Compatibilism: What's that About?

[Marvin Edwards]

Whatever we do, if the world is determined, is determined.

Determined, yes, but determined by what? Determinism is not an entity with causal force. Only the actual objects and forces that make up the physical universe can be said to cause events. Determinism is neither an object nor a force.

A baseball is an object.
A living organism is an object with internal causal force. For example, a tree will send roots into the ground, disturbing other objects they encounter.
An intelligent species is a living organism that can deliberately choose what it will cause to happen.

Determinism is none of these things. The notion that determinism is an entity that goes about determining things is a delusion.

If option A is determined, option B doesn't exist for you and was never an option or a realizable choice in that moment in time.

That is a figurative statement. Like all figurative statements, it is literally false. For example, we have ice cream. You may have chocolate (option A) or vanilla (option B). Here is the chocolate ice cream in a bowl on the table. Here is the vanilla ice cream in another bowl.

You cannot claim that the vanilla ice cream "doesn't exist for you", when it is right there on the table in front of you.
Nor can you claim it was "never an option", because it was in fact offered to you.
Nor can you claim it was not a "realizable choice", because, had you chosen vanilla, you would be eating it right now.

These claims arise from figurative thinking. We can easily convert them to their correct figurative form by adding the missing "AS IF's". For example, you claim that, since you would inevitably choose chocolate, it was AS IF the vanilla didn't exist for you, and it was AS IF vanilla was never an option, and it was AS IF vanilla was not a realizable option.

But, in fact, the vanilla did exist for you, it was an option, and it was realizable to you had you chosen it.

We have the false impression of ''I could have chosen B'' - false because choosing B was never a possibility if action A is determined.

Again, figurative speech, literally false. Vanilla was a realizable possibility, even though it was not realized. The fact that we inevitably would not choose vanilla does not logically imply that we could not choose vanilla. You are suggesting that, because we would not choose vanilla, it is AS IF we could not choose vanilla.

Among those causally necessary mental events, events that must take place with no possibility of an alternate event in that moment of time, will be the notion of A as a possibility and the notion of B as an alternate possibility.

As choosing is indeed a necessitated action within a determined system, there is no ''choosing.''

No. You are suggesting falsely that, since all the events in a choosing operation are causally necessary, it is AS IF there is no "choosing". The problem is, that if choosing is necessitated, and all its mental events are necessitated, then there certainly will be choosing!

Nothing is chosen because to choose implies the real possibility of 'could have done otherwise,' but of course there is no 'could have done otherwise' within a determined system.

And yet there was the vanilla, the "otherwise", sitting right there on the table beside the chocolate, right there in the middle of a determined system. Not only was the otherwise possible, but it was causally necessary/inevitable from any prior point in eternity.

Actions proceed deterministically without the possibility of real choice (to have done otherwise).

Ironically, "real" often flags figurative statements. There was a real choice, between chocolate and vanilla, and you made that choice for yourself, of your own free will (without coercion or undue influence), just like the rest of us.

You are suggesting that our choosing is not really choosing, because it seems like choosing isn't actually happening. But, choosing is actually happening. Really. And the fact that all of the events in the choosing process, just like all events everywhere, was causally necessary from any prior point in time, does not change the fact that choosing did indeed happen in the actual world, and that we each did that choosing.

A determined system is a tightly woven web of events that don't allow alternate possibilities (except Many worlds/string theory).

You mean, it is AS IF it didn't allow alternate possibilities. But the fact is that each of those alternate possibilities was causally necessary from any prior point in history.

The key insight here, if you're able to see it, is that universal causal necessity doesn't actually change anything.

 

[Copernicus]

...The meaning of the word "define" is not hard to grasp. The dictionary quote I posted more than adequately explains its meaning.

Your objections miss the point. You ignore flaws in the compatibilist definition, only to focus on trivialities.

I guess that's the only option available for those engaged in the futile defense of a failed argument that is based on word play.

My explanation of the difference between a meaning and a definition is not hard to grasp either, nor is my explanation of what was wrong with your cut-and-pasted definition. Yet you made no substantive reply other than to simply dig your heels in and keep repeating what you had said earlier. Your last sentence was ironic, since the entire substance of your argument has been simply to insist that everyone adhere to your opinion that the meaning of "free will" should not be based on actual usage, but on your view of causal necessity as obliterating anyone's ability to make choices. Oh, well. I honestly expected nothing less from you.

 

[DBT]

Whatever we do, if the world is determined, is determined.

Determined, yes, but determined by what? Determinism is not an entity with causal force. Only the actual objects and forces that make up the physical universe can be said to cause events. Determinism is neither an object nor a force.

A baseball is an object.
A living organism is an object with internal causal force. For example, a tree will send roots into the ground, disturbing other objects they encounter.
An intelligent species is a living organism that can deliberately choose what it will cause to happen.

Determinism is none of these things. The notion that determinism is an entity that goes about determining things is a delusion.

