denying the role of experience or of beliefs in the decision making process. Practically everyone knows, intellectually, that drunk driving involves grave risks. The question is not about acquired knowledge, but about how the agent weighs the incompatible factors that motivate driving drunk or not. There is no numerical trade-off between the relevant factors, so despite utilitarian objections, no algorithmic maximization can determine the decision. I think we can agree, further, that the decision is made in light of a subjective weighting process -- one that is neither algorithmic nor syllogistically conclusive.

Can't we also agree that how a person weighs such factors is not merely backward looking, not merely a matter of past experience and belief, but also forward looking -- a matter of what kind of person the agent wishes to be? And, if that is so, then the past is not fully determinative. We know, as a matter of experience, of cases of metanoia, of changes in past beliefs and life styles. While this does not disprove determination by the past, it makes it very questionable.

As for being "random," that depends on how you define the term. If you mean not predictable, not fully immanent in the prior state, free acts are random in that sense. But, if you take "random" to mean "mindless," no account of well-considered decisions can hold they are random in that sense. Personal beliefs, dispositions, and impulses all enter proairesis, but they alone cannot be determinative because they are intrinsically incommensurate. They are materials awaiting the impress of form. It is not what we consider, but the weight we give to what we are consider, that is determinative. And, we give that weight, not in view of the past alone, but in view of the kind of person we want to emerge in shaping our identity.

This is a very nice account of practical reason, and a nice explanation of the sense in which past circumstances can't be held, even in conjunction with universal principles or laws, to uniquely determine the actions of rationally autonomous agents. It also seems broadly consistent with the account of practical reason that David Wiggins provides in his papers Towards a Reasonable Libertarianism and Deliberation and Practical Reason (both reprinted in Needs, Values, Truth, 3rd ed, OUP, 1998) and in his book Ethics: Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality, HUP, 2009.

Reply to Pierre-Normand Thank you for the kind words. I will look into Wiggins.

Reply to Dfpolis Society without responsibility is anarchy.

Quoting Jamesk

Society without responsibility is anarchy

Is it? I think that's a separate issue. In Nazi Germany we had a highly structured society in which no one seemed to take responsibility. Famously, most were "just following orders."

Reply to Dfpolis Nazi Germany was the very definition of state anarchy. The criminal elements took over all positions of power and they took responsibility very seriously, most top Nazi's were extreme animal lovers.

Reply to Jamesk I am sorry, but I do not see loving animals while killing innocent people as "taking responsibility seriously."

Anarchy is defined as "a state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority." We may not like the authority wielded in Nazi Germany, but it is a hallmark of all forms of fascism.

Reply to Dfpolis The SS functioned as a state within a state and an army within an army.

Reply to Jamesk Yes, it did.

Quoting Dfpolis

Can't we also agree that how a person weighs such factors is not merely backward looking, not merely a matter of past experience and belief, but also forward looking -- a matter of what kind of person the agent wishes to be? And, if that is so, then the past is not fully determinative. We know, as a matter of experience, of cases of metanoia, of changes in past beliefs and life styles. While this does not disprove determination by the past, it makes it very questionable.

No, it's not just beliefs - it's also due to dispositions and can be influenced by impulsiveness. These are also consistent with determination. Questionable? It's questionable either way.

The coherence of compatibilism shows that a determinist's ontological commitment is not falsified. Still, I agree that the coherence of compatibilism doesn't falsify a libertarian's belief either.

Quoting Dfpolis

I don't think the arguments given do this. They begin by noting that we feel responsible, and show how this plays a role in our behavior -- none of which is in dispute. The question of why would we have a false belief in responsibility if we are not responsible is simply not addressed. Why couldn't we reprogram the drunk driver with prison or a scarlet "D" because reprogramming works (if it does), and not because of an irrelevant responsibility narrative?

I suggest that you are defining responsibility from a libertarian's point of view, and observing that my account is inconsistent with it. The account I gave has the explanatory scope needed to show that moral accountability is still a coherent concept under compatibilism, even though it is not the identical concept to that of LFW.

Reply to Dfpolis Using Nazi Germany as an example is extreme. It was a one off thing and does not represent anything but insanity.

Quoting Dfpolis

Norms are intentional, for they are goals. So, they are not independent of mind in the sense of being physical states; however, they they exist in nature, as actual intentional states found in other natural persons, independently of us knowing or positing them.

I wasn't saying anything about whether they exist in nature (whatever distinction you'd be using for natural/artificial or whatever term you might be making a distinction with). If normatives are only mental, then there are no facts about them aside from the fact that a particular mind is thinking about them however that mind is thinking about them.

Quoting Relativist

No, it's not just beliefs - it's also due to dispositions and can be influenced by impulsiveness. These are also consistent with determination. Questionable? It's questionable either way.

It seems to me that your view precludes metanoia/conversion experiences. I am thinking of one of the great proponents of free will, St. Augustine. Before his conversion, he lived a very hedonistic life -- one driven by disposition and impulse, I think you would say if you'd met him. Then he decided that was not the kind of person he wished to be, and entirely re-ordered his life -- breaking with his former disposition and impulsive, hedonistic behavior. His is not a solitary case. Thus, experience shows that the past need not determine the future.

