According to Robert Sapolsky, human free will does not exist

[BSilvEsq]

Possibilities do not yield indeterminateness, they just yield...well, possibilities

If there are concurrent multiple alternative possibilities, there is indeterminateness. If there are not concurrent alternative multiple possibilities, there is no indeterminateness. That is a better way of expressing the fact. Your "yield" is wholly unnecessary and an inferior manner of expression.

possibilities which must be selected against to get a result.

Absent the above noted possibilities, there is no selecting to be done; there is just doing that is done.

Unless you just want to invoke the idea that some outcome of the future is "undetermined" until the moment and time and position it is determined in? But that's just saying that "different positions contain different results" again.

And if "the future is NOT 'undetermined' until the moment and time and position it is determined in", then the future is determined before that "moment and time and position", and that would be the very same as saying that the future is pre-determined which simply means the future is determined and not at any point undetermined before the future becomes the present.

However, as I recall, you deny that the future is pre-determined, which is why your determinism is not pre-determinism. So, let's see: you insist that the future is currently not undetermined, and that means the future is currently determined, but the future is also currently not pre-determined. Currently determined and currently not determined.

At any rate, you can try to twist yourself in tighter and tighter knots

Uh, is there possibly a tighter knot than that of you holding the future to be currently determined but not pre-determined, currently determined and currently not determined? The answer to that question is a resounding NO! You contradict yourself, and I believe it is by your own reckoning that there cannot be any knot tighter than a contradiction.

Then again, maybe you do think the future is pre-determined.

But none of that is all that important.

You like to toss out accusations of "modal fallacy" without having bothered with any substantial analysis. Try realizing how the modal fallacy notion can serve as impetus for developing your own philosophical charity. Of course, if you do not already have an idea about what value there is in philosophical charity, well, that is an entirely different problem.

OMG!

You nailed it (once again).

Your logic and clarity of writing are impeccable -- albeit improving with each post.

There is no persuading folks on this thread who are unwilling to examine their deep-seated biases, which preclude their ability to so much as consider the possibility of a reality that differs from the one they "feel" to exist.

There is, however, value in fencing with such folks, because it helps to bring greater clarity and focus to the issue. In a sense, it is like dealing with an amateur version of AI, which simply spits out things others have said without providing any true analysis or ability to deal with new arguments for which it lacks an existing counter.

Bravo!

 

[pood]

There is no persuading folks on this thread who are unwilling to examine their deep-seated biases, which preclude their ability to so much as consider the possibility of a reality that differs from the one they "feel" to exist.

Looking in the mirror again?

It has got nothing to do with what I or others “feel.” It has to do with logic and evidence,

I suggest you acquaint yourself sometime with them.

 

[BSilvEsq]

Pood, pood, pood whatever am I going to do with you?

Science reduces to quantifiable measurements, mathematical theories, and tests of theories.

Philosophy does not, the boundary between areas of philosophy and science.

That someone with science credentials philosophizes does not add credence to the philosophizing.

AI among other issues is a moral issue.

There was mention in the news about a conference on AI in part discussion rights for AI. To me utterly bizarre.

Free will versus determinism is not decidable by science, it is relegated to a never ending debate in philosophy generation after generation.

I recall in the intro to Durant's overview of philosophy he says that which is quantifiable is science, the rest is religion and philosophy.

One of my favorite quotes is from Kelvin.

“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarely, in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science.”

And 'In god we trust, all else bring data'

Morality regarding AI and deciding if an AI is a person, I dread the day, is subjective philosophy not science.

You can arbitrarily say science is philosophy, but in actual practice they are two different things.

Great post, Steve.

I agree with everything you wrote. I also love the reference to Durant. The simplicity and clarity of his work is brilliant and a joy to read.

The last sentence of your post comes close to rejecting the notion that science is philosophy, but you do not quite say so expressly. I agree with "in actual practice they are two different things" -- the operative words being "in practice." Plainly, the act of engaging in philosophical debate and the act of engaging in scientific inquiry are fundamentally different in their methods -- although I would argue that the best philosophy tends to create the best hypotheses that can then be tested by the scientific method (if the hypotheses are not too metaphysical to be subject to proof or falsification). In that same vein, engaging in philosophical debate also is fundamentally different than the act of performing arithmetic operations -- although, the use of logic to engage in philosophical debate is arguably a form of verbal mathematics, and can even include the use if symbolic logic and even math, itself, to advance the philosophical debate.

Where we possibly come apart is if you are suggesting that the branch of knowledge we call science has any greater claim to truth than does philosophy or even theology or eastern mysticism for that matter. As I understand it, the philosophical or metaphysical foundation of Science (with a capital "S") is the belief (faith?) that (i) there is an objective reality that exists independent of the observer (although some, but not all, quantum physicists might disagree), (ii) the objective reality is capable of being discerned / observed, measured, tested and verified in some manner or another, and (iii) that which is empirically demonstrable one day is likely to be empirically demonstrable thereafter in the absence of some material change in circumstances (other than the mere passage of time -- to the extent that time actually exists and does, in fact, pass).

