Compatibilism: What's that About?

[Marvin Edwards]

 Francis Crick

• Temporal Resolution of Tonal Pulses

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 51, 644 (1972); https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1912888
Kendrick N. Williams and David R. Perrott

Temporal Resolution of Tonal Pulses

Temporal resolution, as defined by the minimum detectable gap between successive tonal pulses, was observed to decrease as a direct function of both the frequency disparity between successive pulse...

asa.scitation.org

ABSTRACT
Temporal resolution, as defined by the minimum detectable gap between successive tonal pulses, was observed to decrease as a direct function of both the frequency disparity between successive pulses and the duration of the pulses. An interaction between frequency disparity and pulse duration was also observed.

Says awareness of actual input is dependent on duration and intensity of signal input.

Nuff sed.

Sure. There are limits to our sensory apparatus, whether sight, smell, sound, touch, taste, etc. And these vary from species to species. We can see more colors than dogs. Dogs can distinguish more things by smell. I assume the abstracted article is about hearing, and the thresholds of a tone's duration and frequency needed to detect the tone.

Through our curiosity and our imagination we have designed experiments to increase our knowledge of these sensory mechanisms.

Through our curiosity and our imagination we have also created many ways to extended our senses, building telescopes to better examine distant objects, building microscopes to better examine tiny objects.

Perhaps our curiosity and our imagination are, in themselves, mechanisms of sensing the world around us, and another means of making sense of it.

One of the things we have observed is the reliable operation of certain causal mechanisms, like the force of gravity upon the masses of two objects. Another thing we have observed is people encountering problems or issues that require them to make choices about what they will do next (for example, people in a restaurant deciding what they will have for dinner).

Two objective observations, like gravity and people making choices, cannot contradict each other. So, we must assume that the two notions cannot be incompatible. The fact of gravity cannot contradict the fact of choosing. Both are causal mechanisms. Gravity causes objects dropped from the leaning tower of Pisa to fall at a constant rate of acceleration until they hit the ground. Choosing causes the person in the restaurant to resolve the many options on the menu into a single "I will have this, please" or an "I will have that, please".

In the same way that we observe people making choices for themselves, we have also observed people forcing choices upon others. The bank robber points a gun at the cashier, and demands that she fill his bag with money.

The customer in the restaurant was free to decide for himself what he would have for dinner. The bank cashier was not free to decide for herself what to do with the banks money. This is the distinction, between a freely chosen will and a coerced will, is necessary when deciding who is responsible for what happened.

The waiter will bring the bill to the customer, holding the customer responsible for his deliberate act.
But the police will not hold the bank cashier responsible for her actions, because she was forced to act against her will. Instead, they will hold the robber with the gun responsible for her actions.

That is what free will is about, who is properly held responsible for their actions and who is not held responsible.

Determinism asserts that all actions are reliably caused by prior events. This includes the actions of the customer in the restaurant, the actions of the bank cashier, and the actions of the bank robber. And it even includes our own actions, as we decide who is responsible for what in each of these cases.

So, within a deterministic world, the determination of responsibility is reliably caused by the assessment of which parties acted of their own free will and which parties were forced to act against their will.

Thus, we find free will and the lack of free will to be meaningful concepts that are still significant within a fully deterministic world.

Determinism and free will appear to be compatible notions.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

P1: A freely chosen will is when someone chooses for themselves what they will do, while free of coercion and other forms of undue influence.
P2: A world is deterministic if every event is reliably caused by prior events.
P3: A freely chosen will is reliably caused by the person's own goals, reasons, or interests (with their prior causes).
P4: An unfree choice is reliably caused by coercion or undue influence (with their prior causes).
C: Therefore, the notion of a freely chosen will (and its opposite) is still meaningful within a fully deterministic world.

Sure, that is the compatibilist argument, the conclusion does follow from the premises....but...as the premises are questionable - the argument from Incompatibilism, etc - the argument is not sound, the conclusion does not prove the proposition of ''free will.''

Premise 1 is the definition of "free will". You can challenge the definition by providing your own definition. But, lacking that, the question is simply whether there is any evidence of free will as defined in P1.

The evidence presented for the existence of a choice, that is free from coercion and undue influence, was straightforward. We have all the people in the restaurant deciding for themselves what they will have for dinner. Everyone has seen it and everyone has actually made such a choice for themselves. So, that is sufficient to prove that free will as defined is a real event actually taking place in the real world.

''A deductive argument is sound if and only if it is both valid, and all of its premises are actually true.''

The form is clearly valid and each of the premises are right there for you to attempt to prove any of them false.

The problem for the notion of free will is, basically, unconscious agency, the non chosen state of neural networks being acted upon by external information: inner necessitation. Lacking the necessary regulative ability to qualify as being free will.

1. The brain performs the information processing called "choosing" using functions that include both conscious and unconscious processes. The specific mix is unimportant. But it has already been pointed out to you that each customer is conscious of being in a restaurant, conscious of the menu and the possibilities listed on it, conscious of the need to make a choice, and conscious of themselves telling the waiter, "I will have this, please" or "I will have that, please."

2. You again suggest that we must have the ability to step outside the brain and control what is going on inside it. Unless you are positing a supernatural "soul", your claim is clearly bogus. We, ourselves, are part of the brain's processing. And when the brain tells the waiter, "I will have the lobster dinner, please", that is actually "us" telling the waiter what "we" have decided that "we" will have for dinner.

Necessitation and freedom are not compatible.

I've just proven they are compatible. Now, it is your turn to prove they are not. Good luck!

... The restaurant menu is information acquired by your senses, processed, integrated with memory and proclivities, the determined response activated; thoughts and actions proceeding without impediment or restriction.

Yes. The specific operation is called "choosing". Choosing inputs two or more real possibilities, applies some criteria of comparative evaluation, and based on that evaluation outputs a single choice. The choice is usually in the form of an "I will X", where X is the thing we have decided to do. Their chosen will sets their specific intent, and that intent then motivates and directs their subsequent action. This is what the brain does.

