Compatibilism: What's that About?

[bilby]

Saying one has part in determination is laughable.

Saying one does NOT have a part in determinism is laughable. All physical objects in the universe have a part in determinism.

Humans are physical systems. Their determined behaviour is too complex to predict, so we wait to see what they do.

We call this 'deciding'.

"What will Marvin have for dinner?"
"He doesn't know; He hasn't decided yet, but he has the menu, so at least he knows what he can decide to order."
"But what he orders must be determined"
"Sure, but it's determined by the physical processes in his brain, and we can't predict their final decision until they finish making it."
"Oh, look, now he's ordering the chef salad. He could have had steak, but he was always going to order the salad, it was determined by the physics of his brain."
"So why couldn't we predict his order?"
"Because his brain is too complex and chaotic; Small changes in any input could have resulted in a large change in the output."
"But it wouldn't, because the inputs were all determined too."
"No, it wouldn't. But it could have, because we had no way to measure the inputs with sufficient accuracy to make a prediction. All we could do was wait and see what he decided, even though it was an entirely determined outcome."

 

[fromderinside]

Saying one has part in determination is laughable.

Saying one does NOT have a part in determinism is laughable. All physical objects in the universe have a part in determinism.

Humans are physical systems. Their determined behaviour is too complex to predict, so we wait to see what they do.

We call this 'deciding'.

"What will Marvin have for dinner?"
"He doesn't know; He hasn't decided yet, but he has the menu, so at least he knows what he can decide to order."
"But what he orders must be determined"
"Sure, but it's determined by the physical processes in his brain, and we can't predict their final decision until they finish making it."
"Oh, look, now he's ordering the chef salad. He could have had steak, but he was always going to order the salad, it was determined by the physics of his brain."
"So why couldn't we predict his order?"
"Because his brain is too complex and chaotic; Small changes in any input could have resulted in a large change in the output."
"But it wouldn't, because the inputs were all determined too."
"No, it wouldn't. But it could have, because we had no way to measure the inputs with sufficient accuracy to make a prediction. All we could do was wait and see what he decided, even though it was an entirely determined outcome."

I feel for Marvin, poor soul.

As for deciding would you call the bumping of molecules into each other, because of thermodynamics, choices. Well as a retired neuroscientist I wouldn't. Same with humans, because of cultural and personal thermodynamics. It pays to stay on a particular logical plane when discussing such as 'behavior'. Sorry if there are problems computing such as personal and cultural thermodynamics.

 

[bilby]

Saying one has part in determination is laughable.

Saying one does NOT have a part in determinism is laughable. All physical objects in the universe have a part in determinism.

Humans are physical systems. Their determined behaviour is too complex to predict, so we wait to see what they do.

We call this 'deciding'.

"What will Marvin have for dinner?"
"He doesn't know; He hasn't decided yet, but he has the menu, so at least he knows what he can decide to order."
"But what he orders must be determined"
"Sure, but it's determined by the physical processes in his brain, and we can't predict their final decision until they finish making it."
"Oh, look, now he's ordering the chef salad. He could have had steak, but he was always going to order the salad, it was determined by the physics of his brain."
"So why couldn't we predict his order?"
"Because his brain is too complex and chaotic; Small changes in any input could have resulted in a large change in the output."
"But it wouldn't, because the inputs were all determined too."
"No, it wouldn't. But it could have, because we had no way to measure the inputs with sufficient accuracy to make a prediction. All we could do was wait and see what he decided, even though it was an entirely determined outcome."

I feel for Marvin, poor soul.

As for deciding would you call the bumping of molecules into each other, because of thermodynamics, choices.

Yes, I would, in sufficiently complex circumstances. Indeed, I just did in the post to which you are replying.

Did you read it?

Well as a retired neuroscientist I wouldn't. Same with humans, because of cultural and personal thermodynamics. It pays to stay on a particular logical plane when discussing such as 'behavior'. Sorry if there are problems computing such as personal and cultural thermodynamics.

I have zero clue what you are attempting to communicate here, other than an attempt to impress me with credentials of which I was already aware. (It failed, fyi).