One of the best discussions of this subject that I have read is included in a paper titled “Exploring the Philosophical Underpinnings of Research: Relating Ontology and Epistemology to the Methodology and Methods of the Scientific, Interpretive, and Critical Research Paradigms,” which can be viewed at https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f24f/1d16645e. There also is an excellent a book titled “Myths, Models and Paradigms” by Ian Barbour, who has the rare distinction of having both (i) a PhD in physics from the University of Chicago (where he was a teaching assistant to Enrico Fermi) and (ii) a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Yale’s University of Divinity School. For anyone who has the time and inclination to read the article and book, I highly commend them.

The foregoing is not a criticism of Science. It may well be the case that there is a discernable objective reality that is capable of being mapped by Science. It also may be the case that Science is simply modern mythology.

In the grand scheme of things, physics (and quantum physics, in particular) is accepted by many as the latest and greatest paradigm for explaining the universe. It is a modern mythology that tells a story that aligns with what we believe to understand about the universe – as discovered through application of math and science. But, no paradigm is right or wrong. By definition, a paradigm is a metaphor, which most closely aligns with our understanding of reality (if such a thing exists). When someone says that a paradigm has been proven wrong, they simply mean that the acquisition of greater knowledge (or what appears to be knowledge) has caused the paradigm to be expanded or abandoned in favor of a new paradigm.

As I see things, there are no true “laws” of physics. There are simply principles that the authors of the story of physics find sufficiently robust to be compelling based on the current state of knowledge. New knowledge that is consistent with the paradigm, but somewhat different from some aspect of the paradigm, causes the paradigm to be revised to accommodate the new knowledge. Other new knowledge is so inconsistent with an existing paradigm so as to require its abandonment in favor of a new paradigm that accounts for all that is known.

Physics, itself, was born out of an informational revolution that caused many people to abandon prior mythology. In relatively recent past, physicists have taken a quantum leap in their beliefs, causing the physics paradigm to be reshaped. Some physicists, however, are unpersuaded by the new story and remain attached to Newtonian physics.

As we continue to evolve, we develop new and greater information (or, possibly, build on our grand illusion). If the evolution of new information is sufficiently great it leads to revolution in which the most robust current paradigm is abandoned and relegated to the history books. In that regard, it seems more likely than not that there will come a time when today's modern physics will be viewed as a step between ancient mythology and some yet-to-be written story of the universe, which will, in turn, yield to yet a new and broader story.

While many respected philosophers, including Carl Popper, have written about the philosophical underpinnings of science, one of the most direct discussions appears in the work of Paul Feyerabend. As explained in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (the “SEP”) (at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/):

Feyerabend saw himself as having undermined the arguments for science’s privileged position within culture, and much of his later work was a critique of the position of science within Western societies. Because there is no scientific method, we can’t justify science as the best way of acquiring knowledge. And the results of science don’t prove its excellence, since these results have often depended on the presence of non-scientific elements, science prevails only because “the show has been rigged in its favour” (SFS, p. 102), and other traditions, despite their achievements, have never been given a chance. The truth, he suggests, is that science is much closer to myth than a scientific philosophy is prepared to admit. It is one of the many forms of thought that have been developed by man, and not necessarily the best. It is conspicuous, noisy, and impudent, but it is inherently superior only for those who have already decided in favour of a certain ideology, or who have accepted it without ever having examined its advantages and its limits (AM, p. 295).

A discussion of Feyerabend on Wikipedea (at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science) similarly explains:

Feyerabend said that science started as a liberating movement, but that over time it had become increasingly dogmatic and rigid and had some oppressive features, and thus had become increasingly an ideology. Because of this, he said it was impossible to come up with an unambiguous way to distinguish science from religion, magic, or mythology. He saw the exclusive dominance of science as a means of directing society as authoritarian and ungrounded. Promulgation of this epistemological anarchism earned Feyerabend the title of “the worst enemy of science” from his detractors.

A good article about Feyerabend also appears at https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...paul-feyerabend-really-science-s-worst-enemy/.

Another entry in the SEP discusses the sociological underpinnings of Science:

An even more fundamental kind of criticism was offered by several sociologists of science from the 1970s onwards who dismissed what they saw as a false distinction between philosophical accounts of the rational development of science and sociological accounts of the irrational mistakes. Instead, they adhered to a symmetry thesis on which any causal explanation of how scientific knowledge is established needs to be symmetrical in explaining truth and falsity, rationality and irrationality, success and mistakes by the same causal factors (see, e.g., Barnes and Bloor 1982, Bloor 1991). Movements in the Sociology of Science, like the Strong Programme, or in the social dimensions and causes of knowledge more generally led to extended and close examination of detailed case studies in contemporary science and its history. (See the entries on the social dimensions of scientific knowledge and social epistemology.) Well-known examinations by Latour and Woolgar (1979/1986), Knorr-Cetina (1981), Pickering (1984), Shapin and Schaffer (1985) seemed to bear out that it was social ideologies (on a macro-scale) or individual interactions and circumstances (on a micro-scale) which were the primary causal factors in determining which beliefs gained the status of scientific knowledge. As they saw it, in other words, explanatory appeals to scientific method were not empirically well grounded.