Determined by the laws or principles of physics, the attributes and behaviour of matter/energy. Determined by genetic makeup, the nature of life, how life and environment interact. Determined by social conditions, language, culture, personal circumstances, family, friends, education, health, developed tastes and aversions, needs and wants;

The CNS;
''Every moment of the day your nervous system is active. It exchanges millions of signals corresponding with feeling, thoughts and actions. A simple example of how important the nervous system is in your behavior is meeting a friend.
First, the visual information of your eyes is sent to your brain by nervous cells. There the information is interpreted and translated into a signal to take action. Finally the brain sends a command to your voice or to another action system like muscles or glands. For example, you may start walking towards him.
Your nervous system enables this rapid recognition and action. ''

Well lets take just one of our senses, vision. Light enters through the cornea, reaches the retina and is converted to nerve impulses by complex chemical reactions (rod,cones, etc) and conveyed by the optic nerve to the visual cortex, from there it is propogated throughout the brain, gathering memory and infomation before the signals return to the visual cortex and a representation of that information is formed, a conscious image of what we see.

The visual information is interpreted by the various systems of the brain and translated into a signals to take action (visual,auditory,tactile reflexes) and on to the prefrontal cortex region which deal with complex responses, one's social values, cultural expectations, ethics, etc - the seat of one's personality and sense of self. Finally the brain forms conscious thoughts a deliberation and sends a commands to its motor neurons, muscle groups, glands... and the action is undertaken.

Despite the complexity of the process, this is quite rapid in recognition and action. 160 to 215 milliseconds for auditory and visual response, and 500 milliseconds for higher order decision making.''

If option A is determined, option B doesn't exist for you and was never an option or a realizable choice in that moment in time.

That is a figurative statement. Like all figurative statements, it is literally false. For example, we have ice cream. You may have chocolate (option A) or vanilla (option B). Here is the chocolate ice cream in a bowl on the table. Here is the vanilla ice cream in another bowl.

You cannot claim that the vanilla ice cream "doesn't exist for you", when it is right there on the table in front of you.
Nor can you claim it was "never an option", because it was in fact offered to you.
Nor can you claim it was not a "realizable choice", because, had you chosen vanilla, you would be eating it right now.

These claims arise from figurative thinking. We can easily convert them to their correct figurative form by adding the missing "AS IF's". For example, you claim that, since you would inevitably choose chocolate, it was AS IF the vanilla didn't exist for you, and it was AS IF vanilla was never an option, and it was AS IF vanilla was not a realizable option.

But, in fact, the vanilla did exist for you, it was an option, and it was realizable to you had you chosen it.

I'm not saying that Vanilla ice cream or anything else doesn't exist for you, only that it is your condition rather than your 'freedom of will' that determines what action is taken at any given moment.

Seeing that I don't like vanilla, that chocolate is the only flavour I like, choosing vanilla is never going to happen. Unless I am challenged or coerced to eat vanilla....then of course it doesn't relate to compatibilist free will.

No. You are suggesting falsely that, since all the events in a choosing operation are causally necessary, it is AS IF there is no "choosing". The problem is, that if choosing is necessitated, and all its mental events are necessitated, then there certainly will be choosing!

Yes, but with determinism there was never the possibility of an alternate choice. Without the option of being able to 'do otherwise' where exactly is this freedom of choice? Which is not a part of compatibilism anyway.

You mean, it is AS IF it didn't allow alternate possibilities. But the fact is that each of those alternate possibilities was causally necessary from any prior point in history.

Not for everyone, what is a possibility for you may not be a possibility for me. And given that what happens is determined, ''possibility'' only exist as a concept, what happens is a necessity

 

[DBT]

...The meaning of the word "define" is not hard to grasp. The dictionary quote I posted more than adequately explains its meaning.

Your objections miss the point. You ignore flaws in the compatibilist definition, only to focus on trivialities.

I guess that's the only option available for those engaged in the futile defense of a failed argument that is based on word play.

My explanation of the difference between a meaning and a definition is not hard to grasp either, nor is my explanation of what was wrong with your cut-and-pasted definition. Yet you made no substantive reply other than to simply dig your heels in and keep repeating what you had said earlier. Your last sentence was ironic, since the entire substance of your argument has been simply to insist that everyone adhere to your opinion that the meaning of "free will" should not be based on actual usage, but on your view of causal necessity as obliterating anyone's ability to make choices. Oh, well. I honestly expected nothing less from you.

Again, to 'define is not a hard concept to grasp. It's not complicated. Compatibilists, Libertarians, etc, give their definition of free will and in-compatibilists deal with the given definitions, Hobbs, Dennett, etc, describe their idea of free will, ''that a person’s freedom consists in his finding “no stop, in doing what he has the will, desire, or inclination to do, etc, etc''

Nor is it a matter of me 'digging in my heels.'

In case you haven't noticed, there are two sides to this argument, compatibilism and incompatibilism. The reasons why compatibilism is inadequate to prove the proposition of free will have been explained and supported by quotes and references.

