Freewill contra Determinism

andy wrote:We are on Ps and Qs now.

let's do something else.

andy wrote:You claimed in your original post that it makes no sense to say that there is both necessity and liberty in human behavior. That's what I am responding to.

perhaps, but it isn't helping with the problem i have with hume's compatibilism. i think he was lying like a good scot so as to preserve law and morality. lotta political turbulence back in those days. the last things folks needed to think was that they weren't responsible for their actions. imagine the scottish mayhem that would have ensued. ever seen braveheart? same thing, only with flint-locks instead of swords. it would have been total madness.

andy wrote:It is best represented with a statement such as "Every P is followed by Q". That's a universal statement. That's what Hume is saying. Liberty, too, is a universal. It can be represented with a statement such as "P is followed by all events in equal measure".

trying to express causal relationships between things with notational logic can't answer the question of whether or not causality exists. Qs may follow Ps or not follow Ps, but this says nothing about Ps causing Qs.

we just can't make the inference of a working causality by experience alone. if it exists, it would have to be some kind of category of reason... a structure, like time, added to the world by the mind (in a kantian sense).

Zoot wrote:perhaps, but it isn't helping with the problem i have with hume's compatibilism.

Well then, you have to explain what's your problem with Hume's compatibilism. And you have to do so with sufficient precision.

Is your problem empirical or conceptual? Are you saying there is no liberty in human behavior or are you saying that it makes no sense to say that human behavior is free in certain regards and determined in other regards? What exactly is your point?

trying to express causal relationships between things with notational logic can't answer the question of whether or not causality exists.

Well, what I am trying to do is to define the concept of causality. I am not trying to prove that causality exists. Even though it's obvious that it does.

How do you define causality? Hume defined it as a conjuction of events i.e. two events X and Y are causally related if every occurence of event X is immediately followed by event Y. That's what causality means for Hume. Nothing more than that.

Qs may follow Ps or not follow Ps, but this says nothing about Ps causing Qs.

My point is that "P causes Q" means nothing other than "Whenever P occurs Q immediately follows". This is a universal statement. It cannot be proven with absolute certainty, that's true, but that does not mean it is meaningless and it certainly does not mean that there is no such thing as causality out there in the world.

we just can't make the inference of a working causality by experience alone. if it exists, it would have to be some kind of category of reason... a structure, like time, added to the world by the mind (in a kantian sense).

We cannot observe whether every P that occurs in the universe is immediately followed by Q. However, we can observe a number of Ps that occur in the universe and we can observe the events that immediately follow them, and based on that, we can establish the degree to which the statement "All Ps are immediately followed by Q" matches what we know about reality.

McGilcrist is writing a book on how everything is 'patterns'.
Fascinating.

Satyr wrote:McGilchrist surprised me....he's someone I've never hear of before.
I stood up and listened more intently around 16:12...He, like I, 'embraces uncertainty'.
I've always talked about degrees or probabilities and not absolutes.
Everything McGilchrist said I agreed with. I must look into him more.
At 19:00 I almost spit out my coffee....he repeated my metaphysics exactly.
"There are no things" ...."patterns".
Music is the truest form of art. It is sonic patterns with none of that corrupting effect of language, symbols, forms.
Very Schopenhauerrean....all is like a symphony.
Flowing....Heraclitus.

I'm a determinist myself, there are instances of things or life that might be interpreted as free-will but even then they are within limitations of various situations that have already been predetermined. Perhaps free will might be better described as predetermined options with predetermined outcomes within an already determined world and universe, you have a single set of differing options that you may choose from that will lead to different reactions or circumstances. Those options however are all preselected or predetermined to begin with.

Problems with conversations like these is that they're borderline metaphysics and I'm not one for metaphysical thinking.

I'm a determinist myself, there are instances of things or life that might be interpreted as free-will but even then they are within limitations of various situations that have already been predetermined.

about the meaning of the word 'determined', see post number 2 in this thread.

to be clear, expressing a belief in causality is not well represented by using the word 'determined', as that word has subtle nuance that confuses its use for this purpose.