The following is also interesting: (i) “Scientific Proof Is A Myth” (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/11/22/scientific-proof-is-a-myth/#35fa34282fb1; (ii) “What Thomas Kuhn Really Thought About Scientific ‘Truth’” (at https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...s-kuhn-really-thought-about-scientific-truth/; “The Mythology of Science” (at https://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2007/08/the-mythology-o.html);

Again, I wholly agree with your statement that "in actual practice [philosophy and science] are two different things." But, that is simply a practical distinction about the way in which people engage in philosophy and science -- just as "in actual practice, baseball and football, are two different things." They both have different rules and look very different in their operation. They are, however, both games of sport. Perhaps, the same is true of philosophy and science.

 

[steve_bank]

Bsilv

There is thought. We categorize because it is difficult to deal with complexity without it.

There is thought. Philosophy and science are categories of thought.

The problem I have with pood's assertion is it implies a kind of active agency with 'philosophy'. The assertion that 'philosophy guides science' made by pood.

Modern silence is mathematical. People figured out how to spin stabilize an arrow with feathers without math or philosophy. We all do science in one way or another. It is natural.

Modern science with many independent disciplines evoked out of Natural Philosophy because met6aphysicsc became inadequate.

Modern science began with Newton, his mechanics, and his synthesis of the calculus notation.

Calculus today is still the basic language of physical science.

We all need a basic working paradigm or philosophy, but I don't see it as a particular requirement for sconce.

For me Naturalism and Freethought. Freethought being looking at issues without a filter of an ideology.

At nest philosophies of science are generalizations. Like the 'scientific method'.

For me science was a skill partly learned from text books and partly form experience. Working with others.

 

[pood]

Bsilv

There is thought. We categorize because it is difficult to deal with complexity without it.

There is thought. Philosophy and science are categories of thought.

The problem I have with pood's assertion is it implies a kind of active agency with 'philosophy'. The assertion that 'philosophy guides science' made by pood.

Modern silence is mathematical. People figured out how to spin stabilize an arrow with feathers without math or philosophy. We all do science in one way or another. It is natural.

Modern science with many independent disciplines evoked out of Natural Philosophy because met6aphysicsc became inadequate.

Modern science began with Newton, his mechanics, and his synthesis of the calculus notation.

Calculus today is still the basic language of physical science.

We all need a basic working paradigm or philosophy, but I don't see it as a particular requirement for sconce.

For me Naturalism and Freethought. Freethought being looking at issues without a filter of an ideology.

At nest philosophies of science are generalizations. Like the 'scientific method'.

For me science was a skill partly learned from text books and partly form experience. Working with others.

As I have said repeatedly, philosophy guides science and science guides philosophy. They are interdependent.

As Einstein noted, bare data is not enough. You need interpretation and philosophy. Einstein was both a scientist and a philosopher.

He dismissed those who thought otherwise as mere artisans, not seekers after truth. I do not completely agree with Einstein, finding myself skeptical that there is such a thing as ultimate truth and also rejecting his hard determinism.

However, whatever agreements or disagreements I have with Einstein are philosophical. It is philosophy all the way down, whether you like it or not.

The claims you have made in various threads represent a form of philosophy called scientism, that only science can make meaningful statements about the world.

Since this claim is itself not testable, it is self-refuting.

And, to reiterate for the umpteenth time, I have given you plenty of examples where philosophy has guided and informed scientists — including Einstein, who enthusiastically acknowledged his debt to philosophy.

It appears you just choose not to see something that conflicts with your biases.

 

[pood]

@BSilvEsq I know all about Feyerabend and the fact that science does not deal in proof positive and much else besides. If you want to discuss these matters, your real antagonist is Steve, not me. Steve thinks wrongly that all philosophy is useless.

 

[pood]

I recommend this thread. Note that the title is a misnomer. Carrier is arguing against libertarian free will as well as hard determinism and pre-determinism, the latter two of which are essentially the same thing. But he is mounting a robust defense of Compatibilism.

These ideas cannot be tested and quantified in a lab, so in that sense they are not scientific, but it is mistake to think that scientism — the idea that only scientific statements have validity — is true. The statement, as noted above, is self-refuting. And scientism is also philosophy.

Science itself does not deal in absolute truth, but only in models that seem to work but are always subject to be updated or discarded altogether pending better evidence. The pessimistic meta-induction (more philosophy) advises us that because all are prior theories have been demonstrated to be strictly false, we should expect the same to be true for our current theories.

This is philosophy through and through. It informs science.

Like turtles, it’s philosophy all the way down.

 

[DBT]

We don't think or act in isolation. We are inseparable from the system at large.

Yes we do; yes we are.