In the restaurant, choosing inputs a menu of possibilities. Each customer will apply their own criteria of evaluating these options, which can include things like how well it will satisfy their hunger and their tastes, whether it is consistent with their dietary goals, and perhaps the price of the dinner. The option that seems best becomes their choice. Having set their intent upon a specific option, their subsequent action is to tell the waiter, "I will have the X dinner, please".

A highly evolved intelligent system, but not a free will system.

It is a system that causally determines what they will have for dinner by choosing it from many possible options.

Free will is about specific conditions that might or might not apply while choosing. For example, was someone pointing a gun at us and forcing his choice upon us against our will? If so, then we were not free to decide for ourselves what we would order for dinner.

So, either we were free to decide for ourselves or someone or something else imposed a choice upon us against our will.

You can do what you want, but what you want is fixed by the state and condition of the information processor.

Choosing is how the brain's information processing fixes the will upon some specific option.

Not the generic 'person,' but specifically the brain.

I'm pretty sure the 'generic person' includes their brain. The waiter hands the dinner bill to the generic person, making it readily available to the brain through the information processing known as 'reading'.

Its never a freely chosen decision.

Free in what sense? It was certainly a choice free of coercion and undue influence. Thus the "I will have the steak dinner" was a freely chosen will.

Determinism means necessitated actions.

Determinism means causally necessitated actions, that is, the actions were the reliable result of prior events.

A) The prior events may have been our freely choosing the action.
B) Or, the prior events may have been a guy pulling out a gun and telling us what to do.

Determinism makes no distinction between these two events. But we must.

Thus, we have the notions of free will, coercion, and insanity, to determine the nature of the cause, so that we may apply the appropriate means of correction. These distinctions are necessary for us to function as a society.

... We may say ''he is free to chose '' on the basis of outer appearances. After all, we can think and act. That is what we see.

And in most cases, what you see is an accurate picture of reality.

What we don't see is the means and mechanisms by which all of this is possible or how it works. Our casual comments do not take the underlying means of thought and action into account.

We don't see the bones and tendons and veins either. But we can see the robber walk into the bank, point a gun at the bank teller, and demand that she fill his bag with money. We will arrest him for his deliberate act, but we will not arrest the bank teller because she was forced to act against her will.

Some facts are relevant. Some facts are not.

... necessitation is when information acquired by the senses alters brain activity, with thoughts and feeling brought to mind in response, with no free will involved, just the form and function of the system at work.

Causal necessity is granted in P2: A world is deterministic if every event is reliably caused by prior events. But, because it is always true of every event, without distinction, it is never a meaningful or relevant truth.

Our uncertainty is not the uncertainty of the system, which, if determined has no inherent uncertainy, with events proceeding according to initial conditions and each and every action fixed thereafter.

Yes. Determinism and causal necessity are matters of certainty. They have no knowledge at all of possibilities, of things that might or might not happen. Therefore, determinism must remain silent about what "can" or "cannot" happen, and what "could have" happened or "could not have" happened.

We, on the other hand, must deal with uncertainty on a daily basis. When we do not know what will happen, we imagine what can happen, to prepare for what does happen. These logical tokens are essential to our rational mechanisms for dealing with uncertainty and possibility. To use determinism to wipe out these tokens would also wipe out our means of dealing with uncertainty in a rational manner.

And that would not be a good thing. So, stop trying to harm us all by suggesting that we wipe out free will, responsibility, self, and other meaningful concepts that we humans have evolved to help us deal with the reality before us.

We as conscious being do not have access to the mechanical/ electrical state of the traffic lights, or systems and workings of our own brains.

That's right. Fortunately, we have evolved many concepts and tools of logic to deal with matters of which we lack detailed information, so that we can continue to function effectively, even though we lack omniscience.

The brain itself is a modular system with different regions competing for attention.

Yep.

The results are not willed.

It is unnecessary for us to manage the neural activity within our brain as it goes about choosing what we will do. The result of the choosing is our will and it is our own brains that are doing the choosing.

Determinism isn't doing it. Causal necessity isn't doing it. The "laws of nature" aren't doing it. The "Past" isn't doing it.

It is our own brains that are doing the choosing that causally necessitates our actions.

How we perceive the world, the traffic lights, our own estimations, uncertainties, thoughts and actions are a reflection of our limited understanding

Yep.

The compatibilist conclusion may follow from its premises, but as its premises are flawed, the argument is not sound.

The premises have held up to your objections. They are sound. The argument is thus sound and the conclusion is sound.

''A deductive argument is sound if and only if it is both valid, and all of its premises are actually true.''

Exactly!

 

[Copernicus]

My analogy is we exist on a tiny far from the hotbed of reality and with the tools we have, we can only gather indirect information about what we can sense with senses. The world is the entire universe over its entire life. And we begin by sampling with inefficient and incomplete sensors. No way we can get from that microscopic sample to reality with whatever capabilities we have for combining what we know into knowledge of everything. Here I'm gonna ripoff Jarhyn and say local solutions cannot become system solutions. We are still discovering stuff that changes how we view what we know. We've not even begun to tap the range of what is there. nor are we ever going to do so.

Then explain why it is so easy to prove that perception in humans (and other animals) is active, not passive. That is, we recognize patterns in what we sense, even if the sensory information does not fully support every element of the pattern.

Active perception is clear observing innervation that descending/ascending nervous activity modulates input nervous activity in most human sensory and effector systems. That is irrelevant to my argument.

Using technical jargon in a discussion group like this serves no purpose other than to obfuscate what you are trying to say, not that you are saying much with it here. Jargon of this sort turns out to be more of a barrier than a help in explaining your position. I get that you are a retired psychophysicist. Let's focus on the topic--some clear explanation of how you think the well-established gestalt phenomenon works.

