According to Robert Sapolsky, human free will does not exist

[bilby]

there is no point in discussing this topic with you any further.

...and yet, I cannot shake the feeling that further discussion is inevitable, perhaps even causally necessary

 

[Ruth Harris]

I didn't realize that you started this thread, Ruth.

Guilty as charged

But I have to say I was taken aback by the ferocious debate that started from my little opening post. I didn't expect that; I was just posting something I found interesting and thought others might like it too. Philosophy is not one of my strong suits.

I have tried to follow the arguments posed for each position and think I have barely succeeded - but to be honest, the whole thing reminds me of the old joke about one Baptist trying to prevent another Baptist from committing suicide until he finds out that they don't agree on the smallest point possible and pushes him off the bridge saying "Die, heretic!".

Don't let me discourage the participants in this discussion though. Go right ahead with pushing your small points and I will sit over here in the corner quietly eavesdropping....

Ruth

 

[DBT]

If determinism is true, it is inevitable …

Now you are using the word “inevitable,” so let’s talk about that, at the risk of laboring a point you refuse to grasp, though you are perfectly able to do so. Your whole argument to inevitability rests again on a modal fallacy.

I've used the word inevitable quite often. I use it because it applies to the terms and conditions of determinism as you define it.

Where 'constant conjunction' means ''a relationship between two events, where one event is invariably followed by the other: if the occurrence of A is always followed by B, A and B are said to be constantly conjoined'' - and B being conjoined to A, inevitably follows A.

This is not me saying it. It is not something I cooked up;

Determinism, in philosophy and science, the thesis that all events in the universe, including human decisions and actions, are causally inevitable. Determinism entails that, in a situation in which a person makes a certain decision or performs a certain action, it is impossible that he or she could have made any other decision or performed any other action. In other words, it is never true that people could have decided or acted otherwise than they actually did.'' - https://www.britannica.com/topic/determinism

That is determinism as it is defined. Including your own definition, where all actions are 'causally inevitable.

Let’s say that all true propositions are true at all times, even before the event that they describe happens. This seems perfectly reasonable to me. If someone uttered in the distant past, say in the year 1308, the sentence, “Joe Biden will be elected president of the United States in the year 2020,” it seems to me that he spoke truly.

Does it follow from this, however, that Biden’s election was inevitable?

Given the terms and conditions, including your own, obviously there are no exemptions, everything that happens is causally inevitable. The causally inevitable events of the world and the USA brought about Biden's election.

You seek exemptions within determinism that cannot - by definition - exist within a deterministic system.

Take something more mundane: today it is true that tomorrow, I will stay at home.

1. Today it is true that tomorrow I will stay at home. Call that truth S.
2. S is true, and permanently true (true at all times).
3. Is not possible that both (2) and that I render S false through some action of my own.
4. It is not possible that I render S false by some action of my own (follows from 2 and 3).
5. I can’t render S false through my actions; therefore, inevitablism is true and tomorrow I must stay at home (I have no choice in the matter).

The above argument is unsound. It commits the modal fallacy at Step 4.

Step 4, when derived from Step 3, looks like this:

I am at home; it is not possible that (I am at home and not at home); therefore, it is not possible that I am not at home.

Perhaps you will see the problem. Of course it’s possible that I’m not at home; it’s just that I AM at home. Nothing about permanent truth (true at all times) entails that I be at home, or that Biden be elected, or anything else. What IS necessary is that no proposition can be both TRUE, and FALSE, at the same time (Law of Noncontradiction).

Put another way, the fallacy occurs thus:

If today it is true that tomorrow I am at home, then tomorrow I MUST (necessarily) be at home.

The modal fallacy lies in ascribing the modal necessity operator to the consequent of the antecedent, thereby illicitly rendering a contingent (could have been otherwise) truth as necessary. The repair goes as follows:

Necessarily (if it is true today that tomorrow I am at home, then tomorrow I WILL BE [not MUST be!] at home).

When you speak, as you so often do, of causal necessity, or physical necessity, or deterministic necessity, or deterministic inevitability, you are committing every single time a modal fallacy because you are confusing absolute necessity with relative necessity. The relative necessity lies in the conjunction of the antecedent and the consequent, rendered just above. But all the above is saying is that necessarily, if a proposition is true, then it is true; not that it MUST be true. If I DON’T stay at home, then the proposition “tomorrow I will be at home” remains truth-valued, only it now returns the value FALSE instead of TRUE.