Our brains do, absolutely, think in almost complete isolation from most other stuff around them. That's the whole point of a skull, and mylin, and the short-range effects of neuro-transmitters that seem quite highly evolved to the purposes of isolating what goes on inside your head from what goes on outside it.

Just stop allowing the outside to twiddle those switches of the skin and eyes and so on, and now you separate what goes on inside from what is going on outside even more!

The thinking and acting is CLEARLY isolated from the majority of the system.

In fact, it looks like this pretense of non-isolation due to inconsequentially weak influence is one of those things you use to pretend, instead, to be significant enough to eliminate responsibility?

Dark matter passing through you is not going to be consequential to the decision of whether to have a ham or turkey sandwich. The gravitational pull of Alpha Centauri is not influencing your decision on whether to wear the green shirt or blue more than the configuration of your own neurons as resulted from taking a color theory class last week.

In fact, part of the discussion about simulation is to show exactly how isolated humans really are and how they may be isolated in total.

In fact, studying, creating, designing, and leveraging that isolation in specific ways is how computers are engineered, and simulation itself is the act of isolating systems' functions in particular ways, and binary circuitry is used to drive that isolation to Boolean precision.

Yes, people think and act in isolation, unless, say, they have wires planted in their skull bridging it to the contents of another, somehow connecting the circuit.

The point being that it is the unchosen state and condition of the brain in any given instance of decision making that determines the thoughts and actions that are taken in that instance.

Which clearly has nothing whatsoever to do with free will.

 

[DBT]

One of the things @DBT keeps erroneously saying is that determinism “does not permit alternate outcomes.” As I have pointed out time and again, this is to mistakenly claim that a descriptive process is a prescriptive one.

But the problem goes deeper. If you run an experiment twice, or any number of times, with the exact same initial conditions in the experimental setup, you will NOT, in fact, always get the same outcome. This is because at any given time there are innumerable variables you cannot control for — difference in air pressure, temperature, random quantum fluctuations, and so on. So in addition to being a descriptive process without any coercive power, determinism is also an idealization.

There is no error on my part. The conditions of the system are a part the definition of determinism.

The error is yours. You want it both ways. It appears that you support compatibilism, yet you contravene the compatibilist definition of determinism...which does not permit alternate actions.

If alternate actions happen, it is not determinism. If it is not determinism, the argument for compatibilism is redundant.

Your position appears to be an odd blend of compatibilism and Libertarian free will.

 

[Jarhyn]

I recommend this thread. Note that the title is a misnomer. Carrier is arguing against libertarian free will as well as hard determinism and pre-determinism, the latter two of which are essentially the same thing. But he is mounting a robust defense of Compatibilism.

These ideas cannot be tested and quantified in a lab, so in that sense they are not scientific, but it is mistake to think that scientism — the idea that only scientific statements have validity — is true. The statement, as noted above, is self-refuting. And scientism is also philosophy.

Science itself does not deal in absolute truth, but only in models that seem to work but are always subject to be updated or discarded altogether pending better evidence. The pessimistic meta-induction (more philosophy) advises us that because all are prior theories have been demonstrated to be strictly false, we should expect the same to be true for our current theories.

This is philosophy through and through. It informs science.

Like turtles, it’s philosophy all the way down.

I would pose that all philosophy, if valid, can be validated by reconstructing the claims using computational structures.

The constructability of a philosophical structure is proof of its reality, because while science does not deal in proof, reality is self-proving... Hence why science works in the first place (the axioms of observation are more solid than any we could hope to produce, and so babe more weight than a hypothetical axiom of function).

If a "will" translates to "what your intent is", a software program is unambiguously an "intent", filled out to binary precision.

If "a freedom" or "an alternative is a way a system 'may' go", a software program contains such conditionals with binary precision, and is validated unambiguously by a unit test.

Science doesn't deal in proof, but engineering does... By validating our theories as sufficient for the purpose through constructive application.

 

[Jarhyn]

The point being that it is the unchosen state and condition of the brain in any given instance of decision making that determines the thoughts and actions that are taken in that instance.

And we have shown again and again how: the brain does have the power to choose its own future state. I spent some good amount of time even describing that whole process and even demonstrating for you how you can make a system for which you can trivially observe the process of it choosing its own future operational text from a list of operational text based on its own current operational text.

This directly disproves your claim, and in fact validates through the trivial clear observation of the principle.

As pointed out by Copernicus in the other thread, this means the paradox in which we clearly observe the outcome, in the midst of your belief that this outcome must be impossible, means that some aspect of your use of language MUST be in error.

We have heavily discussed what that error is and why: it's a modal fallacy, caused by your belief in "the set of all sets", which you call "necessitation", identified clearly by some quality of "omniscience" and creation which you use to improperly justify this injection of nonsense.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

The point being that it is the unchosen state and condition of the brain in any given instance of decision making that determines the thoughts and actions that are taken in that instance.