If one has no access to information one has no means for verifying other than existing information. One cannot model something which one can't experience. If you don't have a palette all you can do is fill in the blanks with the tools you have. That's not going to get you to reality.

It does not matter whether one has the ability to create a map as known by inserting data to complete existing models. Existing models always change as understanding increases.

None of this is in dispute. Nobody is denying that there is access to existing information from the peripheral nervous system. The fact appears to be that the central nervous system matches them against pattern templates. Those templates or models have to come from somewhere, but I'm glad to see you clearly acknowledging the existence here. That, at least, is progress, in light of what seemed to be your earlier claim that people couldn't build models of reality.

An example today is dark energy and matter. They are proposed fillers to complete the current theory. But we already see there are elements outside our theoretical model. So completing the model without including the new data goes nowhere because the model has changed in unknown ways.

My problem is we have glimpsed knowledge of the amount of energy out there from our existing models but we will never have the capacity to exploit that knowledge/energy because harnessing such energy is beyond our reach forever. And darn it we don't even know whether energy is the tool we really need to exploit. We may be at the stage mankind was 60,000 years ago and we may not have another 60000 ears to find out.

Finally, imagine what we know versus what is the reality now is like what we knew 60000 years ago was to what we know now. Time problem.

Ok, now you are talking about dark energy and matter. Off you go on another gish gallop. I'm sure you'll have fun, but I'll pass on the opportunity to go with you.

 

[Jarhyn]

My analogy is we exist on a tiny far from the hotbed of reality and with the tools we have, we can only gather indirect information about what we can sense with senses. The world is the entire universe over its entire life. And we begin by sampling with inefficient and incomplete sensors. No way we can get from that microscopic sample to reality with whatever capabilities we have for combining what we know into knowledge of everything. Here I'm gonna ripoff Jarhyn and say local solutions cannot become system solutions. We are still discovering stuff that changes how we view what we know. We've not even begun to tap the range of what is there. nor are we ever going to do so.

Then explain why it is so easy to prove that perception in humans (and other animals) is active, not passive. That is, we recognize patterns in what we sense, even if the sensory information does not fully support every element of the pattern.

Active perception is clear observing innervation that descending/ascending nervous activity modulates input nervous activity in most human sensory and effector systems. That is irrelevant to my argument.

Using technical jargon in a discussion group like this serves no purpose other than to obfuscate what you are trying to say, not that you are saying much with it here. Jargon of this sort turns out to be more of a barrier than a help in explaining your position. I get that you are a retired psychophysicist. Let's focus on the topic--some clear explanation of how you think the well-established gestalt phenomenon works.

If one has no access to information one has no means for verifying other than existing information. One cannot model something which one can't experience. If you don't have a palette all you can do is fill in the blanks with the tools you have. That's not going to get you to reality.

It does not matter whether one has the ability to create a map as known by inserting data to complete existing models. Existing models always change as understanding increases.

None of this is in dispute. Nobody is denying that there is access to existing information from the peripheral nervous system. The fact appears to be that the central nervous system matches them against pattern templates. Those templates or models have to come from somewhere, but I'm glad to see you clearly acknowledging the existence here. That, at least, is progress, in light of what seemed to be your earlier claim that people couldn't build models of reality.

An example today is dark energy and matter. They are proposed fillers to complete the current theory. But we already see there are elements outside our theoretical model. So completing the model without including the new data goes nowhere because the model has changed in unknown ways.

My problem is we have glimpsed knowledge of the amount of energy out there from our existing models but we will never have the capacity to exploit that knowledge/energy because harnessing such energy is beyond our reach forever. And darn it we don't even know whether energy is the tool we really need to exploit. We may be at the stage mankind was 60,000 years ago and we may not have another 60000 ears to find out.

Finally, imagine what we know versus what is the reality now is like what we knew 60000 years ago was to what we know now. Time problem.

Ok, now you are talking about dark energy and matter. Off you go on another gish gallop. I'm sure you'll have fun, but I'll pass on the opportunity to go with you.

I reject that one cannot model that which they can't experience. I do it all the time. I'm fairly certain that I can't experience, for example, a zombie apocalypse. Yet somehow I have models for it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I admittedly don't know whether I can experience time travel or how "I" would experience it, but I habe some models for that too. Albeit incomplete models.

I also reject this stink nugget:
"No way we can get from that microscopic sample to reality with whatever capabilities we have for combining what we know into knowledge of everything."

Seriously? Hard determinism... of the gaps?!?

 

[fromderinside]

My analogy is we exist on a tiny far from the hotbed of reality and with the tools we have, we can only gather indirect information about what we can sense with senses. The world is the entire universe over its entire life. And we begin by sampling with inefficient and incomplete sensors. No way we can get from that microscopic sample to reality with whatever capabilities we have for combining what we know into knowledge of everything. Here I'm gonna ripoff Jarhyn and say local solutions cannot become system solutions. We are still discovering stuff that changes how we view what we know. We've not even begun to tap the range of what is there. nor are we ever going to do so.

Then explain why it is so easy to prove that perception in humans (and other animals) is active, not passive. That is, we recognize patterns in what we sense, even if the sensory information does not fully support every element of the pattern.

Active perception is clear observing innervation that descending/ascending nervous activity modulates input nervous activity in most human sensory and effector systems. That is irrelevant to my argument.

Using technical jargon in a discussion group like this serves no purpose other than to obfuscate what you are trying to say, not that you are saying much with it here. Jargon of this sort turns out to be more of a barrier than a help in explaining your position. I get that you are a retired psychophysicist. Let's focus on the topic--some clear explanation of how you think the well-established gestalt phenomenon works.

If one has no access to information one has no means for verifying other than existing information. One cannot model something which one can't experience. If you don't have a palette all you can do is fill in the blanks with the tools you have. That's not going to get you to reality.

It does not matter whether one has the ability to create a map as known by inserting data to complete existing models. Existing models always change as understanding increases.

