We have no free will
Free will requires us to have autonomous control over our actions. Actions are initiated by mental states, specifically preferences. We have no control over our preferences: certain things are uncomfortable or comfortable for reasons outside of our control. I feel pain after stubbing my toe: I cannot control this reaction - I can't tell myself that stubbing my toe isn't going to hurt anymore. I feel pleasure while hanging with friends: I cannot control this reaction, I cannot control the immediate surge of pleasure I get when I hang with friends.
Thus our actions are pre-determined by preferences that we have no control over, and therefore we have no free will.
Part of me actually finds this to be kind of horrifying. Even the greatest pleasures, the most sublime happiness, is the way it is because of reasons outside of our control. We like things not because we chose to like them but because these preferences were forced on us.
Thus our actions are pre-determined by preferences that we have no control over, and therefore we have no free will.
Part of me actually finds this to be kind of horrifying. Even the greatest pleasures, the most sublime happiness, is the way it is because of reasons outside of our control. We like things not because we chose to like them but because these preferences were forced on us.
Comments (74)
Acfions initiated by mental states and preferences sounds suspiciously like choices. You seem to want gave control of choice itself, as if we were free to select what was entailed in any choice, such that if I made a choice to make this post, such I could select whether of not I wrote something and posted to the server.
The notion of free will you are using is one that demands nothing be chosen.
The preference itself is the choice. No doubt we can have no control over our choices in this sense. That would entail predetermining what we do. Free will requires our choices occur without such restriction.
At each moment, we must have the freedom to have any preference. If our preferences were set prior to their being, we would have no freedom in our action.
"Reason behind" a choice are a red herring. A choice is not defined by a prior thought or desire, but by the choice itself.
Because of this, any attempt at a radical metaphysical rebellious existentialism is going to be shallow as it ignores our inability to free ourselves from our preferences to begin with. The only rebellion worthy of such a name would be one in which the agent performs actions that are entirely against his own preferences - which is impossible to do without having a preference to rebel in the first place.
The reason might be "why" you tend to the source of the pain, but it is not the act of tending to it. It's only a story. You say you were destined to act that way because you didn't want pain, but it's not true. Sometimes people feel pain, hate it and do nothing about it. Indeed, you might have acted that way. You just chose to tend to it.
"Rebellious existentialism" isn't interested in freeing anyone from preferences. It's point is one cannot free themselves from their preference-- you must choose, you must have a preference and there is no other state which can define it. Its freedom is defined in our inability to determine our preferences.
For example how many of us cut our knees playing sport as a child but didn't notice the cut until we looked down to see the blood. It was only then it hurt.
As someone with tinnitus, I found I could choose to listen to it and get upset, or focus on other things and let my brain learn to ignore it. I rarely notice I have it now.
Hard determinists may argue that values just are the same sort of things as preferences and desires: that they are fully predetermined by inborn temperament and past conditionings. But this is to overlook the fact that what values we endorse is sensitive to our present reasons for endorsing them. It is misleading to say that we can't choose what good reasons we have for acting in the way we do (or endorse the values we do). A reasonable account of free will doesn't portray the will as an ability to act, or to chose, in a arbitrary manner unconditioned even by reason, but rather portrays it as an ability to act in accordance with reason.
This is another homunculus argument very similar to the one that proves we cannot see things. Light enters the eye, optic nerve signals, neurons fire, etc, but 'we' don't 'see' the world. The explanation of how we see purports to demonstrate that we don't see.
"Actions are initiated by mental states" looks as if it is saying something other than "we initiate actions".
Quoting darthbarracuda
Again, it looks as though there is a me, a mental state and some preferences. This disowning of myself into fragments does indeed result in a powerless homunculus that has no will at all, but is ruled by outside forces called 'preferences'. But I choose to strangle the little wretch to silence its incessant complaints and excuses, and since it has no preferences of its own, it doesn't even care.
But the alternative is incoherent. What would it mean to be able to like something this morning and then not like it this afternoon because we want to? Life would be near impossible if we didn't have stable preferences. Imagine shopping at a supermarket for the week's groceries if you couldn't be sure that you will not find the breakfast cereal you like today repulsive next Monday! There is in fact a condition which renders choice all but impossible in such a situation leaving people standing for hours in front of the same shelf literally unable to make up their mind between two brands for example.
Preferences are, by definition, predispositional. They may develop and change over time as we acquire tastes and are exposed to new experiences but but we can't flip between liking something and not liking something and we should be jolly glad of it!
Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”
? Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms
You find it horrifying not because you've decided it's horrifying, but you find it horrifying because you're compelled to find it horrifying, just like it hurts when you stub you toe.
Fortunately, I believe in free will, which, according to you, I believe in because I am compelled to. You might try to convince me otherwise, but I would ask that you save yourself the breath because I'm going to believe what I am forced to believe regardless of what you say. But, then again, you're forced to try to convince me regardless. We're all just sort of doing what we must, which includes our having this futile conversation.
Which is of course false.
Which is of course true.
For every action there is a preference. The act of choosing one's preferences is an act itself, which requires a preference that was not chosen.
In which case, I would argue that they have other preferences over-riding others. Accomplishment is the essence of action. We want something to be the case, therefore we do something.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
My point was that the ultimate act of rebellion in the existential sense would be a rebellion against yourself. It's why we see people who go cliff jumping as totally crazy, yet somehow in an endearing way. They are fighting against their own body's preferences which instantiate themselves as fear and anxiety. But cliff jumping would pale to the maximal act of rebellion, which would be suicide. It wouldn't make sense to kill yourself when you are really, really happy - yet for the rebellious this is exactly what they ought to do.
And that's kind of what I was getting at here, we don't have control. We only think we have control. We didn't get to choose what was to be enjoyable and uncomfortable to us. For some reason, synthwave music jives with me - but I had no choice in this matter. I enjoy synthwave music, and I enjoy it without my own consent. I know that sounds edgy but really if we're all about existential rebellion, then this is kind of important. If we're really actually concerned about individuality then we need to recognize that we don't even have control over who we are, and that the greatest act of individuality would be the rebellion against the individual himself.
Quoting Weeknd
On the contrary I think it rather that our mind, our sense of self, is aligned with what the body needs. But what the body does and needs does not always align with the self - see hunger, thirst, aging, etc.
Quoting unenlightened
Yes, I meant preferences which would be outside of the self's grasp. I did not choose to hate tomatoes, for example. This preferences against tomatoes guides my action - without any over-riding higher-level preferences, I will not eat tomatoes. So I suppose it does look like a homunculus, but then again I suspect agency is entirely epiphenomenal.
This may only seem true from the standpoint of a metaphysics of Humean events that are individuated independently of their relational and causal relationships. This Humean view also tends to assimilate each and every manifestation of a "mental state" (including manifestations of so called "motivational states") with an isolable "event" in space and time. From the point of view of a more Aristotelian metaphysics -- a naturalism that is more biologistic than physicalistic -- acts of the will are actualizations of rational/practical embodied capacities rather than them being self standing events that are merely caused to happen by antecedent events and conditions.
If one drops the Humean view, actions and choices (including endorsements of values) can thus be seen as manifestations of a rational agent's orientation of her will. This is a manifestation of her sensitivity to the reasons that she has to act in this or that way in such or such general range of circumstances. If one seeks to trace further back the causal antecedents of the actualization of such rational/practical capabilities then what one primarily finds aren't more ancient "acts of will" but rather the conditions that led up to, or enabled, the formation of that person's rational character and capabilities. This account need not lead a free will defender to any troublesome regress since there is no need to deny that one must have had the good fortune to have sufficiently matured intellectually (thanks to one's biology and culture) before one can act freely.
But what are these reasons, other than preferences (i.e. needs, desires, concerns, etc)?
If we are not free when we have to follow a social contract that we did not agree to, then we are not free when we have to follow preferences that we did not agree to.
For example the pedophile may have an implicit preference for children but may also believe this to be wrong and so thus has a higher-level preference that disables the pedophilic preference. However, this pedophilic preference still has influence, since it has to be repressed.
Even the higher-level preferences we did not ask for. The preference to be loved, the preference to have a good set of friends, the preference to have a stable job, etc - although we may really really enjoy these preferences being satisfied, after reflection we can come to realize that these preferences are inherently limiting in their nature. They limit what we can and cannot do by limiting what we like and dislike. Therefore, we have no control over what we like and dislike, and therefore have no control over what options will be seen as better than others.
This is why I was saying rebellious existentialism is sort of incoherent, since it takes a preference (that of being an individual) and forgets where this preference came from (not from the individual!).
You need to stretch your nostrils if you want to reach into your brain and grasp your preferences. There are bits of yourself that can be grasped, and bits that cannot. You seem to be wanting to grasp your wanting to grasp, and concluding that you cannot grasp anything if you cannot grasp that.