And we have shown again and again how: the brain does have the power to choose its own future state. I spent some good amount of time even describing that whole process and even demonstrating for you how you can make a system for which you can trivially observe the process of it choosing its own future operational text from a list of operational text based on its own current operational text.

This directly disproves your claim, and in fact validates through the trivial clear observation of the principle.

As pointed out by Copernicus in the other thread, this means the paradox in which we clearly observe the outcome, in the midst of your belief that this outcome must be impossible, means that some aspect of your use of language MUST be in error.

We have heavily discussed what that error is and why: it's a modal fallacy, caused by your belief in "the set of all sets", which you call "necessitation", identified clearly by some quality of "omniscience" and creation which you use to improperly justify this injection of nonsense.

That is not actually responsive to DBT. Well, it is not actually responsive to my interpretation/understanding of what DBT is trying to say. I am under the impression that DBT sees this discussion as regarding whether a something referred to as free will is compatible with an other something referred to as determinism with the term compatibilism in this discussion being understood as the holding that determinism is compatible with free will (and/or vice versa).

DBT and the self-described compatibilists both refer to determinism; so, the first question is whether DBT and the self-described compatibilists understand determinism identically.

DBT appears to regard determinism in strictly reductive physicalist terms with that physicalism maintaining that there is no occasion in which there is human control over what occurs physically, and, since all that occurs is physical, there is no frank human control. DBT does not deny that there are humans and human acts; DBT does not deny that humans feel/think they have some control; he simply asserts that there is physical activity occurring entirely in accord with a regularity sufficient for there to be the sufficient descriptions provided by or referred to as physics.

DBT has a tendency to express his thinking in terms of physics as controlling, and that is how his expression comes to be in terms of must rather than will; however, as the previous paragraph makes apparent, the reductive physicalist account to which DBT seems to hold has no need of there being - has no need of reference to - any sort of control whatsoever: not human and not even physical.

This means that for DBT, determinism is the belief that the physical is sufficiently consistently regular such that all which occurs is fixed, settled, determined to be as it occurs whether it has occurred or will occur, whether it has already become or been actual or whether it is yet to be actual.

I think that what DBT wants to know is whether the self-described compatibilists in this discussion have the same understanding about determinism as that presented in the previous paragraph.

If yes, there then follows the matter of free will, but, if the compatibilists do not have the same understanding about determinism which DBT seems to have, then the matter of free will and whether it is compatible with determinism is not really at issue. The issue would simply be: what is determinism?

It does no good to say "we have shown again and again". If DBT is (thought to be) intentionally recalcitrant, then stop showing and stop saying he has been shown. If what has supposedly been "shown again and again" makes no sense to DBT, then a new and different manner of expression can be tried in place of that manner of expression which has been used "again and again".

For reasons which should be obvious, it does no good to describe determinism as deterministic or in terms of deterministic systems. Maybe DBT cannot free himself from thinking in terms of control, and maybe DBT or someone else would want to modify the description of determinism as the belief that there is only physical activity occurring entirely in accord with a regularity sufficient for there to be the sufficient descriptions provided by or referred to as physics with the physical being sufficiently consistently regular such that all which occurs is fixed, settled, determined to be as it occurs whether it has occurred or will occur, whether it has already become or been actual or whether it is yet to be actual.

Then again, maybe I have misunderstood DBT's contention.

 

[Jarhyn]

DBT and the self-described compatibilists both refer to determinism

No, we do not.

This is why I brought up the insistence on using the terms "determinism" and "fatalism", which we can distinguish, rather than "determinism" and "(pre-)determinism" which are much harder to tell apart seeing as how they are the same utterance in practice.

This

being sufficiently consistently regular

Does not lead to this:

such that all which occurs is fixed, settled, determined to be as it occurs whether it has occurred or will occur, whether it has already become or been actual or whether it is yet to be actual.

Being consistently regular does not lead to all that which occurs being settled.

Even when viewed as a block, it's not settled with respect to itself.

To your left it is NOT as it is determined at your right.

It is not determined to occur except as and where and when it is occurring, because it is not determined to occur except for those reasons at that position where it is seen to occur.

It doesn't seem fixed seeing as it's not fixed equally to all places and points in time. For something to be "fixed" it would have to be like that... So physics is fixed, seeing it is equal at all places and points in time, but this fixture is specifically to an open equation with variables.

The one fixture that you can point to is defined as a relationship of variables with open rules and capable of simulating literally anything we can imagine.

I am specifically attacking the (pre-).

DBT just does not seem to be capable of rejecting that demand that possibilities be regarded as having to exist at the same position when different positions alongside one another demonstrate the reality of alternatives.

If what is to my left is alternate to the thing to my right, it is a valid alternative... And it didn't have to exist on the same place at the same time.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

DBT and the self-described compatibilists both refer to determinism

No, we do not.

Well, this is a problem, because I am sure that DBT has thought (as have I) that self-described compatibilists would hold to compatibilism which is commonly thought of as "the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism." So, you see, it is common for compatibilists to refer to determinism as that to which or with which the compatibilist thinking is compatible.