None of this is in dispute. Nobody is denying that there is access to existing information from the peripheral nervous system. The fact appears to be that the central nervous system matches them against pattern templates. Those templates or models have to come from somewhere, but I'm glad to see you clearly acknowledging the existence here. That, at least, is progress, in light of what seemed to be your earlier claim that people couldn't build models of reality.

An example today is dark energy and matter. They are proposed fillers to complete the current theory. But we already see there are elements outside our theoretical model. So completing the model without including the new data goes nowhere because the model has changed in unknown ways.

My problem is we have glimpsed knowledge of the amount of energy out there from our existing models but we will never have the capacity to exploit that knowledge/energy because harnessing such energy is beyond our reach forever. And darn it we don't even know whether energy is the tool we really need to exploit. We may be at the stage mankind was 60,000 years ago and we may not have another 60000 ears to find out.

Finally, imagine what we know versus what is the reality now is like what we knew 60000 years ago was to what we know now. Time problem.

Ok, now you are talking about dark energy and matter. Off you go on another gish gallop. I'm sure you'll have fun, but I'll pass on the opportunity to go with you.

I reject that one cannot model that which they can't experience. I do it all the time. I'm fairly certain that I can't experience, for example, a zombie apocalypse. Yet somehow I have models for it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I admittedly don't know whether I can experience time travel or how "I" would experience it, but I habe some models for that too. Albeit incomplete models.

I also reject this stink nugget:
"No way we can get from that microscopic sample to reality with whatever capabilities we have for combining what we know into knowledge of everything."

Seriously? Hard determinism... of the gaps?!?

Yet you argue what you do based on what we know because we develop science based on determinism.

 

[Copernicus]

Yet you argue what you do based on what we know because we develop science based on determinism.

Science assumes that all observable phenomena have physical causes, not that free will is incompatible with determinism. That philosophical position is more widely known as "hard determinism", and it has nothing to do with science.

 

[fromderinside]

Using technical jargon in a discussion group like this serves no purpose other than to obfuscate what you are trying to say, not that you are saying much with it here. Jargon of this sort turns out to be more of a barrier than a help in explaining your position. I get that you are a retired psychophysicist. Let's focus on the topic--some clear explanation of how you think the well-established gestalt phenomenon works.

Is it, 'the well-established gestalt phenomenon' really more than the sum of its parts. Or is it more like generating a model that matches up with existing expectations (models) do for most illusions?

 

[fromderinside]

Yet you argue what you do based on what we know because we develop science based on determinism.

Science assumes that all observable phenomena have physical causes, not that free will is incompatible with determinism. That philosophical position is more widely known as "hard determinism", and it has nothing to do with science.

I see determinism differently from you. It is simply determinism and when applied observation and experiment one presumes a physical basis. One looks back to Descartes and sees he's self-referencing which is something modern scientists have learned to avoid like the plague.

If there is a mind it arises from brain and body information and consciousness seems to be primarily one talking to himself like he's rehearsing a procedure such as toolmaking.

I'm sure animals have been conscious of visual olfactory, somesthetic, motion, scenes for most of the existence of innervated organisms. What's different is that man, with speech, has taken it to subtext just prior to and just after, such as when justifying, execution.

 

[Copernicus]

Yet you argue what you do based on what we know because we develop science based on determinism.

Science assumes that all observable phenomena have physical causes, not that free will is incompatible with determinism. That philosophical position is more widely known as "hard determinism", and it has nothing to do with science.

I see determinism differently from you. It is simply determinism and when applied observation and experiment one presumes a physical basis. One looks back to Descartes and sees he's self-referencing which is something modern scientists have learned to avoid like the plague.

If there is a mind it arises from brain and body information and consciousness seems to be primarily one talking to himself like he's rehearsing a procedure such as toolmaking.

I'm sure animals have been conscious of visual olfactory, somesthetic, motion, scenes for most of the existence of innervated organisms. What's different is that man, with speech, has taken it to subtext just prior to execution.

We really aren't connecting with each other on this subject, so it is best to let it go. I know I've said that before, but you seemed to want to keep it going. I'm content to let it rest where it is.

 

[fromderinside]

Yet you argue what you do based on what we know because we develop science based on determinism.

Science assumes that all observable phenomena have physical causes, not that free will is incompatible with determinism. That philosophical position is more widely known as "hard determinism", and it has nothing to do with science.

I see determinism differently from you. It is simply determinism and when applied observation and experiment one presumes a physical basis. One looks back to Descartes and sees he's self-referencing which is something modern scientists have learned to avoid like the plague.

If there is a mind it arises from brain and body information and consciousness seems to be primarily one talking to himself like he's rehearsing a procedure such as toolmaking.

I'm sure animals have been conscious of visual olfactory, somesthetic, motion, scenes for most of the existence of innervated organisms. What's different is that man, with speech, has taken it to subtext just prior to execution.

We really aren't connecting with each other on this subject, so it is best to let it go. I know I've said that before, but you seemed to want to keep it going. I'm content to let it rest where it is.

As I see it the only reason to posit 'hard' determinism is to make room in determinism for such as self-referenced attributes. Unless you can specify something beyond that you are right we have little to discuss.

However, if you can show that determinism has meaning relative to will beyond self-reference attribution we should be game on.

 

[Copernicus]

However, if you can show that determinism has meaning relative to will beyond self-reference attribution we should be game on.

I will refer you to Marvin's posts. He does an excellent job of explaining the meaning of free will in the context of determinism. The "freedom" in free will is not in reference to freedom from causal necessity. You don't need me for that, and I think it's best that we terminate our discussion on this subject.

 

[fromderinside]

However, if you can show that determinism has meaning relative to will beyond self-reference attribution we should be game on.

I will refer you to Marvin's posts. He does an excellent job of explaining the meaning of free will in the context of determinism. The "freedom" in free will is not in reference to freedom from causal necessity. You don't need me for that, and I think it's best that we terminate our discussion on this subject.