Which essentially comes down to;

''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. ''

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Determined by the laws or principles of physics, the attributes and behaviour of matter/energy.

So, we arrest the bank robber. Now, how do we go about changing his behavior using only the laws of physics? How do we rearrange the configuration of his matter/energy such that he no longer robs banks?

The Laws of Nature come in three Volumes.
Volume 1: The Laws of Inanimate Objects, whose behavior is governed by physical forces.
Volume 2: The Laws of Living Organisms, whose behavior is affected by physical forces but is governed by biological drives.
Volume 3: The Laws of Intelligent Species, whose behavior is affected by physical forces and biological drives, but is governed by deliberate choosing.

The physical laws only govern the behavior of inanimate objects. So Volume 1, The Laws of Inanimate Objects, is not going to help us to modify the behavior of the bank robber.

Determined by genetic makeup, the nature of life, how life and environment interact.

Now we're in Volume 2, the Life Sciences. This is better, but is still insufficient to deal with the bank robber, because there is little we can do to change his genetic makeup. On the other hand, I understand that the Y chromosome is the highest correlate to criminal behavior, so if we eliminated males ...

Determined by social conditions, language, culture, personal circumstances, family, friends, education, health, developed tastes and aversions, needs and wants;

That brings us to Volume 3, the Social Sciences. And here we finally get the tools for altering the bank robber's behavior, psychology and sociology. We also get a whole system of justice and the rule of social laws. Oh, and we also get the distinction between deliberate acts, versus accidental acts, versus coerced acts, versus other unduly influenced acts.

The CNS;
''Every moment of the day your nervous system is active. It exchanges millions of signals corresponding with feeling, thoughts and actions. A simple example of how important the nervous system is in your behavior is meeting a friend.
First, the visual information of your eyes is sent to your brain by nervous cells. There the information is interpreted and translated into a signal to take action. Finally the brain sends a command to your voice or to another action system like muscles or glands. For example, you may start walking towards him.
Your nervous system enables this rapid recognition and action. ''

Unfortunately, one of the things our nervous system fails to provide for us, is a way to describe events in terms of neural activity.

Fortunately, our nervous system does provide us with a way to describe our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions. For example, we may ask the bank robber, "What were you thinking when you robbed that bank?" And then, by counseling, education, addiction treatment, job training, and other rehabilitation programs we may get the robber to make better deliberate choices in the future.

Seeing that I don't like vanilla, that chocolate is the only flavour I like, choosing vanilla is never going to happen. Unless I am challenged or coerced to eat vanilla....then of course it doesn't relate to compatibilist free will.

Compatibilist free will is the distinction between you choosing to eat the vanilla ice cream versus you being coerced to eat it against your will. Do you think that this distinction does not matter?

In either case, whether you chose the vanilla of your own free will, or whether someone put a gun to your head and said, "Eat the vanilla", it will be causally necessary from any prior point in time that you will eat the vanilla ice cream. Causal necessity makes no distinctions between any two events.

The question is simply this: is it useful to distinguish between the nature of these two very events? Does it matter to you whether you are forced to do something that you don't want to do?

And in matters of social justice, is it useful to distinguish between the bank teller forced at gun point to turn over the money to the bank robber, versus the bank teller who conspired with the bank robber and plans to split the money with him later.

Yes, but with determinism there was never the possibility of an alternate choice. Without the option of being able to 'do otherwise' where exactly is this freedom of choice?

By definition, choosing requires at least two alternate possibilities. If you use the word "choice" then you are asserting that choosing happened, and you are agreeing that there were at least two alternate possibilities. Determinism cannot change the definition of choosing. All that determinism can logically assert is that, whatever we choose, it will have been causally necessary from any prior point in time. All that determinism can assert is that all of the mental events within the choosing operation were equally necessary from any prior point in time, including the events where it occurred to us that "we could do A" and that "we could do B instead". Alternate possibilities will necessarily show up in every choosing operation.

Which is not a part of compatibilism anyway.

A given theory of compatibilism is judged by how well it demonstrates that determinism and free will are in fact compatible. For example, I've just demonstrated that alternate possibilities are causally necessary.

 

[fromderinside]

The Laws of Nature come in three Volumes.
Volume 1: The Laws of Inanimate Objects, whose behavior is governed by physical forces.
Volume 2: The Laws of Living Organisms, whose behavior is affected by physical forces but is governed by biological drives.
Volume 3: The Laws of Intelligent Species, whose behavior is affected by physical forces and biological drives, but is governed by deliberate choosing.

The physical laws only govern the behavior of inanimate objects. So Volume 1, The Laws of Inanimate Objects, is not going to help us to modify the behavior of the bank robber.

Now for an a lesson in reductionism.

Book two reduces to book one, book three reduces to book one. Why? Because, as your titles explicitly demonstrate all behavior is governed by physical forces. All biological drive reduces to physical forces. All choosing reduces being governed by physical forces. The same set of laws cover all behavior.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

The Laws of Nature come in three Volumes.
Volume 1: The Laws of Inanimate Objects, whose behavior is governed by physical forces.
Volume 2: The Laws of Living Organisms, whose behavior is affected by physical forces but is governed by biological drives.
Volume 3: The Laws of Intelligent Species, whose behavior is affected by physical forces and biological drives, but is governed by deliberate choosing.

