Compatibilism: What's that About?

[Jarhyn]

It is the difference in meaning behind could and did.

Thanks but I don't think this adresses my question.

"It is always true that "the system will, from here, if X is true, do this thing" even if X was false. Thus is the meaning of "it always could have, but it did not.""

This is the bat I think should address it?

It is acknowledgement from me that S is perhaps different by X. It is the union of X U S.

I don't view the union of X and S as a nonsense concept, though. It makes perfect sense so long as one assumes the universe operates on the state by general principles rather than just-so.

In fact, whether S U X == S is exactly the determinant of "free".

 

[The AntiChris]

This is the bat I think should address it?

I think it would be more helpful if you address what I actually say and tell me where I go wrong (although to do so, you'd have to be sure you know what Marvin intended by his words).

 

[Jarhyn]

This is the bat I think should address it?

I think it would be more helpful if you address what I actually say and tell me where I go wrong (although to do so, you'd have to be sure you know what Marvin intended by his words).

I'm just pointing out how it comes together for me? Maybe it's how it comes together for you too and I'm just speaking past?

At any rate I acknowledge that when "could" is not also "did", the agent was not free to do so for some reason, and when that reason was "he decided to do a mutually exclusive thing" I say "he did not, was not free to do so, but he was made so unfree in this will by the freedom of this other will they had, thus he could have" and when he did not for some OTHER reason, we say "he did not, was not free to do so, and was unfree by external sources to his will to do otherwise, and thus couldn't have regardless of his will to do or do otherwise."

Note the context. Couldn't operates in terms of "his will to do OR to do otherwise."

But then there is another extension on the group of "could WRT that impediment". And on that we can further step towards investigation of  why he couldn't, and how in the future to maintain could.

I'm honestly just using you as a rubber duck to hammer these thoughts out, to be fair.

It's been something I've been trying to frame in these terms for a while and it's finally becoming crystalline for me.

 

[The AntiChris]

I'm honestly just using you as a rubber duck to hammer these thoughts out, to be fair.

Ok, I'll try not to butt in.

 

[Jarhyn]

I'm honestly just using you as a rubber duck to hammer these thoughts out, to be fair.

Ok, I'll try not to butt in.

I mean, feel free to butt in, but know I'm not really discussing Marvin's point of view anymore, really, but what seems to make sense with the syntactic structure, and the applicability of the operators in various contexts.

In short, I'm discussing my point of view on the concepts, wherein "could" does in fact assume something of S that MAY be false, and how this relationship comes back to the truth value of the requirement of the 'will: a series of instructions unto a requirement'.

The fact that this seems to be coming around to a completion, though, seems to support it's sensibility as a framework including "free", "will", "could" "did/shall/is" "requirement" and so on as functional sensible objective descriptions.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

As I understand it if determinism is true, given a specific state of the universe S, A will always follow. For anything other than A to occur, S would have to be different.

Correct. And if we already have certain knowledge that S is the current state of things and that A will always follow S, then there are no other things that will happen. The notion of possibilities, of things that could happen, would never come up. The words "can" or "might" or "ability" or "possibility" would never be used in this context of certainty as to what will happen.

But suppose we did not have certain knowledge that S was the current state of things, and/or that we did not have certain knowledge that A will always follow S? What then? When we do not know what "will" happen, we imagine what "can" happen, to prepare for what does happen.

In the absence of certainty as to what will happen, we switch to the context of what can happen. In the context of possibilities we can nail down any facts that we do know by replacing the "will" with a "can". For example, will the traffic light be red or will it be green when we arrive? We don't know. But we do know for certain that it will either be red or green. The light might be red. The light might be green. Both of these are real possibilities.

If we take what you say literally, you seem to be claiming that A or B or C etc. could follow S (be instantiated by S). How does this tally with determinism?

What we are saying literally is that we do not know whether the light will be red or green. It could be red. It could be green. If we are saying "could", then it implies that we do not have certain knowledge of what will happen.

Even after we do have certain knowledge, for example if we arrive and the light is green rather than red, such that we know for certain that it was causally inevitable from any prior point in time that the light would always be green, we can still say that "the light could have remained red". To say that "the light could have remained red" is referring to that time in which we were still uncertain.