 

[DBT]

That doesn't alter anything in terms of how the world develops or evolved because our condition of incomplete understanding is entailed by it.

How the world develops is entailed by the the behavior of the objects and forces that make up this world. You seem to be overlooking this fact. The abstractions of "causation" and "determinism" do not cause or determine anything. All of the causation is by the actual objects and the actual forces. Their behavior determines what happens. For example, the accumulated snow on a mountain side can reach a weight where gravity will cause an avalanche. The object is a mass of snow. The force is gravity. The event is an avalanche.

The behaviour of the objects is fixed by antecedent events - the evolving system - before the objects even get to perform their actions.

Whatever the objects do, they do it necessarily. Their actions are not freely chosen or freely willed, they are entailed, fixed to happen precisely they must happen before they happen.

That's determinism, and why determinism is incompatible with the idea of free will.

The avalanche is not caused by causation, or determined by determinism. The avalanche is caused by the mass of snow and the force of gravity.

We are objects, specifically living organisms of an intelligent species. And we can exert force upon other objects, as we do when we pick up the menu and open it. We can cause things to happen. When we order the Chef Salad, the waiter takes our order to the chef, and the chef prepares our salad.

Nobody is saying that an avalanche or thought is caused by causation, just a matter of the properties of the system....this event causes that event, which causes the next, a precise evolution of events that do not allow deviation or alternate actions to happen.

Just as you define it.

The events of the world proceed, not through free will or choice, but fixed: as determined,

And that blatantly contradicts the fact that choosing not only happened, but was determined to happen. We actually chose to order the Chef Salad, and that choice caused us to tell the waiter, "I will have the Chef Salad, please".

Your selection is entailed/fixed by the state of the system in any given moment in time as events unfold without deviation. As there are no alternative actions to choose from in any given instance - no deviation - what you 'selected' in that instance was inevitable, as are all events in any given instance in time.

Hence, nothing is freely willed or freely chosen. Whatever is done, is done necessarily.

Choosing is a physical event performed by our own brain. It actually happens in the real world. And the choice causally determines the subsequent behavior of the waiter and the chef. That is how determinism works. It is the reliable string of events unfolding as they inevitably must happen, where each event is the reliable result of prior events.

Our 'own brain' is formed and programmed by the system - information input/memory - it is the world and its events that shapes and forms us, our physical and mental makeup, thoughts and actions.


''The senses are the gateways to the intellect. There is nothing in the intellect which did not first pass through the senses.'' - Aristotle.

 

[Jarhyn]

The determined object will be executed because it is the determined object for execution

Posh posh and fatalism.

Things get determined by process.

It is not determined until it is determined. It gets determined through the observable process of choice.

Your post evinces a lack of the ability to maintain such a thing as consistency of tense.

The process is determinism. Determined is. Full stop.

Putting such a failure to parse tense on display is not going to lead you to what you want.

You want to talk about determinism, yet you can't understand how the statement that all things are caused by antecedents means that there is no such concept as a perfect prediction.

There is a clear difference, as I have explained multiple times, between predetermination and determination by as systemic course.

The only way to access the future is stepping through the past one second per second.

What is the future going to be, of your choices? It will be whatever it is you choose, because you making the choice (or not and letting it default, which @bilby points out is a requirement you cannot fail to fulfill!) Is part of what will make it the way it is!

If you go back everything happens the same because the same things lead to the same outputs...

And as we can see by looking somewhere else in the system, we can see that different inputs lead to different outputs on the physics, and we can then calculate how those different inputs lead to different outputs, and then we can figure out which output we want to see here in the future. We then figure out what inputs we need to see here in the future for that, and then of those sets we pick one, and then we have made a choice to make something happen, and then that thing happens here.

The thing would not have happened here had all that not happened, so that choice happening in the middle is part of determinism.

the process is determinism. Determinism includes compatibilist choice.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

How the world develops is entailed by the the behavior of the objects and forces that make up this world. All of the causation is by the actual objects and the actual forces. Their behavior determines what happens. For example, the accumulated snow on a mountain side can reach a weight where gravity will cause an avalanche. The object is a mass of snow. The force is gravity. The event is an avalanche.