If you care to experiment, you will find that you can eat tomatoes even if you prefer not to. It just requires will-power. But even if you are entirely the slave of your passions and your passions are out of control, you unfreedom only arises because you separate yourself from your passions so as to say, 'not I, but my preferences choose'. The homunculus is yourself imagined without passions, so as to choose them.
Imagine that one could do that with every aspect of oneself. When one is choosing to like tomatoes or not to, who is choosing, and on what basis. I suggest that if you liked tomatoes, you would not be darthbarracuda, but darthfruitfly. Perhaps in the spirit world, darthfruitfly chose not to like tomatoes, and was reincarnated as darthbarracuda. It's all his choice, not yours. But this is nonsense talk, isn't it?
Yes. And there is always no one lurking behind the preference not being able to choose it, only an imaginary homunculus.
No. if there is an individual, then its preferences are itself.
It is only in dividing the individual that one part, the preference can be an imposition on another part, the complainant.
This question involves a category error. Reasons are categorically distinct from preferences (or desires, concerns, etc.). If you need milk and believe the corner store to be open, then you may believe that you have a good reason to go to the corner store. But you may be mistaken about that if the corner store is in fact closed. Your being right or wrong about that need not be conditioned by your preferences. You may want to say that upon learning that the store is closed the acquisition of this knowledge leads you to reorder your preferences (e.g. you now prefer to stay home and drink orange juice). But this reordering of preference of yours is sensitive to the fact that it is pointless to go to the corner store to buy milk when the corner store is closed.
Some philosophers with a Humean bent believe that only instrumental actions (things done for the sake of something else, or for the sake of some end) are sensitive to (instrumental) rationality while the choices of the ends themselves aren't sensitive to reasons. The latter merely reflect brute "passions", which we are passively affected by or straddled with, according to such philosophers. But that is a prejudice. It is routine for human beings to reflect on the cogency of their pursuing the ends that they pursue, and have their wills reoriented on the basis of such deliberation. Many among our ends are rational ends (i.e. sensitive to reasons) rather than them all being brute a-rational desires. This is not to say that our natural or culturally ingrained proclivities don't effect the ends that we take ourselves to be justified to pursue, but we hardly are slaves to those proclivities.
I've been going back over Sam Harris' book Free Will, and I think the main point of his entire way of looking at free will may just be to get people to accept that a lot of what they believe about the world around them, was determined by things beyond their control. I think his point is that if we believe we and other humans have free will, then there are certain expectations that go along with that belief, and we tend to hold ourselves and others accountable. If we truly believed no one has free will, then those expectations would be very different.
I bought into Dennett's fear-mongering for a while. But, then I met some people who, because of Harris, were totally convinced that they have no free will. They and Harris are living good lives, as far as I can tell. They're not out there committing crimes and blaming those crimes on the universe.
Like my other thread suggests... I think any position on free will would have to be one of blind faith.
Regardless of free will or not, we still consider the consequences of our actions... (at least if we're sane).
...but as I said, I think we do have some free will. Maybe we get more when we are learn to be responsible enough to use it. So far in this world, we have a lot to learn.
If Harris were right about our not having free will, our not being responsible for out decisions, and our actions being entirely determined by past circumstances that lay entirely outside of our control, then, while it could still be judged to be sane in a purely medical/psychological sense for one to consider the consequence of one's actions prior to acting, it would be practically irrational to do so, just as it is irrational for us to deliberate about things that we know not to be in our power to affect generally.
It has been pointed out to Harris that if it is true from one's perspective, at any given instant, that what one is poised to do already had been determined at that time by one's (and the Universe's) past history then it is pointless to deliberate what to do. Harris's reply to this seemingly absurd practical consequence of his view is to claim that while we can't control the causes of our action, our actions nevertheless have consequences and since consequences matter we ought to take them into account while deliberating what to do. But this answer is completely point missing and is a garbled attempt to take in stride the central insight from compatibilism while, at the same time, denying the cogency of compatibilism.
If we can't control what it is that we are going to do, then we can't control what the consequences of our actons will be, either. If Harris were consistent he would have to claim that, while the consequences of our action matter greatly, it is a sad tragedy of our human predicament that we are powerless to control what it is that we are going to do and we must therefore just as well stand back -- wait and see what the Universe already had in store for us -- and cherish however little confort we can get from the though that the consequences of our resigned inaction were inevitable and thus leave us blameless.