For example, if someone asked, "Why did you slow down back there?", we would naturally respond, "Because the light could have remained red". And by that we are referring back to that point of our uncertainty. When we say it could have remained red we are implying that (1) it definitely did not remain red and (2) that it would have remained red only under different circumstances. And these implications of "could have" are consistent with the facts of reality and the facts of determinism.

Here is the source of your cognitive dissonance: Determinism has been making the incorrect claim that things "could not have been otherwise" rather than the correct claim that things "would not have been otherwise".

How did they come to make this mistake? By figurative thinking. After all, if something never will happen, it is AS IF it could not ever happen. The only problem is that every figurative statement is literally false.

 

[fromderinside]

That parcel of BS that does nothing exactly ever

Apparently you did nothing exactly ever than either because where you see nothing happen, ostensibly because you slacked off at your job I see neurons increasing and decreasing charge potentials all over the place: I see objects doing things.

This is because you have FAILED MISERABLY in observing that every "subjective thing" is also an object. Every single one.

"Tall" is "subjective" between people: it means something different to me than you normally.

But when I define "tall", we can objectively say whether something meets that subjective definition. Because while you do not consider the thing subjectively "tall" it is unarguably "3 meters in length".

Fundamentally, we cannot say that there is an objective standard of beauty either, but we can objectively say whether something meets a subjective standard of beauty.

When we get to such precise things as "NAND gate" and "requirement" we are in fact talking about general object types which have objectively met those definitions.

This is what you seem to not want to acknowledge. That it isn't subjective that these objects have these properties.

It's just not up for subjective debate whether the dwarf feels happy. "Happy" for the dwarf is defined to semantic completeness.

What makes him happy is arbitrary, subjective, but the happiness itself is objectively happening.

Completeness - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So is it Niger or AfriKan?

Get the point?

 

[The AntiChris]

...if we already have certain knowledge that S is the current state of things and that A will always follow S, then there are no other things that will happen. The notion of possibilities, of things that could happen, would never come up. The words "can" or "might" or "ability" or "possibility" would never be used in this context of certainty as to what will happen.

We don't need certain knowledge of the current state of things. All we need to know is that given any current state of things only one thing will happen next (that's determinism). Your claim is that the current state of things could instantiate a range of possible things that might happen. Sure, we've no idea which possibility will be instantiated but that doesn't give us warrant to say "different actions could actually be instantiated given the same circumstances". Regardless of our knowledge of the current state of things we know that it will always instantiate the same action. The only way a different action could be instantiated is if the state of things were different.

So when you say : "different actions could actually be instantiated given the same circumstances" I think you're wrong.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

... Sure, we've no idea which possibility will be instantiated but that doesn't give us warrant to say "different actions could actually be instantiated given the same circumstances". Regardless of our knowledge of the current state of things we know that it will always instantiate the same action. The only way a different action could be instantiated is if the state of things were different.

Whenever we say that "a different action could actually be instantiated" we are logically implying circumstances that are different from what they were. So, the statement becomes nonsensical if taken literally. Taken literally it turns out like this, "a different action could actually be instantiated under the same circumstances under different circumstances".

The correct way to clear up this confusion is to simply use "could" and "would" appropriately (same as "can" and "will").

If we have certain knowledge of what will happen, then simply say it "will" happen in "actuality".

If we lack certain knowledge of what will happen, then we speak of the things that "can" happen, our "possibilities".

It is incorrect to say that only one thing can happen. What can happen always comes in multiples.

It is incorrect to say that we have only one possibility on the menu, when what we should say is that we have many possibilities, and that we will reduce them to a single dinner order by our choosing.

 

[The AntiChris]

Whenever we say that "a different action could actually be instantiated" we are logically implying circumstances that are different from what they were. So, the statement becomes nonsensical if taken literally. Taken literally it turns out like this, "a different action could actually be instantiated under the same circumstances under different circumstances".

So when you say "different actions could actually be instantiated given the same circumstances" what do you mean by "given the same circumstances"? This isn't making sense.

I take issue with this:

Whenever we say that "a different action could actually be instantiated" we are logically implying circumstances that are different from what they were.

I agree that when we say we could have done otherwise we're implying "circumstances that are different from what they were".

However in philosophical discussions about free will, when incompatibilists talk about "could have done otherwise" (also known as PAP - the principal of alternative possibilities) they most definitely are not implying "circumstances that are different from what they were".

Failure to make this distinction clear when arguing the compatibilist case will cause confusion.