The physical laws only govern the behavior of inanimate objects. So Volume 1, The Laws of Inanimate Objects, is not going to help us to modify the behavior of the bank robber.

Now for an a lesson in reductionism.

Book two reduces to book one, book three reduces to book one. Why? Because, as your titles explicitly demonstrate all behavior is governed by physical forces. All biological drive reduces to physical forces. All choosing reduces being governed by physical forces. The same set of laws cover all behavior.

Yes, that is a good lesson in how reductionism fails. The fact is that biological drives were a new causal mechanism that did not exist in the physical universe until inanimate matter managed to organize itself into a living organism. And imagination did not show up in the physical universe until living organisms evolved intelligence. When matter is organized differently, it behaves differently. That's why we do not cook a turkey in our car or drive an oven to work.

 

[bilby]

The Laws of Nature come in three Volumes.
Volume 1: The Laws of Inanimate Objects, whose behavior is governed by physical forces.
Volume 2: The Laws of Living Organisms, whose behavior is affected by physical forces but is governed by biological drives.
Volume 3: The Laws of Intelligent Species, whose behavior is affected by physical forces and biological drives, but is governed by deliberate choosing.

The physical laws only govern the behavior of inanimate objects. So Volume 1, The Laws of Inanimate Objects, is not going to help us to modify the behavior of the bank robber.

Now for an a lesson in reductionism.

Book two reduces to book one, book three reduces to book one. Why? Because, as your titles explicitly demonstrate all behavior is governed by physical forces. All biological drive reduces to physical forces. All choosing reduces being governed by physical forces. The same set of laws cover all behavior.

Not so. The laws governing social interactions do not cover the interactions between electrons, even though the laws governing electrons may cover (in excruciating detail), social interactions.

There's a hypothetical set of laws that "cover all behaviour", which physicists call a "Grand Unified Theory" (GUT), but if these laws exist, we don't yet know them.

Which would, if the foundational laws were the only path to an understanding of more complex systems built from them, be a huge problem. Because the absence of a GUT would then imply the impossibility of our understanding or predicting anything.

Fortunately, the reductionist approach is far from the only option. Newton was able to derive classical mechanics from his observations of reality, despite being completely oblivious to the quantum mechanics that underlies it all, and despite being unaware of the relevance of reference frames in the calculation of relative motions between objects. He didn't even know that light travels at the same speed regardless of the motion of the observer, and yet he was able to produce a set of rules that very accurately described large parts of reality.

Of course, they didn't perfectly describe reality; But they didn't need to. Classical mechanics works. And, importantly, it's easy. You can determine whether your artillery shell will hit the target, without having to calculate the quantum states of every particle in the universe.

Similarly, you can observe human behaviour and say that it's less likely that they will rob banks, if they are threatened with long jail sentences for doing so; That you could, hypothetically, make the exact same prediction by applying quantum field theory to every particle and force involved (and it turns out the whole universe is involved) is possibly true, but certainly useless, as it would take at least billions of years, and likely trillions, to do those calculations.

Reductionism is a useful way to grasp how high level rules are ultimately an expression of lower level rules; But it's completely useless and stupid as an actual approach to understanding complex, high level, systems.

I don't need to think about atoms, much less subatomic particles, in order to jump out of the way of a speeding car. That the car is more accurately described in terms of the atoms, and their electrons, hadrons, etc., than as an aggregate macroscopic object obeying Newton's Laws, is true; but completely irrelevant.

 

[Copernicus]

...Nor is it a matter of me 'digging in my heels.'

In case you haven't noticed, there are two sides to this argument, compatibilism and incompatibilism. The reasons why compatibilism is inadequate to prove the proposition of free will have been explained and supported by quotes and references...

You simply prove my point in your reply. Nobody is denying that there are two sides to the argument, and your quote is nothing more than a reference to Pereboom's convoluted "manipulation argument", which has lots of critics and supporters in the literature. Like you, I don't see Pereboom seriously advocating the abolition of criminal law on the grounds that people don't actually have free will. It is really hard to argue for a conclusion that one does not take seriously, so I think that Pereboom deserves some credit for being really good at defending an absurd conclusion. Would you like references to some of his critics, or can you handle the Google search on your own?

 

[fromderinside]

The Laws of Nature come in three Volumes.
Volume 1: The Laws of Inanimate Objects, whose behavior is governed by physical forces.
Volume 2: The Laws of Living Organisms, whose behavior is affected by physical forces but is governed by biological drives.
Volume 3: The Laws of Intelligent Species, whose behavior is affected by physical forces and biological drives, but is governed by deliberate choosing.

The physical laws only govern the behavior of inanimate objects. So Volume 1, The Laws of Inanimate Objects, is not going to help us to modify the behavior of the bank robber.