Many years ago I met someone who genuinely believed in a deterministic universe and that everything was fate and we had no free will.
He used it as an excuse for his actions.
But that's an entirely false dichotomy. Preferences are an expression of the individual. They are not somebody else's preferences, nor are they community 'property'. They are, by definition, what makes me me! No matter how they came to be what they are, their source is always me. They were not transferred to me from any external source.
One can be a determinist and still acknowledge the responsibility they have for their actions. If one doesn't do that, however, it just makes them a conceited prick. And not very wise.
See my brain made me do it.
Depends what you mean by not getting out of trouble. In some peoples minds, being punished by being put into jail (for example) just makes them feel like martyrs.
Anyway, shouldn't we be more concerned about the cause of actions rather than the consequences? Maybe this is where things are going wrong...
They characterize you but they aren't the product of your will or anything like that. One morning you woke up and found that you wanted orange juice. You didn't decide that you wanted orange juice.
A lot of the existentialists were all about radical freedom, and anti-essentialists. Like Sartre said, existence precedes essence. Which I find to be entirely incoherent, since to exist is to have certain properties and qualities outside of your control.
So say you wake up one day and want orange juice. You get orange juice and it makes you satisfied. But reflecting upon all this you can come to realize that, since you didn't choose to have this preference, you're merely following the rules the universe programmed into you.
So then perhaps in disgust you throw down my glass of orange juice and decide to rebel. But your life is filled with preferences, and this would require a massive undertaking to resist all these preferences. You didn't choose to make the smell of lavender soothingly calming, dammit! You don't want to be a posh resident of the universe, pampered (insulting to the dignity of the ego), and neither do you want to be a pawn of the universe, thrown around without your consent (also insulting)!
But eventually you will realize that all of these preferences are meant to keep you alive - that's the universe's game, to keep you alive until you can procreate and defend the clan. Therefore, in order to rebel, you must discontinue living.
However you then also immediately realize that the preference to live seems to be more important than being an individual - in fact, you realize later, that the preference to be an individual is itself a preference. You didn't get to decide if you wanted to be an individual, you were thrown into the world from nothing-ness.
This leads me to believe that the self has absolutely no causal relevancy here. And it also leads me to believe that existentialism, with its focus on freedom and rebellion, fundamentally falls short because it doesn't realize that our preferences, who we are, are not a product of ourselves at all. We don't have control. And if we can't have control, then what's the point of being an individual?
We also feel pleasure and pain. I doubt we will ever be able to program a robot to really 'feel' pleasure and pain. What would be the point of making something feel pain if it was 100% programmed with no free will anyway?
It seems that we are more guided by stick and carrot than programmed. After all, isn't that how we bring our children up?
I think it is probably true that you don't feel you have any control over why you are so cynical about existence, but it might be mistaken to believe that this is therefore a general truth or a philosophical principle.
To be fair I wasn't trying to cover everything...lol.
Actually just to mention that I don't pretend to know any answers (that would be dangerous). I am just on a journey, like many of you, to get closer to the truth. Whether I'll ever get there is another matter. :)
Quoting darthbarracuda
Even those habits which you are born with, instincts which keep you alive, may be overcome through the power of choice, this is demonstrated by the hunger strike.
Your argument fails to dismiss free choice, because you would need to produce a human inclination which could not be overcome by the power of the will, in order to prove your point. But each and every activity of the human being may be overcome through the power of choice, as is demonstrated by suicide.
Yes, I agree that the carrot/stick analogy doesn't sit well on it's own. It does blomin' feel like it sometimes though.
I think inspiration is also a massive driver. Again we can choose whether to act on it or not.
You sound like Dennett. I'm not aware of Harris or any of his followers blaming the universe for their own inappropriate behavior, are you?
That being said, I do consider my background and previous conditions when I think about my and other people's behaviors.
I think that's where Searle is coming from, as well. I think he concedes that IF a deterministic universe, then not really technically free will. But, when we go into a restaurant, it's still up to us to order a meal. The universe isn't going to do it for us. That's free will - and it's a free will that is independent of the type of universe we're in.
So, are we just supposed to have faith that we are in a deterministic universe? Or hope we're not in one? Be agnostic about it?
Can one claim to know that one does have free will, and not also make a claim about the type of universe we're in? The two topics look to be inseparable.
