Compatibilism: What's that About?

[none]

... You bring a slingshot to a nuclear war.

David brought only a slingshot, because that was all that was required.

who?

 

[Copernicus]

Definitions alone prove nothing. God can be defined in relation to the world, as the creator, the giver of life, transcendent being, etc.....none of which establishes the existence of God.

Straw man. Nobody is arguing otherwise.

Sure, you can define compatibilism as 'acting in accordance with one's will with no outside force or coercion,' but this ignores that will itself has no functional say, no alternatives, no possibility to do otherwise. Thereby, ignoring the very thing that curtails freedom - fixed outcome - compatibilism fails to establish its proposition: freedom of will.

That's just false. If I were ignoring causal necessity, I would not have spent all of that time explaining why it was irrelevant to the meaning and usage of "free will" in everyday English. Your argumentum ad nauseam reduces to just a terminological dispute. Denying your usage of a term is not denying the facts. You can use the language in any way you want. Just don't expect everyone else to use it the way you want.

 

[none]

hahaha
yep everday English... in philosphy??
that's gonna be a hard one to hold onto... so in everyday of philosophy everday english is permanent?

 

[Copernicus]

DBT thinks of all choices as essentially a  Hobson's Choice. That is, they aren't real choices, because the result is always predetermined. However, Hobson's choice was even more real--the customer could have any horse in the stable as long as it was the one closest to the door. That genuine alternative was to have no horse at all. In the end, the argument comes down to sophistry, because nobody but a hard determinist defines "free choice" in such a way that it would be of no practical use to anyone, and we would just have to invent a new word for the kind of "choice" that we experience throughout our lives. Or we could just keep using "choice" the way we always have an ignore the hard determinist. It's a pity that they aren't free to invent their own vocabulary, but that's the path they've chosen to tread.

There is no choice, whether you own a horse or not is determined. If you 'decide' to buy a horse, events have inevitably brought you to the point of considering (inevitable) the purchase, followed by the purchase itself. You are a horse owner through determination/necessity.

Of course there is "choice". Even if a choice is fully determined by past events that one has no control over, it is still a choice at the point it is made. The whole point of making a choice is to act on one's understanding of how causal reality is working out, given that we don't actually know how it is working out. Whether or not the future is fully determined by past events, we still don't know how it will turn out. So we choose actions based on our best calculation. That's all we can do, and that is why people call uncoerced choice "free will". It is choice made freely within the limits of our knowledge about the future. Once it is made, we know we can't change it, but we can imagine what we would have done differently, if we had only known the future.

 

[Copernicus]

hahaha
yep everday English... in philosphy??
that's gonna be a hard one to hold onto... so in everyday of philosophy everday english is permanent?

Interesting that you should ask that rhetorical question about philosophy. In the 20th century, much of philosophy was taken up with the subject of language in order to deal with paradoxes of one sort or another. Eliminativism is part of that trend in  Linguistic Philosophy.

Linguistic philosophy is the view that many or all philosophical problems can be solved (or dissolved) by paying closer attention to language, either by reforming language or by understanding the everyday language that we presently use better.[1] The former position is that of ideal language philosophy, one prominent example being logical atomism. The latter is the view defended in ordinary language philosophy.

Ideal language philosophers developed a lot of interesting advances in the creation of formal logical languages and their interpretation. Basically, their approach was to create an artificial language that would not allow the expression of paradoxical or self-contradictory statements. Ordinary Language philosophers argued that the paradoxes arose from a poor understanding of how language worked and that they would disappear if philosophers just played by the rules of the language game. Their trend is generally said to have originated with the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

I suspect that you aren't interested in any of this none, but your comment was unusually appropriate in this discussion.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

... Sure, you can define compatibilism as 'acting in accordance with one's will with no outside force or coercion,' but this ignores that will itself has no functional say, no alternatives, no possibility to do otherwise. Thereby, ignoring the very thing that curtails freedom - fixed outcome - compatibilism fails to establish its proposition: freedom of will.

Our "will" is our specific intent for the immediate or distant future. Our will marshals the resources of our mind and body to carry out that intent. "Will you help me move this sofa?" You say, "Yes, I will". And suddenly we are both lifting the sofa and moving it to its new location. This is what "will" is about, motivating and directing what we do.

So, where do the alternatives and the possibilities show up? They show up in the deliberate choosing of the will. "Where will I move the sofa? Over here (possibility number 1) or over there (possibility number 2)?" We have two different things that we can do: (1) move the sofa over here, and, (2) move the sofa over there. This is the "possibility to do otherwise".