Now for an a lesson in reductionism.

Book two reduces to book one, book three reduces to book one. Why? Because, as your titles explicitly demonstrate all behavior is governed by physical forces. All biological drive reduces to physical forces. All choosing reduces being governed by physical forces. The same set of laws cover all behavior.

Yes, that is a good lesson in how reductionism fails. The fact is that biological drives were a new causal mechanism that did not exist in the physical universe until inanimate matter managed to organize itself into a living organism. And imagination did not show up in the physical universe until living organisms evolved intelligence. When matter is organized differently, it behaves differently. That's why we do not cook a turkey in our car or drive an oven to work.

Biological drives? Do you mean circuits and squirts evolved over eons through development of neurosecretory, glandular, autonomic and central nervous systems all composed of atoms and molecules governed by physical forces?

 

[fromderinside]

The Laws of Nature come in three Volumes.
Volume 1: The Laws of Inanimate Objects, whose behavior is governed by physical forces.
Volume 2: The Laws of Living Organisms, whose behavior is affected by physical forces but is governed by biological drives.
Volume 3: The Laws of Intelligent Species, whose behavior is affected by physical forces and biological drives, but is governed by deliberate choosing.

The physical laws only govern the behavior of inanimate objects. So Volume 1, The Laws of Inanimate Objects, is not going to help us to modify the behavior of the bank robber.

Now for an a lesson in reductionism.

Book two reduces to book one, book three reduces to book one. Why? Because, as your titles explicitly demonstrate all behavior is governed by physical forces. All biological drive reduces to physical forces. All choosing reduces being governed by physical forces. The same set of laws cover all behavior.

Not so. The laws governing social interactions do not cover the interactions between electrons, even though the laws governing electrons may cover (in excruciating detail), social interactions.

There's a hypothetical set of laws that "cover all behaviour", which physicists call a "Grand Unified Theory" (GUT), but if these laws exist, we don't yet know them.

Which would, if the foundational laws were the only path to an understanding of more complex systems built from them, be a huge problem. Because the absence of a GUT would then imply the impossibility of our understanding or predicting anything.

Fortunately, the reductionist approach is far from the only option. Newton was able to derive classical mechanics from his observations of reality, despite being completely oblivious to the quantum mechanics that underlies it all, and despite being unaware of the relevance of reference frames in the calculation of relative motions between objects. He didn't even know that light travels at the same speed regardless of the motion of the observer, and yet he was able to produce a set of rules that very accurately described large parts of reality.

Of course, they didn't perfectly describe reality; But they didn't need to. Classical mechanics works. And, importantly, it's easy. You can determine whether your artillery shell will hit the target, without having to calculate the quantum states of every particle in the universe.

Similarly, you can observe human behaviour and say that it's less likely that they will rob banks, if they are threatened with long jail sentences for doing so; That you could, hypothetically, make the exact same prediction by applying quantum field theory to every particle and force involved (and it turns out the whole universe is involved) is possibly true, but certainly useless, as it would take at least billions of years, and likely trillions, to do those calculations.

Reductionism is a useful way to grasp how high level rules are ultimately an expression of lower level rules; But it's completely useless and stupid as an actual approach to understanding complex, high level, systems.

I don't need to think about atoms, much less subatomic particles, in order to jump out of the way of a speeding car. That the car is more accurately described in terms of the atoms, and their electrons, hadrons, etc., than as an aggregate macroscopic object obeying Newton's Laws, is true; but completely irrelevant.

Oh, I think they do. At least no one has developed even partial theory of social behavior much further along than that of Kurt Lewin from the early 1900s which is pretty qualitative and iffy. Yet we do know that every one of the mechanisms underlying social interactions are executed by systems made up of molecules and atoms governed by physical forces.

At no time has there ever been a theory attributing top level principle causing physical forces. Is it reasonable to reject reductionism when at at the most fundamental levels we find physical forces attributed to every part of every potential social law?

I never posited reductionist modelling for social laws. For instance, we use such as association and inhibition to describe interactions among sensory neurons in processing specific location and extent of neural response to inputs. Those can be traced to chemical and electrical changes. So I'm aware of limitations of the extent to which we can currently ascribe physical forces to on-going nervous activity theory.

I just used a reductionist approach to find that all behavior ultimately is caused by whatever is the most elemental description of physical forces. There is continuity of forces from bottom to top of whatever we will find to be GUT, if we do find there is such. I'm using reductionism as sort of a tool for finding parsimony among things used to describe behaviors in the world. I'm pretty sure that descriptions for reactions to threats will at every level involve physical forces, whether they be in systems, functions, or even populations of behaviors.

 

[bilby]

The Laws of Nature come in three Volumes.
Volume 1: The Laws of Inanimate Objects, whose behavior is governed by physical forces.
Volume 2: The Laws of Living Organisms, whose behavior is affected by physical forces but is governed by biological drives.
Volume 3: The Laws of Intelligent Species, whose behavior is affected by physical forces and biological drives, but is governed by deliberate choosing.