 

[DBT]

Necessity;
Necessity is the idea that everything that has ever happened and ever will happen is necessary, and can not be otherwise. Necessity is often opposed to chance and contingency. In a necessary world there is no chance. Everything that happens is necessitated.

''The No Choice Principle implies that I cannot have a choice about anything that is an unavoidable consequence of something I have no control of.''

And there you go again, cherry-picking an essay you apparently did not read. I have addressed this upthread.

You miss the point. That is the nature of necessitation within a determined system. It's entailed in the definition given by compatibilists on this forum. No deviation from the big bang and ever after means that events proceed precisely what as described in the quote.

There is no wriggle room. Stomp your feet, wail and gnash your teeth, given no possible deviation or alternate action: ''In a necessary world there is no chance. Everything that happens is necessitated.''

That is the point, like it or not.

It is you who misses the point. Why don’t you address the rest of the article, which refutes the opening lines that you chery-picked? It seems strange to invoke an essay or a writer that disagrees with your position, but you’ve done that inthe past, so …

No, it's you. If necessitation is refuted, the compatibilist definition of determinism is also, by default refuted.

In other words, there is no determinism as defined by compatibilists on this forum.

And as the compatibilist claim happens to be that free will is compatible with the given definition of determinism.....which you say is refuted, you have just negated the validity of compatibilism.

To repeat, the quoted definition of necessitation is equivalent to the definition of determinism as given by Marvin and Jarhyn, ie, no deviation, all events proceed as determined/necessitated.

You don't understand that the given definition of determinism, Marvin and Jarhyn, is precisely the same as the quoted definition of necessitation, or the implications for compatibilist free will?



Necessity equates to determinism as it is defined by compatibilists.

''Necessity is the idea that everything that has ever happened and ever will happen is necessary, and can not be otherwise. Necessity is often opposed to chance and contingency. In a necessary world there is no chance. Everything that happens is necessitated.

What Does Deterministic System Mean?
''A deterministic system is a system in which a given initial state or condition will always produce the same results. There is no randomness or variation in the ways that inputs get delivered as outputs.'

Which equates to this:

''However, in order for determinism to be true, it must include all events. For example, determinism cannot exclude the effects of natural forces, like volcanoes and tidal waves or a meteor hitting the Earth. Determinism cannot exclude the effects of biological organisms that transform their environments, like tree seedlings changing bare land into a forest. Determinism cannot exclude the effects of deliberate choices, like when the chef prepares me the salad that I chose for lunch. All of these events, including my choices, were causally necessary from any prior point in time. And they all proceeded without deviation from the Big Bang to this moment.'' Marvin Edwards.

And this; Jarhyn - ''A deterministic system is a system in which no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system.''

Now, are you saying that these definitions are not valid because they have been refuted in the article?

 

[Jarhyn]

<Continued ignorance of can vs will>

Again, you fail at the boundary of "can" and "will", which is a conversation being had quite handily without you. Maybe actually read the posts with a mind open to the possibility of compatibilism instead of repeating your assertion fallacies and religion.

It would be helpful if you could take a hint that perhaps the side that understands things well enough to actually read whole articles and think about actual state transitions and switching structures, perhaps some folks who have actually designed and debugged large scale deterministic systems, might have a pretty good handle on "determinism"

 

[DBT]

Determinism means that events will proceed naturally (as if "fixed as a matter of natural law") and reliably ("without deviation"). All of these events, including my choices, were causally necessary from any prior point in time. And they all proceeded without deviation from the Big Bang to this moment.

Among these inevitable events was my reading the restaurant menu, considering the possibility of ordering the juicy steak, but recalling that I had bacon and eggs for breakfast and a double cheeseburger for lunch. So I decided that the salad would be a better choice for dinner.

It would also be inevitable that my choice would be free of coercion and free of any undue influence. No one was pointing a gun to my head. My reasoning was not distorted by mental illness. Thus, it was a choice of my "own free will", as the notion of free will is commonly understood.

Please note that causal necessity has not changed anything. Everything happened just so.

Determinism cannot exclude the effects of our deliberate choices, choices reliably caused by our own goals and our own reasoning. That would invalidate determinism.

That is not choice.

Your conclusion does not logically follow from determinism. If we assume, as I do, that all of these events, including my choices, were causally necessary from any prior point in time, and they all proceeded without deviation from the Big Bang to this moment, then we must conclude that my making the choice for myself, between the steak and the salad, would inevitably be made by me of my own free will.