If the self-described compatibilists in this group do not regard their compatibilism as "the thesis that free will iscompatible with determinism", then to what is compatibility being claimed?

Being consistently regular does not lead to all that which occurs being settled.

I agree that such regularity - indeed, physics - is not sufficient basis for asserting that all which is yet to occur is nonetheless settled to occur in a specific way, but I nonetheless also regard scientistic physicalism (whether of the reductive variety or not) as a possibly correct viewpoint even though such physicalists seem to live their lives as if that physicalism is not actually the case. That physicalism is an unproved philosophy derived from an over-extension of science-related concepts. That over-extension is what makes that physicalism a scientistic philosophy which, of course, is distinct from science.

DBT just does not seem to be capable of rejecting that demand that possibilities be regarded as having to exist at the same position when different positions alongside one another demonstrate the reality of alternatives.

I do not think the problem is with alternatives regarding the not-yet-determined being located at the same place-time. I think the problem is in DBT's statement: "If alternate actions happen, it is not determinism." If there are alternatives at the same place-time, that does not mean that "alternate actions" actually occur. Rather, what are being referred to as alternatives are taken as exclusive of the other associated alternatives; if one of those alternatives becomes actual, the others of those alternatives do not - certainly not at the same place-time.

That being said, it is possible (even likely) that what DBT means to say is that the aforementioned alternatives are not themselves actual as alternatives/possibilities; such possibilities (specifically those which humans identify as available from which a choice can be made) are illusions. Such a view can be tied in with the notion of consciousness as being epiphenomenal.

Regardless, I can see DBT wanting to know with what the self-described compatibilists here regard their thinking to be compatible - if not determinism - when they think of it as and call it a compatibilism? Not that it has to be called compatibilism, of course, but if it is and when it is to be so called.

 

[BSilvEsq]

Bsilv

There is thought. We categorize because it is difficult to deal with complexity without it.

There is thought. Philosophy and science are categories of thought.

The problem I have with pood's assertion is it implies a kind of active agency with 'philosophy'. The assertion that 'philosophy guides science' made by pood.

Modern silence is mathematical. People figured out how to spin stabilize an arrow with feathers without math or philosophy. We all do science in one way or another. It is natural.

Modern science with many independent disciplines evoked out of Natural Philosophy because met6aphysicsc became inadequate.

Modern science began with Newton, his mechanics, and his synthesis of the calculus notation.

Calculus today is still the basic language of physical science.

We all need a basic working paradigm or philosophy, but I don't see it as a particular requirement for sconce.

For me Naturalism and Freethought. Freethought being looking at issues without a filter of an ideology.

At nest philosophies of science are generalizations. Like the 'scientific method'.

For me science was a skill partly learned from text books and partly form experience. Working with others.

As I have said repeatedly, philosophy guides science and science guides philosophy. They are interdependent.

As Einstein noted, bare data is not enough. You need interpretation and philosophy. Einstein was both a scientist and a philosopher.

He dismissed those who thought otherwise as mere artisans, not seekers after truth. I do not completely agree with Einstein, finding myself skeptical that there is such a thing as ultimate truth and also rejecting his hard determinism.

However, whatever agreements or disagreements I have with Einstein are philosophical. It is philosophy all the way down, whether you like it or not.

The claims you have made in various threads represent a form of philosophy called scientism, that only science can make meaningful statements about the world.

Since this claim is itself not testable, it is self-refuting.

And, to reiterate for the umpteenth time, I have given you plenty of examples where philosophy has guided and informed scientists — including Einstein, who enthusiastically acknowledged his debt to philosophy.

It appears you just choose not to see something that conflicts with your biases.

For once, I largely agree with what you have written -- at least about Einstein and his views and approach to the intersection of philosophy and science, and also about the fact that philosophy guides science and that science, itself, is a form of philosophy, which lacks a provable or falsifiable claim to ultimate truth (if such a thing even exists).

 

[BSilvEsq]

DBT and the self-described compatibilists both refer to determinism

No, we do not.

Well, this is a problem, because I am sure that DBT has thought (as have I) that self-described compatibilists would hold to compatibilism which is commonly thought of as "the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism." So, you see, it is common for compatibilists to refer to determinism as that to which or with which the compatibilist thinking is compatible.

If the self-described compatibilists in this group do not regard their compatibilism as "the thesis that free will iscompatible with determinism", then to what is compatibility being claimed?

Being consistently regular does not lead to all that which occurs being settled.

I agree that such regularity - indeed, physics - is not sufficient basis for asserting that all which is yet to occur is nonetheless settled to occur in a specific way, but I nonetheless also regard scientistic physicalism (whether of the reductive variety or not) as a possibly correct viewpoint even though such physicalists seem to live their lives as if that physicalism is not actually the case. That physicalism is an unproved philosophy derived from an over-extension of science-related concepts. That over-extension is what makes that physicalism a scientistic philosophy which, of course, is distinct from science.