Moreover, there is no modal category called “causal necessity” or “deterministic inevitability,” or anything of the kind. There is only logical necessity, which deals with true propositions that can’t be false on pain of logical contradiction, like married bachelors or four-sided triangles.

Hence there is no physical or causal or deterministic necessity. We perceive that gravity operates everywhere and in the same way and at all times; yet this is not a necessary truth, because I can easily conceive a possible (though non-actual) world in which gravity does not exist, and I can do so without bringing about a logical contradiction.

Turning to causal determinism, let S stand for “chooses Pepsi” at some time T when I have a choice between Pepsi and Coke.

Your argument until now has been that, given deterministic antecedents x, y, and z, then necessarily S.

But S isn’t necessary, as I have just demonstrated! What you can say is,

Necessarily (given x, y, z, then S), where S is, was, and always will be, contingent (could have been otherwise).

This means that at Time T, not-S was within my power; and more, it is, was, and always will be, true, that not-S is possible. Sure enough, I WILL choose S, given x, y, and z, but I don’t have to.

If I don’t choose S, then different antecedents would be in play.

But, you will object, the antecedents x, y, and z, were inevitable, given determinism, and therefore S is inevitable, too, but that’s wrong — they were not inevitable — for all the reasons given above!

Even IF I always choose S, it follows that it was always within my power to choose not-S.

So when Jerry Coyne, for example, always states “you could not have done, other than what you did,” he is talking logical nonsense. And so are you, if you keep sticking to that line.

A final point about inevitability. One should not confuse “inevitability” with “fixity.” The past is fixed, but it was never inevitable, for reasons outlined above. It’s true that I cannot change the past. But no one I know argues, “Because I can’t change the past, I have no free will.”

Now suppose the future is as fixed as the past, which it is under the block universe model of Minkowski/Einstein. In that case I can’t change the future either, because of Step 3 in the initial argument offered above: Is not possible that both (2) and that I render S false through some action of my own.

But, compatibilist free will (or libertarian, for that matter) does not require changing the past, or the future, or even the present — to do so would entail the following absurdity, that I AM both at home, and not at home, at the same time.

Free will entails only the ability to make, in some small measure, the past, present, and future, be what it was, what it is, and what it will be. This just means that if the future is as fixed as the past, then some of the future is fixed by my actions, just like the present and the past.

Too many points to deal with in one sitting....but the idea of compatibilist free will does not entail the ability to alter the course or flow of causally inevitable events.

Which is why compatibilists carefully define free will as decisions made without coercion, force or undue influence.

Which fails to prove the idea of freedom of will within a deterministic system because it ignores the greatest constraint of all, that the means and mechanisms of decision making must necessarily be ''causally inevitable.''

No exemptions. No deviations. No alternatives. No taking an option that was not fixed by antecedents.

That's Determinism.

You learned nothing from reading my post. No surprise there. In the past I’ve given you link to source material on this subject, but I’m sure you ignored them. At least you never commented on them. Mainly I wrote the post not for you, but for others who might be interested in this subject.

What exactly was I supposed to have learned?

We have a definition of determinism given by compatibilists and others, which includes your definition, and the claim that free will is compatible with determinism when certain conditions are met.

Yet the given conditions are flawed because they ignore the implications of the given terms of determinism, and consequently, the compatibilist argument fails.

Now, what did I miss? What haven't I learned?

Had you actually bothered to try to understand what I was saying, you would know, for example, that no compatibilist thinks you can “alter’ the course of events — that was my whole point at the end in discussing whether we can change the past, present, or future. Had you made an attempt to understand what I was writing, you’d know that talk of things being ”causally necessary” and the like is indeed a modal fallacy, and you’d know why. You’d also know that the only valid modal category with respect to necessity is logical necessity, and no contingent event can ever be logically necessary. However, you choose to ignore all this and not to educate yourself, which is your right. But given your intransigence, there is no point in discussing this topic with you any further.