There is no choice to be found. You said it yourself without realizing the implications

There is no such implication from causal necessity. Causal necessity includes me choosing to order the salad rather than the steak. If you attempt to eliminate that fact, you contradict causal necessity and your notion of determinism becomes incomplete and invalid.

How is it choice when all events proceed without deviation from the big bang and how things go ever after?

What exactly is chosen, ie, there was a possible alternative, when nothing deviates from what must necessarily happen?

Do you have a choice when the conclusion was fixed before you thought about it? If your 'choice' is chocolate ice cream as determined, not by you, but all prior states of the system, is that how choice works?

A determined action is clearly not a choice.

No event is an isolated action, there are no independent agents, everything that happens is an interaction between many events. Every cause an effect and every effect a cause. A web of causality that does not allow free will.

 

[Jarhyn]

If your 'choice' is chocolate ice cream as determined, not by you, but all prior states of the system, is that how choice works

You are invoking a nonsense here. We keep pointing this out.

You are part of a prior state of the system.

As such this statement decodes, in compatibilist language, to "If your 'choice' is chocolate ice cream as determined, not by you, but by you + some other stuff, is that how choice works"

I have bolded the contradiction for you.

Marvin keeps pointing out that we are a part of the state of the system. DBT keeps ignoring that fact. Who is right? Almost certainly Marvin accounting for the fact that DBT does not seem to be able to understand or spot nonsense when he spews it.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Whenever we say that "a different action could actually be instantiated" we are logically implying circumstances that are different from what they were. So, the statement becomes nonsensical if taken literally. Taken literally it turns out like this, "a different action could actually be instantiated under the same circumstances under different circumstances".

So when you say "different actions could actually be instantiated given the same circumstances" what do you mean by "given the same circumstances"? This isn't making sense.

The "same circumstances" is referring to the broader event of causal necessity, within which the more specific event of choosing was happening. In the restaurant example, within the choosing event itself, it was logically necessary that "I can choose the steak" and "I can choose the salad" were both true, thus insuring that "I could have chosen the steak" would be true after I decided to order the salad.

The "broader" same circumstances can be seen in the thought experiment of "turning back the clock". We once again return to the beginning of the choosing operation in which "I can choose the salad" and "I can choose the steak" are once again true, resulting in "I could have chosen the steak" being true. So, "I could have chosen the steak" is once again true under the exact same circumstances.

However, the statement "I could have chosen the steak" itself is implying that circumstances would have to be different in order for "I would have chosen the steak" to be true.

I take issue with this:

Whenever we say that "a different action could actually be instantiated" we are logically implying circumstances that are different from what they were.

I agree that when we say we could have done otherwise we're implying "circumstances that are different from what they were".

However in philosophical discussions about free will, when incompatibilists talk about "could have done otherwise" (also known as PAP - the principal of alternative possibilities) they most definitely are not implying "circumstances that are different from what they were".

Failure to make this distinction clear when arguing the compatibilist case will cause confusion.

Two things: First, the PAP is satisfied by the logical fact that there are always alternative possibilities, due to the very nature of the notion of a "possibility". A possibility is something that may or may not happen. If it never happens, it remains a real possibility. The fact that it never happens does not convert it to an impossibility. It simply remains something that could have happened, but never did.

A possibility exists solely within the imagination. We cannot drive a car across the possibility of a bridge. We can only drive across an actual bridge. However, a possibility serves a real function, in that we cannot build an actual bridge without first imagining a possible bridge.

A real possibility is something that we can make real if we choose to do so. Once we've determined that it is a real possibility, the fact that we never choose to actualize it does not make it impossible. It remains an actual possibility that we simply did not choose.

Second: I agree with you that it is very difficult to shake off the figurative use of "could" in "could not have been different under the same circumstances". I find myself having to recognize and make the appropriate word change after the fact, by changing "could" to "would" (or "can" to "will').

Figuratively, we have gotten into the habit of saying "could" in place of "would", because of our tendency to think that "because it would never happen, it is AS IF it could never happen". Or, "because it will not happen, it is AS IF it cannot happen". But, like all figurative statements, they are literally false.

But in reality, "I chose the salad for dinner, even though I could have ordered the steak", is considered to be true in both its parts, and not a contradiction.