Perhaps free will might be better described as predetermined options with predetermined outcomes within an already determined world and universe, you have a single set of differing options that you may choose from that will lead to different reactions or circumstances. Those options however are all preselected or predetermined to begin with.

you've directly contradicted yourself. look at what you said: freewill is x, but x is determined, therefore freewill is determined.

the big problem is not about whether or not causality exists (that's a little problem), but the matter of agency. what is causing y to follow x if y does follow x, and follows x because x happened.

both determinism and freewill have problems with, and claim, agency, while indeterminism (which is not freewill) claims no agency at all.

soft-determinism (compatibilism) claims our desires are determined, but not our choices to act on desires. this is nonsense, i think, unless you somehow proved there was a cartesian second substance that wasn't causally effected by the material world. good luck with that.

and btw, many religious philosophers try to get around this dilemma with what they call occasionalism; god determines everything... every action in the world is a result of god's will. so there isn't a bunch of people acting freely, but god acting through them.

but is he acting freely? 'ah', you say, 'that's a good question, zoot.' indeed. what compels god to act? can he decide not to act? if so, then his causal relationship to the world is suspended... but how can that happen if the causal system that governs the world is not controlled by individual people who act in it? somebody's got to run the thing, right? on the other hand, if he can't decide to act, he's not free, himself.

so why isn't he free? there would have to be another, higher causality which is operating above and beyond him, making him have to act.

nice try, occasionalism.

andy wrote:How do you define causality?

i define causality as :a pain in the ass.

it's a classic antinomy, man. the intuitionist in us knows goddamn good and well it exists, but the empiricist in us can't catch it in the act.

no matter how you handle the issue, you get to a dead end. what's making everything move, and what's making everything that moves everything, move? god? so what's making him make everything move? aristotle's prime mover doesn't solve anything.

on the other hand, imagine a universe in which everything is causally isolated; everything moves itself and cannot be affected by something. okay, so what makes it move itself?

it must be that something is going on that we can't understand, or won't ever understand. but i don't like to admit that.

Zoot Allures wrote:

I'm a determinist myself, there are instances of things or life that might be interpreted as free-will but even then they are within limitations of various situations that have already been predetermined.

about the meaning of the word 'determined', see post number 2 in this thread.

to be clear, expressing a belief in causality is not well represented by using the word 'determined', as that word has subtle nuance that confuses its use for this purpose.

Perhaps free will might be better described as predetermined options with predetermined outcomes within an already determined world and universe, you have a single set of differing options that you may choose from that will lead to different reactions or circumstances. Those options however are all preselected or predetermined to begin with.

you've directly contradicted yourself. look at what you said: freewill is x, but x is determined, therefore freewill is determined.

the big problem is not about whether or not causality exists (that's a little problem), but the matter of agency. what is causing y to follow x if y does follow x, and follows x because x happened.

both determinism and freewill have problems with, and claim, agency, while indeterminism (which is not freewill) claims no agency at all.

soft-determinism (compatibilism) claims our desires are determined, but not our choices to act on desires. this is nonsense, i think, unless you somehow proved there was a cartesian second substance that wasn't causally effected by the material world. good luck with that.

and btw, many religious philosophers try to get around this dilemma with what they call occasionalism; god determines everything... every action in the world is a result of god's will. so there isn't a bunch of people acting freely, but god acting through them.

but is he acting freely? 'ah', you say, 'that's a good question, zoot.' indeed. what compels god to act? can he decide not to act? if so, then his causal relationship to the world is suspended... but how can that happen if the causal system that governs the world is not controlled by individual people who act in it? somebody's got to run the thing, right? on the other hand, if he can't decide to act, he's not free, himself.

so why isn't he free? there would have to be another, higher causality which is operating above and beyond him, making him have to act.

nice try, occasionalism.



 

Indeterminism sounds interesting, I'll have to look into that, although even that seems like a can of worms that leads to other problems or questions.

yeah, here's one such can of worms:

Indeterminists do not have to deny that causes exist. Instead, they can maintain that the only causes that exist are of a type that do not constrain the future to a single course; for instance, they can maintain that only necessary and not sufficient causes exist. The necessary/sufficient distinction works as follows:

If x is a necessary cause of y; then the presence of y necessarily implies that x preceded it. The presence of x, however, does not imply that y will occur.