The behaviour of the objects is fixed by antecedent events - the evolving system - before the objects even get to perform their actions.

Yes. We can choose any prior point in time, such as the Big Bang, and the state and events at that point will lead inevitably to the current event. But the state and events at the time of the Big Bang will not help us to understand WHY we chose the Chef Salad instead of the juicy Steak for dinner.

The most meaningful and relevant causes of our choosing the Chef Salad are found right here, in our own thoughts, as we recalled the bacon and eggs we ate for breakfast and the double cheeseburger we had for lunch. Those thoughts, local to this time and place, provide the most meaningful explanation of why we ordered the Chef Salad tonight.

Whatever the objects do, they do it necessarily.

Yes. Due to our presumption that all events necessarily proceed from prior events, all events are causally necessary from any prior point in time. And we actually experience this necessity during our choosing, as we find the recollection of our breakfast and our lunch leading inevitably to our rejecting the Steak and choosing the Chef Salad instead. We may even say to ourselves, "I must not add the Steak on top of the bacon and eggs, and the double cheeseburger!"

Their actions are not freely chosen or freely willed,

(A) They are "freely chosen" and "freely willed" as long as what we mean is that the choosing is simply free of coercion and undue influence.

(B) They are not "freely chosen" and not "freely willed" if what we mean is that the choosing is free of causal necessity.

One of these meanings (A) is compatible with causal necessity and the other (B) directly contradicts it and is thus incompatible.

they are entailed, fixed to happen precisely they must happen before they happen.

Correct. And the meaning of "free will" in (A) is perfectly fine with that. If my choosing is fixed to happen free of coercion and undue influence, then it will be my own freely chosen will. But if my choosing is fixed to happen under duress then it will not be of my own free will.

That's determinism, and why determinism is incompatible with the idea of free will.

As you can see, determinism is only incompatible with the idea of free will in (B), which insists upon being outside of causal necessity.

But the free will in (A) works just fine within a world of causal necessity.

Your selection is entailed/fixed by the state of the system in any given moment in time as events unfold without deviation.

And that poses no problem for the free will in (A). Events will either unfold without deviation into a choice free of coercion and undue influence or they will unfold without deviation in a choice subject to coercion or undue influence. That's the way determinism works.

As there are no alternative actions to choose from in any given instance - no deviation - what you 'selected' in that instance was inevitable, as are all events in any given instance in time.

Of course. However, within the choosing operation itself, there will be multiple alternate actions to choose from, because that is how choosing works within a deterministic system. There is no alternate to the choosing happening, and there is no alternate to it happening with multiple alternates to choose from.

Hence, nothing is freely willed or freely chosen.

Again, that depends entirely upon what we mean by "freely willed" and "freely chosen".
You are correct if we are using "freedom from causal necessity".
But you are incorrect if we are using "freedom from coercion and undue influence".

Our 'own brain' is formed and programmed by the system - information input/memory - it is the world and its events that shapes and forms us, our physical and mental makeup, thoughts and actions.

You seem to be ignoring the fact that from the moment we are born, we are a unique object within that world, negotiating with our physical (the crib) and social (the parents) environments for control. We are not passive vessels, but active participants.

''The senses are the gateways to the intellect. There is nothing in the intellect which did not first pass through the senses.'' - Aristotle.

Hi Aristotle. I'm sure you will agree that, while the senses are the gateway, once things get inside, the brain begins its own job of interpreting and dealing with that data in terms of its own needs and interests. We are manipulating the world while the world manipulates us. It's that control thing.

 

[fromderinside]

Well as a retired neuroscientist I wouldn't. Same with humans, because of cultural and personal thermodynamics. It pays to stay on a particular logical plane when discussing such as 'behavior'. Sorry if there are problems computing such as personal and cultural thermodynamics.

I have zero clue what you are attempting to communicate here, other than an attempt to impress me with credentials of which I was already aware. (It failed, fyi).

Good. It wasn't intended to impress. My point is material measures are different from self reported measures. You put your arguments in a Descartes context "cogito ergo cum" rather than measures arising from science.

 

[fromderinside]

Saying one has part in determination is laughable.