The power of the will? What is the will, if not the manifestation of the most prominent preference, or the conglomeration of a multitude of compatible and cohesive preferences?
This is the power to not choose, to decline or deny any preference. Since it can decline any preference whatsoever, it cannot be a preference itself. To say that will power, which is the power to deny any preference, is itself a form of preference, is contradictory.
Well, it's a long time since I read Sartre and Camus, but this isn't how existentialism lives on in my memory. In one sense all you seem to be saying is that you yourself are some sort of essentialist: you deny responsibility for your acts, you think you have a set of things called 'preferences' that arise in you unbidden. Well, that certainly is anti-existentialist, but it seems odd. Where do these 'preferences' come from? Why are they insensitive to rationality? And how do you know they are? Is there empirical evidence to back up your claim?
My neo-Sartreian existential take would be different. There is the inauthentic life. This is lived when you have thought a reasonable amount about what makes you tick, and understand the well-springs of your choices pretty well, but you go on conforming to conventionality by living a life you have seen through. Or you can live the authentic life by your actions, which may be absurd, lack rational explanation or defy reason, but are actions which you make happen and which then, make you: you are no longer the product of a conformity you have seen through, you are your own person. Onwards, to freedom!
The years take their toll of such a view, and Sartre himself came to sympathise more in later life with the Marxists he originally opposed - there are more deterministic pressures on how to live than one might suppose in one's youth. But I still feel it has some thing going for it. Indeed I went and read some Kierkegaard properly for the first time this summer and found, lo! - the immediate, the life lived and leapt into - this is what defines us by our making it happen. (A strange and tortuous leap in Soren's case, but there you go) We begin where Heidegger begins (and Heidegger is where Sartre begins) with our ordinary sense of ourselves alive, among things ready to hand and present at hand, we don't begin with abstractions about so-called essentials but with existence/Existenz...whence the leap, freedom, the joy of authenticity...
Not necessarily. We can see will-power as a kind of illusion. In any case, what exactly is going on when we choose, if not the process of evaluating our preferences? If our preferences don't causally affect our choices, then what exactly causes us to choose one option rather than another?
The free will!
If you understand that there is a process of evaluating preferences, how can you conclude that a preference is the cause of the choice. Whatever it is that carries out the act of evaluating preferences must be something other than a preference itself, or else it could not evaluate, it would always choose itself, as the preference with power over the others.
Why would you say this? It appears as contradiction. How can you say that "it chooses", if whatever it chooses it must choose? How is that a choice at all?
Quoting darthbarracuda
Yes, it absolutely does make sense. This is how we proceed to kick our bad habits. We just face the fact that certain things are not good for us, and force ourselves not to choose those things, even though they are our preferences.
Quoting darthbarracudaI don't think you understand the way that the will works. Do you understand the concept of "will power"? This is the capacity which we have to resist from following our natural preferences, habits, and things like this which give us pleasure. Once we apply the will power to prevent ourselves from engaging in these unwanted activities, produced by unwanted preferences, we give ourselves the freedom to choose other things. So the will acts to negate all preferences, resist any activity, giving the rational mind time to consider many options. The choice produced by the rational mind is not one of "preference", but one of reason. Then the will releases the suspended choice, allowing the individual to act according to reason rather than preference.
Your view that every practical choice that we make is governed by "preference" isn't false but it needs to be qualified. There is a liability to run together two different senses of "preference". In the first sense, a preference-1 is an antecedent desire or inclination. It is manifested in an agent's tendency to chose to engage in some sorts of behaviors, to tend to some specific sorts of needs, or to favor the achievement of some specific ends (e.g. enriching herself financially or fulfilling her promises). Preferences of that sort are general dispositions that get manifested in circumstances appropriate to them, and which may, but need not, be irrational. This sense of "preference" (that I here label preference-1) is roughly equivalent to "desire"; but labeling it such isn't very useful since the conflation that I wish to warn against also applies to two distinct senses of "desire".
In the second sense, an agent's prefered-2 action is what this agent effectively choses to do in the specific circumstances in which she is called to deliberate and act. That the two senses of "preference" are different is displayed in the fact that they often conflict with one another, as I had hinted in a previous post. What an agent choses to do, in response to rational considerations and evaluation of the salient features of her practical situation (e.g. her opportunities, obligations, general concerns, etc.) manifests, by definition, her preference-2, but often goes against some of her preferences-1. (The phenomenon of akrasia, or weakness of the will, highlights a further complication regarding the concept of preference-2 that I am leaving on the side for now.)
On a crude Humean conception of practical rationality that has been popular in analytic philosophy (but has found much disfavor in more recent Anscombe inspired philosophy of action), and that may not be entirely fair to Hume, preference-2 -- what an agent effectively "prefers-2", or choses, to do -- always is the result of some intrinsically stronger preference-1 (brute desire, or habit) winning out over other preferences-1 that it potentially conflicts with.
On that view, reason always is the slave of passions, as Hume would say, since its scope of operation is entirely restricted to instrumental deliberation: finding means to achieving antecedently determined ends. But once the distinction is properly kept in mind in between preferences-1 and preferences-2, the Humean slogan admits of two readings: only the first one of which supports the crude conception of practical rationality as being governed by preferences-1 that we are passively straddled with and have no control over. Under the second reading, the always present "passion" or "motivational state" that leads an agent into action can be, and indeed always is, sensitive to reason. Habits can be molded and they can be overridden. Preferences-2 are rational, although Hume avoids qualifying them thus since he himself is attacking a crude intellectualist conception of rationality.
What Hume can thus be justly taken to be objecting to is a crude conception of reason that portrays is to be entirely independent of habit and motivation. The second reading of Hume's dictum is defended and elaborated upon by David Wiggins in his Ethics: Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality. The distinction that I have stressed between two sorts of preferences (two sorts of "imperatives") has been stressed in a similar spirit by John McDowell in his paper Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?. Although those texts focus on issues of meta-ethics, they are centrally relevant to the philosophy of action and of practical rationality, generally.
This preference #2, is only determined after a choice is made, posteriorly, it describes the choice which has been made. "She choose X, therefore it was her preference". Since free will is directed toward choices which will be made, this preference #2 is irrelevant to the free will/determinism issue. Preference #2 cannot act as a cause, and to introduce this sense of "preference" is to create ambiguity with the possibility of equivocation.
Of course, that was exactly my point. The two concepts, however, are frequently run together, and Darthbarracuda seems to be relying on running them together in order for his anti-free-will argument to run through. At the same time the concept of preference that singles out what a person effectively choses to do when faced with a range of alternatives that she has deliberated over is a perfectly good concept that reflects a quite normal use of the word "preference". ("I prefer to order the salad because I am dieting" is consistent with "I much prefer eating apple pie to eating salad"). It is thus quite useful to distinguish this concept of an 'all things considered preference' precisely to avoid the equivocation with the other concept of an antecedent and merely general preference -- or desire, or habit of choice -- that may conflict with an agent's assessment of what it is that she deems that she ought to do, or with what it is that she effectively chooses to do precisely because she judges that she ought to do it.
Exactly, it's not a choice at all. It's like a compass pointing to north - it is forced to point north, but nevertheless we need the needle to know where north is.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But to kick our bad habits requires us to have the preference to be rid of these bad habits. An override.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What does reason accomplish if not goals, and where do goals come from if not preferences?
Practical reason is an ability to arbitrate between potentially conflicting goals. Some specific goal may be judged to take precedence over another goal, in a particular practical situation, when there is a good reason for it to do so. Practical reason is the ability to understand such reasons and to be motivated by them to act accordingly. Reasons themselves, unlike raw desires, baby squirrels or meteorites, do not come from anywhere. It's a category mistake to ask where a reason comes from. One can ask where the human ability to reason practically (i.e. to be sensitive to reasons) comes from, but reasons themselves stand on their own. If someone's reason to do, or to believe, something is bad, what is required in order to show this reasons to be bad, and thereby motivate an agent to abandon it, isn't a story about the causal origin of that reason (or the causal origin of the specific goal that it recommends one to act upon), but rather a good counterargument.
This is where you are incorrect. The "override" is a judgement that the habit is bad. It is only a "preference" to be rid of the habit in the second sense of "preference", as Pierre-Normand has argued. So your conclusion is one drawn from equivocation.
The fact is, as I have argued, and Pierre-Normand now agues, that we use reason to judge conflicting preferences, and this is called making a choice. The process which judges preferences cannot itself be a preference. Only after the judgement is made can we say that the chosen one was the preferred one. But if the chosen one is called "the preference", this uses "preference" in a different way from the "preferences" which are judged. The chosen one, as "the preference", comes about as an effect of the choice, and cannot be the cause of the choice.