If x is a sufficient cause of y, then the presence of x necessarily implies the presence of y. (However, another cause z may alternatively cause y. Thus the presence of y does not imply the presence of x.)

so if zero wants to smoke a blunt (x) and drives to the store to get rolling papers (y), he drives to the store only because (x). but sometimes when (x), zero uses a bong instead.

however, one of the reasons why (y) when (x) is that zero doesn't like to use his roommates bong (z), which can also be said to cause (y) beside than the fact that (x).

You're the first I've seen to use a marijuana bong in philosophical argumentation.

But yes, I understand what you're saying, I will have to give it more thought later.

I will have to give it more thought later.

suuuure you will. since i've known you, you've never had an inclination for metaphysical philosophy. i envy that. once you get into metaphysics, it takes everything you got to get back out.

Satyr wrote:

Some good observations in there.

Nothing can exist without resistance.

Ill note that patterns consist of resistances.

The speed of light itself is such a resistance, limitation.


Also interesting;
The right hemisphere as defensive and exploratory and the left as predatory and grasping.

Self-valuing is of course the basic pattern of resistance. That resistance which, in resisting and being resisted, returns to itself on a progressed arc.
Hence also why patterns must necessarily grow or break.

Resistance, when not a pattern, is fleeting; a pattern without resistance is nothing.



His notion of the motions of the planets as analogous of music rather than collisions validates astrology.

Self-Valuing can be understood as the threshold where chaos separates (or is perceived, interpreted to separate) from order,  i.e. where distinction (rather than Platonic thing-ness) begins; that "optimal state of engagement spoken of here, which is a prerequisite for the existential minimum, and also the limit for existential maxima.



Self-valuing logic thus disintegrates Platonism, and it marks the end of the era of the "Theoretical Man" as N calls Socrates in the Birth of Tragedy; it is the beginning of the Manifest Man, which is a return to the Greeks on a higher arc.

Note that I replace "thingness" with "logic";
where logic used to describe the behaviour of things with respect to each other, it now replaces thing-ness altogether.

One "catch" to consider here here is that the mind no longer remains separate of the equations it performs; the mind now ... under-stands its own activity.
Becomes ground to itself, like all existence-proper.



Further,
Uncertainty exists by the virtue of certainties; uncertainty gives the possibility of certainties to exist without becoming completely static, which is to say non existent.



Like the neural patterns in the brain are speculative and future-oriented, so is the coherence of the universe. The world is drawn out by its future potentials. There is no beginning, but there are ends.

... but there is no such thing as 'chaos'. 'chaos' is a name given to a concept experienced when meaning and/or predictability couldn't be found in order, not in the experience of disorder, of which there is no such thing.

in the first case, philosophers identified no purpose in the ordered nature they observed, felt a bit discouraged and unsatisfied with this feeling, and so coined the ill-conceived mystery of order without purpose with the term 'chaos'.

another instance of the philosopher being unable to find an excuse for his being in a perfectly ordered but indifferent universe. this pisses him off because he wants to be important, so he refuses to recognize and acknowledge the ordered perfection of the universe and instead extends his middle finger toward it.

really though, as long it is impossible for any fundamental unit of being or point of power or whatever you want to call it, to exist as an unconditioned and unaffected thing, there can be no disorder. 'order' is another concept for the negation 'nothing can be unrelated to something else.'

Zoots Allures wrote:... but there is no such thing as 'chaos'. 'chaos' is a name given to a concept experienced when meaning and/or predictability couldn't be found in order, not in the experience of disorder, of which there is no such thing.

One mans order is another mans chaos.
On top of that, some men prefer order and some prefer chaos.

Both order and chaos are pretty useful and relevant concepts. One is the relative weakness of the other.

in the first case, philosophers identified no purpose in the ordered nature they observed, felt a bit discouraged and unsatisfied with this feeling, and so coined the ill-conceived mystery of order without purpose with the term 'chaos'.