Saying one does NOT have a part in determinism is laughable. All physical objects in the universe have a part in determinism.

Humans are physical systems. Their determined behaviour is too complex to predict, so we wait to see what they do.

We call this 'deciding.'

'Too complex' is an excuse to invent 'what if' fillers. Waiting with incomplete information is useless. Ergo deciding is a useless exercise re knowing.

I have hope because humans have completely decoded the nervous systems of certain ants. Still I know we can't know because humans have found that as incomplete knowing beings it is impossible for us to 'know.'

 

[bilby]

'Too complex' is an excuse to invent 'what if' fillers. Waiting with incomplete information is useless.

I am not talking about incomplete information.

I am talking about systems that represent the fastest possible way to model themselves.

Knowing everything about an ant's (or a human's) brain doesn't help to predict what it will do, if your best model can't tell you what it will do faster than just waiting to see what it does.

You can theoretically predict the weather three months from now, but only if you build a model the size of the entire planet, and wait three months, so that fact isn't particularly helpful.

 

[fromderinside]

'Too complex' is an excuse to invent 'what if' fillers. Waiting with incomplete information is useless.

I am not talking about incomplete information.

I am talking about systems that represent the fastest possible way to model themselves.

Knowing everything about an ant's (or a human's) brain doesn't help to predict what it will do, if your best model can't tell you what it will do faster than just waiting to see what it does.

You can theoretically predict the weather three months from now, but only if you build a model the size of the entire planet, and wait three months, so that fact isn't particularly helpful.

At least we agree we can't predict. The point of my ant history was just what you wrote. We are part of the system. the rest of the yammering is just noise and flexes.

 

[Jarhyn]

Prediction? Prediction? Among those determined their uncertainty, false, but felt, is that.

Salad? Salad? Among those salads their saladity, wilted and flat, is felt.

You falsely edited my words and claimed I said something I did not.

If you cannot actually establish the transform wherein I say something, quit assuming it is there. It is not.

 

[Jarhyn]

If you have a problem predicting that from this you haven't been looking in the right places

At least we agree we can't predict

It would be nice if you could at least agree with yourself across the span of a few chain posts.

There are no perfect predictions. There is no such thing. There are only dictions, actual executions of the system, as bilby points out, time travels at one second per second.

And I'm sorry @bilby, even making a whole earth is not enough. Alas! you would need a whole detached universe to make that determination, and then you wouldn't be predicting it, you would just be "dicting" it as it were, creating an untold number of people "last thursday", and then telling us not what shall happen of us with that information, but establishing for us what happens when that information is side-loaded in, in a corrupted game.

That's not a perfect prediction either.

It's what happened of a strongly related system somewhere else, sometime else and thus not "perfect" after this impossible measure.

There are only imperfect predictions, and actual operations of the system given an antecedent state.

But in that operation of the system there are a number of events, and one of the categories events that acts as antecedent to the outcomes in it is called 'choice'.

I described one several times for you. The fact that the predictions are approximal does not matter. It is in fact a discussion about inaccessibility, and what numbers in a system can be accessed where and how and when!

Approximation is the best we can ever get for strongly inaccessible cardinalities, but we can't claim they are not there just because they are inaccessible from where we are: they can still be treated and looked at, have things proven about them, despite their inaccessibility.

 

[DBT]

How the world develops is entailed by the the behavior of the objects and forces that make up this world. All of the causation is by the actual objects and the actual forces. Their behavior determines what happens. For example, the accumulated snow on a mountain side can reach a weight where gravity will cause an avalanche. The object is a mass of snow. The force is gravity. The event is an avalanche.

Sure, the behaviour of all the objects within the system, including brains and minds, is entailed by the evolving state of system.

The behaviour of the objects is fixed by antecedent events - the evolving system - before the objects even get to perform their actions.

Yes. We can choose any prior point in time, such as the Big Bang, and the state and events at that point will lead inevitably to the current event. But the state and events at the time of the Big Bang will not help us to understand WHY we chose the Chef Salad instead of the juicy Steak for dinner.