So you have not addressed the process which judges the preferences to make a choice. You have simply asserted that a "preference" causes the choice, so it is not a choice at all. But this is simplistic nonsense because clearly different preferences are judged, and not a single one of them actually causes itself to be chosen. They are judged as passive possibilities, not active causes. The active cause of the choice comes from that which is judging.
I see no reason to distinguish between preferences and reasons, as if they are two completely separate things. Reasons, in my view, are just static preferences. I have a reason to go for a run today, because I want to be in good shape. I may not actually prefer to go for a run (exercise is hard...), but this preference is over-ridden by the reason (preference) to be fit.
Thus we can have a static grouping of preferences (reasons) if we have a static goal - to be fit, to understand the truth, etc. The division between normative reasons and non-normative preferences thus, in my view, cannot be sustained.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But to what standard do we judge conflicting preferences, if not the goals we have in mind to accomplish?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We choose an option depending on what our overarching goals are. Do I go to the movie theater, or donate to a charity? In both cases, I have a preference to have fun, and a preference to be moral. And this is where we get into the idea of character, or the static preferences a person has. The character is what ultimately decides between two or more preferences, based on what the person's higher-order goals are and a deliberation as to which of the possible routes of action helps attain this goal the best. But of course none of us decided what our character would be, or who we would fundamentally be as a person.
Right, for the sake of argument, let's assume that reasons are "static preferences". Being static, they cannot act as a cause. It is the reasoning mind, which uses static preferences, in the process of reasoning, which causes the decision. It cannot be a preference which is the cause of a decision because the preferences are not active, they are passive. The mind is active in the process of reasoning, and it is the mind which causes the decision, not the preference.
Quoting darthbarracudaWe judge things according to principles, not goals. We look for objective principles, and we can judge our goals as to whether they are consistent with the principles which we believe are objective.
Quoting darthbarracuda
No, I don't believe that these are "higher order goals" at all, they are principles. You make the decision of whether to go to the movie, or donate the money to a charity, based on the principles you hold, not on some preference. Your preference is dependent on you principles. So I think that you misrepresent principles as preferences. But a principle is not the same thing as a preference. We know, and believe that preferences are subjective and vary from one individual to another. We know and believe that principles can obtain a high degree of objectivity, as is the case with mathematical principles. And we often employ mathematical principles when deciding what to do. So we know and also believe that principles are completely different from preferences. Now we only need people like you to understand and believe, that it is principles which a rational human being uses to make decisions, not preferences.
You misunderstand what I meant by static. By static, I merely meant unchanging, I didn't mean causally inert. The existence of a opportunity-preference, paired with a principled, character-building preference, leads to action.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I hesitate to accept this idea of a perfectly rational mind, built upon sturdy, concrete principles and noble truths. For where do these principles come from, and why do we uphold them if not by a preference to uphold them?
Principles become rules in which to follow, given a framework which we adopt based upon certain preferences.
I don't view them to be completely separate either. General preferences (which I've previously identified as preferences-1) are general and abstract -- they reflect rational tendencies -- while the reason why one acts (which singles out one's preference-2) are specific and sensitive to the particular circumstances in which one acts. Both of them are normative since both of them are involved in the operation of practical rationality. Someone who is practically rational must be sensitive both the the reasons why someone must generally act in such or such a way in some general class of situations (e.g. keep one's promises, or avoid engaging in harmful or overly risky behaviors) and also to the specific circumstances that bear on the applicability of such general reasons to the particular situation in which one is called to deliberate and act.
If you have both a reason to do A and a reason to do B, while A and B are incompatible actions, this means that such reasons are general rational preferences. We could label such reasons "reasons-1" There is also another sense of "reason" which is your reason to chose one particular option in a particular occasion. Practical rationality is the ability select among potentially conflicting reasons for acting (reasons-1) which one is suited or relevant to the rationally salient features of the particular situation. Failure to distinguish between the reason ("reason-2") why one acts in the way one does, and the reasons one might have to act in other incompatible ways (reasons that are overridden in the particular case) just reproduces the conflation that you were previously making between two sorts of preferences.
Both sorts of reasons, (1) general, or (2) particular/specific, are normative. Neither ones are "static". That is, both are sensitive to the concerns that are rationally salient in the circumstances in which one acts. Reasons (that is reasons-1) just are the general rational considerations that guide one in the first steps of practical deliberation. When things go well, this process culminates in action (or intention) in accordance with the reason one has to favor the chosen course of action all things considered (to the extend that one is rational, which one may be to a quite limited degree).