Quoting Relativist

The coherence of compatibilism shows that a determinist's ontological commitment is not falsified.

Coherence is not the primary criterion of truth. Adequacy to reality is. We need to look beyond self-consistency to see whether a position agrees with experience -- whether it "saves the phenomena" as Aristotle said. Redefining free will to make it compatible with determinism is little more than a bait and switch tactic. What experience tells is that mutually exclusive lines of action are equally in our power. What analysis shows us (I am thinking of Hume) is that there is no reason to believe that successive events follow necessarily.

Quoting Relativist

I suggest that you are defining responsibility from a libertarian's point of view, and observing that my account is inconsistent with it. The account I gave has the explanatory scope needed to show that moral accountability is still a coherent concept under compatibilism, even though it is not the identical concept to that of LFW.

The fact that one can re-define "responsibility," "free will" or any other term is not in question. Of course you may. They problem is that the concepts expressed by the common (pre-redefinition) use of these terms are elicited by the shared experience of those having those concepts. The redefined terms do not have this basis in common experience/reality.

Reply to Jamesk I am not comparing anyone to the Nazis. I am simply pointing to a well-known counterexample to the thesis that lack of responsibility implies anarchy.

Quoting Terrapin Station

If normatives are only mental, then there are no facts about them aside from the fact that a particular mind is thinking about them however that mind is thinking about them.

This forgets that thoughts are formal signs, often pointing to actual states of affairs. Here, what is signified is the potential fact that some physical state would not be, save for the initiation of a line of action by the responsible person. The norm's basis in reality is that the state of affairs so engendered would either advance or retard the self-realization of various people.

Quoting Dfpolis

The norm's basis in reality is that the state of affairs so engendered would either advance or retard the self-realization of various people.

What's an example of mentally-independent advancement or retardation of self-realization?

Reply to Dfpolis For all of those not in the Nazi party it was anarchy.

Reply to Dfpolis The way we are is not our choice. Hmmm.

What do you make of people who change the way they are through education, reflection, experience, insight, etc?

The way we are is a condition of our worldview which is definitely shaped by knowledge which is constantly changing. We update ourselves don't we?

For instance, people used to believe that sickness was caused by evil spirits. Now we don't. So, we're NOT the way we were.

Quoting Terrapin Station

What's an example of mentally-independent advancement or retardation of self-realization?

For retardation: being killed, being inadequately fed, sheltered, clothed, educated, etc.

For advancement: having adequate food, shelter, medical care, education, etc.

I am thinking of Maslow's hierarchy of values as reflecting the ordering of intermediate goals toward the attainment of self-realization. The values in Maslow's hierarchy can be examined empirically for their relevance to bio-personal development. As for self-realization as the high order goal, it is recognized in a number of traditions, Eastern and Western, as the goal of a well-lived life.

Reply to Jamesk I agree that it was a horror, but I do not think that the definition of "anarchy" fits the kind of horror it was.

Quoting TheMadFool

he way we are is not our choice. Hmmm.

This is not my position. I think that we are able to choose the kind of person we wish to be. I am unsure why you are addressing your questions to me, as I think we agree.

Quoting Dfpolis

I agree that it was a horror, but I do not think that the definition of "anarchy" fits the kind of horror it was.

Agreed

Reply to Dfpolis

What I'm asking for is the mentally-independent assessment that one state versus another counts as advancement.

Reply to Terrapin Station I may be missing something, but a more mature, educated, moral, healthier person, seems objectively more fully realized to me than one who is not. What am I missing?

Reply to Dfpolis

Something seeming some way to you isn't a mind-independent assessment is it?

Reply to Terrapin Station Any assessment has to be done by a mind, so, it seems that what you want, "a mind-independent assessment," is a contradiction in terms.

Reply to Dfpolis For what it’s worth, you’ve at least convinced me to be agnostic about LFW.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete Thanks. There is nothing wrong with an open mind.

Quoting Dfpolis

Any assessment has to be done by a mind, so, it seems that what you want, "a mind-independent assessment," is a contradiction in terms.

Hence "If normatives are only mental, then there are no facts about them aside from the fact that a particular mind is thinking about them however that mind is thinking about them."

Reply to Terrapin Station What do you mean by “only mental”? Words are only mental, too. Beliefs are only mental. Perhaps normatives refer to actual conduct and what is inter subjectively true?

Quoting Terrapin Station

Any assessment has to be done by a mind, so, it seems that what you want, "a mind-independent assessment," is a contradiction in terms. — Dfpolis

Hence "If normatives are only mental, then there are no facts about them aside from the fact that a particular mind is thinking about them however that mind is thinking about them."

This is a non sequitur. The fact that thoughts depend on the mind for their being does not prevent them from referring to and grasping objective reality.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

The meaning of a word is only mental. The sounds or marks etc. are not. Beliefs per se are mental, but if they correspond to something that's not only mental, they can be correct or incorrect.

Normatives don't correspond to anything non-mental. The actual conduct doesn't have anything like a normative in it.

Intersubjectivity is nonsense on my view, at least insofar as it attempts to refer to anything other than the facts that we can agree and cooperate with each other.