The Big Bang evolved into stars, galaxies, planets and life on Earth, life on Earth produced us with our physical and mental abilities, our brain and proclivities led to the development of Chef Salad, which some folk find appealing while others don't. It is on the menu because it appeals to enough customers to make it worthwhile.

The most meaningful and relevant causes of our choosing the Chef Salad are found right here, in our own thoughts, as we recalled the bacon and eggs we ate for breakfast and the double cheeseburger we had for lunch. Those thoughts, local to this time and place, provide the most meaningful explanation of why we ordered the Chef Salad tonight.

Some find it appealing, tasty, can't get enough while others couldn't bear the thought of ordering Chef Salad, and would only do so if put under pressure by their partner or companions. Which is not classed as free will under the compatibilist definition.

On one hand, inner necessity and on the other both external coercion and inner necessity.

It doesn't work either way.


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

Whatever the objects do, they do it necessarily.

Yes. Due to our presumption that all events necessarily proceed from prior events, all events are causally necessary from any prior point in time. And we actually experience this necessity during our choosing, as we find the recollection of our breakfast and our lunch leading inevitably to our rejecting the Steak and choosing the Chef Salad instead. We may even say to ourselves, "I must not add the Steak on top of the bacon and eggs, and the double cheeseburger!"

What we say to ourselves is a necessary part of the process. Deliberation proceeds as it must.

Their actions are not freely chosen or freely willed,

(A) They are "freely chosen" and "freely willed" as long as what we mean is that the choosing is simply free of coercion and undue influence.

(B) They are not "freely chosen" and not "freely willed" if what we mean is that the choosing is free of causal necessity.

One of these meanings (A) is compatible with causal necessity and the other (B) directly contradicts it and is thus incompatible.

Being free of coercion or undue influence is not sufficient to claim free will because underlying everything that is thought, felt and done is the process of inner necessity, a deterministic interaction of brain and evironment.

they are entailed, fixed to happen precisely they must happen before they happen.

Correct. And the meaning of "free will" in (A) is perfectly fine with that. If my choosing is fixed to happen free of coercion and undue influence, then it will be my own freely chosen will. But if my choosing is fixed to happen under duress then it will not be of my own free will.

If events are entailed to happen before they happen, they are not chosen or freely willed to happen, because nothing else can happen.

That's determinism, and why determinism is incompatible with the idea of free will.

As you can see, determinism is only incompatible with the idea of free will in (B), which insists upon being outside of causal necessity.

But the free will in (A) works just fine within a world of causal necessity.

A definition alone doesn't prove the proposition. If nothing is free willed within a deterministic system, the definition is mere rhetoric...something like defining the qualities and attributes of God and the Angels.

''The senses are the gateways to the intellect. There is nothing in the intellect which did not first pass through the senses.'' - Aristotle.

Hi Aristotle. I'm sure you will agree that, while the senses are the gateway, once things get inside, the brain begins its own job of interpreting and dealing with that data in terms of its own needs and interests. We are manipulating the world while the world manipulates us. It's that control thing.

The brain does the job of interpreting information based on neural architecture and electrochemical processing of information, not free will.

The physical state and makeup of the brain determines what it can or can't do, not free will.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

How the world develops is entailed by the the behavior of the objects and forces that make up this world. All of the causation is by the actual objects and the actual forces. Their behavior determines what happens. For example, the accumulated snow on a mountain side can reach a weight where gravity will cause an avalanche. The object is a mass of snow. The force is gravity. The event is an avalanche.

Sure, the behaviour of all the objects within the system, including brains and minds, is entailed by the evolving state of system.

You miss the point. It is the behavior of all the objects and forces that entails the evolution of the system, not the other way around. The universe does not behave in a unified fashion. But the human being does behave in a unified fashion. The human being literally has "skin in the game", and is concerned with the consequences of events.

The Big Bang evolved into stars, galaxies, planets and life on Earth, life on Earth produced us with our physical and mental abilities, our brain and proclivities led to the development of Chef Salad, which some folk find appealing while others don't. It is on the menu because it appeals to enough customers to make it worthwhile.

But the Big Bang had no interest in building a restaurant. People built the restaurant for their own reasons, reasons that did not exist at the time of the Big Bang. So, if we have any complaint about the restaurant, we bring it up with the owners, not the Big Bang.