I agree. Since you don't know that 'causal necessity' is a door opener for self-reference further between s would probably hopeless. Besides I've engaged Marvin and he thinks the world of Wundt which is why I don't bother with him any more.

 

[DBT]

P1: A freely chosen will is when someone chooses for themselves what they will do, while free of coercion and other forms of undue influence.
P2: A world is deterministic if every event is reliably caused by prior events.
P3: A freely chosen will is reliably caused by the person's own goals, reasons, or interests (with their prior causes).
P4: An unfree choice is reliably caused by coercion or undue influence (with their prior causes).
C: Therefore, the notion of a freely chosen will (and its opposite) is still meaningful within a fully deterministic world.

Sure, that is the compatibilist argument, the conclusion does follow from the premises....but...as the premises are questionable - the argument from Incompatibilism, etc - the argument is not sound, the conclusion does not prove the proposition of ''free will.''

Premise 1 is the definition of "free will". You can challenge the definition by providing your own definition. But, lacking that, the question is simply whether there is any evidence of free will as defined in P1.

As I happen to be arguing that the term 'free will' does not represent the mechanics of cognition, decision making or motor action - for the given reasons - I argue that there is no such thing as 'free will.'

If I was to speculate on what free will would look like, I would say it must include regulative control through the power of will, the ability to do otherwise in any given instance in time.

Which of course is impossible within a determined system. And of course, will does not play the role of decisionmaker within the brain, which - you guessed it - is unconscious information processing that produces experiences and actions.

Consequently, free will is impossible any way you look at it, and carefully crafted definitions fail to prove the proposition;

''If you accept regulative control as a necessary part of free will, it seems impossible either way:
1. Free will requires that given an act A, the agent could have acted otherwise
2. Indeterminate actions happens randomly and without intent or control
3. Therefore indeterminism and free will are incompatible
4. Determinate actions are fixed and unchangeable
5. Therefore determinism is incompatible with free will.''

The compatibilist conclusion may follow from its premises, but as its premises are flawed, the argument is not sound.

The premises have held up to your objections. They are sound. The argument is thus sound and the conclusion is sound.

I disagree. Compatibilist premises fail to account for the nature of determinism (fixed outcomes rather than 'reliable causality'), brain function, information processing and motor action - that unconscious processes determine action based on architecture, inputs, proclivities, etc - therefore do not hold up as a valid set of premises.

''Almost all of behavior involves motor function, from talking to gesturing to walking. But even a simple movement like reaching out to pick up a glass of water can be a complex motor task to study. Not only does your brain have to figure out which muscles to contract and in which order to steer your hand to the glass, it also has to estimate the force needed to pick up the glass. Other factors, like how much water is in the glass and what material the glass is made from, also influence the brains calculations. Not surprisingly, there are many anatomical regions which are involved in motor function.''

''An action’s production by a deterministic process, even when the agent satisfies the conditions on moral responsibility specified by compatibilists, presents no less of a challenge to basic-desert responsibility than does deterministic manipulation by other agents. ''

''A deductive argument is sound if and only if it is both valid, and all of its premises are actually true.''

Exactly!

Which, for the given reasons, is a problem for compatibilism.

Trouble with Compatibilism

''Here, in a nutshell, is Sartorio's main thesis: even if everything in the universe is fully determined in advance, there is nevertheless a sense in which our actions can make a difference in the world.

But of course here's what puzzles me, and what seems to puzzle most of compatibilism's opponents as far as I can tell: how compatibilism is supposed to be at all interesting, regardless of how we spell it out. After all, suppose I said to you: "All of your actions were determined billions of years ago. But, don't worry, you can make a real difference in the world. I have a philosophical analysis of 'making a difference' that proves it!" The obvious enough rejoinder seems to me to be this: "Well, of course. Surely there has to be a sense in which I can make a difference in the world. My actions are mine, after all -- they belong to me -- and there's clearly a sense in which they do make a difference in what happens. If the laws of nature cause me to drink a Coke, then, indeed, I have made a difference in the world: there is one less Coke to drink. But so what? It's one thing to say that there's a sense in which I can make a difference in the world. It's another thing to show that it is a sense worth philosophically caring about."


Here is the problem. Frankfurt cases are strongly disanalogous to physical determinism. In a Frankfurt case, the person's action is not determined by any actual physical laws. The sense in which the person "cannot do otherwise" is entirely counterfactual. It is that if they tried to choose otherwise, someone (or some mechanism) would step in and ensure that they don't succeed. But this "trying" isn't even possible under physical determinism. It's not the case that if I tried to behave otherwise than I do, physical laws would step in and stop me. It's that I can't even try to behave otherwise if physical determinism is true (it is not a physical possibility). This, then, is the problem with Frankfurt cases. They push certain intuitions -- that we can be morally responsible for our actions even if we couldn't do otherwise -- because, contrary to determinism, they smuggle in libertarian intuitions. They do this because alternative possibilities are only ruled out counterfactually. For all Frankfurt cases show, the reason why we judge a person free and responsible in those cases is that (A) we judge the person had libertarian free will to make the choice (they caused their action independently of physical laws), but (B) alternative possibilities are counterfactually ruled out because, if they libertarian-ly tried to choose something else, some mechanism would force them to behave the same way.

Accordingly, Frankfurt cases don't seem sufficient to me to philosophically motivate compatibilism. They're a poor analogy to determinism. In order to motivate compatibilism, we would have to tell a story like the one above (about voting for democrats) using determinism. But when we tell such a story, it doesn't seem at all like the person is free or morally responsible.

 

[Jarhyn]

Using technical jargon in a discussion group like this serves no purpose other than to obfuscate what you are trying to say, not that you are saying much with it here. Jargon of this sort turns out to be more of a barrier than a help in explaining your position. I get that you are a retired psychophysicist. Let's focus on the topic--some clear explanation of how you think the well-established gestalt phenomenon works.

[Not even any of the actual content of my post]

[Nothing to do with my comments or post]

I'm not digging into your Gish Gallop or any red herrings. Swing again maybe?