Reply to Dfpolis

You can't refer to or grasp the objective reality of anything that's only mental, because it's only mental--by definition not objective.

Are you claiming that normatives are referring to something non-mental that's anything like a normative? What objective thing?

Reply to Terrapin Station It’s objectively true that the Holocaust was evil.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

Nope.

There are no objective whatever-you-want-to-call-thems period when it comes to good, bad, evil, etc. (most terms, like assessments, evaluations, judgments, already suggest things we do, so you can use whatever term you think best suggests things the world does/is like independent of us)

Reply to Terrapin Station Agree to disagree. I believe in objective moral truths. Genocide is objectively wrong. Cold-blooded murder of babies is objectively wrong. Torture of religious heretics is objectively wrong.

Reply to Terrapin Station And burning atheists at the stake simply for being atheists is objectively wrong.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

Where would you say "genocide is wrong" is located in the world? What is "genocide is wrong" a property of?

I don't like "agreeing to disagree" about stuff like this. I want people to not have the same old incorrect beliefs.

Reply to Terrapin Station You cannot rationally will the maxim that genocide is permissible without denying basic human rights. I believe in human rights. I believe society cannot function optimally without them, and chaos goes against our order-seeking minds/brains.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

You just told me a bunch of stuff about how some people think, what they believe, what they prefer.

Your claim was that "genocide is wrong" can be found in the world independently of us.

So it doesn't do any good to attempt to support that by talking about how some people think, what they believe or what they prefer. The only way to support it is to give the evidence of "genocide is wrong" occurring mind-independently.

Reply to Terrapin Station I was referring to the objective fact that the human mind/brain seeks order. It orders the objective world, and human conduct is a part of the objective world.

Quoting Terrapin Station

You can't refer to or grasp the objective reality of anything that's only mental, because it's only mental--by definition not objective.

Are you claiming that normatives are referring to something non-mental that's anything like a normative? What objective thing?

No, I an saying norms have an objective foundation in reality, which though not themselves norms, justify the application of norms. For example, there is a biological basis for not eating 2-week old cream pie.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

I was referring to the objective fact that the human mind/brain seeks order

For it to be an objective fact, it has to be a fact that's mind-independent. How is a fact about the human mind mind-independent?

Quoting Dfpolis

No, I an saying norms have an objective foundation in reality, which though not themselves norms, justify the application of norms. For example, there is a biological basis for not eating 2-week old cream pie.

Do they objectively justify the application of norms?

Reply to Terrapin Station It’s a fact about how brains work. I can look at other people’s brains through fMRI’s and the accounts they give while being scanned. Then compare it to a large sample of scans and accounts.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

It’s a fact about how brains work.

Sure, a mental way that they work, right? (Otherwise you're not saying something about the human mind after all, no?)

Reply to Terrapin Station Your stipulation was that mental states refer to the outside world truths. I’m giving an account of how that can be shown objectively.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Your stipulation was that mental states refer to the outside world truths

That's not what I said (and there are reasons I definitely would never say that that way (which I don't want to get into because it would be a big tangent)).

What I said was that normatives, and moral stances, etc. are mental only. They don't correspond to something not mental. So talking about the human mind, which is the brain in particular (dynamic) states, isn't talking about something not mental, right?

Reply to Terrapin Station Brain scans aren’t mental. But I’m sure that’s not what you’re saying?

Reply to Terrapin Station fMRI scans in conjunction with reported accounts are observable phenomena. They are objective. That’s how we corroborate the mental activity of minds giving order to the world.

Reply to Terrapin Station Just take the example of a city. It is order. Minds came up with the idea, but there are physical aspects to what we call “cities”. Living as intelligent social beings, we also cannot consistently live together without emergent objective social norms.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Brain scans aren’t mental. But I’m sure that’s not what you’re saying?

Right, since a brain scan isn't a moral stance or a normative, etc.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

fMRI scans in conjunction with reported accounts are observable phenomena. They are objective. That’s how we corroborate the mental activity of minds giving order to the world.

What I kept specifying was mind versus mind-independent, no? I didn't say anything about whether anything is observable.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Just take the example of a city. It is order. Minds came up with the idea, but there are physical aspects to what we call “cities”. Living as intelligent social beings, we also cannot consistently live together without emergent objective social norms.

The question is whether norms, ethical stances etc. are mind-independent. The question isn't whether once we have norms and ethical stances in mind whether that has any impact on mind-independent stuff.

Is there a reason you didn't answer the question in the last post, by the way?

Reply to Terrapin Station Okay. I just don’t know how you could describe anything from a mind-independent viewpoint without positing a mind. So what is mind-independent knowledge?

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

You ignored the question I asked earlier and then ignored the question about why you ignored the question. I wasn't asking questions simply for decoration.

Reply to Terrapin Station Remind me which question. I’m thick.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

The first question was "Talking about the human mind, which is the brain in particular (dynamic) states, isn't talking about something not mental, right?"

Reply to Terrapin Station Brain states equate to mental states. I will give you that. But what is a mind-independent fact?

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

But what is a mind-independent fact?