Whenever choosing happens, there will always be, by logical necessity (they are required by the operation itself) at least two real possibilities to choose from, and, by logical necessity, we will be able to choose either one. This remains true even while it is causally necessary that one of these possibilities will necessarily become the single inevitable thing that we will choose, and the other possibilities will become the inevitable other things that we could have chosen, but didn't.

 

[pood]

Necessity;
Necessity is the idea that everything that has ever happened and ever will happen is necessary, and can not be otherwise. Necessity is often opposed to chance and contingency. In a necessary world there is no chance. Everything that happens is necessitated.

''The No Choice Principle implies that I cannot have a choice about anything that is an unavoidable consequence of something I have no control of.''

And there you go again, cherry-picking an essay you apparently did not read. I have addressed this upthread.

You miss the point. That is the nature of necessitation within a determined system. It's entailed in the definition given by compatibilists on this forum. No deviation from the big bang and ever after means that events proceed precisely what as described in the quote.

There is no wriggle room. Stomp your feet, wail and gnash your teeth, given no possible deviation or alternate action: ''In a necessary world there is no chance. Everything that happens is necessitated.''

That is the point, like it or not.

It is you who misses the point. Why don’t you address the rest of the article, which refutes the opening lines that you chery-picked? It seems strange to invoke an essay or a writer that disagrees with your position, but you’ve done that inthe past, so …

No, it's you. If necessitation is refuted, the compatibilist definition of determinism is also, by default refuted.

In other words, there is no determinism as defined by compatibilists on this forum.

And as the compatibilist claim happens to be that free will is compatible with the given definition of determinism.....which you say is refuted, you have just negated the validity of compatibilism.

You still didn’t read the rest of the article that you cherry-picked? And yet, in this very post to which I’m responding, you cherry pick the essay again.

Let me quote from that essay (among other salient quotes) the following:

Necessity must be limited to its proper use in logic

The problem is that causal determinism does NOT imply “necessity.” That’s an unwarranted add-on of HARD determinists, not CAUSAL determinists.

Are you seriously trying to tell us that it was NECESSARY that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK on Nov. 22, 1963, because of the big bang?

Necessity applies to formal logic. It is necessary that triangles have three sides. it is necessary that bachelors are unmarried. It is necessary that two plus two equals four. And so on.

The article you cherry-picked quotes Leibniz as distinguishing between necessary necessity and contingent necessity. The latter today is also known as physical necessity or more fancily, nomic or nomological necessity. The philosopher whom I’ve quoted previously, Norman Swartz, argues that there is no valid modal category of nomological necessity.

The article that you cherry-picked goes on to state that “…some future events that are possible do not occur by necessity from past external factors alone, but might depend on us. We have a choice to assent or not assent to an action.”

As as been argued forever now, the fact that I WILL do x, given antecedents a, b, and c, does not mean that I MUST do x, only that I WILL do x. That’s it, full stop. To confuse WILL and MUST is a modal fallacy, as I’ve explained umpteen times to no discernible effect.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

How is it choice when all events proceed without deviation from the big bang and how things go ever after?

You're hanging onto the figurative sense. Your argument is based upon the notion that "if the choice was inevitable since the big bang, then it is AS IF choosing never really happened".

The problem is that every figurative statement is literally false. Choosing is something that people actually do in the real world. We observe ourselves and others making choices all the time. Making choices is an indisputable event actually happening in physical reality. So, the claim that it does not exist is objectively false.

The correct analysis of causal necessity as it applies to choosing is that it is inevitable that people will be making choices and the most meaningful and relevant causes of those choices are the person's own thoughts and feelings. We assume that these thoughts and feelings will themselves be reliably caused by prior events. But as we trace back through the prior causes, they become less relevant and more incidental. The most direct cause of a deliberate action is the act of deliberation that precedes it.

A determined action is clearly not a choice.

A choice is still a choice (the output of a person's choosing operation), even though it was an inevitable choice. So, clearly, an action determined by choosing is still a choice.

No event is an isolated action, there are no independent agents, everything that happens is an interaction between many events. Every cause an effect and every effect a cause. A web of causality that does not allow free will.

The web of causality apparently does allow choosing to happen, because we see it every day. And when that choosing is free of coercion and undue influence, then it is considered to be freely chosen, a voluntary choice, an unforced choice, a choice of "one's own free will". There is no requirement that it be free of ordinary influences, free from causation, free from one's own brain, or free from anything else. Free will only requires freedom from coercion and undue influence. Nothing more. Nothing less.

