Why There is No Free-Will (with Richard Carrier)

[Mr. Board Member]

Hi All! Vice President of Internet Infidels here. I interview Carrier on Free-Will. We prove it is metaphysically impossible. Link:

Thanks,

Edouard Tahmizian

 

[pood]

Hi All! Vice President of Internet Infidels here. I interview Carrier on Free-Will. We prove it is metaphysically impossible. Link:

Thanks,

Edouard Tahmizian

Is there a transcript? I dislike watching videos.

Also, we have several ongoing threads discussing this very topic.

 

[pood]

“Metaphysically impossible” — proven, no less!

 

[pood]

Are there proofs in metaphysics? Last I looked, there are not even proofs in science. Proofs are for alcohol and maths.

 

[Mr. Board Member]

“Metaphysically impossible” — proven, no less!

Hi. Once our Executive Director makes a Summary of the video, I will post it here. This interview was actually interesting and making a transcript would take too much space.

VP of Internet Infidels,

Ed Tahmizian

 

[pood]

I wonder why atheists in particular seem hung up on the idea that we lack free will, however precisely that is defined. I think it is argument to the effect that if God exists and knows exactly what we will do before we do it, then we cannot do otherwise, and God would be responsible for all our bad acts. Thus we cannot be held morally responsible.

Unfortunately for this atheist claim, it’s logically wrong.

 

[Mr. Board Member]

I wonder why atheists in particular seem hung up on the idea that we lack free will, however precisely that is defined. I think it is argument to the effect that if God exists and knows exactly what we will do before we do it, then we cannot do otherwise, and God would be responsible for all our bad acts. Thus we cannot be held morally responsible.

Unfortunately for this atheist claim, it’s logically wrong.

If you watch the video, we go into why the will is determined solely by motives and could not have done otherwise. We discuss why all choices are determined by prior causes. Me and Carrier do not at all think foreknowledge is itself causative.

 

[pood]

I wonder why atheists in particular seem hung up on the idea that we lack free will, however precisely that is defined. I think it is argument to the effect that if God exists and knows exactly what we will do before we do it, then we cannot do otherwise, and God would be responsible for all our bad acts. Thus we cannot be held morally responsible.

Unfortunately for this atheist claim, it’s logically wrong.

If you watch the video, we go into why the will is determined solely by motives and could not have done otherwise. We discuss why all choices are determined by prior causes. Me and Carrier do not at all think foreknowledge is itself causative.

OK, I will look at it. “Could not have done otherwise” is a modal fallacy, though. As I have asked in another ongoing thread, and received no good answer to, how does determinism design buildings, write novels, and compose symphonies? It takes humans making actual choices to do that. Of course, the brain is part of the deterministic process. But determinism is a mindless descriptive (not prescriptive) process. Free will depends on determinism to realize chosen outcomes. But I’ll see what Carrier has to say.

 

[Jarhyn]

I wonder why atheists in particular seem hung up on the idea that we lack free will, however precisely that is defined. I think it is argument to the effect that if God exists and knows exactly what we will do before we do it, then we cannot do otherwise, and God would be responsible for all our bad acts. Thus we cannot be held morally responsible.

Unfortunately for this atheist claim, it’s logically wrong.

If you watch the video, we go into why the will is determined solely by motives and could not have done otherwise. We discuss why all choices are determined by prior causes. Me and Carrier do not at all think foreknowledge is itself causative.

If you would bring yourself to actually read the threads here on the subject, you would understand why taking Carrier's word on the subject may be premature.

In fact, there's a nice discussion there on the nature of time which indicates that any such statement of "it could not be otherwise" is fallacious, specifically of the form of Modal Fallacy, or type/instance confusion.

It would be nice if you could send people like Carrier our way, or at least join the discussion on the subject before posting views many Infidels (and those most invested in discussing the topic) would object to, and accepting them at face value.

 

[pood]

Edouard, I edited the book A Drop of Reason, including your excellent essay The Origin of Evil. I did not agree with all of it, but that’s OK. Nice to see you!

One of the reasons I prefer transcripts to videos is because if I wish to respond, I can put quote tags around text which is obviously impossible with video.

Carrier’s essay in that book is also quite impressive, though a bit overlong IMO.