Most states of affairs are mind-independent facts. A tree being deciduous, for example, or that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, or that seawater has an average salinity of about 3.5%, etc.

Reply to Terrapin Station Wrong. Without minds to make “sense” of the world, everything would be amorphous. You can’t posit a fact without first assuming a mind.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

You can’t posit a fact without first assuming a mind.

Positing a fact is different than the fact itself.

Reply to Terrapin Station A fact is nothing more than the order that the mind gives to the world. Without minds, there would be no facts.

Positing is something that we do. Mind-independent facts are not something we do. They just are.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

A fact is nothing more than the order that the mind gives to the world. Without minds, there would be no facts.

Why would you believe such nonsense? What led you to that conclusion?

Reply to Terrapin Station No. Consciousness is immanent in the world. I’m not a physicalist. How do you explain the fact that quanta change behavior once they are observed?

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

How do you explain the fact that quanta change behavior once they are observed?

Via noting that scientists have a tendency to reify instrumental models. They're particularly bad about that when it comes to anything mathematical.

Reply to Terrapin Station So quanta are just models, but hydrogen being the most abundant atom in the universe is not a model? Or that trees are deciduous or coniferous?

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

So quanta are just models,

Keep track of what you asked about. You asked about the idea of "changing behavior when observed." I didn't say "everything is an instrumental model," but I immediately guessed you'd go there (as if I did say that), because people in general also have a weird tendency to assume universal, simplified generalizations.

Reply to Terrapin Station It’s not a simplified generalization. It’s a fact that the mind models the physical world. The things-in-themselves have no facts independent of a mind. I’m not saying they’re not real. I’m just saying it doesn’t make sense to speak of “mind-independent facts”. You’re assuming an observer.

Reply to Terrapin Station I’m leaving town for a few hours. This is a fascinating conversation to me, but I will have to put it on hold.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

It’s not a simplified generalization

It would be to assume that I was saying "everything is an instrumental model" just because I said one thing is. That's what I was talking about re that phrase.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

It’s a fact that the mind models the physical world.

Sure. But that's not all it does, and the fact that the mind models the physical world doesn't imply that that's all there is.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

The things-in-themselves have no facts independent of a mind.

Again, why would you believe such nonsense? How would you come to that conclusion?

Reply to Terrapin Station Because a fact is an article of knowledge. It’s epistemic. Not metaphysical.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

No. A standard way to use "fact," in both philosophy and the sciences, is that it's a state of affairs, independent of our knowledge. We make statements about facts. Our knowledge is about facts. And we can get the facts wrong. We can be wrong about what the world is really like (which we can only know because we can get it right, too).

When you have time in the future I want you to answer how you're coming to the conclusions you are re mind-independent facts, whether we can know them, etc.

Reply to Terrapin Station How does the truth condition work then?

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

To get into my truth theory is going to be a big tangent. Don't you not have time at the moment? And we should probably start a different thread about it, because it would be a long, involved thing that would be getting even further off topic.

Also, if you have time I want you to answer this first: how you're coming to the conclusions you are re mind-independent facts, whether we can know them, etc.

We say we have justified true beliefs to have knowledge. But the truth condition may not refer to anything mind-independent. States of affairs are inherently mind-dependent. That’s how we can talk about them.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

States of affairs are inherently mind-dependent.

If you have time, I want you to tell me the process by which you reached that conclusion.

Reply to Terrapin Station My wife is still getting ready. Lol

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

Isn't she just an idea in your own mind on your view?

Reply to Terrapin Station No. But what she is really like independent of mind cannot be known.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

What possible grounds would you have for saying she's not just an idea in your own mind then?

Reply to Terrapin Station Because I believe in the physical world. I believe we get sense data from it. But I don’t think it makes sense to speak of her as mind-independent. She has a mind and I have a mind.

Reply to Terrapin Station In other words, it’s our minds which make sense of the sense data. Sense data isn’t things-in-themselves.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Because I believe in the physical world. I believe we get sense data from it.

I know this. I'm asking you on what grounds do you believe this, given your views?

Gotta go now. Be back later.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete Of course brains encode the contents we are aware of, but neither contents nor the processing of contents entails awareness of contents.

I am not sure how the brain encoding relates to whether norms have a basis in extramental reality, which was the point we were discussing.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Do they objectively justify the application of norms?

Yes. To thrive, you need to follow norms, not as rigid rules, but as defaults to be observed in the absence of overriding considerations.

Quoting Dfpolis

Yes. To thrive, you need to follow norms, not as rigid rules, but as defaults to be observed in the absence of overriding considerations.

Don't you have to desire to thrive rather than not thrive?

Quoting Dfpolis

Of course brains encode the contents we are aware of, but neither contents nor the processing of contents entails awareness of contents.

I am not sure how the brain encoding relates to whether norms have a basis in extramental reality, which was the point we were discussing.

I was trying to make the point that brain encoding, an objective phenomenon, gives rise to mental states as an emergent property. Normatives are thus objective as being encoded in the brain, and the emergent property of consciousness makes us aware of them. At least that’s what I think I was trying to say.

I was further discussing the objective fact that brains and their emergent mental states model reality through sense data, giving order to the chaotic natural world. Normatives are also an attempt to order human conduct, also a part of the natural world.