This is so simple that it should be fairly obvious to everyone by now. (It's as easy as shooting a slingshot, said David).

 

[none]

oh well, there you go folks.
see if only I had brought theater to the nuclear war, David? David, are you there?

 

[Marvin Edwards]

oh well, there you go folks.
see if only I had brought theater to the nuclear war, David? David, are you there?

Perhaps you should ask Goliath.

 

[pood]

It all does seem kind of slingshot simple. Suppose I have a light breakfast, coffee and a donut. Why did I choose that? Because of antecedent events. Perhaps the night before I had a gluttonous meal and woke up not hungry. The previous night’s meal, and the fact that I am therefore not hungry in the morning, were causal factors in deciding to have a light breakfast. How does that mean I don’t have free will? On the contrary, it means I do have free will — I evaluated past events, my present lack of hunger, and decided to have a light breakfast.

It does not follow from this that I could not have had a heavy breakfast, it is just that I did not — for why would I? I wasn’t very hungry.

But if antecedent events had been different — if, the previous night, I had fasted — I likely would have woken up hungry, and ordered a big breakfast.

I continue to think the hangup here between hard determinists and soft determinists is that the hard determinist maintains that at any given point, I could not have chosen other than what I did; whereas the soft determinist (compaibilist) says that I would not have done otherwise, full stop. “Could” and “would” and “could not” and “would not” are modally very different.

So I resist the term “causal necessity,” which to me is not a valid modal category. To me the only valid modal category of necessity is logical necessity, which simply means that some propositions about the world are true, at all (logically) possible worlds.

It is true at all possible worlds that triangles have three sides. It is not true at all possible worlds that I have a light breakfast instead of a heavy one.

Therefore it is possible that I could have freely chosen to have a light or heavy breakfast, depending on antecedent events, in a way that it’s not possible for triangles to have sides numbering other than three.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Determinism never actually does anything. It simply points out that our choice was reliably caused by our choosing. Our choosing was reliably caused by who and what we were at that moment. Who and what we were at that moment was caused by our nature and our nurture. Prior events leading up to who and what we were included our birth, our parents, the evolution of our species, the appearance of living organisms on the planet, the formation of the stars and planets, the Big Bang, and whatever conditions reliably led up to the Big Bang.

Most of those prior events were incidental in the chain of causation, and neither meaningful nor relevant to our choice between pancakes or waffles for breakfast.

So, we only really care about the most meaningful and relevant causes of our choices. And those causes are found within us. That's why I'm asking you, and not determinism, "What will you have for breakfast, pancakes or waffles?"

Determinism refers to the actions of countless non-chosen events that bring you to your present condition, determining what you think and what you do. ...

Again you offer an incomplete determinism! Determinism refers to all of the relevant and meaningful events that are involved in determining what you will do. You cannot validly exclude the choosing event from the prior causes that necessitate the choice!

Your version of "determinism" is not determinism.

 

[none]

Determinism never actually does anything. It simply points out that our choice was reliably caused by our choosing. Our choosing was reliably caused by who and what we were at that moment. Who and what we were at that moment was caused by our nature and our nurture. Prior events leading up to who and what we were included our birth, our parents, the evolution of our species, the appearance of living organisms on the planet, the formation of the stars and planets, the Big Bang, and whatever conditions reliably led up to the Big Bang.

Most of those prior events were incidental in the chain of causation, and neither meaningful nor relevant to our choice between pancakes or waffles for breakfast.

So, we only really care about the most meaningful and relevant causes of our choices. And those causes are found within us. That's why I'm asking you, and not determinism, "What will you have for breakfast, pancakes or waffles?"

Determinism refers to the actions of countless non-chosen events that bring you to your present condition, determining what you think and what you do. ...

Again you offer an incomplete determinism! Determinism refers to all of the relevant and meaningful events that are involved in determining what you will do. You cannot validly exclude the choosing event from the prior causes that necessitate the choice!

Your version of "determinism" is not determinism.

of course he could fix your whole assertive diatribes by encapsulating.... through deterministic means... "text" "with" "quotes"... lol

 

[Rhea]

MODERATOR NOTE:
Thread locked for moderation.

 

[DBT]

DBT thinks of all choices as essentially a  Hobson's Choice. That is, they aren't real choices, because the result is always predetermined. However, Hobson's choice was even more real--the customer could have any horse in the stable as long as it was the one closest to the door. That genuine alternative was to have no horse at all. In the end, the argument comes down to sophistry, because nobody but a hard determinist defines "free choice" in such a way that it would be of no practical use to anyone, and we would just have to invent a new word for the kind of "choice" that we experience throughout our lives. Or we could just keep using "choice" the way we always have an ignore the hard determinist. It's a pity that they aren't free to invent their own vocabulary, but that's the path they've chosen to tread.