 

[The AntiChris]

Whenever we say that "a different action could actually be instantiated" we are logically implying circumstances that are different from what they were. So, the statement becomes nonsensical if taken literally. Taken literally it turns out like this, "a different action could actually be instantiated under the same circumstances under different circumstances".

So when you say "different actions could actually be instantiated given the same circumstances" what do you mean by "given the same circumstances"? This isn't making sense.

The "same circumstances" is referring to the broader event of causal necessity, within which the more specific event of choosing was happening.

So by "same circumstances" you mean different circumstances.

This is a little frustrating. In the post (#2,867) that started this current sub-discussion. I specifically used the phrase "the ability to do otherwise given exactly the same circumstances" (my point was that this was an unreasonable requirement of incompatibilism). Following that post both you and pood disagreed with my objection. Although it now seems what you really meant was that we could do otherwise in the same circumstances but not exactly the same circumstances.

 

[pood]

I’ve stated this before but will now summarize.

There are various forms of determinism, and for each form it has been claimed that free will is ruled out. All of the claims run afoul of the modal fallacy.

Epistemic determinism is the claim that if there is an omniscient entity, such as god, who has infallible foreknowledge of all future contingent events, then such events cannot be contingent but are necessary, viz.:

If today it is true that tomorrow God knows you will do x, then tomorrow you must do x (no free will).

This is a modal fallacy. Here’s the corrected argument:

Necessarily (If today it is true that tomorrow God knows you will do x, then tomorrow you will [NOT MUST!] do x. If tomorrow you do y instead, then God would have foreknown THAT fact instead. (Free will restored.)

Logical determinism, also known as Aristotle’s problem of future contingents:

If today it is true that tomorrow there will be a sea battle, then tomorrow there must be a sea battle (no free will).

This is a modal fallacy. Here’s the corrected argument:

Necessarily (if today it is true that tomorrow there will be a sea battle, then tomorrow there will [NOT MUST!] be sea battle. If tomorrow there is no sea battle, then a DIFFERENT prior proposition would have been true. (Free will restored.)

Relativistic determinism, via the special and general theories of relativity:

The future exists along with the present and the past. Since the future already exists even before you “get” there, you cannot change the future. Hence what you always do, you MUST do. No free will.

This is a modal fallacy. Here’s the corrected argument:

If all you future actions are “already” true, it is because those are the things that you will [NOT MUST!] do. If you do or had done different things, then a DIFFERENT past/present/future would be true.

Causal determinism is the claim that all antecedent events entail or necessitate future events, including human acts, such that:

Given antecedents a, b, and c, I must do x.

This is a modal fallacy. Here’s the corrected argument:

Necessarily (given antecedents a, b, and c, I will [NOT MUST!] do x.) If I do y instead, than a DIFFERENT set of antecedents would have been true. (Free will restored.)

I know, DBT will be spluttering, “But, but, antecedent circumstances WEREN’T different, they COULDN’T have been different, therefore you must do what you do, yada yada. …”

But they could have been different and that is the point! They just WEREN’T different! It COULD have been the case that Hitler died in childbirth and we skip WWII and so on, but he lived and so we got WWII. All that is necessarily true in this case is that there is only ONE history; but that history is always contingent.

 

[The AntiChris]

Causal determinism is the claim that all antecedent events entail or necessitate future events, including human acts, such that:

Given antecedents a, b, and c, I must do x.

This is a modal fallacy. Here’s the corrected argument:

Necessarily (given antecedents a, b, and c, I will [NOT MUST!] do x.) If I do y instead, than a DIFFERENT set of antecedents would have been true. (Free will restored.)

I know, DBT will be spluttering, “But, but, antecedent circumstances WEREN’T different, they COULDN’T have been different, therefore you must do what you do, yada yada. …”

But they could have been different and that is the point! They just WEREN’T different! It COULD have been the case that Hitler died in childbirth and we skip WWII and so on, but he lived and so we got WWII. All that is necessarily true in this case is that there is only ONE history; but that history is always contingent.

I assume this is in response to my concerns.

I'm not sure how this justifies your claim that "A subject does have the ability to do otherwise in exactly the same circumstances". What you say above is that if he does do otherwise then "a DIFFERENT set of antecedents would have been true" - it wouldn't be in exactly the same circumstances.