Quoting Terrapin Station

I know this. I'm asking you on what grounds do you believe this, given your views?

I believe a physical world is the best possible explanation for the variety of our sense data, the fact that they are able to be communicated intersubjectively and that they seem to come from without. Furthermore, it is impossible to communicate solely in the language of sense data without using outside world language to give it context.

Our minds interpret sense data. We do not have direct apprehension of the physical world. It is filtered through the senses and interpreted by the mind. So if that is the case, we model the physical world in our minds through sense data and our order-seeking circuitry. In that case, there are no mind-independent facts.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

Our minds interpret sense data. We do not have direct apprehension of the physical world. It is filtered through the senses and interpreted by the mind.

What do you consider to support the above belief?

Reply to Terrapin Station Do you deny that we have five senses?

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

No. How do you support that we do if you think you can't know what the physical world is really like?

Reply to Terrapin Station The truth condition refers to states of affairs as interpreted sense data. The truth condition does not refer to states of mind-independent reality. All knowledge occurs in minds, but I have my reason for believing in a physical world independent of minds. What it is like without a mind observing it through the senses is irrelevant. It has nothing to do with us.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete
Wait, are you saying that you believe this:

"Our minds interpret sense data. We do not have direct apprehension of the physical world. It is filtered through the senses and interpreted by the mind"

because of some definition of "the truth condition"?

And re this:

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

What it is like without a mind observing it through the senses is irrelevant. It has nothing to do with us.

Why would we only be interested in ourselves?

Reply to Terrapin Station No. That was just my coherent belief about the truth condition. My belief in the physical world is an abductive argument which I thought I had put to rest.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Why would we only be interested in ourselves?

You’re not getting what I’m saying. Life forms give meaning to the physical world. Without life forms, especially ones with consciousness, the physical world is irrelevant.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

I'm asking about your belief that we don't have direct apprehension of the physical world for example.

Reply to Terrapin Station Neuroscience, cognitive psychology, philosophy of mind. I’m sure you’re familiar with the theories put forth by these disciplines.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

Sure, but I don't believe that anything supports that we don't have direct apprehension of the physical world, and I'm asking for what you take to be a good reason to believe that.

Reply to Terrapin StationWhy do we only experience visible light through sight, and not the other frequencies of electromagnetic waves? Why do we see things that are far away as being smaller than things up close?

Reply to Terrapin Station Push in the side of your eye a little. Did your experience change?

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

Re light, we just happened to have evolved that way--it had evolutionary advantages for us, but how would that suggest that we don't have direct apprehension of the physical world? If anything, it would suggest just the opposite. Sensing things as they are is going to be a survival advantage.

Re apparent size, that's simply a perspectival difference. And again, how would that suggest that we don't have direct apprehension of the physical world?

Reply to Terrapin Station Plug your ears. Did the volume change?

Quoting Terrapin Station

Re apparent size, that's simply a perspectival difference. And again, how would that suggest that we don't have direct apprehension of the physical world?

Because the way things appear to the senses changes, when the physical world postulate should be constant. Our senses don’t reflect our models of reality. So, our apprehension of reality is not direct.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

When you plug your ears, you change sound waves travel from a source to your eardrums. Why do you think that you don't directly apprehend the way that really is?

Reply to Terrapin Station Perhaps that was a bad example. Sound to the mind has a particular quality. Sound as a model in the mind is air wave compressions.

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

You'd have to explain that one better.

Reply to Terrapin Station So, we say that sound is the compression of air waves. Is what you experience as sound anything like the model of sound as the compression of air waves?

Reply to Terrapin Station Also the color blue. Is what we experience of blue anything like the model of it being a particular frequency of electromagnetic wave?

Reply to Noah Te Stroete

Nothing is like a model or explanation. Models and explanations are words, equations, etc.

Reply to Terrapin Station So you are saying that blue is a quality, and that it is directly apprehended? What explanatory power does that have? What kind of knowledge is that?

Reply to Terrapin Station I’m afraid I am not thinking clearly. I didn’t sleep last night.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

So you are saying that blue is a quality, and that it is directly apprehended?

Yes. That's part of the properties of that wavelength of light/electromagnetic radiation.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

What explanatory power does that have? What kind of knowledge is that?

Why would it need to have explanatory power? And it's knowledge by acquaintance.

Get some sleep, by the way. :wink:

Quoting Terrapin Station

Don't you have to desire to thrive rather than not thrive?

Of course, and we know that we do by what Jacques Maritain calls "knowledge by connaturality" -- by being aware of how we naturally respond in various situations. This knowledge of our objective nature is part of the basis in reality for norms of behavior.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

I was trying to make the point that brain encoding, an objective phenomenon, gives rise to mental states as an emergent property.

The notion of "emergence" is that of an unexplained consequence and has no place in an explanatory or causal theory. It is clear that neural processing is a necessary part of most mental operations. It is unclear that such operations alone are an adequate explanation for them. Emergence is a claim that it is, while ducking the burden of an actual explanation.

I think the basis for norms is to be sought in what is known, rather in the mechanisms by which it is known. Thus, we know that we have natural needs and desires which are satisfied by determinate means. That is where I look for the basis of norms.