I'm pretty sure that I have understood what you have been saying. And reason I have been pointing out the flaws in your argument.

Now, if you actually consider the terms of the given definition of determinism, you'd understand that causal necessity is not only not a modal fallacy, but the very essence of determinism as it is defined, including as you yourself define it.

If determinism is true, causal necessity is not only the logic consequence, but a physical reality, whereevent B must necessarily follow from even A, and event C must necessarily follow event B......

That's how it is defined. That's how it works. Sorry if that is inconvenient or upsetting.

Determinism: given the state of the world at any moment in time, there is only one way it can be at the next moment.

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.''

 

[southernhybrid]

I didn't realize that you started this thread, Ruth.

Guilty as charged

But I have to say I was taken aback by the ferocious debate that started from my little opening post. I didn't expect that; I was just posting something I found interesting and thought others might like it too. Philosophy is not one of my strong suits.

I have tried to follow the arguments posed for each position and think I have barely succeeded - but to be honest, the whole thing reminds me of the old joke about one Baptist trying to prevent another Baptist from committing suicide until he finds out that they don't agree on the smallest point possible and pushes him off the bridge saying "Die, heretic!".

Don't let me discourage the participants in this discussion though. Go right ahead with pushing your small points and I will sit over here in the corner quietly eavesdropping....

Ruth

I've learned from reading the discussions here over the years, that once the subject of free will is mentioned, the arguments are endless, at least until the participants become exhausted from trying to convince each other that their position is the correct one. Like you, I've never been very interested in philosophy, but I've read a couple of books on free will that more or less strengthened my own position that if we have free will, it's very limited. As I put it, we are each products of our genetic and environmental influences and only new influences can change us, but even that is difficult. For example, how hard would it be to influence a MAGA supporter to vote for a Democrat.


MY favorite book on the topic is, "The Cruelty of Freewill" by Richard Oerton. It's an easy read, compared to this thread.

 

[Jarhyn]

I use it because it applies to the terms and conditions of determinism as you define it.

No, it does not. Inevitability is a called shot, something that even if you were to have perfect knowledge of events as they played out in a past observation, that the information of the observation of the past would not be capable of influencing the future.

In that regard, all "inevitability" discussed within the universe is actually an illusion, because it will NEVER come about from observations of the present and past. So while you could observe some time point of some system, the system itself could not possibly observe that time point so the universe itself cannot actually contain an inevitability.

 

[DBT]

I use it because it applies to the terms and conditions of determinism as you define it.

No, it does not. Inevitability is a called shot, something that even if you were to have perfect knowledge of events as they played out in a past observation, that the information of the observation of the past would not be capable of influencing the future.

In that regard, all "inevitability" discussed within the universe is actually an illusion, because it will NEVER come about from observations of the present and past. So while you could observe some time point of some system, the system itself could not possibly observe that time point so the universe itself cannot actually contain an inevitability.

Well, it's clear that you have not grasped the implications of determinism as compatibilists define it and as you define it.

Or else you simply can't accept the given terms and conditions, including your own, because it doesn't suit your favorite beliefs.

If event B must follow event A, and event C must follow B because conditions in event A entail event B, etc, etc, and the system must evolve as determined, there can be no deviation, no randomness, no alternatives and no choices.

As defined, the system must evolve from past to present and future states as determined by initial conditions and the laws and principles of the world and its physics.

You, yourself set the terms;

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

No randomness means no deviation and no possible alternatives in the 'development of future states of the system.'

In other words, according to your own terms, the system develops as it must, with no room for 'freedom of will.'

 

[DBT]

I didn't realize that you started this thread, Ruth.

Guilty as charged

But I have to say I was taken aback by the ferocious debate that started from my little opening post. I didn't expect that; I was just posting something I found interesting and thought others might like it too. Philosophy is not one of my strong suits.

I have tried to follow the arguments posed for each position and think I have barely succeeded - but to be honest, the whole thing reminds me of the old joke about one Baptist trying to prevent another Baptist from committing suicide until he finds out that they don't agree on the smallest point possible and pushes him off the bridge saying "Die, heretic!".

Don't let me discourage the participants in this discussion though. Go right ahead with pushing your small points and I will sit over here in the corner quietly eavesdropping....