The most meaningful and relevant causes of our choosing the Chef Salad are found right here, in our own thoughts, as we recalled the bacon and eggs we ate for breakfast and the double cheeseburger we had for lunch. Those thoughts, local to this time and place, provide the most meaningful explanation of why we ordered the Chef Salad tonight.

Some find it appealing, tasty, can't get enough while others couldn't bear the thought of ordering Chef Salad, and would only do so if put under pressure by their partner or companions. Which is not classed as free will under the compatibilist definition.

Peer pressure is a common (as opposed to undue) influence, but it normally doesn't rise to the level of coercion. Each adult in the restaurant is still free to choose for themselves what they will order for dinner.

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

There is no challenge to basic-desert responsibility in the restaurant. If you ordered it, then you deserve to pay for it. Or did you have some different notion of basic-desert responsibility?

Their actions are not freely chosen or freely willed,

(A) They are "freely chosen" and "freely willed" as long as what we mean is that the choosing is simply free of coercion and undue influence.

(B) They are not "freely chosen" and not "freely willed" if what we mean is that the choosing is free of causal necessity.

One of these meanings (A) is compatible with causal necessity and the other (B) directly contradicts it and is thus incompatible.

Being free of coercion or undue influence is not sufficient to claim free will because underlying everything that is thought, felt and done is the process of inner necessity, a deterministic interaction of brain and environment.

But there is no incompatibility between a choice free of coercion and undue influence and the deterministic interaction of brain and environment. It is only when using "freedom from deterministic interaction" that deterministic interaction becomes incompatible.

As you can see, determinism is only incompatible with the idea of free will in (B), which insists upon being outside of causal necessity.

But the free will in (A) works just fine within a world of causal necessity.

... the definition is mere rhetoric ...

Definition (A), free will as a choice we make while free of coercion and undue influence, is not just rhetoric. It is actually used when assessing a person's responsibility for their actions.

But perhaps definition (B), "freedom from causal necessity" is mere rhetoric. After all, it is a bit of silly nonsense which has no utility at all, except perhaps to generate needless debate.

 

[Jarhyn]

is entailed by the evolving state of system

And the shape of the change as the system evolved satisfies at certain points the definition of compatibilist choice...

It is on the menu because it appeals to enough customers to make it worthwhile

...Such that they choose it over other things

Deliberation proceeds as it must

...Such that the geometry of the brain leaves no choice but to make the choice... Same as Bilby's dog has no choice but to obey.

If events are entailed to happen before they happen

Events cannot possibly be entailed to happen before they happen because "entailing them to happen" is literally tautologically "the happening of them".

No event is entailed to happen before it happens. That is not a coherent thought.

When it is entailed to happen, that is when it happens, because entailing it to happen is equivalent to it happening.

That's how happening happens.

 

[Jarhyn]

The brain does the job of interpreting information based on neural architecture and electrochemical processing of information, not free will

It's not an either/or. The brain, in an operation satisfying the definition of compatibilist choice, does the job of interpreting information based on neural architecture and electrochemical processing of information. Sometimes this operation also satisfies the compatibilist definition of free will with respect to a given agent at a given point in time.

 

[bilby]

There is no challenge to basic-desert responsibility in the restaurant. If you ordered it, then you deserve to pay for it. Or did you have some different notion of basic-desert responsibility?

If I am going to order and pay for a dessert, then it's got to be a fancy one, with ice cream and sparklers, and a bazillion calories of sugar.

Ain't going to be no 'basic-dessert's' for me at any restaurant I would want to go back to.

And I don't care what kind of diet my doctor recommended, I still don't have a responsibility to order a dumb basic...

Oh, wait.

Desert.





Sorry.

Carry on.

 

[Jarhyn]

There is no challenge to basic-desert responsibility in the restaurant. If you ordered it, then you deserve to pay for it. Or did you have some different notion of basic-desert responsibility?

If I am going to order and pay for a dessert, then it's got to be a fancy one, with ice cream and sparklers, and a bazillion calories of sugar.