The physical laws only govern the behavior of inanimate objects. So Volume 1, The Laws of Inanimate Objects, is not going to help us to modify the behavior of the bank robber.

Now for an a lesson in reductionism.

Book two reduces to book one, book three reduces to book one. Why? Because, as your titles explicitly demonstrate all behavior is governed by physical forces. All biological drive reduces to physical forces. All choosing reduces being governed by physical forces. The same set of laws cover all behavior.

Not so. The laws governing social interactions do not cover the interactions between electrons, even though the laws governing electrons may cover (in excruciating detail), social interactions.

There's a hypothetical set of laws that "cover all behaviour", which physicists call a "Grand Unified Theory" (GUT), but if these laws exist, we don't yet know them.

Which would, if the foundational laws were the only path to an understanding of more complex systems built from them, be a huge problem. Because the absence of a GUT would then imply the impossibility of our understanding or predicting anything.

Fortunately, the reductionist approach is far from the only option. Newton was able to derive classical mechanics from his observations of reality, despite being completely oblivious to the quantum mechanics that underlies it all, and despite being unaware of the relevance of reference frames in the calculation of relative motions between objects. He didn't even know that light travels at the same speed regardless of the motion of the observer, and yet he was able to produce a set of rules that very accurately described large parts of reality.

Of course, they didn't perfectly describe reality; But they didn't need to. Classical mechanics works. And, importantly, it's easy. You can determine whether your artillery shell will hit the target, without having to calculate the quantum states of every particle in the universe.

Similarly, you can observe human behaviour and say that it's less likely that they will rob banks, if they are threatened with long jail sentences for doing so; That you could, hypothetically, make the exact same prediction by applying quantum field theory to every particle and force involved (and it turns out the whole universe is involved) is possibly true, but certainly useless, as it would take at least billions of years, and likely trillions, to do those calculations.

Reductionism is a useful way to grasp how high level rules are ultimately an expression of lower level rules; But it's completely useless and stupid as an actual approach to understanding complex, high level, systems.

I don't need to think about atoms, much less subatomic particles, in order to jump out of the way of a speeding car. That the car is more accurately described in terms of the atoms, and their electrons, hadrons, etc., than as an aggregate macroscopic object obeying Newton's Laws, is true; but completely irrelevant.

Oh, I think they do. At least no one has developed even partial theory of social behavior much further along than that of Kurt Lewin from the early 1900s which is pretty qualitative and iffy. Yet we do know that every one of the mechanisms underlying social interactions are executed by systems made up of molecules and atoms governed by physical forces.

At no time has there ever been a theory attributing top level principle causing physical forces. Is it reasonable to reject reductionism when at at the most fundamental levels we find physical forces attributed to every part of every potential social law?

I never posited reductionist modelling for social laws. For instance, we use such as association and inhibition to describe interactions among sensory neurons in processing specific location and extent of neural response to inputs. Those can be traced to chemical and electrical changes. So I'm aware of limitations of the extent to which we can currently ascribe physical forces to on-going nervous activity theory.

I just used a reductionist approach to find that all behavior ultimately is caused by whatever is the most elemental description of physical forces. There is continuity of forces from bottom to top of whatever we will find to be GUT, if we do find there is such. I'm using reductionism as sort of a tool for finding parsimony among things used to describe behaviors in the world. I'm pretty sure that descriptions for reactions to threats will at every level involve physical forces, whether they be in systems, functions, or even populations of behaviors.

Sure. But so what?

How does modelling the approaching car as a collection of atoms help me to avoid being run down?

How is such an approach more parsimonious than simply treating it as an approximately classical object that will obey Newton's very simple, and certainly accurate enough, laws?

Why do I care that my choices are ultimately due to entirely deterministic physics (assuming ad argumentum that the underlying physics is in fact entirely deterministic)?

I am the physical system that chose to leap onto the sidewalk rather than be run down. That a "god's eye view" would see my survival as an inevitable and predetermined consequence of the starting conditions of the universe, is entirely irrelevant to me even if true.

I am in the slightly odd position of believing both that the physical universe is not, fundamentally, deterministic; while simultaneously believing that this makes exactly zero difference to freedom of will, which has nothing to do with whether or not the underlying physics of the universe is deterministic or not.

That our actions would be completely and unavoidably predictable were we to know the exact status of every particle in the universe at some earlier time, is of zero interest, as not only do we not know that exact status for any time, but we are demonstrably incapable of ever knowing this.

We call the condition of finding out what future actions physics imposes on ourselves "choosing". Often it's something of a surprise. And unless coerced, it's always an action taken by ourselves - my self isn't separate from the physical universe, it's a part of it, and it's the part that chooses to do stuff.

Atoms decide. But those atoms are me.

 

[fromderinside]

The Laws of Nature come in three Volumes.
Volume 1: The Laws of Inanimate Objects, whose behavior is governed by physical forces.
Volume 2: The Laws of Living Organisms, whose behavior is affected by physical forces but is governed by biological drives.
Volume 3: The Laws of Intelligent Species, whose behavior is affected by physical forces and biological drives, but is governed by deliberate choosing.