Maybe. I can see the appeal.

another instance of the philosopher being unable to find an excuse for his being in a perfectly ordered but indifferent universe. this pisses him off because he wants to be important, so he refuses to recognize and acknowledge the ordered perfection of the universe and instead extends his middle finger toward it.

Okay but. Well what is wrong with this proposed philosopher? What makes a philosopher, if not the sensation of being the purpose of the universe?
A philosopher, I would say, experiences the universe as profoundly partial, in his favour.

The philosopher is always gleeful at heart. (Which is why some of them permit themselves such radical pessimism; a game they play, and can afford to play, on the poorer of spirit; this is the will to power of some philosophers, and of Dostoyevski - "I can endure this, can you?")

really though, as long it is impossible for any fundamental unit of being or point of power or whatever you want to call it, to exist as an unconditioned and unaffected thing, there can be no disorder. 'order' is another concept for the negation 'nothing can be unrelated to something else.'

I believe thats technically correct.

One mans order is another mans chaos.
On top of that, some men prefer order and some prefer chaos.

Both order and chaos are pretty useful and relevant concepts. One is the relative weakness of the other.

i see what you're getting at and how you are meaning to use the term 'chaos', but you are intersecting two different kinds of language games and as a result, producing some confusion.

in the natural sciencs we take chaos to mean lack of order or unpredictablity of a systems's future state. more so the latter than the former, because even in being unpredictable, it isn't necessarily out of order.

then in transporting that concept into philosophical or poetic language, we lose some of its literal meaning and import into it metaphorical expression. examine some of the ways the word is used in such speech:

"the chaos surrounding joe was unbearable"

this may mean that joe was frustrated, undecided, unable to make sense of of something, discouraged by being unable to find purpose in it, pressed to take uncertain risks and make choices without knowledge of the consequences that might follow.

but is any of this really 'chaos'? shirley not.

Okay but. Well what is wrong with this proposed philosopher? What makes a philosopher, if not the sensation of being the purpose of the universe?

nothing at all. in fact, that's all he can do.

The philosopher is always gleeful at heart. (Which is why some of them permit themselves such radical pessimism; a game they play, and can afford to play, on the poorer of spirit; this is the will to power of some philosophers, and of Dostoyevski - "I can endure this, can you?")

to a degree, nicely put. but a seasoned existentialist would retort "obviously you have not experienced real anguish, for if you did, you would not be laughing."

these lofty types of philosopher are more often at the threshold of despair when they believe they are face to face with the abyss. not yet have they fallen into the gaping jaws of experience, from which there is usually no escape... unless one becomes mad.

madness is that peculiar state when one hasn't the impetus to commit suicide, but cannot find any lasting purpose in staying alive, either. only a few philosophers have ever had to balance on that precipice.

Zoot Allures wrote:

andy wrote:How do you define causality?

i define causality as :a pain in the ass.

it's a classic antinomy, man. the intuitionist in us knows goddamn good and well it exists, but the empiricist in us can't catch it in the act.

I do not doubt that defining causality is a pain in the ass for you but that does not mean, and it certainly isn't, a pain in the ass for other people.
Perhaps you should try being humble?

no matter how you handle the issue, you get to a dead end. what's making everything move, and what's making everything that moves everything, move? god? so what's making him make everything move? aristotle's prime mover doesn't solve anything.

on the other hand, imagine a universe in which everything is causally isolated; everything moves itself and cannot be affected by something. okay, so what makes it move itself?

it must be that something is going on that we can't understand, or won't ever understand. but i don't like to admit that.

If time is infinite, which means there is no first point in time and no last point in time, then the idea that for every event there is some prior event that is its cause makes perfect sense. The two statements are perfectly compatible with each other is what I am trying to say. However, if time is finite then the idea makes no sense. In such a case, there is at least one event for which there is no prior event which means there is at least one event that has no cause (since for an event to have a cause there must be at least one event that took place before it.) It's also important to understand that such an event is uncaused but not necessarily self-caused. Uncaused and self-caused are two different concepts. If something is uncaused it does not mean it is self-caused. Note that causation is a relation and relation can only exist between two different things. There can be no relation between one and the same thing literally speaking. Self-relation is to be understood as a relation between two instances of the class that is represented by the word "self". So when we say that an event is self-caused what this means is that this event can be broken down into multiple sub-events (its instances) and that there is a causal relation between these sub-events. Consider a related term: self-destruction. What does that mean? It means that one part of self (e.g. one's brain) destroys another part of self (e.g. one's heart) without which the first part of self (one's brain) cannot continue to exist. If this goes over your head understand that it's because the subject itself is above your head. If you want to tackle a subject you must first estimate how difficult is and whether its difficulty is within your abilit. You already decided to tackle this subject. Remember that. Don't be surprised if you realize the subject is more complicated than you initially thought.