There is no choice, whether you own a horse or not is determined. If you 'decide' to buy a horse, events have inevitably brought you to the point of considering (inevitable) the purchase, followed by the purchase itself. You are a horse owner through determination/necessity.

Of course there is "choice". Even if a choice is fully determined by past events that one has no control over, it is still a choice at the point it is made. The whole point of making a choice is to act on one's understanding of how causal reality is working out, given that we don't actually know how it is working out. Whether or not the future is fully determined by past events, we still don't know how it will turn out. So we choose actions based on our best calculation. That's all we can do, and that is why people call uncoerced choice "free will". It is choice made freely within the limits of our knowledge about the future. Once it is made, we know we can't change it, but we can imagine what we would have done differently, if we had only known the future.

Choice is defined as an act of choosing between two or more possibilities. Determinism by definition fixes the outcome in each and every instance of decision making - in any given instance, it is this option for you, that option for someone else - which is the opposite of free choice. What is fixed by antecedents is not freely chosen. As the option open to you in any given instance is fixed/determined, you have the illusion of free choice.

[tʃɔɪs] NOUN
1 - an act of choosing between two or more possibilities.

 

[DBT]

Determinism never actually does anything. It simply points out that our choice was reliably caused by our choosing. Our choosing was reliably caused by who and what we were at that moment. Who and what we were at that moment was caused by our nature and our nurture. Prior events leading up to who and what we were included our birth, our parents, the evolution of our species, the appearance of living organisms on the planet, the formation of the stars and planets, the Big Bang, and whatever conditions reliably led up to the Big Bang.

Most of those prior events were incidental in the chain of causation, and neither meaningful nor relevant to our choice between pancakes or waffles for breakfast.

So, we only really care about the most meaningful and relevant causes of our choices. And those causes are found within us. That's why I'm asking you, and not determinism, "What will you have for breakfast, pancakes or waffles?"

Determinism refers to the actions of countless non-chosen events that bring you to your present condition, determining what you think and what you do. ...

Again you offer an incomplete determinism! Determinism refers to all of the relevant and meaningful events that are involved in determining what you will do. You cannot validly exclude the choosing event from the prior causes that necessitate the choice!

Your version of "determinism" is not determinism.

It's not my version of determinism. It's the standard version of determinism, something that I have quoted numerous times, and what I work with.

And yes, all the meaningful elements/ factors/events go into determining a determined outcome or course of events, which I have not denied, said or suggested otherwise.

'Choosing an event' - which allows no alternative - is the result of all the elements that go into determining whatever transpires.

Why the 'selfhood' defense of compatibilism fails:

''The increments of a normal brain state is not as obvious as direct coercion, a microchip, or a tumor, but the “obviousness” is irrelevant here. Brain states incrementally get to the state they are in one moment at a time. In each moment of that process the brain is in one state, and the specific environment and biological conditions leads to the very next state. Depending on that state, this will cause you to behave in a specific way within an environment (decide in a specific way), in which all of those things that are outside of a person constantly bombard your senses changing your very brain state. The internal dialogue in your mind you have no real control over.

We have an illusion of control, but in reality we have no more control over these processes than we do a microchip or tumor leading our brain states to want, think, and decide in specific ways. The distinction between an abnormal or coerced brain state compared to a normal and uncoerced brain state is irrelevant to our lack of control in these regards.

Compatibilists might say that the person couldn’t control the influences of a tumor or microchip, but that misses the point that a person cannot control their own genetics or environmental conditions any more.''

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Choice is defined as an act of choosing between two or more possibilities. Determinism by definition fixes the outcome in each and every instance of decision making - in any given instance, it is this option for you, that option for someone else - which is the opposite of free choice. What is fixed by antecedents is not freely chosen. As the option open to you in any given instance is fixed/determined, you have the illusion of free choice.
[tʃɔɪs] NOUN
1 - an act of choosing between two or more possibilities.

There is no such thing as "freedom from causal necessity", therefore free choice cannot mean that.

But there is such a thing as "freedom from coercion and undue influence", therefore free choice can mean that.

The illusion is not free will. The illusion is that one must be free from reliable cause and effect. What we will inevitably do is exactly identical to us just being us, choosing what we choose, and doing what we do. And that is not a meaningful constraint.

Our freedoms are not constrained by reliable causation. They are enabled by reliable cause and effect.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

It's not my version of determinism. It's the standard version of determinism, something that I have quoted numerous times, and what I work with.