Ruth

I've learned from reading the discussions here over the years, that once the subject of free will is mentioned, the arguments are endless, at least until the participants become exhausted from trying to convince each other that their position is the correct one. Like you, I've never been very interested in philosophy, but I've read a couple of books on free will that more or less strengthened my own position that if we have free will, it's very limited. As I put it, we are each products of our genetic and environmental influences and only new influences can change us, but even that is difficult. For example, how hard would it be to influence a MAGA supporter to vote for a Democrat.


MY favorite book on the topic is, "The Cruelty of Freewill" by Richard Oerton. It's an easy read, compared to this thread.

Not only limited, but an illusion.

Apparently, a comforting illusion for some. Like Gods, Angels and Patron Saints that one can appeal to for intercession, change one's condition and live a happier life.

Plus, it can't be helped.

 

[southernhybrid]

Not convinced that influences never help. I think that a good rehab program in prisons has turned the lives around of many young men. Our current prison system is a disgrace for the most part. Here's another example, I taught my own son how to read when his teacher was about to give up. He eventually earned a BS in programming and is a very successful adult. What would have happened to him if I had not taught him how to read? That's the kind of influences I'm talking about.

But, no, I'm not going to get into this argument. It's not important to me how I'm labeled when it comes to this subject. I just don't think that we have free will or at least not total free will. Our lives and decisions are determined by what I mentioned.

 

[pood]

Now, what did I miss? What haven't I learned?

That you keep committing a glaring logical fallacy, among other things.

Now, if you actually consider the terms of the given definition of determinism, you'd understand that causal necessity is not only not a modal fallacy, but the very essence of determinism as it is defined, including as you yourself define it.

Of course it is. Given antecedents x, y, and z, agent X WILL do S at time T, not MUST do S! How can you fail to see this? I’ve explained it to you a billion times, with supporting links to academic discussions, but you ignore it. Hence you have learned nothing.

And. no, I do not define determinism in terms of a modal fallacy (hard determinism) as you so define it.

If determinism is true, causal necessity is not only the logic consequence, but a physical reality, whereevent B must necessarily follow from even A, and event C must necessarily follow event B......

That's how it is defined. That's how it works. Sorry if that is inconvenient or upsetting.

Determinism: given the state of the world at any moment in time, there is only one way it can be at the next moment.

No. There is only one way it WILL be, not CAN be. Jesus!

You know the song with the lyric, What will be, will be? Notice the lyric isn’t, What will be, MUST be. Even the songwriter knew better than you!

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.''

And the agent is part of the deterministic process, which generates options. Brains evolved, among other reasons, because there was selective pressure in favor of organisms that can evaluate options as opposed to blindly obeying stimuli. This has been pointed out to you again and again but you always ignore it.

 

[pood]

I

Not only limited, but an illusion.

Apparently, a comforting illusion for some. Like Gods, Angels and Patron Saints that one can appeal to for intercession, change one's condition and live a happier life.

Plus, it can't be helped.

This is pretty ironic, because having free will, which we do, puts full responsibility on YOU for your actions, the fact that we are products of our genes and upbringing notwithstanding. It’s called “existentialism,” and it is the opposite of religious comfort. It is your fallacious hard determinism that provides religious-style comfort, absolving you of any responsibility for your own life and leaning on the Big Bang as a crutch the way religious people lean on God.

 

[pood]

Sorry if that is inconvenient or upsetting.

There is no modal category called “causal necessity,” only “logical necessity.”

And there is no logical necessity that I choose Pepsi over Coke at time T. End of hard determinism.

Sorry if that is inconvenient or upsetting.

 

[pood]

Not convinced that influences never help. I think that a good rehab program in prisons has turned the lives around of many young men. Our current prison system is a disgrace for the most part. Here's another example, I taught my own son how to read when his teacher was about to give up. He eventually earned a BS in programming and is a very successful adult. What would have happened to him if I had not taught him how to read? That's the kind of influences I'm talking about.

But, no, I'm not going to get into this argument. It's not important to me how I'm labeled when it comes to this subject. I just don't think that we have free will or at least not total free will. Our lives and decisions are determined by what I mentioned.