Also, causal isolation does not mean that everything moves itself. I don't know who came up with this idea. Causal isolation means that things are causally unrelated to each other (i.e. they are not moving each other.)

it's all over my head man.

^^^ https://vocaroo.com/i/s05cevNQbczC

professor satyr wrote:Free-Will or Un-Free-Will

if you begin with the premise that there is such a thing as 'will', you'd obviously want to ask whether it is free or not. but in doing so you'd have to bewitch the meaning of the word 'will' and treat it as if it were a phenomena rather than simply a word used in ordinary discourse to describe or indicate intent. this is in fact what philosophers have been doing for centuries - metaphysicalizing the meaning of 'will' - and it is no mystery why they've gotten themselves into a confusing, conceptual mess.

they have been believing that there is an agency... call it a 'self'... that can act as its own casually sufficient antecedent condition for action which is not subject to any other sufficient condition, itself. this idea is most easily summarized like this, maybe: there are two systems of causality operating in the world. one system governs what all objects do in time and space, and the other governs what a special object - call it a human being - does in time and space. the former cannot affect the latter, but the latter can affect the former. now the 'will' here, or the agency (the self), is that governing force that acts upon the human body to make it move. it is at this point that the real problem arises; now the agency isn't, in fact, the body, but some kind of entity inside or around it that acts upon it. this forces philosophers to conceive of the agency as something immaterial, and so they invent metaphysical entities such as 'will', 'soul', and 'spirit' to describe the immaterial phenomena that they believe is governing the acts and appetites of the body.

this new thesis then turns into something of a property-dualism, which brings forth another set of logical problems; how do two ontologically distinct things relate to each other causally, that is, how does one reach out and touch the other if they are two different substances. this (originally cartesian) problem was best addressed and resolved by spinoza.

the language i'm using here is technical and for the purposes of describing the problem. none of what professor satyr says about how the concept of freewill is used/abused by religions or nihilists or whatever else he thinks validates the issue which he believes he's 'figured out' and solved. the problem i describe here has nothing to do with 'order' or 'chaos' or 'patterns', or any of the other concepts he thinks are related to the problem of whether or not 'freewill' exists, or to what degree it does exist, if it does.

a wittgensteinian walk-through. in the PI he draws attention to that peculiar bewitchment of the concept of 'deliberation' that occurs when one compelled to act is not satisfied simply with equating one's intent with one's action. the 'feeling' of freewill here emerges as an illusory 'inner-state' that comes about in reflecting on one's deliberations and actions. being unable to identify this deliberating act as a 'phenomena' (remember here it is only a 'feeling'), one has to call it transphenomenal (kant tied this)... and then the mistake is made that compelling is the same as causing...

In Philosophical Investigations, section 174, Wittgenstein is discussing the temptation to describe the experience of acting with deliberation (in drawing a line parallel to another, say) as a “quite particular inner” experience. At this point in the text, he has been discussing reading in order to shed light on the concept of understanding, which he had been discussing in relation to rule following, which in turn came up in the very broad discussion of what it means to know the meaning of a word. He addresses the question of what it means to suddenly understand and be able to go on, one having (apparently) grasped the rule for a word’s use, which he compares to suddenly understanding how to continue a series of numbers based on an initial segment of the series. In a parenthetical remark at the end of the passage, he says, “(This is connected with the problem of intention, of willing).” Then, in 176, he talks about the temptation to say that acting deliberately in, for example, drawing a line parallel to another, one is under the influence of the original and that one feels this, that there is a particular experience of being guided, being influenced. He rejects this idea and tries to show that it arises only when one reflects on what happens when one acts deliberately (or suddenly understands, or believes...) and is dissatisfied with what one finds, thinking that acting deliberately in such a case can’t just consist in the fact that “I merely looked, made such-and-such a face, and drew a line” (175). Here he adds the parenthetical remark that these considerations “(... contain the germ of the idea that the will is not a phenomenon).” Note: As others have, Wittgenstein eschews the expression “free will,” the word “free” really being a contrast with “compelled,” which does not mean caused. Water is not compelled, nor forced, to boil by heat.