Ain't going to be no 'basic-dessert's' for me at any restaurant I would want to go back to.

And I don't care what kind of diet my doctor recommended, I still don't have a responsibility to order a dumb basic...

Oh, wait.

Desert.





Sorry.

Carry on.

Like, I'm just waiting for DBT to hurry up and say "there's nothing to hilight, there is no reference to deviation or randomness" at which point we can finally launch into pointing out where desert of education or mitigation (pick one) ties into that series of events in question needing highlighting in red or such an admission.

In many ways, we are not yet at the level of caring specifically what the process description of solving for u(x) may be.

We know that humans will generally gin up some objects such that they contain images to be interpreted into a simulation of operation towards some goal. We can probably figure out what those are given time and effort and context.

We can describe them concretely enough in terms of logical operations and binary math to implement something that meets the process definition for such!

We know it happens. We know there is a machine in the world that operates this way. There are many of them in fact, of many varieties. We are one of them. We constructed others of them.


We don't need to delve into that to recognize that then a system may choose upon an object type called a "will".

 

[Marvin Edwards]

There is no challenge to basic-desert responsibility in the restaurant. If you ordered it, then you deserve to pay for it. Or did you have some different notion of basic-desert responsibility?

If I am going to order and pay for a dessert, then it's got to be a fancy one, with ice cream and sparklers, and a bazillion calories of sugar.

Ain't going to be no 'basic-dessert's' for me at any restaurant I would want to go back to.

And I don't care what kind of diet my doctor recommended, I still don't have a responsibility to order a dumb basic...

Oh, wait.

Desert.





Sorry.

Carry on.

Like, I'm just waiting for DBT to hurry up and say "there's nothing to hilight, there is no reference to deviation or randomness" at which point we can finally launch into pointing out where desert of education or mitigation (pick one) ties into that series of events in question needing highlighting in red or such an admission.

In many ways, we are not yet at the level of caring specifically what the process description of solving for u(x) may be.

We know that humans will generally gin up some objects such that they contain images to be interpreted into a simulation of operation towards some goal. We can probably figure out what those are given time and effort and context.

We can describe them concretely enough in terms of logical operations and binary math to implement something that meets the process definition for such!

We know it happens. We know there is a machine in the world that operates this way. There are many of them in fact, of many varieties. We are one of them. We constructed others of them.


We don't need to delve into that to recognize that then a system may choose upon an object type called a "will".

Well, in my conversations with DBT, he keeps suggesting that there can be no alternatives on the menu because determinism proceeds with no deviation. I keep reminding him that we have no alternative but to consider those alternatives on the menu in order to choose our dinner. Determinism simply means that we will have no choice but to choose. Choosing is bloody well inevitable. But he keeps trying to deny objective reality.

 

[fromderinside]

If you have a problem predicting that from this you haven't been looking in the right places

At least we agree we can't predict

It would be nice if you could at least agree with yourself across the span of a few chain posts.

There are no perfect predictions. There is no such thing. There are only dictions, actual executions of the system, as bilby points out, time travels at one second per second.

And I'm sorry @bilby, even making a whole earth is not enough. Alas! you would need a whole detached universe to make that determination, and then you wouldn't be predicting it, you would just be "dicting" it as it were, creating an untold number of people "last thursday", and then telling us not what shall happen of us with that information, but establishing for us what happens when that information is side-loaded in, in a corrupted game.

That's not a perfect prediction either.

It's what happened of a strongly related system somewhere else, sometime else and thus not "perfect" after this impossible measure.

There are only imperfect predictions, and actual operations of the system given an antecedent state.

But in that operation of the system there are a number of events, and one of the categories events that acts as antecedent to the outcomes in it is called 'choice'.

I described one several times for you. The fact that the predictions are approximal does not matter. It is in fact a discussion about inaccessibility, and what numbers in a system can be accessed where and how and when!

Approximation is the best we can ever get for strongly inaccessible cardinalities, but we can't claim they are not there just because they are inaccessible from where we are: they can still be treated and looked at, have things proven about them, despite their inaccessibility.

That we cannot predict precisely is given. We are of the system. That determinism exists is proven. We have uninterrupted progress in science.