The physical laws only govern the behavior of inanimate objects. So Volume 1, The Laws of Inanimate Objects, is not going to help us to modify the behavior of the bank robber.

Now for an a lesson in reductionism.

Book two reduces to book one, book three reduces to book one. Why? Because, as your titles explicitly demonstrate all behavior is governed by physical forces. All biological drive reduces to physical forces. All choosing reduces being governed by physical forces. The same set of laws cover all behavior.

Not so. The laws governing social interactions do not cover the interactions between electrons, even though the laws governing electrons may cover (in excruciating detail), social interactions.

There's a hypothetical set of laws that "cover all behaviour", which physicists call a "Grand Unified Theory" (GUT), but if these laws exist, we don't yet know them.

Which would, if the foundational laws were the only path to an understanding of more complex systems built from them, be a huge problem. Because the absence of a GUT would then imply the impossibility of our understanding or predicting anything.

Fortunately, the reductionist approach is far from the only option. Newton was able to derive classical mechanics from his observations of reality, despite being completely oblivious to the quantum mechanics that underlies it all, and despite being unaware of the relevance of reference frames in the calculation of relative motions between objects. He didn't even know that light travels at the same speed regardless of the motion of the observer, and yet he was able to produce a set of rules that very accurately described large parts of reality.

Of course, they didn't perfectly describe reality; But they didn't need to. Classical mechanics works. And, importantly, it's easy. You can determine whether your artillery shell will hit the target, without having to calculate the quantum states of every particle in the universe.

Similarly, you can observe human behaviour and say that it's less likely that they will rob banks, if they are threatened with long jail sentences for doing so; That you could, hypothetically, make the exact same prediction by applying quantum field theory to every particle and force involved (and it turns out the whole universe is involved) is possibly true, but certainly useless, as it would take at least billions of years, and likely trillions, to do those calculations.

Reductionism is a useful way to grasp how high level rules are ultimately an expression of lower level rules; But it's completely useless and stupid as an actual approach to understanding complex, high level, systems.

I don't need to think about atoms, much less subatomic particles, in order to jump out of the way of a speeding car. That the car is more accurately described in terms of the atoms, and their electrons, hadrons, etc., than as an aggregate macroscopic object obeying Newton's Laws, is true; but completely irrelevant.

Oh, I think they do. At least no one has developed even partial theory of social behavior much further along than that of Kurt Lewin from the early 1900s which is pretty qualitative and iffy. Yet we do know that every one of the mechanisms underlying social interactions are executed by systems made up of molecules and atoms governed by physical forces.

At no time has there ever been a theory attributing top level principle causing physical forces. Is it reasonable to reject reductionism when at at the most fundamental levels we find physical forces attributed to every part of every potential social law?

I never posited reductionist modelling for social laws. For instance, we use such as association and inhibition to describe interactions among sensory neurons in processing specific location and extent of neural response to inputs. Those can be traced to chemical and electrical changes. So I'm aware of limitations of the extent to which we can currently ascribe physical forces to on-going nervous activity theory.

I just used a reductionist approach to find that all behavior ultimately is caused by whatever is the most elemental description of physical forces. There is continuity of forces from bottom to top of whatever we will find to be GUT, if we do find there is such. I'm using reductionism as sort of a tool for finding parsimony among things used to describe behaviors in the world. I'm pretty sure that descriptions for reactions to threats will at every level involve physical forces, whether they be in systems, functions, or even populations of behaviors.

Sure. But so what?

How does modelling the approaching car as a collection of atoms help me to avoid being run down?

How is such an approach more parsimonious than simply treating it as an approximately classical object that will obey Newton's very simple, and certainly accurate enough, laws?

Why do I care that my choices are ultimately due to entirely deterministic physics (assuming ad argumentum that the underlying physics is in fact entirely deterministic)?

I am the physical system that chose to leap onto the sidewalk rather than be run down. That a "god's eye view" would see my survival as an inevitable and predetermined consequence of the starting conditions of the universe, is entirely irrelevant to me even if true.

I am in the slightly odd position of believing both that the physical universe is not, fundamentally, deterministic; while simultaneously believing that this makes exactly zero difference to freedom of will, which has nothing to do with whether or not the underlying physics of the universe is deterministic or not.

That our actions would be completely and unavoidably predictable were we to know the exact status of every particle in the universe at some earlier time, is of zero interest, as not only do we not know that exact status for any time, but we are demonstrably incapable of ever knowing this.

We call the condition of finding out what future actions physics imposes on ourselves "choosing". Often it's something of a surprise. And unless coerced, it's always an action taken by ourselves - my self isn't separate from the physical universe, it's a part of it, and it's the part that chooses to do stuff.

Atoms decide. But those atoms are me.