Yes, these are preferences in sense #2 which Pierre-Normand brought up. When we have decided that a principle is good, and accept it, we can say that it is a preference. That is something which has occurred in the past. Now when facing the future, we have numerous preferences, preferred principles, from which to choose in making a decision. We choose one, the preference does not choose itself.
Quoting darthbarracuda
You are missing a source of activity here. Activity is essential to causation. You have many preferences. In your example, two preferences get paired together. We need to determine a cause of these two particular preferences getting paired together, rather than two other preferences getting paired.
Your claim is that the pairing causes action, which is true, but we still need to account for, i.e. find the cause of, that particular pairing. That is the free will act. Clearly, the preferences don't pair together in a random way, nor do they cause actions in a random way. So it is not the preferences which are the initial cause of the action, it is the mind which uses the preferences.
Simply put, he is just saying that it is the deliberation of the possible choices or outcomes before a decision is made that affects the beneficiality of the choice. That is not absurd as you say it is and is completely coherent with the determinism that he expounds on.
Just because what one is poised to do already is based on prior events does not negate the necessity of logical thought or reasoning for making a decision. Predestination works just as well if not better with a reasoning mind.
As for why you think it denies the central insight of compatibilism, I see no evidence to support your opinions here...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3355584/Man-22-samurai-sword-sneaked-AFP-HQ-mingled-counter-terrorism-police-arrested-major-security-breach.html
What about if existence is meant in the sense of an objective universe that exists without witness? Then comes along an organism to add essence to the preordained existence.
you don't know that, it may just be that you don't remember what it was.
Just because you don't have control doesn't mean to say life isn't worth living. That is like the argument "if life doesn't go on forever then it is not worth living". The point of living is subjective and could actually be objective albeit concealed in a grand alien design. IMO, subjectively it would be to be a witness... free will or no.
What would be the point in making something of 100% freewill feel pain anyway?
Now seeing as you are only your conscious mind because it would be absurd to claim ownership over something of which you are not conscious of, lol... it means that our decisions are largely in the domain of the unconscious which is not you.
Yes, he is saying this... often. And when he is saying this, he is effectively endorsing compatibilist conceptions of control and of free choice. The trouble is that Harris also tries to hold on to some version of Van Inwagen's argument for incompatibilism. He indeed is very often explicitly arguing against compatibilism on the basis of such an argument (and also on the basis of Galen Strawson's "basic argument" against moral responsibility), and his endorsement of those arguments is inconsistent with his tacit endorsements of compatibilism. This is why Dennett says that Harris often seems to be compatibilist in all but name (i.e. whenever Harris isn't arguing for the contrary position!) Harris charges against compatibilists, that they are "redefining" free will, just is his attempt to extricate himself from this muddle. Compatibilists at least are consistent in their definitions of freedom and of the ability to choose; Harris himself, while consistently denying the possibility of free will, isn't endorsing consistent arguments.
You yourself are entitled to this compatibilist insight, but Harris isn't. You may want to replace "predestination" with "determinism" in the above, though, since Harris claims to be agreeing with Dennett that determinism doesn't entail predestination and that those two theses, as they relate to freedom of action, ought not to be confused.
You are misreading me. I didn't say that he was denying the central insight of compatibilism. I suggested, on the contrary, that he was tacitly endorsing this central insight while at the same time explicitly arguing for incompatibilism on the basis of arguments that are inconsistent with this insight. Harris is very explicit in his rejection of compatibilism, while being seemingly unaware that he is depriving himself of the the possibility of making his utilitarian argument about consequences that "matter".
As I was suggesting in the next paragraph of that post, pain is used as a guide. To nudge us in the right direction if you like. The point is we can still choose how we respond to the pain unlike 100% programming.
Ok, thanks. understood. Why is Harris making this mistake though? What is leading him to accept compatibilism in some respects but openly deny it as well? Would not understanding it correctly cause him to endorse inconsistent arguments.
As far as I understand Harris position, he believes that the mind make decisions unconsciously without freewill and therefor no moral accountability can be placed on any subject as he is just a product of his experiences, genetics and unconscious programming. He feels choices are causally determined but not fated to happen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKv2pWZkgrI
Seems like a totally legitimate standpoint to me, especially neurologically with a lot of evidential support in favor of it (see my post above). Where is the inconsistency here?
Sometimes the most obvious ''facts'' are wrong.
What say?