No one, I think, denies that we are influenced, even heavily, by our genes, by our environment, by others around us, and on and on. How else would we ever decide on any course of action? This underscores that point that determinism, far from impeding our free will, is a necessary condition for it to exist at all. The issue becomes when someone tries to tell you that in addition to having no choice over your genes or upbringing, you also have no choice but to order Pepsi over Coke, to choose a red shirt over a blue, to commit a crime, etc. etc.

 

[pood]

I’ve linked to this before, but DBT ignored it. Maybe others will find it helpful.


What Jerry Needs to Know About Freedom.


Key passage from the article:

Suppose I tell you that this glass of water has the power to extinguish that candle flame. It would be silly for you to deny this merely because the world is deterministic and as a matter of fact the glass remains on the table and the candle burns itself out. When I’m talking about what the water can do, I’m referring to what it would do in the right circumstances.

And the same goes for our ability to choose certain actions. When I say that I could have had coffee rather than tea, what I’m saying is that I had a certain ability, a certain power. If things had been slightly different, I would have had coffee. I’m not saying that I am able to violate the deterministic laws of physics; I’m just talking about my ability to order beverages and the causal connections between my preferences and the type of liquid that I find in my cup.

Of course, there is another notion of “could” that is not compatible with determinism. This notion is one in which there are two possible worlds that are completely identical up to some time, and then after that time, the two worlds differ from one another. This seems to be what incompatibilists have in mind when they say that determinism means I couldn’t do anything other than what I actually did. They point out that if we hold the circumstances fixed – if we don’t allow any of the details to vary – then determinism says that only one outcome is allowed by the laws of nature.

But if we use this notion, then (given the truth of determinism) the notion of what can happen collapses down to what will happen, and the notion of what could have happened collapses down to what did happen. But this just means that the proposed notion can’t do the work we want it to. It’s very useful to be able to talk about the powers that something has, and to be able to distinguish between what can be done and what can’t be done. And some of the things that can be done, won’t be.

But to make sense of this, we need the compatibilist notion of “can” and “could.” We need to talk about what would have happened if things had been different.

 

[Jarhyn]

no alternatives and no choices

Again, alternatives do not require being executed in alternalities for them to be what they are. It is yet again a discussion about some real (non-illusory) mechanism of contingent function where some contingent interaction IF it was executed would lead to some outcome.

Yet again "can" does not necessitate "does".

Choices require only the selection of AN alternative via some pattern of activation of contingent mechanisms, they don't require alternalities where every outcome does happen. A is not required for "If A, B" to be a truth in material form sitting in front of you.

 

[bilby]

I use it because it applies to the terms and conditions of determinism as you define it.

No, it does not. Inevitability is a called shot, something that even if you were to have perfect knowledge of events as they played out in a past observation, that the information of the observation of the past would not be capable of influencing the future.

In that regard, all "inevitability" discussed within the universe is actually an illusion, because it will NEVER come about from observations of the present and past. So while you could observe some time point of some system, the system itself could not possibly observe that time point so the universe itself cannot actually contain an inevitability.

Well, it's clear that you have not grasped the implications of determinism as compatibilists define it and as you define it.

Or else you simply can't accept the given terms and conditions, including your own, because it doesn't suit your favorite beliefs.

If event B must follow event A, and event C must follow B because conditions in event A entail event B, etc, etc, and the system must evolve as determined, there can be no deviation, no randomness, no alternatives and no choices.

As defined, the system must evolve from past to present and future states as determined by initial conditions and the laws and principles of the world and its physics.

You, yourself set the terms;

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

No randomness means no deviation and no possible alternatives in the 'development of future states of the system.'

In other words, according to your own terms, the system develops as it must, with no room for 'freedom of will.'

Randomness is a red herring. It's presence doesn't permit "freedom of will" either; Randomness isn't willed, it's just random.

Randomness can make the future state of a system unpredictable; But then, sufficiently complex systems have unpredictable future states even with no random elements whatsoever.

The question of whether a system includes any random element has exactly zero bearing on the question of whether that system is willful, or whether it is "free".

Equally, the question of whether a system includes any predictable elements has exactly zero bearing on the question of whether that system is willful, or whether it is "free".