Right. Don't worry, I'm not blaming you for the version of determinism you're working with. The illusion that causal necessity was an entity that removed all our freedom and control is a very old one.

Breaking out of that illusion is difficult. But basically it is a matter of going right through it to the other side: If we presume a world of perfectly reliable cause and effect then we will find ourselves as actual objects in that world that are able to reliably cause effects. The metaphorical "laws of nature" are just as much inside us as outside us. Due to our construction as an intelligent species we are able to imagine alternative ways to solve a problem and we are able to choose which option we will go with. We experience many wants and desires, and it is up to us to choose from among them when, where, how, and if we will go about satisfying them.

I explain the nature of the paradox and how it is created here: Free Will: What's Wrong and How to Fix It.
And I explain the problems with certain philosophical notions of determinism here: Determinism: What's Wrong and How to Fix It.

And yes, all the meaningful elements/ factors/events go into determining a determined outcome or course of events, which I have not denied, said or suggested otherwise.

Good. But let's see if you and Mr. Slattery really do that:

'Choosing an event' - which allows no alternative - is the result of all the elements that go into determining whatever transpires.

Choosing is an event that inputs two or more alternatives, applies some criteria of comparative evaluation, and based on that evaluation outputs a single choice, usually in the form of an "I will" do something. We never enter into a deliberate choosing operation without at least two options staring us in the face.

Why the 'selfhood' defense of compatibilism fails:

''The increments of a normal brain state is not as obvious as direct coercion, a microchip, or a tumor, but the “obviousness” is irrelevant here. Brain states incrementally get to the state they are in one moment at a time. In each moment of that process the brain is in one state, and the specific environment and biological conditions leads to the very next state. Depending on that state, this will cause you to behave in a specific way within an environment (decide in a specific way), in which all of those things that are outside of a person constantly bombard your senses changing your very brain state. The internal dialogue in your mind you have no real control over.

We have an illusion of control, but in reality we have no more control over these processes than we do a microchip or tumor leading our brain states to want, think, and decide in specific ways. The distinction between an abnormal or coerced brain state compared to a normal and uncoerced brain state is irrelevant to our lack of control in these regards.

Compatibilists might say that the person couldn’t control the influences of a tumor or microchip, but that misses the point that a person cannot control their own genetics or environmental conditions any more.''

Mr. Slattery is attempting to remove us from our brain, placing us in one corner of the room and our brain over there in another corner. But this doesn't work, because one of those two corners is now empty. Trick did not invent this illusion of dualism. It's a common false suggestion made by many others who really should know better.

We are our brains. Or, rather, we are a process running upon the neural infrastructure. But the key here is that whatever our brain decides we will do, we have decided we will do. We do not need to be independent of our brain in order to exercise control. We only need to BE "our brain deciding what we will do".

Our brain organizes sensory data into a symbolic model of reality, consisting of objects and events. It uses this model to imagine, evaluate, and choose what we will do. Included in this model are our selves. When this model is accurate enough to be useful, as when we navigate our body through a doorway, we simply call this "reality", because the model is our only access to reality. It is only when the model is inaccurate enough to cause problems, such as when we walk into a glass door, thinking it was open, that we call this an "illusion".

But the brain cannot track the individual neurons as they pass signals to each other. It can only track the broad changes that are occurring in our body and brain as represented in the model.

At the top of this symbolic modeling we find the language we use to explain our own behavior to ourselves and others. Mr. Slattery suggests to us that "The internal dialogue in your mind you have no real control over". And where does Mr. Slattery suggest the control is located, why, in our brains, but somehow not in us! Our brains are us. What our brains decide, we have decided. We have no need to be free of our own brain in order to exercise control. We already ARE our own brains, and whatever deliberate control it exercises, we are exercising.

It is useful to distinguish (A) a person's own deliberate behavior from (B) the person's behavior when under duress and (C) the person's behavior when subject to a mental illness or injury that alters their behavior. But Mr. Slattery says: "The distinction between an abnormal or coerced brain state compared to a normal and uncoerced brain state is irrelevant to our lack of control in these regards." He implies that these three cases should be treated the same, without distinction. But, being caught up in the abstract notion that every event is equally causally necessary, he fails to recognize the absurdity of his position when dealing with the actual reality of this world.

The notion that causal necessity is an entity that removes all of our control and all of our freedom, is a delusion. And it is not a harmless delusion.