Quoting Noah Te Stroete

I was further discussing the objective fact that brains and their emergent mental states model reality through sense data, giving order to the chaotic natural world. Normatives are also an attempt to order human conduct, also a part of the natural world.

Does mean that you are looking to the means of knowing rather than what is known as the basis of norms? Perhaps in some neo-Kantian way?

Reply to Dfpolis

If you need a desire for that then there's nothing objective about it.

Quoting Terrapin Station

If you need a desire for that then there's nothing objective about it.

So, desires are not empirically knowable?

I am not saying that the experience of having a desire is intersubjectively available. I an saying that the desire itself is. Recently, a 7-year-old girl died of dehydration while in the custody of Trump's immigration goons. Was her desire for water not an objective fact?

Quoting Dfpolis

Was her desire for water not an objective fact?

Of course not. Desires are mental phenomena.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Was her desire for water not an objective fact?
— Dfpolis

Of course not. Desires are mental phenomena.

@Dfpolis was making an empirical claim about the 7-year-old girl. That she had a desire for water.

Don't you think that is a claim that can be true or false? And one that you can marshal evidence for or against?

Reply to Terrapin Station No, desires are generally physiological needs, accompanied by mental awareness of the need.

Quoting Dfpolis

No, desires are generally physiological needs, accompanied by mental awareness of the need.

I don't think that's quite right. According to Aristotle, desires are appearances of the good. They thus are directed outwardly to what appears good. If something is good because it fulfills a need, then desiring it betrays awareness that it indeed fulfills that need; if an agent is rational and self-conscious, she can self-ascribe the need that is being fulfilled by the desired object. But the intentional content of the desire is the proposition (true or false) that the desired object is good.

Quoting Pierre-Normand

No, desires are generally physiological needs, accompanied by mental awareness of the need. — Dfpolis

I don't think that's quite right. According to Aristotle, desires are appearances of the good. If something is good because it fulfills a need, then desiring it betrays awareness that it indeed fulfills that need; if an agent is rational and self-conscious, she can self-ascribe the need that is being fulfilled by the desired object. But the intentional content of the desire is the proposition (true or false) that the desired object is good.

I recall Aquinas saying that whatever we choose, we choose under the aspect (appearance?) of good. I would not be surprised to find that he derived this claim form Aristotle, but I do not recall the text. Do you?

While "aspect" and "appearance" can have the same denotation, their connotations are quite different. To see according to an aspect is to say that we see reality, but only partially, from a certain perspective. To say that we see an appearance leaves open the possibility that we are deceived -- that what we think see is not really there. Of course, we do err in judgements of perception, so we could choose something we think is good, but really is not. For example, one partner can deceive another in love, so the deceived commits for a sound, but false, reason.

If one has exercised due diligence, committing for a sound, but false reason, is not a culpable act, and culpability for sin is the context of Aquinas' discussion. So, "appearance" is not how I read Aquinas' (and presumably Aristotle's) main point. I think his main point is, that we do not choose evil acts because of their privative (evil) nature, but because of the actual, but lesser good, incorporating the privation. A suicide, for example, wishes the cessation of pain, which is a good, at the cost of deprivation of life, which is evil.

So, to return to my point, desires reflect states of need -- goods required for the realization of our potential that we lack. Thus, needs are based on our end-directed nature, some are physiological in origin, others intellectual or spritual. We know these by connaturality (as Maritain notes), by attending to the natural responses of our being to presented situations. Physiologically, the brain is informed of needs by neural and endocrine signals. Our awareness of this information, of the need for action directed to our natural self-realization, is, in my view, desire.

So, desire is an intentional state, but, as Brentano points out, the nature of intentional states it to point beyond themselves -- here to the need for action to continue toward our natural end (telos).

Quoting Dfpolis

I recall Aquinas saying that whatever we choose, we choose under the aspect (appearance?) of good. I would not be surprised to find that he derived this claim form Aristotle, but I do not recall the text. Do you?

Maybe the most relevant place is De Anima 433a27-28 (Translated by J. A. Smith, in The Complete Work of Aristotle - The Revised Oxford Translation Vol 1):

Now thought is always right, but appetite and imagination may be either right or wrong. That is why, though in any case it is the object of appetite which originates movement, this object may be either the real or the apparent good. -- 433a27-28

Here is the broader context:

That which moves therefore is a single faculty and the faculty of appetite; for if there had been two sources of movement—thought and appetite—they would have produced movement in virtue of some common character. As it is, thought is never found producing movement without appetite (for wish is a form of appetite; and when movement is produced according to calculation it is also according to wish), but appetite can originate movement contrary to calculation, for desire is a form of appetite. Now thought is always right, but appetite and imagination may be either right or wrong. That is why, though in any case it is the object of appetite which originates movement, this object may be either the real or the apparent good. To produce movement the object must be more than this: it must be good that can be brought into being by action; and only what can be otherwise than as it is can thus be brought into being. That then such a power in the soul as has been described, i.e. that called appetite, originates movement is clear. Those who distinguish parts in the soul, if they distinguish and divide in accordance with differences of power, find themselves with a very large number of parts, a nutritive, a sensitive, an intellective, a deliberative, and now an appetitive part; for these are more different from one another than the faculties of desire and passion. -- 433a21-433b4

I'll respond later to the rest of your challenging post.