 

[Jarhyn]

My analogy is we exist on a tiny far from the hotbed of reality and with the tools we have, we can only gather indirect information about what we can sense with senses. The world is the entire universe over its entire life. And we begin by sampling with inefficient and incomplete sensors. No way we can get from that microscopic sample to reality with whatever capabilities we have for combining what we know into knowledge of everything. Here I'm gonna ripoff Jarhyn and say local solutions cannot become system solutions. We are still discovering stuff that changes how we view what we know. We've not even begun to tap the range of what is there. nor are we ever going to do so.

Then explain why it is so easy to prove that perception in humans (and other animals) is active, not passive. That is, we recognize patterns in what we sense, even if the sensory information does not fully support every element of the pattern.

Active perception is clear observing innervation that descending/ascending nervous activity modulates input nervous activity in most human sensory and effector systems. That is irrelevant to my argument.

Using technical jargon in a discussion group like this serves no purpose other than to obfuscate what you are trying to say, not that you are saying much with it here. Jargon of this sort turns out to be more of a barrier than a help in explaining your position. I get that you are a retired psychophysicist. Let's focus on the topic--some clear explanation of how you think the well-established gestalt phenomenon works.

If one has no access to information one has no means for verifying other than existing information. One cannot model something which one can't experience. If you don't have a palette all you can do is fill in the blanks with the tools you have. That's not going to get you to reality.

It does not matter whether one has the ability to create a map as known by inserting data to complete existing models. Existing models always change as understanding increases.

None of this is in dispute. Nobody is denying that there is access to existing information from the peripheral nervous system. The fact appears to be that the central nervous system matches them against pattern templates. Those templates or models have to come from somewhere, but I'm glad to see you clearly acknowledging the existence here. That, at least, is progress, in light of what seemed to be your earlier claim that people couldn't build models of reality.

An example today is dark energy and matter. They are proposed fillers to complete the current theory. But we already see there are elements outside our theoretical model. So completing the model without including the new data goes nowhere because the model has changed in unknown ways.

My problem is we have glimpsed knowledge of the amount of energy out there from our existing models but we will never have the capacity to exploit that knowledge/energy because harnessing such energy is beyond our reach forever. And darn it we don't even know whether energy is the tool we really need to exploit. We may be at the stage mankind was 60,000 years ago and we may not have another 60000 ears to find out.

Finally, imagine what we know versus what is the reality now is like what we knew 60000 years ago was to what we know now. Time problem.

Ok, now you are talking about dark energy and matter. Off you go on another gish gallop. I'm sure you'll have fun, but I'll pass on the opportunity to go with you.

I reject that one cannot model that which they can't experience. I do it all the time. I'm fairly certain that I can't experience, for example, a zombie apocalypse. Yet somehow I have models for it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I admittedly don't know whether I can experience time travel or how "I" would experience it, but I habe some models for that too. Albeit incomplete models.

I also reject this stink nugget:
"No way we can get from that microscopic sample to reality with whatever capabilities we have for combining what we know into knowledge of everything."

Seriously? Hard determinism... of the gaps?!?

Yet you argue what you do based on what we know because we develop science based on determinism.

Good thing that I'm a determinist then.

Compatibilist are determinists, we just recognize that the ideas of free will are not incompatible with determinism.

Or in other words: I can make a whole universe, set up with various domino trails that will cascade through an identifiable series of decision events. Which each themselves generate a frame and put it on the screen in a fully deterministic fashion.

Yet I can still point in this to localities which have free will relative to the others and these relationships are part of the system: they are real. I could not even set up the system were this not so, so as to have it contain events that isolate from one another.

The fact that the data sits in the available field of the context (memory in this case) doesn't change the fact that it, like our own more complicated (ostensibly) universe, contains discrete localities and those discrete localities do not express the same stuff in the same fields at the same location.

Compatibilism IS determinism. It's just that determinism does not require as you think it does the removal of concepts of free will, it merely exposed it as a very sloppy concept prior to compatibilism picking it up, dusting it off, knocking a bunch of weird and unnecessary assumptions about it, and then shoving it back into the world view to pin down the gears of goal oriented thinking once more and otherwise prevent the birth of The Stranger.

Even knowing the future (as long as it's not my future... Things get very fucky in that space!) Does not change this, that in the moment we are the causal agents insofar as we isolate our question to "as it relates to some particular event such as which path we walk down"

 

[Marvin Edwards]

P1: A freely chosen will is when someone chooses for themselves what they will do, while free of coercion and other forms of undue influence.
P2: A world is deterministic if every event is reliably caused by prior events.
P3: A freely chosen will is reliably caused by the person's own goals, reasons, or interests (with their prior causes).
P4: An unfree choice is reliably caused by coercion or undue influence (with their prior causes).
C: Therefore, the notion of a freely chosen will (and its opposite) is still meaningful within a fully deterministic world.

As I happen to be arguing that the term 'free will' does not represent the mechanics of cognition, decision making or motor action - for the given reasons - I argue that there is no such thing as 'free will.'

Cognition and decision making is how free will operates. Our deliberate motor actions are the result of that cognition and decision making. So, the facts of neuroscience confirm the mechanisms by which we choose what we will do.

When we are free to choose for ourselves what we will do, it is a freely chosen will. But if the choice is imposed upon us by someone or something else, then we are not free to make that choice for ourselves.

How the brain operates is a constant that is not in dispute here. Whether we make the choice ourselves, or someone points a gun at us, making us do his will, the brain continues to operate through cognition and decision making. The brain deals with the empirical conditions it faces, whether coerced or free of coercion.

But whether we are coerced or free of coercion is a significant distinction between the two cases. It makes a difference in how we assess who is responsible for the action.

If I was to speculate on what free will would look like, I would say it must include regulative control through the power of will, the ability to do otherwise in any given instance in time.

1. Regulative control falls to that which decides what will happen next. And that is us, specifically our brains, deciding what the we will do next. So, your first condition is satisfied.

2. The ability to do otherwise in any given instance in time always shows up whenever a choosing operation appears in the causal chain. Choosing logically requires at least two real possibilities to choose from and it logically requires that it is possible to choose either one. This means that there will always be at least two things that we "can" do. And when we've make our choice there will be the single thing that we inevitably "will" do, plus each of the other things that we inevitably "could have done" instead. So, your second condition is also satisfied.

Which of course is impossible within a determined system.

Apparently those two things, regulative control and the ability to do otherwise, are right there, staring you in the face, within a perfectly deterministic system.

And of course, will does not play the role of decisionmaker within the brain,

You keep putting the cart before the horse. Decision making is the source of our deliberate will. The process of deliberation chooses what we will deliberately do. I thought for a long time about whether to order the steak or the lobster, because I was uncertain which dinner I would enjoy the most. It was only after that deliberation that I was able to tell the waiter, "I will have the lobster, please".

The sequence is this: (1) multiple possibilities -> (2) choosing -> (3) "I will have the lobster". That's where the will comes from, and it is why it is important to know who or what is actually deciding what I will do.

which - you guessed it - is unconscious information processing that produces experiences and actions.

And I can see that you have the notion that unconscious information processing somehow changes things, but it doesn't. Choosing still happens, because it is the only way to get from the multiple possibilities on the menu to the "I will have the lobster, please".

Consequently, free will is impossible any way you look at it, and carefully crafted definitions fail to prove the proposition;

Freedom from ourselves is impossible. Freedom from our brains is impossible.

But our freedom to decide for ourselves what we will do is certainly possible, because we do it all the time. And having a brain is what makes it possible.

Since there are simpler definitions of free will, which not only make it possible, but also meaningful and relevant, I would suggest that your definition is the one that is bogus, and contrived.

My definition actually works, and is commonly used when assessing a person's moral or legal responsibility for their actions.

Compatibilist premises fail to account for the nature of determinism (fixed outcomes rather than 'reliable causality'), brain function, information processing and motor action - that unconscious processes determine action based on architecture, inputs, proclivities, etc - therefore do not hold up as a valid set of premises.

Compatibilism recognizes that all events are the reliable result of prior events (determinism), and thus, every event can in theory be traced back through a fixed series of reliably caused events to things and events as they were at any prior point in time.
Compatibilism recognizes that people have brains, and that it is the brain that processes information and makes choices.
Compatibilism recognizes that most of the brain's activity takes place outside of conscious awareness.
Compatibilism recognizes that each person has a history of prior causes that include their genetic proclivities and their prior life experiences.

Compatibilism also recognizes that a person can either be free decide for themselves what they will do, or, they can be coerced into doing something they would rather not do. Making the distinction between these two cases does not contradict any of the above facts.

Therefore, determinism and free will are compatible.

... "It's one thing to say that there's a sense in which I can make a difference in the world. It's another thing to show that it is a sense worth philosophically caring about." ...

Why do you quote people with such a snotty view of humanity, responsibility, and ethics?

 

[Jarhyn]

It's one thing to say that there's a sense in which I can make a difference in the world. It's another thing to show that it is a sense worth philosophically caring about.

It's not often I find a view so wrong I would use the term "repugnant".

The fact is we can each make exactly the difference in the world that a human existing where we are with the power to decide (choose; "exercise free will") can make. The difference your existence imparts on the world may be a difference reflected back onto yourself, or the invention of some new things, or perhaps even just sadly repeating someone else's "greatest hits". All of the above are possible.

To ignore this is to blind yourself to what you are
and to merely exist, as The Stranger.

I recognize that I have choices, and that I do not always have to accept, repeat, implement, or respect every (or any) thought that passes across my awareness. I pick and choose.

It's a fun game. Look at what you decide in a moment, ask "what else could I do in the coming moments besides what I just considered" and actually look for something (sometimes you draw a blank, that's OK it happens to all of us). Then ask "which of those do I think better for myself?" And then do that thing of the things.

 

[fromderinside]

My analogy is we exist on a tiny far from the hotbed of reality and with the tools we have, we can only gather indirect information about what we can sense with senses. The world is the entire universe over its entire life. And we begin by sampling with inefficient and incomplete sensors. No way we can get from that microscopic sample to reality with whatever capabilities we have for combining what we know into knowledge of everything. Here I'm gonna ripoff Jarhyn and say local solutions cannot become system solutions. We are still discovering stuff that changes how we view what we know. We've not even begun to tap the range of what is there. nor are we ever going to do so.

Then explain why it is so easy to prove that perception in humans (and other animals) is active, not passive. That is, we recognize patterns in what we sense, even if the sensory information does not fully support every element of the pattern.

Active perception is clear observing innervation that descending/ascending nervous activity modulates input nervous activity in most human sensory and effector systems. That is irrelevant to my argument.

Using technical jargon in a discussion group like this serves no purpose other than to obfuscate what you are trying to say, not that you are saying much with it here. Jargon of this sort turns out to be more of a barrier than a help in explaining your position. I get that you are a retired psychophysicist. Let's focus on the topic--some clear explanation of how you think the well-established gestalt phenomenon works.

If one has no access to information one has no means for verifying other than existing information. One cannot model something which one can't experience. If you don't have a palette all you can do is fill in the blanks with the tools you have. That's not going to get you to reality.

It does not matter whether one has the ability to create a map as known by inserting data to complete existing models. Existing models always change as understanding increases.

None of this is in dispute. Nobody is denying that there is access to existing information from the peripheral nervous system. The fact appears to be that the central nervous system matches them against pattern templates. Those templates or models have to come from somewhere, but I'm glad to see you clearly acknowledging the existence here. That, at least, is progress, in light of what seemed to be your earlier claim that people couldn't build models of reality.

An example today is dark energy and matter. They are proposed fillers to complete the current theory. But we already see there are elements outside our theoretical model. So completing the model without including the new data goes nowhere because the model has changed in unknown ways.

My problem is we have glimpsed knowledge of the amount of energy out there from our existing models but we will never have the capacity to exploit that knowledge/energy because harnessing such energy is beyond our reach forever. And darn it we don't even know whether energy is the tool we really need to exploit. We may be at the stage mankind was 60,000 years ago and we may not have another 60000 ears to find out.

Finally, imagine what we know versus what is the reality now is like what we knew 60000 years ago was to what we know now. Time problem.

Ok, now you are talking about dark energy and matter. Off you go on another gish gallop. I'm sure you'll have fun, but I'll pass on the opportunity to go with you.

I reject that one cannot model that which they can't experience. I do it all the time. I'm fairly certain that I can't experience, for example, a zombie apocalypse. Yet somehow I have models for it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I admittedly don't know whether I can experience time travel or how "I" would experience it, but I habe some models for that too. Albeit incomplete models.

I also reject this stink nugget:
"No way we can get from that microscopic sample to reality with whatever capabilities we have for combining what we know into knowledge of everything."

Seriously? Hard determinism... of the gaps?!?

Yet you argue what you do based on what we know because we develop science based on determinism.

Good thing that I'm a determinist then.

I can make a whole universe, set up with various domino trails that will cascade through an identifiable series of decision events.

You can make (self reference). We're done here.

 

[Jarhyn]

My analogy is we exist on a tiny far from the hotbed of reality and with the tools we have, we can only gather indirect information about what we can sense with senses. The world is the entire universe over its entire life. And we begin by sampling with inefficient and incomplete sensors. No way we can get from that microscopic sample to reality with whatever capabilities we have for combining what we know into knowledge of everything. Here I'm gonna ripoff Jarhyn and say local solutions cannot become system solutions. We are still discovering stuff that changes how we view what we know. We've not even begun to tap the range of what is there. nor are we ever going to do so.

Then explain why it is so easy to prove that perception in humans (and other animals) is active, not passive. That is, we recognize patterns in what we sense, even if the sensory information does not fully support every element of the pattern.

Active perception is clear observing innervation that descending/ascending nervous activity modulates input nervous activity in most human sensory and effector systems. That is irrelevant to my argument.

Using technical jargon in a discussion group like this serves no purpose other than to obfuscate what you are trying to say, not that you are saying much with it here. Jargon of this sort turns out to be more of a barrier than a help in explaining your position. I get that you are a retired psychophysicist. Let's focus on the topic--some clear explanation of how you think the well-established gestalt phenomenon works.

If one has no access to information one has no means for verifying other than existing information. One cannot model something which one can't experience. If you don't have a palette all you can do is fill in the blanks with the tools you have. That's not going to get you to reality.

It does not matter whether one has the ability to create a map as known by inserting data to complete existing models. Existing models always change as understanding increases.

None of this is in dispute. Nobody is denying that there is access to existing information from the peripheral nervous system. The fact appears to be that the central nervous system matches them against pattern templates. Those templates or models have to come from somewhere, but I'm glad to see you clearly acknowledging the existence here. That, at least, is progress, in light of what seemed to be your earlier claim that people couldn't build models of reality.

An example today is dark energy and matter. They are proposed fillers to complete the current theory. But we already see there are elements outside our theoretical model. So completing the model without including the new data goes nowhere because the model has changed in unknown ways.

My problem is we have glimpsed knowledge of the amount of energy out there from our existing models but we will never have the capacity to exploit that knowledge/energy because harnessing such energy is beyond our reach forever. And darn it we don't even know whether energy is the tool we really need to exploit. We may be at the stage mankind was 60,000 years ago and we may not have another 60000 ears to find out.

Finally, imagine what we know versus what is the reality now is like what we knew 60000 years ago was to what we know now. Time problem.

Ok, now you are talking about dark energy and matter. Off you go on another gish gallop. I'm sure you'll have fun, but I'll pass on the opportunity to go with you.

I reject that one cannot model that which they can't experience. I do it all the time. I'm fairly certain that I can't experience, for example, a zombie apocalypse. Yet somehow I have models for it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I admittedly don't know whether I can experience time travel or how "I" would experience it, but I habe some models for that too. Albeit incomplete models.

I also reject this stink nugget:
"No way we can get from that microscopic sample to reality with whatever capabilities we have for combining what we know into knowledge of everything."

Seriously? Hard determinism... of the gaps?!?

Yet you argue what you do based on what we know because we develop science based on determinism.

Good thing that I'm a determinist then.

I can make a whole universe, set up with various domino trails that will cascade through an identifiable series of decision events.

You can make (self reference). We're done here.

Ah, so this is where you bury your head in the sand! It's been nice, I guess.

The fact that you recognize the existence of the "self" as a discrete entity and process of discrete phenomena making decisions (being the sole momentary causal agency of a large-scale event) is almost there. Now you just have to recognize that there is language that discusses the causal agency and those things that supercede one causal agency with another in the momentary determination of a given event.

That there is more context does not void the actual existence of "the text itself".

 

[fromderinside]

I also reject this stink nugget:
"No way we can get from that microscopic sample to reality with whatever capabilities we have for combining what we know into knowledge of everything."

Seriously? Hard determinism... of the gaps?!?

Yet you argue what you do based on what we know because we develop science based on determinism.

I can make a whole universe, set up with various domino trails that will cascade through an identifiable series of decision events.

"I can make ..." is self-reference. Everything that follows from that phrase is not objective, material. We're done here. Self-reference is not objective, not science.

The fact that you recognize the existence of the "self" as a discrete entity and process of discrete phenomena making decisions (being the sole momentary causal agency of a large-scale event) is almost there. Now you just have to recognize that there is language that discusses the causal agency and those things that supercede one causal agency with another in the momentary determination of a given event.

The fact that you think that recognizing an introspected construct as material is evidence you don't know the meaning of objective or material.