DBT just does not seem to be capable of rejecting that demand that possibilities be regarded as having to exist at the same position when different positions alongside one another demonstrate the reality of alternatives.

I do not think the problem is with alternatives regarding the not-yet-determined being located at the same place-time. I think the problem is in DBT's statement: "If alternate actions happen, it is not determinism." If there are alternatives at the same place-time, that does not mean that "alternate actions" actually occur. Rather, what are being referred to as alternatives are taken as exclusive of the other associated alternatives; if one of those alternatives becomes actual, the others of those alternatives do not - certainly not at the same place-time.

That being said, it is possible (even likely) that what DBT means to say is that the aforementioned alternatives are not themselves actual as alternatives/possibilities; such possibilities (specifically those which humans identify as available from which a choice can be made) are illusions. Such a view can be tied in with the notion of consciousness as being epiphenomenal.

Regardless, I can see DBT wanting to know with what the self-described compatibilists here regard their thinking to be compatible - if not determinism - when they think of it as and call it a compatibilism? Not that it has to be called compatibilism, of course, but if it is and when it is to be so called.

You have nailed it once again.

The problem, as I see it, and have written about previously in this thread, is that many (but not all) of the self-proclaimed compatibilists on this thread have a view of compatibilism that is based entirely on their unshakable faith that they have free will and that the existence of free will is, therefore, compatible with any other reality that may permeate the universe -- otherwise the free will they accept on faith would not exist. In essence, they reason as follows:

1. know that Free Will exists.
2. I accept the claim that Determinism, whatever it may be, exists.
THEREFORE
3. Free Will is compatible with Determinism

When confronted with the fact that this is not what compatibilism means in classic literature, the self-proclaimed compatibilists proclaim that a majority of the folks on this thread are compatibilists in the modern world and this is what they understand the term to mean.

In essence, these folks make up their own new definitions of words used in a philosophical debate that has waged for thousands of years, they assert the reality of how they feel, and they advance an argument that is little more than verbal masturbation that makes them feel good about their position.

What these folks refuse to do is accept (arguendo) the hypothetical truth of determinism and explain how the truth of that hypothetical reality could coexist with the truth of free will. Instead, they evade and avoid that question by asserting that any form of determinism that would not be compatible with the existence of Free Will is logically impossible (which actually proves the point of the incompatibilists) and, again, assert the truth of their meaningless version of compatibilism.

As I have said before, the only value in engaging with folks of that mindset is to help sharpen the analysis and also to gain an understanding of the fundamentally meaninglessness of their position, which is, in the final analysis, simply a assertion that they have free will and any argument to the contrary is just plain wrong.

 

[Jarhyn]

self-described compatibilists would hold to compatibilism which is commonly thought of as "the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism." So, you see, it is common for compatibilists to refer to determinism as that to which or with which the compatibilist thinking is compatible.

Except that every compatibilist represented here, from me, to pood to Mr. Board Member to Carrier has observed that when you say "determinism" you mean "fatalism", and when we say "determinism" we mean "determinism".

So when we say "determinism is compatible with free will" we say something distinctly different from what you say.

Every compatibilist here has said as much in our own ways.

It comes from the perhaps understandable notion that the compatibilist might lack the specific (and incorrect) intuition that determinism entails fatalism, or have already understood it to be flawed for other reasons (such as a rejection of the set of all sets, via Russel's Paradox).

The "hard determinist", or as incall them the fatalist has not yet rejected these facile and pre-academic views of "necessitation" outside logical axioms in some important and general way.

And to be fair, I'm still exploring my way carefully as I feel I should through that idea space!

But we need to look with suspicion on anything we might declare as necessary, I think fairly universally, at least for anything that finds itself in ignorance and has the tools for effective doubt.

The problem is that necessitation is a thought terminator. Once something is "necessary" there's nothing past that, no way to even think about it, no explanation of why, it's just "necessary" by some sort of FIAT, and you don't even get to ask when or how, and it's always that everywhere!

When you have necessitation in your premise you can necessitate the answer! This use of necessitation is "assuming the conclusion" and it's not valid logic.

You can attach a fig leaf to "necessity" by hiding it in a non-sequitur.

In fact, I think we should fairly well search out for words, not just specific individual words but the whole class of words that can be interjected there, in that structure, to present arguments in similarly faulty ways.

If there are alternatives at the same place-time

Then a contradiction exists, end of statement.

Something is both A and ~A at the same place and time.

The fact that after saying this series of words you don't look at it and immediately recognize it itself indicates a penchant for logical contradiction.

This is why I keep pointing out alternatives don't have to be at the same place in space and time to be alternatives.

Rather, what are being referred to as alternatives are taken as exclusive of the other associated alternatives; if one of those alternatives becomes actual, the others of those alternatives do not - certainly not at the same place-time.

And as said repeatedly, they don't have to exist at the same place and time to be alternatives, though they can exist within the same field of view at the same time, through the function of an existing relationship between places over time.