Reply to Dfpolis Mentality is physiological, by the way. But I wouldn't say that there's any reason to believe that a desire, per se, can be nonmental. I don't buy the notion of unconscious mental content in general.

Also, needs always hinge on wants.

Reply to Pierre-Normand Thank you for the informative post. The citations are quite helpful.

Reflecting on them, we have used "desire" ambiguously. I was focusing on desire as based on a natural need, (call it "intrinsic desire"), while the passage you cite, and your subsequent discussion focuses on desire for a specific object (call it "directed desire"). If I thirst, I have a need for hydration, but that does not mean that I fixed on a particular beverage as the object to meet my need. So, we have intrinsic desire as a state of being (thirst) that we can be aware of, and an analogous use of "desire" as an intentional relation directed to an object, universal or specific, that we believe can meet that need in whole or in part.

Aristotle anticipates me on relation of desire and telos at 433a15: "And every appetite is directed to an end (to telei)."

The following passages also caused me to reflect:

Now thought is always right, but appetite and imagination may be either right or wrong.

I find this quite problematic as translated. Clearly, even in careful reflection, there is a chance for error. My Liddel and Soctt says orthos can also mean "norm." I can agree that the norm should be to follow thought over impulse.

To produce movement the object must be more than this: it must be good that can be brought into being by action; and only what can be otherwise than as it is can thus be brought into being.

This relates to what I sad about potential. Objects of desire have to have real potential if they are to advance the realization of our natural ends.

That then such a power in the soul as has been described, i.e. that called appetite, originates movement is clear. Those who distinguish parts in the soul, if they distinguish and divide in accordance with differences of power, find themselves with a very large number of parts, a nutritive, a sensitive, an intellective, a deliberative, and now an appetitive part; for these are more different from one another than the faculties of desire and passion.

These well-founded distinctions are lost in the projection of naturalist and purely neurophysiological thinking.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Mentality is physiological, by the way. But I wouldn't say that there's any reason to believe that a desire, per se, can be nonmental. I don't buy the notion of unconscious mental content in general.

Also, needs always hinge on wants.

Mentality is physiological in the sense that it is normally supported by the neurophysiological processing of informative contents. It is equally clear that it is inadequate to explain awareness of contents.

1. Neurophysiological data processing cannot be the explanatory invariant of our awareness of contents. If A => B, then every case of A entails a case of B. So, if there is any case of neurophysiological data processing, and it explains our awareness of the processed data (consciousness) then we would be aware of all the data we process. Clearly, we are not aware of all the data we process.

2. All knowledge is a subject-object relation. There is always a knowing subject and a known object. At the beginning of natural science, we abstract the object from the subject -- we choose to attend to physical objects to the exclusion of the mental acts by which the subject knows those objects. In natural science care what Ptolemy, Brahe, Galileo, and Hubble saw, not the act by which the intelligibility of what they saw became actually known. Thus, natural science is, by design, bereft of data and concepts relating to the knowing subject and her acts of awareness. Lacking these data and concepts, it has no way of connecting what it does know of the physical world, including neurophysiology, to the act of awareness. Thus it is logically impossible for natural science, as limited by its Fundamental Abstraction, to explain the act of awareness. Forgetting this is a prime example of Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness (thinking what exists only in abstraction is the concrete reality in its fullness).

3. The material and intentional aspects of reality are logically orthogonal. That is to say, that, though they co-occur and interact, they do not share essential, defining notes. Matter is essentially extended and changeable. It is what it is because of intrinsic characteristics. As extended, matter has parts outside of parts, and so is measurable. As changeable, the same matter can take on different forms. As defined by intrinsic characteristics, we need not look beyond a sample to understand its nature.

Intentions do not have these characteristics. They are unextended, having no parts outside of parts. Instead they are indivisible unities. Further, there is no objective means of measuring them. They are not changeable. If you change your intent, you no longer the same intention, but a different intention. As Franz Brentano noted, an essential characteristic of intentionality is its aboutness, which is to to say that they involve some target that they are about. We do not just know, will or hope, we know, will and hope something. Thus, to fully understand/specify an intention we have to go beyond its intrinsic nature, and say what it is about. (To specify a desire, we have to say what is desired.) This is clearly different from what is needed to specify a sample of matter.

4. Intentional realities are information based. What we know, will, desire, etc. is specified by actual, not potential, information. By definition, information is the reduction of (logical) possibility. If a message is transmitted, but not yet fully received, then it is not physical possibility that is reduced in the course of its reception, but logical possibility. As each bit is received, the logical possibility that it could be other than it is, is reduced.

The explanatory invariant of information is not physical. The same information can be encoded in a panoply of physical forms that have only increased in number with the advance of technology. Thus, information is not physically invariant. So, we have to look beyond physicality to understand information, and so the intentional realities that are essentially dependent on information.

(I am posting most of this as a new thread.)