 

[pood]

Edouard, you might want to drop your vid into this thread. A transcript, if possible, would be helpful.

 

[pood]

I see right from the beginning the discussion is about libertarian free will, which I reject. I will see if the video covers compatibilism or neo-Humean compatibilism.

 

[Mr. Board Member]

I see right from the beginning the discussion is about libertarian free will, which I reject. I will see if the video covers compatibilism or neo-Humean compatibilism.

Hey! I'm glad you liked my Essay on Evil's Origin. Nothing scholarly but writing so that the average lay-person can understand has its advantages - easier comprehension. I also messaged Mark Vuletic (the previous Twitter manager for Internet Infidels before me) my work. His Officer Essay was quite nice.

In the video, me and Carrier discuss what it actually takes to be able to choose something. We both agree that there is no libertarian free-will, but we agree that every person is free to do exactly as they desire. We both believe everything (events and actions) are determined via Hard- Determinism.

We don't cover the compatibilism/incompatibilism issue, but for the record we are both compatibilists. We conclude during the interview that LFW is probably metaphysically impossible - it simply makes no sense to say that in the exact same antecedent conditions (casual point) an effect (someone's choice) could have been otherwise as LFW entails. Also, LFW cannot rationally explain WHY someone chose to give into one motive and not another if all motives (and inclinations) were at the same level (no greater desire) before the choice was made. Saying "they just did" is a claim that cannot be proved and intuitively makes no sense.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the interview.

From The Vice President of Internet Infidels' Board of Directors,

Edouard Tahmizian

 

[Jarhyn]

We don't cover the compatibilism/incompatibilism issue, but for the record we are both compatibilists

The problem here is that Compatibilism, at least of the sort we are discussing, is not actually "compatible" with hard determinism.

Fatalism itself, the language of "must" rather than "shall" in the classic sea battle discussion contains an actual syntax error, where "at the same place and time" is exposed to be as "as nonsensical as trying to "set a non-static member on a static type".

I'm not going to get into that here, but the result is that you just have to flush the intuitions of both hard determinism AND libertarianism, if you want to stay consistent.

The problem is that it just makes no sense to even think that things must be different in the same conditions, when things are clearly different in different conditions. It is the direct demand for a contradiction there.

Moreover, discussing determinism before compatibilism seems to be burying the lead.

When we say "it could be otherwise", in the sentence, the could applies a modal modification to could, and is a necessary operation: instead of looking at the thing, you look at its properties, not the context of it mind you, JUST the thing.

Then you present that thing to a context.

Then you see what that thing does...

The metaphysical function this generates is a mapping of are all the things that model could execute in all the various contexts.

"of all the objects in the universe that have you-property, some of those objects do the thing, even if you did not do the thing" is then an equivalent statement to saying "you could even if you didn't".

The result is to just reject "Hard" Determinism (fatalism) with the same vigor as we reject Libertarianism.

Compatibilists are NOT hard determinists, and hard determinists are NOT compatibilists. The compatibilist says "an elsewhere-otherwise is otherwise enough for 'can'."

 

[pood]

Still have not had a chance to watch the whole thing, but will try to do so tonight and maybe comment tomorrow.

 

[pood]

Watched the first eight minutes and it seems pretty clear to me that Carrier is supporting compatibilism as opposed to libertarianism, which is also my position. He specifically rejects pre-determinism, which to me is just an other name for hard determinism. We have seen fatalism, hard determinism, pre-determinism, whatever you want to call it, supported here in other threads.

 

[pood]

Based on what I have watched so far, I think the title of the video should be “Why there is no libertarian free will.” Also note that the hyphen between “free” and “will” should be removed. The hyphen should only be used in compound modifiers of nouns, which this couplet is not. Sorry, grammar Nazi in me.

 

[pood]

By the 12:30 mark it seems pretty obvious that Carrier is a classical compatibilist, is doing a great job of explaining it, and also a great job of explaining why libertarianism makes no sense.

 

[pood]

Damn, wish I had the transcript to quote all the apposite things he is saying.

 

[pood]

Nice stuff on AI slop too and how free will needs determinism. To reiterate, I really think you need to modify “free will” in the title with “libertarian.” Carrier is doing a great job on this.