 

[Copernicus]

...
Choice is defined as an act of choosing between two or more possibilities. Determinism by definition fixes the outcome in each and every instance of decision making - in any given instance, it is this option for you, that option for someone else - which is the opposite of free choice. What is fixed by antecedents is not freely chosen. As the option open to you in any given instance is fixed/determined, you have the illusion of free choice.

[tʃɔɪs] NOUN
1 - an act of choosing between two or more possibilities.

But the future is not fixed until you have converted it to the past by living through the present. So a conscious being in transit will always have choices, since it won't have yet reached the point of hindsight. An outside observer of that being might well foresee its future, but the outside observer is not faced with a choice. Again, we come down to the reality of what an illusion is--a very real perceptual experience from the perspective of a conscious being--and we have two different perspectives to consider: the internal and external observers. Choice is only meaningful to the internal observer facing an uncertain future. The outside observer sees the entire timeline, not just a past timeline. Of course the outside observer would not be able to see its own future, but we are only talking about an imaginary being there. Call it God, if you like, but it only exists in our imaginations.

 

[bilby]

...
Choice is defined as an act of choosing between two or more possibilities. Determinism by definition fixes the outcome in each and every instance of decision making - in any given instance, it is this option for you, that option for someone else - which is the opposite of free choice. What is fixed by antecedents is not freely chosen. As the option open to you in any given instance is fixed/determined, you have the illusion of free choice.

[tʃɔɪs] NOUN
1 - an act of choosing between two or more possibilities.

But the future is not fixed until you have converted it to the past by living through the present. So a conscious being in transit will always have choices, since it won't have yet reached the point of hindsight. An outside observer of that being might well foresee its future, but the outside observer is not faced with a choice. Again, we come down to the reality of what an illusion is--a very real perceptual experience from the perspective of a conscious being--and we have two different perspectives to consider: the internal and external observers. Choice is only meaningful to the internal observer facing an uncertain future. The outside observer sees the entire timeline, not just a past timeline. Of course the outside observer would not be able to see its own future, but we are only talking about an imaginary being there. Call it God, if you like, but it only exists in our imaginations.

Neither space nor time are absolutes, and as a result, the concepts of past, present, and future are only coherent to a specified observer or reference frame.

It's therefore inescapable that the future is as immutable as the past (because any observer's future could be another observer's past); But of course this has nothing whatsoever to do with freedom of choice, due to the inaccessibility of information about their own future to any specific observer.

Free will is entirely illusory, from a 'god's eye view', but nobody has that view, and freedom of choice stems not from the absence of inevitability, but from the absence of predictability.

I can't choose a different breakfast to have had yesterday; And I can't choose a different breakfast than the one I am going to have tomorrow - but I can't know which breakfast I am going to have tomorrow until I get to tomorrow, so it's entirely my choice what it will be.

 

[DBT]

The point is that 'our choice' is not a free will choice. Our choice, what we have for breakfast tomorrow or whatever is determined by countless factors, place, time culture, preferences developed through experience, an interaction of genes and environment, biology, how you feel in the morning, etc, etc....not some magical freedom of the will or a play of words to that effect, that will is in reality free.

 

[Copernicus]

...
Neither space nor time are absolutes, and as a result, the concepts of past, present, and future are only coherent to a specified observer or reference frame.

It's therefore inescapable that the future is as immutable as the past (because any observer's future could be another observer's past); But of course this has nothing whatsoever to do with freedom of choice, due to the inaccessibility of information about their own future to any specific observer.

I can't fully agree. Nobody can observe the future, since we all live in the present (technically, a few milliseconds before we process incoming sense data). From our perspective, the future is always going to be unobservable, and there may be a good reason for that. We are ephemeral beings that come equipped with a central nervous system that makes reasonable guesses about what the future will be. We can only imagine various outcomes without ever perceiving any that are not happening to us in the moment. We manage to reconstruct imaginary events from the past by drawing on memory associations, which are not always reliable. The past will always appear immutable and the future mutable. Imagination allows us to take on different perspectives, but they only exist in our imagination, including the ones that represent future possibilities. The term "free will" is only going to make sense in a context that we make sense of.

Free will is entirely illusory, from a 'god's eye view', but nobody has that view, and freedom of choice stems not from the absence of inevitability, but from the absence of predictability.

Bingo!

I can't choose a different breakfast to have had yesterday; And I can't choose a different breakfast than the one I am going to have tomorrow - but I can't know which breakfast I am going to have tomorrow until I get to tomorrow, so it's entirely my choice what it will be.

There is the additional wrinkle that there might be many different realities spun off of quantum interactions and that the future you end up in is only one of those. Alternate versions of your self could exist in different futures. At least, that is one interpretation of how quantum reality works.