All of those alternatives are actual, right there, but one of those alternatives is going to become proximally actual twice, sometimes in different contexts, following a rotation and translation in space. It will in one place in one way and then also another place in some abstract way.

That being said, it is possible (even likely) that what DBT means to say is that the aforementioned alternatives are not themselves actual as alternatives/possibilities; such possibilities (specifically those which humans identify as available from which a choice can be made) are illusions

At a buffet, the alternatives are quite real. There's the beef right there. Over there are the mashed potatoes. Right here is the bacon.

They are not illusions. They are quite real, right there on the buffet line.

I do have to do some rotation and translation for them to be on my plate at a later point in time, and to be fair, we do call all the sorts of operations that handle that, quite ironically, "imaginary", but I would rather call this complex or time-delayed. The more general your view of space or options or alternatives, the more things in space stand out as valid alternatives to whatever choice.

But you can't make a choice without alternatives.

Then on the other side, on the side of the mind doing the choosing, and I'll call, abstractly, any such process as causes rotation in a system over time a "mind" in the abstract sense, that contains "deciders". You plug the alternatives into the decider or the pile of them, and you get a decision.

Call the pile of deciders anything you want, a function, a particle, a meta-particle, a quasi-particle, a meat computer, a "human", or even "Jarhyn". It's an arbitrary object, and if you present the alternatives to a different decider, or a different set of alternatives to the same decider, different outcomes occur.

That every moment there is a complete set of alternatives and in every moment there is a complete set of deciders such that you can see the whole system as a single frame of decision makes no difference to the existence of the alternatives and the choosing.

What compatibilists think is compatible here is that they as a subset of those deciders participate in the decisions, and that we can impugn the deciders on the specific decisions over the alternatives such that we can re-decide the deciders, even when the decider itself is the thing being decided upon.

This is what is compatible with determinism, but not fatalism, which is incompatible with itself.

If you instead just start calling this "determinism plus necessity" fatalism, the problem resolves itself, and you can see what component of "fatalism" as an expanded concept is kept as compatible and what component gets thrown away, since the concepts are distinct.

The issue comes that when we fully expand the thought, that "necessitation" bit sticks out like a sore thumb.

As Copernicus pointed out in the other thread, paradoxes and arguments in philosophy arise from a tucked-away misuse of language.

The misuse is a modal fallacy, and I'm pretty sure at this point that the the modal fallacy is the reason behind Russel's Paradox, and perhaps with all "arguments from bald necessity" as a group.

Indeed the set of all sets implies that instance implies type qualities, that "of all sets", by containing a statement about the set itself, violates a principle of non-circular statements, of the same sort that out "this statement is false" as being a violation (to assign truth as a prior to the conclusion, and ironically, reflected as assuming an axiom).

The problem is that to get to your conclusions, you want me to pretend to ignore that error right at the start of things. I won't, because that's the error that allows you to say "anything", even contradictory nonsense things.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

But we need to look with suspicion on anything we might declare as necessary

Agreed. Wholeheartedly.

Then a contradiction exists, end of statement.

Something is both A and ~A at the same place and time.

False. There is one possibility with the characteristic of A, and there is also one possibility with the characteristic of not-A. At the same place-time. It is not a matter of one possibility which is both A and not-A. The something made from conjoining the A possibility and the not-A possibility would be expressed as a determinate condition but not itself as a possibility (even if it is, as would highly likely be the case, a contingent condition).

you can't make a choice without alternatives.

Agreed. Wholeheartedly.

Another way of saying it is that there are no actual choices to be made if there are no actual alternatives. Some persons see actual alternatives which other persons do not. Some persons see more actual alternatives in a given context than do other persons. With regards to such alternatives, some persons are more free than other persons.

 

[bilby]

Once something is "necessary" there's nothing past that, no way to even think about it, no explanation of why, it's just "necessary" by some sort of FIAT

 

[Jarhyn]

There is one possibility with the characteristic of A, and there is also one possibility with the characteristic of not-A

Two things... Different characteristics... Same place... That's A and !A at the same place and time.

Two "possibilities" with different characteristics at the same place and time are contradictory.

That's a contradiction.

The fact that you can't see the contradiction RIGHT THERE is your entire problem here.

Trying to inject your "actual" is yet another reflection of fallacy, however, this time of the no-true-scotsman variety, in pretending the things I am calling alternatives aren't "actually" alternatives just because they don't also exist at the same space and time as the "result".

Alternatives do not need to exist at the same place and time to be alternatives. Differing locations are sufficient. What they need to be alternative is merely a decider which they are presented against.

In some ways, this presents an interesting dualism to all of nature in that it is alternative AND decider, granted the nature as alternative to other deciders is about that which things do not share in common (their state and position), and the nature as a decider is about what all things share in common (the physical equations of motion and change). I suspect this is the same duality we find behind momentum and position, and that this same relationship between momentum and position is itself a reflection of modal boundary.

But hey, at least I think I spotted a nifty connection between modal fallacy, argument from necessity, and theism.