If I, as a system, develop the desire for a sandwich, and as a consequence I, as a system, do things to obtain a sandwich, then my will to obtain and eat a sandwich was a necessary input to produce the final consequence that a sandwich was obtained and eaten. We provisionally predict, from the state "desires a sandwich" that a sandwich will be eaten at some future point.

If that predicted consequence is not actualised, then we can divide the reasons for that into two classes - internal, and external. If the reason is external (eg there's no bread left and the store is closed), then that's an unwilled outcome. If it's internal (eg I decided that I would rather lose weight than eat that sandwich - ie I had two incompatible desires, and had to select which to actualise) then that's a willed outcome.

Will isn't contrary to determinism; It's just what we call an outcome (deterministic or not, doesn't matter) when the outcome is consequent to the internal selection between alternatives. If the selection between alternatives took place externally to ourselves then it wasn't a willed selection.

And note - alternatives are defined by internal unpredictability. It doesn't matter if only one outcome is inevitable from a "god's eye view" perspective, only whether or not we, as a system, could predict with certainty what the outcome must be.

If we, as individual persons, cannot yet predict the outcome (I might make myself a sandwich, I might not) and the outcome then resolves due to factors entirely internal to ourselves, we call that a decision, and it is by definition an example of will (I decided not to have a sandwich after all).

Nowhere in this does it matter one whit whether the universe, or the subset of the universe we call our "self" are deterministic. The question "was this outcome willed?" is simply another way of asking "were the most significant influences on this outcome internal to the self?".

If the influences are internal, we say it's a willed outcome. If they're external, we say our will was thwarted. Nobody cares if they're determined, or inevitable, or necessary, or unavoidable; We care only whether they went from being unpredictable to being actual, due to internal or external events.

We even project the concept of will onto the wider universe; If the reason I didn't have a sandwich was external, we presume agency in that external system - we might be correct to do so (my wife said I cannot have a sandwich because I am on a diet); Or it might be a spurious presumption (I dropped the last of the bread on the dirty floor - I guess the universe* didn't want me to have a sandwich).

Regardless, our "will" is just the condition of a decision (the transition from unpredictability** to complete predictability) occuring without further reference to things outside our selves.

Will requires lack of knowledge about our future state. It doesn't matter one whit whether that future state is random or deterministic; Only that it's not known to us yet.





* or, if you are so inclined, "I guess God didn't want me to have a sandwich"

** To us; Not to any external or hypothetical agent with better knowledge or better predictive capabilities than ourselves

 

[DBT]

Sorry if that is inconvenient or upsetting.

There is no modal category called “causal necessity,” only “logical necessity.”

I have addressed this time and time again.



Necessary causes vs sufficient causes

If someone says that A causes B:

• If A is necessary for B (necessary cause) that means you will never have B if you don't have A. In other words, of one thing is a necessary cause of another, then that means that the outcome can never happen without the cause. However, sometimes the cause occurs without the outcome.

And there is no logical necessity that I choose Pepsi over Coke at time T. End of hard determinism.

Sorry if that is inconvenient or upsetting.

You tend to overlook the distinction between necessary cause and sufficient cause, where ''necessary cause means that ''you will never have B if you don't have A.''

Apply that principle to your own definition of determinism, ''constant conjunction,'' where ''one event is invariably followed by the other''

I hope that helps.

 

[DBT]

I’ve linked to this before, but DBT ignored it. Maybe others will find it helpful.


What Jerry Needs to Know About Freedom.


Key passage from the article:

Suppose I tell you that this glass of water has the power to extinguish that candle flame. It would be silly for you to deny this merely because the world is deterministic and as a matter of fact the glass remains on the table and the candle burns itself out. When I’m talking about what the water can do, I’m referring to what it would do in the right circumstances.

And the same goes for our ability to choose certain actions. When I say that I could have had coffee rather than tea, what I’m saying is that I had a certain ability, a certain power. If things had been slightly different, I would have had coffee. I’m not saying that I am able to violate the deterministic laws of physics; I’m just talking about my ability to order beverages and the causal connections between my preferences and the type of liquid that I find in my cup.