Quoting Dfpolis

Mentality is physiological in the sense that it is normally supported by the neurophysiological processing

It's physiological in the sense that it's identical to physiology.

Quoting Dfpolis

Neurophysiological data processing cannot be the explanatory invariant

"Explanatory invariant"? What's that?

Quoting Terrapin Station

It's physiological in the sense that it's identical to physiology.

That is your belief. What is your justification?

Quoting Terrapin Station

"Explanatory invariant"? What's that?

The one principle explaining many cases. For example, the laws of nature are explanatory invariants because they, while unchanging, explain many, variable phenomena. It is by seeing what remains the same while the details vary that we come to an understanding of causality.

Reply to Dfpolis

So, say that someone says "(Part of) The explanation for billiard ball B moving in vector v after being struck by billiard ball A is F=ma."

And then the other guy goes, "That doesn't actually explain why billiard ball B moved. 'F=ma' doesn't seem anything like billiard ball B moving."

Is F=ma part of the explanation for why billiard ball B moved in vector v or not?

Quoting Terrapin Station

Is F=ma part of the explanation for why billiard ball B moved in vector v or not?

Materially considered, which is to say as a piece of text, it has nothing to do with the motion of billiard balls. Formally considered, which is to say as indicating relevant the physics, rather than the proposition as a text, yes, it partly explains the motion.

Reply to Dfpolis

I didn't ask what I wanted to ask clearly enough there.

The guy who says "That doesn't actually explain why billiard ball B moved. 'F=ma' doesn't seem anything like billiard ball B moving" says that F=ma is thus not an explanation.

The other guy says that it is.

What's required for it to "really be" an explanation in a case like this? We have two different opinions on whether F=ma is an explanation.

Reply to Terrapin Station I am still not sure what you're asking. The first thing that comes to mind is that there are many kinds of explanation. Aristotle distinguishes material, formal, efficient and final causes.

Materially, the ball moves because it retains its integrity and so is the principle of continuity in the change.

Formally, the ball moves as it does because of the laws of nature, approximately and partially described by F=ma.

The efficient cause of the ball moving is the strike of the cue, and beyond that the action of the player.

The final cause of the ball moving is, perhaps, the player's desire to win the game.

Is that what you are asking? In any event, F=ma is part of the explanation, but not all that can be said.

Reply to Dfpolis

The exact explanation for the example, and what we're explaining in the example, don't really matter. That's why I just picked something simple--it's just an example.

What I'm asking you is simply:

Joe says that "F=ma" isn't an explanation, because F=ma doesn't at all seem like what it's supposed to be explaining.

Frank says that "F=ma" is the explanation.

Is Joe right and Frank is wrong? Vice versa? What decides?

Quoting Terrapin Station

Joe says that "F=ma" isn't an explanation, because F=ma doesn't at all seem like what it's supposed to be explaining.

OK. Now I understand. For "F=ma" to be the explanation involves a lot of indirection. The string/proposition "F=ma" points to/elicits the mental judgement . (I use "" for words, <> for thoughts.) The concepts in the judgement (, and ) point to any aspects of reality capable of properly eliciting them. So, has for its referents any possible measured values of pushes and pulls, for example. It is because these concrete cases are all equally capable of eliciting that is a universal concept. The judgement, states a relation between these concepts that we believe always obtains in reality.

So, while Joe is right that the proposition is unlike the reality, what he is forgetting is that what the proposition points to is the reality and others like it.

Reply to Dfpolis

While trying to avoid diversions re semiotics, semantics, etc. at the moment (we might not be able to avoid that tangent for long, but I'll try to avoid it), Joe says that force referring to "any possible measured values of pushes and pulls" and all of the rest of that isn't an explanation because it doesn't at all seem like what it's supposed to be explaining.

So who is right and who is wrong? Is it an explanation or not? And who gets to decide?

Reply to Terrapin Station We can each define terms to suit ourselves. So, Joe can define "explanation" in his way and Frank in his. That seems to be what is happening here. Assuming that both understand the relations I outlined, they agree on the facts of the case. Instead, each has a different idea in mind when they say "explanation." Logically, this is equivocation, and so it is not a problem about reality, but about choice of linguistic convention.

Reply to Dfpolis

Just to be clear, Joe is saying that the relations you outlined, as something general about the world, do not seem like billiard balls striking billiard balls and what happens to them when struck.

Reply to Terrapin Station Then he does not understand how predication works.

Reply to Dfpolis

I don't think I understand "how predication works," either, if that would be pertinent here.

How would you say it works? (I wonder if it's something that I'd think has some merit or that I'd think gets things wrong.)

Reply to Terrapin Station When we judge that A is B, it is because what evokes the concept is identically what evokes the concept . For example, when we judge it is because the object evoking is the very same object that evokes the concept . Thus, the copula "is" betokens identity -- not in the concepts it links, but in the source of the concepts it links. If what evoked did not also evoke , even if some other triangle did, the judgement would be false.

So, when we make affirmative predications, we are affirming identity of concept source, and when we make negative predications, we are denying it.

So, the explanation works, because in the actual case, the relevant concepts are all evoked by the same event -- and we have previously accepted that in any case evoking all the required concepts their relation will be given by F=ma.