searle does a great job here explaining the problem... but doesn't go far enough addressing how the entire freewill/determinism debate originates from a dubious intersection of language-games. even the thesis of 'determinism' is misleading, as it uses the concept 'determine' to describe things it cannot describe. see big rosa's brief summary of the problem in the second post of this thread.

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/schlick/pseudo-problem.html

you gotta be pretty schlick to understand this, but if you do, you'll have untangled one of the greatest philosophical knots ever tied.

take your time. you might be schlicker than you think.

the schlick way to isolate the source of the conceptual pseudo-problems:

Natural Law = Law of State

equivocation. these are not the same. the former is exclusively descriptive, the latter, prescriptive. the former concerns itself with what is happening, the latter, with what should happen. the transference of the concept of natural law onto the concept of civic law therefore mistakenly assumes that the matter which civic law is concerned with - that of 'compulsion' - can be interpreted as a reflection of natural law. why this mistake is committed:

Determinism (Causality) = Compulsion

natural law does not 'compel' anything. something is 'compelled' by its feeling of need. the natural laws 'need' nothing:

"This word, derived from "need," also comes to us from practice, and is used there in the sense of inescapable compulsion. To apply the word with this meaning to natural laws is of course senseless, for the presupposition of an opposing desire is lacking; and it is then confused with something altogether different" - schlick

do natural laws contend with their desires to do something else, then choose (are compelled) to do one thing rather than the other? this is a nonsensical question, clearly. why this nonsensical question is asked:

(Universal Validity) = (Necessity)

it is thought that because natural laws are regular and consistent, that they are therefore necessary. but for something to be 'necessary', it must be thought that it should be, which would involve some voluntary compulsion arising from the need for something to be like such and such. again, natural laws are doing no such thing. the phrase 'universal validity' is sufficient to describe the natural laws. no need to call them 'necessary'.

Indeterminism (Chance) = Freedom

this equivocation misses the point (one of the blunders of compatibalism). indeterminism tries to retain the agency of volition by removing from it the causal event... but in doing so, one cannot say either that the agency 'determined' the choice. if indeterminism is true, then the agency of will doesn't exist either, since there would be nothing to determine the choice. this conceptual confusion is derived from the second stage of errors; that if causality exists, it must be a 'determiner'. therefore, only if natural laws do not compel, can there be freedom. see the non-problem here? determinism is a misnomer, while compatibalism simply tries to exchange one agency for another without recognizing its contradiction:

"In fact if we should conceive of a decision as utterly without any cause (this would in all strictness be the indeterministic presupposition) then the act would be entirely a matter of chance, for chance is identical with the absence of a cause; there is no other opposite of causality. Could we under such conditions make the agent responsible? Certainly not." - schlick

(No Cause) = (No Compulsion)

"If one makes clear to himself that a causeless happening is identical with a chance happening, and that, consequently, an indetermined will would destroy all responsibility..." - schlick

if indeterminism is true, there is no compulsion, and if there is no compulsion, one can't be said to have 'chosen' to do such and such. if one didn't choose, one can't be held responsible. this is the accidental conclusion of indeterminism in its misplaced attack on causality. it threw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak.

so you see how schlick, in the typical positivist fashion, puts forth a precursor to ordinary language philosophy by his analysis of the philosophical language used in creating this conceptual confusion.

libet's experiment showed it to be a matter of milliseconds... no they're saying it's a whopping seven seconds. that's some serious lag time, man.

https://www.wired.com/2008/04/mind-decision/