Of course, there is another notion of “could” that is not compatible with determinism. This notion is one in which there are two possible worlds that are completely identical up to some time, and then after that time, the two worlds differ from one another. This seems to be what incompatibilists have in mind when they say that determinism means I couldn’t do anything other than what I actually did. They point out that if we hold the circumstances fixed – if we don’t allow any of the details to vary – then determinism says that only one outcome is allowed by the laws of nature.

But if we use this notion, then (given the truth of determinism) the notion of what can happen collapses down to what will happen, and the notion of what could have happened collapses down to what did happen. But this just means that the proposed notion can’t do the work we want it to. It’s very useful to be able to talk about the powers that something has, and to be able to distinguish between what can be done and what can’t be done. And some of the things that can be done, won’t be.

But to make sense of this, we need the compatibilist notion of “can” and “could.” We need to talk about what would have happened if things had been different.

Thanks for the laugh.

'Could have' has no place in determinism. Not according to how determinism is defined, and not how it must work, as defined, in practice.


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.''

free·dom
1: the quality or state of being free: as
a: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action

Good luck in demonstrating compatibility. Not that it would help.

 

[DBT]

Not convinced that influences never help. I think that a good rehab program in prisons has turned the lives around of many young men. Our current prison system is a disgrace for the most part. Here's another example, I taught my own son how to read when his teacher was about to give up. He eventually earned a BS in programming and is a very successful adult. What would have happened to him if I had not taught him how to read? That's the kind of influences I'm talking about.

But, no, I'm not going to get into this argument. It's not important to me how I'm labeled when it comes to this subject. I just don't think that we have free will or at least not total free will. Our lives and decisions are determined by what I mentioned.

No one, I think, denies that we are influenced, even heavily, by our genes, by our environment, by others around us, and on and on. How else would we ever decide on any course of action? This underscores that point that determinism, far from impeding our free will, is a necessary condition for it to exist at all. The issue becomes when someone tries to tell you that in addition to having no choice over your genes or upbringing, you also have no choice but to order Pepsi over Coke, to choose a red shirt over a blue, to commit a crime, etc. etc.

I don't have all night to deal with multiple posts, now with several posters wading in. I'm surprised that I appear to be the only incompatibilist on this forum.

So, just quickly, there are countless elements/determinants at work in making us who we are, how we think and act. Genes do more than influence what we are, they build our bodies and the architecture of our brains, which in turn gives us our abilities and capacity to think and act. It's a matter of genes and environment, society, culture, life events, place and time.

basically:
''Every moment of the day your nervous system is active. It exchanges millions of signals corresponding with feeling, thoughts and actions. A simple example of how important the nervous system is in your behavior is meeting a friend.

First, the visual information of your eyes is sent to your brain by nervous cells. There the information is interpreted and translated into a signal to take action.

Finally the brain sends a command to your voice or to another action system like muscles or glands. For example, you may start walking towards him.

Your nervous system enables this rapid recognition and action. ''

 

[pood]

Sorry if that is inconvenient or upsetting.

There is no modal category called “causal necessity,” only “logical necessity.”

I have addressed this time and time again.



Necessary causes vs sufficient causes

If someone says that A causes B:

• If A is necessary for B (necessary cause) that means you will never have B if you don't have A. In other words, of one thing is a necessary cause of another, then that means that the outcome can never happen without the cause. However, sometimes the cause occurs without the outcome.

And there is no logical necessity that I choose Pepsi over Coke at time T. End of hard determinism.

Sorry if that is inconvenient or upsetting.

You tend to overlook the distinction between necessary cause and sufficient cause, where ''necessary cause means that ''you will never have B if you don't have A.''

Apply that principle to your own definition of determinism, ''constant conjunction,'' where ''one event is invariably followed by the other''

I hope that helps.

Jebus Christ, we are not talking about necessary or sufficient CAUSES; we are talking about your (imaginary) necessary EFFECTS. The above completely fails to address my point about necessary v. contingent EFFECTS.

 

[pood]

It is necessary (but not sufficient) that the universe should EXIST, for me to pick Pepsi over Coke at time T. That is quite different from saying, It is necessary for me to pick Pepsi over Coke at time T, BECAUSE the universe exists. In addition to the modal fallacy, it is a form of the fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc.