Compatibilism: What's that About?

[Marvin Edwards]

Short on time tonight, I'll just quote this perspective on the subject;
... Frankfurt cases ...
... Strawson ...

Frankfurt cases are simply thought experiments regarding special circumstances where the person is theoretically unable to do otherwise but might still be assessed as acting of their own free will. For example, suppose a neuroscientist implants a device in Bob's that will only allow Bob to vote for a Democrat. However the device is only activated if Bob is about to vote Republican. So, if Bob is already inclined to vote for the Democrat, the device is never activated. Bob, is still acting of his own free will even though Bob could not do otherwise.

The correct analysis of this problem is that any manipulation of Bob constitutes an undue influence, and is therefore not free will. But if the manipulation never occurs, then Bob is acting of his own free will.

P. F. Strawson was looking at the problem of responsibility from the standpoint of the reactional attitudes that people naturally have toward harmful behavior. But that opens the door to justifying feelings of revenge and retribution. So, this adds nothing that is morally useful.

The Principle of Alternative Possibilities is satisfied in a more logical way, by looking at the logic of the language. A possibility is something that may happen, but then again, it may never happen. It is never necessary that a possibility must happen in order to be considered a real possibility.

The language and logic of possibilities evolved in our species to deal with matters of uncertainty. It is often the case that we do not know what will happen. So, we evolved the notion of possibilities to help us deal with this uncertainty. When we do not know what will happen, we imagine what can happen, to prepare for what does happen.

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, we cannot build an actual bridge without first imagining at least one possible bridge. In building a bridge, we are most likely to imagine many possible variations, and weigh the benefits of these alternative possibilities, before deciding upon the final design.

A real possibility is something that we are actually able to do if we choose to do it. It remains a real possibility even if we never choose to do it.

So, while we are limited to having a single inevitable actual bridge, we can have as many possible bridges as we can imagine.

The same applies to the choosing function. Choosing begins with a state of uncertainty. "What will we choose to do? Will we choose A or will we choose B?". We don't know yet. And we will not know until we've performed our evaluation of both options, to estimate which option is likely to produce the best outcome.

The logic of choosing requires that (1) there be at least two real possibilities (A and B) and that (2) we are able to choose either one ("I can choose A" is true and "I can choose B" is also true).

If there is only one possibility, then we bypass the choosing operation and proceed with the single possibility. It is logically impossible to choose between a single possibility, so, choosing simply would not happen. But, if there are two possibilities, and we do not know yet which one we will choose, then we must perform choosing before we can proceed.

In the same fashion, if we know for certain that "we cannot choose A" or that "we cannot choose B", then we would not bother choosing, but would simply proceed with the option that we could choose.

So, whenever we enter a choosing operation, it will always be the case that there are at least two options, and that we can choose either one.

Therefore, whenever a choosing operation occurs within a causal chain, the Principle of Alternative Possibilities will always be satisfied, by logical necessity.

At the end of the choosing operation, say between A and B, one of our options will become the single inevitable thing that we "will do", and the other option will be the inevitable thing that we "could have done".

By the logic and language of choosing, "I could have done otherwise" will ALWAYS BE TRUE, and it is only "I would have done otherwise" that will ALWAYS BE FALSE.

And this should put to bed the issue of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities. Sleep soundly.

Now, what about responsibility? We assign responsibility to the most meaningful and relevant cause of an event. The nature of the cause guides our efforts of correction. For example, if the cause of a criminal act was a significant mental illness, then correction will require medical and psychiatric treatment. If the cause of the bad behavior was coercion, then we remove the threat. If the cause of the act was a person's deliberate choice to profit at the victim's expense, then we need to take some action to correct the way the offender thinks about such choices in the future.

The nature of the penalty for a deliberate act would be designed to serve justice. We create a system of justice to protect everyone's rights, as defined by law. So, the penalty should be limited by that objective. A just penalty would seek to (a) repair the harm to the victim if possible, (b) correct the offender's future behavior is corrigible, (c) protect others from harm by securing the offender until his behavior is corrected, and (d) do no more harm to the offender and his rights than is reasonably required to accomplish (a), (b), and (c).

 

[Marvin Edwards]

As pointed out, so is ∀u∀v(∀x(x∈u⇔x∈v), ...

How in the world are you producing the upside down A??
And the upside down "land downunder"??

Is there a special font for the symbols and letters you're using?

 

[Jarhyn]

As pointed out, so is ∀u∀v(∀x(x∈u⇔x∈v), ...

How in the world are you producing the upside down A??
And the upside down "land downunder"??

Is there a special font for the symbols and letters you're using?

I copied it from a site that had it in Unicode.

IOW: I am a Wizard.

 

[DBT]

Definitions of conditions in relation to a system

You misuse the word "system". "System" used here is "axiomatic system of linguistic description", and the system that must be looked at is "the system which describes the deterministic physics" not the subsystem of that which describes neural systems.

As has been pointed out, and that which you cannot really sneak away from because we are all watching you like a hawk, is that neural systems may behave in reality in any way that Turing systems behave and then some, and Turing systems can do all the things, observably, within a deterministic system that are necessary to execute and regulate what it will do.

Nope.

I shouldn't have to be explaining the basics to you over and over;

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.''

In this instance we are talking about the brain. The brain being the agent of information processing and response.

Which, within the world - if deterministic - is itself a deterministic system. The rest of your post is irrelevant. I don't have the time to waste.

 

[DBT]

Short on time tonight, I'll just quote this perspective on the subject;
... Frankfurt cases ...
... Strawson ...

Frankfurt cases are simply thought experiments regarding special circumstances where the person is theoretically unable to do otherwise but might still be assessed as acting of their own free will. For example, suppose a neuroscientist implants a device in Bob's that will only allow Bob to vote for a Democrat. However the device is only activated if Bob is about to vote Republican. So, if Bob is already inclined to vote for the Democrat, the device is never activated. Bob, is still acting of his own free will even though Bob could not do otherwise.

The point here is that it's the determined state of a brain in any given instance in time that determines its response in that instance in time, and that - consequently - this response, being fixed by antecedents, is not freely willed.

If a given response within a determined system - being fixed by antecedents - is not freely willed, it cannot be claimed to be an example of free will.

Not being [freely] willed cannot logically be an instance of free will.

Not willed does not equate to free will.

Actions, proceeding unhindered as determined, are not examples of free will because they must unfold as determined, not willed.

''Imagine, for example, that you said something to someone you love that hurt them greatly, and you wish you could take those words back. Imagine that you could have actually not said that thing at the time you did. Why should this loved one forgive you? After all, you chose to say something really hurtful when you could have not said the thing. What does this say about your character? Why would you actually choose to say something hurtful that you’d just regret, when you didn’t actually have to say it?

Or does the fact that you didn’t realize such would be hurtful and that you’d regret it play into you saying it? In which case, given that lack of information, could you really have not said it? And if you could have not said it, again why did you? Was there a reason you said it? If so, could you have not said it when there was a reason you said it? That reason would, after-all, still be the same. What if there wasn’t a reason you said it at all? Why, then, did you say such a thing?

For no reason, you might add. But if it just came out for no reason, could you really have not, of your own accord, said it? After all, it just came out and you couldn’t have stopped it. Or could you have stopped it? And if there was no reason for you to say it, and you could have stopped it, why didn’t you?

Was there a reason you didn’t stop it? If there was a reason you didn’t stop it, how could you have stopped it with the reason you didn’t being there? And if there was no reason you didn’t stop it, then how could you have stopped it?

This problem is intractable. The fact of the matter is, we don’t need to even get into determinism, indeterminism, causality, acausality, and all of the philosophical understandings that make free will impossible (though if we want to truly understand why we don’t have free will, in what way, and what it implies, we need to delve deeper into these more focused concepts).''

 

[Jarhyn]

I shouldn't have to be explaining the basics to you over and over;

You don't understand the basics. I keep trying to explain to you in the "free will" thread but I'm not sure my will is free to the requirement of your understanding. It probably isn't.

In my little world where there is a dwarf in a hallway demonstrably and provably holding a will to open a door, they may (absolutely will, by causal necessity, though he doesn't know that) have their will revealed as unfree.

Most notably the dwarf has not even contemplated the freedom of his will.

Yet he still has a truth value as pertains his freedom, however, in this perfectly visibly deterministic world. That truth value is "false".

I could feed the same seed, that resulted in that dwarf in that room, to that engine a million times (ok, not a million, cosmic rays would probably cause a nondeterministic event WRT the deterministic causal flow of that system before I repeated it that many times), and he would always have a will, and the will would always, in this case, be unfree, as the door would always be locked by the determinism of the system.

The dwarf in the next room holding the same will would always be free, on account of that door always being unlocked. As per the free will thread, it seems you have some misconceptions about what "freedom" is, exactly.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

The point here is that it's the determined state of a brain ...

Sorry, but that is not the point of the article from the SEP that references Frankfurt Cases and Strawson. The SEP article on Compatibilism that you referenced does not have a single reference to "brain" or "neuroscience". But it does discuss Frankfurt Cases and P. F. Strawson's reactive attitudes. But I've already responded to both, and laid out why the Principle of Alternative Possibilities is ALWAYS satisfied in any choosing operation.

Please get your act together.

in any given instance in time that determines its response in that instance in time, and that - consequently - this response, being fixed by antecedents, is not freely willed.

Yes, we all know that we have brains, and that our brains are a neurological architecture that provides hundreds of functions, one of which is choosing for us what we will do.

And you and I both agree that determinism means that all of the events within the brain, and all of the mental events we experience, are always reliably caused by antecedent events. Most of these antecedent events are themselves mental events with their corresponding physical events within the neural architecture.

If a given response within a determined system - being fixed by antecedents - is not freely willed, it cannot be claimed to be an example of free will.

Free will, as commonly understood and when used operationally to assess a person's responsibility for their actions, is when we choose for ourselves what we will do, while free of coercion and undue influence. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Free will does not mean freedom from one's own brain. Free will does not mean freedom from antecedent causes. By substituting your definition for the operational definition, you are presenting a strawman version of free will.

Will is a cause. Will is the brain's intention to do something specific. In the Ruby Tuesdays example, we chose to have dinner at Ruby Tuesdays. That freely chosen will, to have dinner at Ruby Tuesdays, caused us to get in our car, drive to the restaurant, walk in the door, sit at a table, pick up the menu, choose what we would have for dinner, and report our decision to the waitress. All of that was caused by the WILL that the brain chose, while FREE of coercion and undue influence.

And, oh my God, Trick Slattery is back again:

''Imagine, for example, that you said something to someone you love that hurt them greatly, and you wish you could take those words back. Imagine that you could have actually not said that thing at the time you did. Why should this loved one forgive you? After all, you chose to say something really hurtful when you could have not said the thing. What does this say about your character? Why would you actually choose to say something hurtful that you’d just regret, when you didn’t actually have to say it?

Okay, so you said something dumb and hurtful because you happen to say dumb hurtful things occasionally. Could you have said something different, something neither dumb nor hurtful? Of course. But, you didn't, because you didn't think through the impact of your words before you spilled them out.

Should your loved one forgive you? Hell no. Forgiveness is conditional. It's pointless to forgive someone who is going to continually hurt you over and over again. So, forgiveness is conditioned upon a sincere effort to exercise better control over the things you say.

How are you going to learn to exercise better control over what you say? You need to recall the incident and what was happening at the time that led you to say something stupid. Then you need to come up with a plan to go on alert when you have similar thoughts and feelings next time, so that you can do something different in the future.

... What if there wasn’t a reason you said it at all? Why, then, did you say such a thing?

Then you are SOL, and probably need to seek counseling to understand yourself better.

This problem is intractable.

Then you, Trick Slattery, are shirt out of luck, and out of any useful advice to us.

 

[Jarhyn]

''Imagine, for example, that you said something to someone you love that hurt them greatly, and you wish you could take those words back. Imagine that you could have actually not said that thing at the time you did. Why should this loved one forgive you? After all, you chose to say something really hurtful when you could have not said the thing. What does this say about your character? Why would you actually choose to say something hurtful that you’d just regret, when you didn’t actually have to say it

I can't have not said it, but that's rather the point. It was me, and I can't have not said it, and that constitutes a problem for the person I said it to.

I have to accept that I said it.

I have to also accept that this acceptance implies it is my responsibility to do better next time.

This is implied by the fact that I am a machine inside my head which serves the general purpose of managing as much of the universe around me and which may be considered "myself" as I have any right.

Nobody gets more oversight over me than me, ultimately. You wonder at the purpose of the narration? That's the purpose. To report to me what is going on.

Also, in ferreting out the unreliable narrator. As they say "it was always the butler ought 'id it!"

You choose to say hurtful things because you don't know they will be hurtful, because you gambled badly on the halting problem there and didn't filter your will on useful doubt.

Next time, don't take bad gambles, and think more about what you say. Nobody can do that but you even if it's only what you always would have done (or not, but if not, we probably won't play well with you). That's what it means to be responsible.

Sometimes it takes a lot of work. There's a fun allegory about chopping off your own hand for the sake of responsibility.

If it's some kind of tic whose trigger isn't meaningfully in your control (like Tourettes), then you have my sincerest pity. If it's some kind of "you put together a plan to go out in the woods on your very best Actual Cannibal Shia LeBeouf impersonation minus the getting stabbed in the kidney and decapitated parts," then your responsibility is probably to get on with the omitted bits already.

 

[DBT]

I shouldn't have to be explaining the basics to you over and over;

You don't understand the basics. I keep trying to explain to you in the "free will" thread but I'm not sure my will is free to the requirement of your understanding. It probably isn't.

That's you.

You fail to grasp the implications of determinism in spite of giving a definition of it. Nor the nature of cognition or the brain as an information processor.

To make matters worse, you tried to introduce extraneous elements into the debate regardless of the fact that the discussion is related to free will in relation to determinism, not random or stochastic, etc....

In my little world where there is a dwarf in a hallway demonstrably and provably holding a will to open a door, they may (absolutely will, by causal necessity, though he doesn't know that) have their will revealed as unfree.

Most notably the dwarf has not even contemplated the freedom of his will.

Yet he still has a truth value as pertains his freedom, however, in this perfectly visibly deterministic world. That truth value is "false".

I could feed the same seed, that resulted in that dwarf in that room, to that engine a million times (ok, not a million, cosmic rays would probably cause a nondeterministic event WRT the deterministic causal flow of that system before I repeated it that many times), and he would always have a will, and the will would always, in this case, be unfree, as the door would always be locked by the determinism of the system.

The dwarf in the next room holding the same will would always be free, on account of that door always being unlocked. As per the free will thread, it seems you have some misconceptions about what "freedom" is, exactly.

Pointless and irrelevant. A waste of time and effort.

 

[Jarhyn]

I shouldn't have to be explaining the basics to you over and over;

You don't understand the basics. I keep trying to explain to you in the "free will" thread but I'm not sure my will is free to the requirement of your understanding. It probably isn't.

That's you.

You fail to grasp the implications of determinism in spite of giving a definition of it. Nor the nature of cognition or the brain as an information processor.

To make matters worse, you tried to introduce extraneous elements into the debate regardless of the fact that the discussion is related to free will in relation to determinism, not random or stochastic, etc....

In my little world where there is a dwarf in a hallway demonstrably and provably holding a will to open a door, they may (absolutely will, by causal necessity, though he doesn't know that) have their will revealed as unfree.

Most notably the dwarf has not even contemplated the freedom of his will.

Yet he still has a truth value as pertains his freedom, however, in this perfectly visibly deterministic world. That truth value is "false".

I could feed the same seed, that resulted in that dwarf in that room, to that engine a million times (ok, not a million, cosmic rays would probably cause a nondeterministic event WRT the deterministic causal flow of that system before I repeated it that many times), and he would always have a will, and the will would always, in this case, be unfree, as the door would always be locked by the determinism of the system.

The dwarf in the next room holding the same will would always be free, on account of that door always being unlocked. As per the free will thread, it seems you have some misconceptions about what "freedom" is, exactly.

Pointless and irrelevant. A waste of time and effort.

No, I daresay it is entirely the point. Let me reiterate from the free will thread:

And more to the point, regardless of whether you accept my definition of "free" as a definition specifically for that utterance, the thing I am defining, let's call it °°°, is still a real property regardless of what you wish to name it!

So let's actually operate with it:

"let °°° be 'when causal necessity determines that an object shall pass through a given configuration or one of a set of given configurations'"

And let's define another word:
"let ••• be 'a set of configurations which through causal necessity determines some future aspect of systemic behavioral moment'"

So, now we have "••• that may be assessed as °°°". It is a very real, identified set of things entirely in terms of causal necessity. Namely, the dwarf has a •••, "attempt to open door". The ••• is not °°° with respect to "opening": the door is locked.

These terms are in fact necessary to discuss causal determinism in any meaningful way.

It just happens that the utterances compatibilists attach to these terms are "free" and "will".

If you would like to offer different utterances for °°° and ••• you can go right on ahead.

And then we'll use those utterances to derive responsibility for things, use them exactly the same way we used the terms "free" and "will", and then that allows a responsibility calculus that has such statements as

"(Person)'s ••• unto murder cannot be allowed to be left [apparently] °°°. We must take measures to definiticely constrain their ••• such that it is observably not °°° and to address the fact that they hold ••• to murder folks."

Of course, until reality resolves, we have to operate on the basis of provisional or apparent rather than real °°°.

Compatibilists use the utterances "free" and "will" for °°° and •••.

 

[DBT]

The point here is that it's the determined state of a brain ...

Sorry, but that is not the point of the article from the SEP that references Frankfurt Cases and Strawson. The SEP article on Compatibilism that you referenced does not have a single reference to "brain" or "neuroscience". But it does discuss Frankfurt Cases and P. F. Strawson's reactive attitudes. But I've already responded to both, and laid out why the Principle of Alternative Possibilities is ALWAYS satisfied in any choosing operation.

It doesn't have to refer to neuroscience. That is another aspect of the issue. It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that the brain as an information processor is the sole source of human behaviour. There is no need to keep saying it (yet apparently there is)

No single article is able to cover all bases.

Please get your act together.

It has never faltered.

I stick to the fundamentals of the accepted definition of determinism and its implications in relation to the nature of cognition, which is not regulated by will, be it conscious or unconscious.

Put simply, that which is not willed - thoughts and actions - cannot logically be described as 'freely willed.'

Not willed does not equate to freely willed.

in any given instance in time that determines its response in that instance in time, and that - consequently - this response, being fixed by antecedents, is not freely willed.

Yes, we all know that we have brains, and that our brains are a neurological architecture that provides hundreds of functions, one of which is choosing for us what we will do.

Fixed by antecedents is not freely willed or freely chosen. Inputs acting upon the state of the system determines outcome.

Outcomes are not, and cannot be freely willed.

Not being freely willed, there is no reason to say that determined actions are an example of 'free will.'

And you and I both agree that determinism means that all of the events within the brain, and all of the mental events we experience, are always reliably caused by antecedent events. Most of these antecedent events are themselves mental events with their corresponding physical events within the neural architecture.

Saying 'reliably' seems to suggest that the desired outcome was willed, then 'reliably' happened as willed. Determinism doesn't work like that. Careful wording is not sufficient to prove the proposition.

That takes agency, that will really does make a difference, that will has freedom.

And, oh my God, Trick Slattery is back again:

Why not, he understands the free will issue quite well and it saves me time tyoing.

''Imagine, for example, that you said something to someone you love that hurt them greatly, and you wish you could take those words back. Imagine that you could have actually not said that thing at the time you did. Why should this loved one forgive you? After all, you chose to say something really hurtful when you could have not said the thing. What does this say about your character? Why would you actually choose to say something hurtful that you’d just regret, when you didn’t actually have to say it?

Okay, so you said something dumb and hurtful because you happen to say dumb hurtful things occasionally. Could you have said something different, something neither dumb nor hurtful? Of course. But, you didn't, because you didn't think through the impact of your words before you spilled them out.

The point is that what came out as dumb and hurtful was a reflection of the state and condition of the system, brain, circumstances, in that instance in time. In the next moment the system is different, altered by new information, which brings the realization of what was said, and the implications.

But of course, it is too late to alter what was said. An action of one moment regretted the next.

Then you, Trick Slattery, are shirt out of luck, and out of any useful advice to us.

It's not a matter of giving advice. The issue is about how things work within a determined system. How the brain functions as a determined system, adaptive and maladaptive sets of behavior produced according to state and condition (not will), in any given instance in time, a hurtful comment or mistake one moment, regret the next.

 

[Jarhyn]

Fixed by antecedents is not freely willed or freely chosen. Inputs acting upon the state of the system determines outcome.

It doesn't have to be anything but, for us to use the statements to logical and functional effect.

And more to the point, regardless of whether you accept my definition of "free" as a definition specifically for that utterance, the thing I am defining, let's call it °°°, is still a real property regardless of what you wish to name it!

So let's actually operate with it:

"let °°° be 'when causal necessity determines that an object shall pass through a given configuration or one of a set of given configurations'"

And let's define another word:
"let ••• be 'a set of configurations which through causal necessity determines some future aspect of systemic behavioral moment'"

So, now we have "••• that may be assessed as °°°". It is a very real, identified set of things entirely in terms of causal necessity. Namely, the dwarf has a •••, "attempt to open door". The ••• is not °°° with respect to "opening": the door is locked.

These terms are in fact necessary to discuss causal determinism in any meaningful way.

It just happens that the utterances compatibilists attach to these terms are "free" and "will".

If you would like to offer different utterances for °°° and ••• you can go right on ahead.

And then we'll use those utterances to derive responsibility for things, use them exactly the same way we used the terms "free" and "will", and then that allows a responsibility calculus that has such statements as

"(Person)'s ••• unto murder cannot be allowed to be left [apparently] °°°. We must take measures to definiticely constrain their ••• such that it is observably not °°° and to address the fact that they hold ••• to murder folks."

Of course, until reality resolves, we have to operate on the basis of provisional or apparent rather than real °°°.

Compatibilists use the utterances "free" and "will" for °°° and •••.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

...

It was nice talking with you. I find it helpful to go over my position and find new ways of communicating the facts of the matter. But you seem to be unresponsive at this point. So, I think it would be a waste of our time to continue.

 

[pood]

...

It was nice talking with you. I find it helpful to go over my position and find new ways of communicating the facts of the matter. But you seem to be unresponsive at this point. So, I think it would be a waste of our time to continue.

Indeed!

 

[pood]

To recap:

DBT just got through saying, again, that the brain is the SOLE source of human behavior. That’s right! But earlier he said that the Big Bang was the source of human behavior! Both can’t be right. When I challenged him on this earlier, he made some argle-bargle about “excluded middle.”

DBT consistently commits the modal fallacy in which he maintains that determinism means that only one outcome is realizABLE. When, in fact, all determinism means is that only one outcome is realizED.

DBT keep saying that there is only one acceptable definition of causal determinism, reducing it to the Consequence Argument. He has repeatedly been corrected on this and repeatedly ignores the corrections.

DBT confuses emergent properties with their reductions. He talks about neuronal activity, the Big Bang, etc. Why not talk about the behavior of subatomic particles, too? It’s true that in none of these do we find free will. We also don’t find comic strips, religion, the planet Saturn, baseball games, or even, at most reductive level, an arrow of time from past to future. And at the quantum level we don’t even find determinism. So I guess none of these things exist.

DBT thinks that all true propositions are necessarily true, a blatant absurdity.

DBT can’t tell the difference between the words “will” and “must,” when all he need do to find the difference is to consult a standard dictionary.

A waste of time, indeed.

 

[fromderinside]

I'm of the view that this that is singular never shared or multiple. To get will or choice or consciousness one needs to look inward rather than outward. That, my friend, is self definitional which isn't testable until the experiment is performed.

We've always conducted our experiments testable in terms of probability because we can't reduce them with our instruments to certainty. We presume probability is the same as that testable as a single variable. A huge and demonstrably false presumption We come to associate the probability related to a single event with that with which we test which is not true. Using probability as an escape hatch from deterministic absolutes is never reality. It is always maybe.

What we've done with compatibilism is use our uncertainty to implant it in what is necessarily deterministic. So arises this fiction about choice, free, etc. from false identifications and analysis. That we cannot reduce experiment to singular is no excuse for inventing 'causes' such as choice and will.

However if one starts with hard determinism and builds a relativistic substrate under that couched in probabilistic statements re determinist findings one can build another level of analysis which I call self determined or probabilistic which is conditioned on the notion upon which it is based is reality. The probabilistic isn't reality. However it is testable by realistic questions and experiments because it is associated by some discernible presumptions with subjectively derived from one's view of reality. Those presumptions are always self defined and probabilistic which may be either related to reality or interpretationally - a your guess is as good as my guess determination - related to reality.

If one removes them from determinism one looses nothing, yet one has another means for deriving new questions about those who exist without actually using reality directly. It is here where the talk of freedom should be addressed, not to determinism.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

I'm of the view that this that is singular never shared or multiple. To get will or choice or consciousness one needs to look inward rather than outward. That, my friend, is self definitional which isn't testable until the experiment is performed.

We've always conducted our experiments testable in terms of probability because we can't reduce them with our instruments to certainty. We presume probability is the same as that testable as a single variable. A huge and demonstrably false presumption We come to associate the probability related to a single event with that with which we test which is not true. Using probability as an escape hatch from deterministic absolutes is never reality. It is always maybe.

What we've done with compatibilism is use our uncertainty to implant it in what is necessarily deterministic. So arises this fiction about choice, free, etc. from false identifications and analysis. That we cannot reduce experiment to singular is no excuse for inventing 'causes' such as choice and will.

However if one starts with hard determinism and builds a relativistic substrate under that couched in probabilistic statements re determinist findings one can build another level of analysis which I call self determined or probabilistic which is conditioned on the notion upon which it is based is reality. The probabilistic isn't reality. However it is testable by realistic questions and experiments because it is associated by some discernible presumptions with subjectively derived from one's view of reality. Those presumptions are always self defined and probabilistic which may be either related to reality or interpretationally - a your guess is as good as my guess determination - related to reality.

If one removes them from determinism one looses nothing, yet one has another means for deriving new questions about those who exist without actually using reality directly. It is here where the talk of freedom should be addressed, not to determinism.

Reliable cause and effect means everything, but determinism is meaningless. All of our science begins with the practical problem of exercising sufficient control within our environment to survive. In order to exercise control, we must first have some practical knowledge of how things work. All of the benefits of the notion of causation comes from knowing the specific causes of specific effects. And that's what applied science deals with on a daily basis.

One of the specific causes of relevant human events is people simply deciding what they will do.

Choosing what we will do only works if we can reasonably predict the outcome of our actions. So, control requires reliable cause and effect, because prediction requires reliable cause and effect.

 

[fromderinside]

I'm of the view that this that is singular never shared or multiple. To get will or choice or consciousness one needs to look inward rather than outward. That, my friend, is self definitional which isn't testable until the experiment is performed.

We've always conducted our experiments testable in terms of probability because we can't reduce them with our instruments to certainty. We presume probability is the same as that testable as a single variable. A huge and demonstrably false presumption We come to associate the probability related to a single event with that with which we test which is not true. Using probability as an escape hatch from deterministic absolutes is never reality. It is always maybe.

What we've done with compatibilism is use our uncertainty to implant it in what is necessarily deterministic. So arises this fiction about choice, free, etc. from false identifications and analysis. That we cannot reduce experiment to singular is no excuse for inventing 'causes' such as choice and will.

However if one starts with hard determinism and builds a relativistic substrate under that couched in probabilistic statements re determinist findings one can build another level of analysis which I call self determined or probabilistic which is conditioned on the notion upon which it is based is reality. The probabilistic isn't reality. However it is testable by realistic questions and experiments because it is associated by some discernible presumptions with subjectively derived from one's view of reality. Those presumptions are always self defined and probabilistic which may be either related to reality or interpretationally - a your guess is as good as my guess determination - related to reality.

If one removes them from determinism one looses nothing, yet one has another means for deriving new questions about those who exist without actually using reality directly. It is here where the talk of freedom should be addressed, not to determinism.

Reliable cause and effect means everything, but determinism is meaningless. All of our science begins with the practical problem of exercising sufficient control within our environment to survive. In order to exercise control, we must first have some practical knowledge of how things work. All of the benefits of the notion of causation comes from knowing the specific causes of specific effects. And that's what applied science deals with on a daily basis.

One of the specific causes of relevant human events is people simply deciding what they will do.

Choosing what we will do only works if we can reasonably predict the outcome of our actions. So, control requires reliable cause and effect, because prediction requires reliable cause and effect.

And like a weasel you slide cause to choice which is exactly the situation when one applies probability to cause and then hand waves from cause to self by making subjective proclamations by looking inward. That arena is entirely different from reality. Although sensation is generated by material input to receptors what is transmitted in the brain are series of electrical impulses reflecting chemical activity within the nervous system.

Those don't reflect reality. They reflect a cumulative gathering of information which is interpreted via special neural clusters arranged in groups of systems to construct activity that mostly works in navigating the real world. Such is quite different from reality. That level of success is reflecting the evolution of the organism across time to the world in which the being exists, not to how reality acts on the being.

Everything you propose except what you know about reality from scientific endeavor comes from within the individual. So if you think choice, mind, will, you are reflecting opinions about how our nervous, endocrinal, and muscle-skeletal system interpret how the being responds to reality. Opinion or approximation never reality. You are referring to how humans interpret via the equipment they have to what reality presents to them. Interpreting based on within being mechanisms is not knowing or scientific or anywhere near reality.

Your take on science is not serving you well.

 

[fromderinside]

I'm of the view that this that is singular never shared or multiple. To get will or choice or consciousness one needs to look inward rather than outward. That, my friend, is self definitional which isn't testable until the experiment is performed.

We've always conducted our experiments testable in terms of probability because we can't reduce them with our instruments to certainty. We presume probability is the same as that testable as a single variable. A huge and demonstrably false presumption We come to associate the probability related to a single event with that with which we test which is not true. Using probability as an escape hatch from deterministic absolutes is never reality. It is always maybe.

What we've done with compatibilism is use our uncertainty to implant it in what is necessarily deterministic. So arises this fiction about choice, free, etc. from false identifications and analysis. That we cannot reduce experiment to singular is no excuse for inventing 'causes' such as choice and will.

However if one starts with hard determinism and builds a relativistic substrate under that couched in probabilistic statements re determinist findings one can build another level of analysis which I call self determined or probabilistic which is conditioned on the notion upon which it is based is reality. The probabilistic isn't reality. However it is testable by realistic questions and experiments because it is associated by some discernible presumptions with subjectively derived from one's view of reality. Those presumptions are always self defined and probabilistic which may be either related to reality or interpretationally - a your guess is as good as my guess determination - related to reality.

If one removes them from determinism one looses nothing, yet one has another means for deriving new questions about those who exist without actually using reality directly. It is here where the talk of freedom should be addressed, not to determinism.

Reliable cause and effect means everything, but determinism is meaningless. All of our science begins with the practical problem of exercising sufficient control within our environment to survive. In order to exercise control, we must first have some practical knowledge of how things work. All of the benefits of the notion of causation comes from knowing the specific causes of specific effects. And that's what applied science deals with on a daily basis.

One of the specific causes of relevant human events is people simply deciding what they will do.

Choosing what we will do only works if we can reasonably predict the outcome of our actions. So, control requires reliable cause and effect, because prediction requires reliable cause and effect.

And like a weasel you slide cause to choice which is exactly the situation when one applies probability to cause and then hand waves from cause to self by making subjective proclamations by looking inward. That arena is entirely different from reality. Although sensation is generated by material input to receptors what is transmitted in the brain are series of electrical impulses reflecting chemical activity within the nervous system.

Those don't reflect reality. They reflect a cumulative gathering of information which is interpreted via special neural clusters arranged in groups of systems to construct activity that mostly works in navigating the real world. Such is quite different from reality. That level of success is reflecting the evolution of the organism across time to the world in which the being exists, not to how reality acts on the being.

Everything you propose except what you know about reality from scientific endeavor comes from within the individual. So if you think choice, mind, will, you are reflecting opinions about how our nervous, endocrinal, and muscle-skeletal system interpret how the being responds to reality. Opinion or approximation never reality. You are referring to how humans interpret via the equipment they have to what reality presents to them. Interpreting based on within being mechanisms is not knowing or scientific or anywhere near reality.

Your take on science is not serving you well. We have learned through deterministic reductionism that minimizing options in experiments to as near one as possible yields the most reliable and repeatable results. Conversely we've learned the most repeatable outcomes trend to the most likely result. Both of those indices support determinism.

 

[fromderinside]

Sorry. I unintentionally posted similar information twice. The second post is more complete.