That's why this is being discussed on a philosophy forum. The distinction between what we can demonstrate we are doing and what we think we are doing are worlds apart. I just like to sit in a comfortable position of presuming what is 'known' is best source of considerations for what is thought. Others here get all tied up in knots saying one thing when they can't support it beyond the saying. If there are laws of nature for social behavior among humans that can be operationally supported and demonstrated via experiment, I'll gladly consider them. As far as I can tell there are principles involved in social behavior but I'm no where near understanding them nor being able to demonstrate them.

We're still at the point of having to use numerical models to demonstrate how weather and lift works which are actually dozens of connected partial theories cobbled together that seem to reflect what actually happens. I'm not above going to 'root cause' analysis whatever that means to get answers. In fact, when I modeled a outer hair cell neuron I cobbled together about two dozen digibits that gave me the activity I observed in live recordings. Sometimes its the only way to get answers. Carving up another rat or rabbit or cat to demonstrate principles is way too expensive, and in my view, too unethical to justify doing so. So We observe, and cobble.

That was 45 years ago. Methods have radically advanced since. Now I follow latest oxygen up take methods and have more confidence we aren't Martians dropping microphones at Fifth and Broadway in NYC. We may even be pretty close to a metabolic explanation of short term local brain behavior.

 

[Jarhyn]

The Laws of Nature come in three Volumes.
Volume 1: The Laws of Inanimate Objects, whose behavior is governed by physical forces.
Volume 2: The Laws of Living Organisms, whose behavior is affected by physical forces but is governed by biological drives.
Volume 3: The Laws of Intelligent Species, whose behavior is affected by physical forces and biological drives, but is governed by deliberate choosing.

The physical laws only govern the behavior of inanimate objects. So Volume 1, The Laws of Inanimate Objects, is not going to help us to modify the behavior of the bank robber.

Now for an a lesson in reductionism.

Book two reduces to book one, book three reduces to book one. Why? Because, as your titles explicitly demonstrate all behavior is governed by physical forces. All biological drive reduces to physical forces. All choosing reduces being governed by physical forces. The same set of laws cover all behavior.

Not so. The laws governing social interactions do not cover the interactions between electrons, even though the laws governing electrons may cover (in excruciating detail), social interactions.

There's a hypothetical set of laws that "cover all behaviour", which physicists call a "Grand Unified Theory" (GUT), but if these laws exist, we don't yet know them.

Which would, if the foundational laws were the only path to an understanding of more complex systems built from them, be a huge problem. Because the absence of a GUT would then imply the impossibility of our understanding or predicting anything.

Fortunately, the reductionist approach is far from the only option. Newton was able to derive classical mechanics from his observations of reality, despite being completely oblivious to the quantum mechanics that underlies it all, and despite being unaware of the relevance of reference frames in the calculation of relative motions between objects. He didn't even know that light travels at the same speed regardless of the motion of the observer, and yet he was able to produce a set of rules that very accurately described large parts of reality.

Of course, they didn't perfectly describe reality; But they didn't need to. Classical mechanics works. And, importantly, it's easy. You can determine whether your artillery shell will hit the target, without having to calculate the quantum states of every particle in the universe.

Similarly, you can observe human behaviour and say that it's less likely that they will rob banks, if they are threatened with long jail sentences for doing so; That you could, hypothetically, make the exact same prediction by applying quantum field theory to every particle and force involved (and it turns out the whole universe is involved) is possibly true, but certainly useless, as it would take at least billions of years, and likely trillions, to do those calculations.

Reductionism is a useful way to grasp how high level rules are ultimately an expression of lower level rules; But it's completely useless and stupid as an actual approach to understanding complex, high level, systems.

I don't need to think about atoms, much less subatomic particles, in order to jump out of the way of a speeding car. That the car is more accurately described in terms of the atoms, and their electrons, hadrons, etc., than as an aggregate macroscopic object obeying Newton's Laws, is true; but completely irrelevant.

Oh, I think they do. At least no one has developed even partial theory of social behavior much further along than that of Kurt Lewin from the early 1900s which is pretty qualitative and iffy. Yet we do know that every one of the mechanisms underlying social interactions are executed by systems made up of molecules and atoms governed by physical forces.

At no time has there ever been a theory attributing top level principle causing physical forces. Is it reasonable to reject reductionism when at at the most fundamental levels we find physical forces attributed to every part of every potential social law?

I never posited reductionist modelling for social laws. For instance, we use such as association and inhibition to describe interactions among sensory neurons in processing specific location and extent of neural response to inputs. Those can be traced to chemical and electrical changes. So I'm aware of limitations of the extent to which we can currently ascribe physical forces to on-going nervous activity theory.

I just used a reductionist approach to find that all behavior ultimately is caused by whatever is the most elemental description of physical forces. There is continuity of forces from bottom to top of whatever we will find to be GUT, if we do find there is such. I'm using reductionism as sort of a tool for finding parsimony among things used to describe behaviors in the world. I'm pretty sure that descriptions for reactions to threats will at every level involve physical forces, whether they be in systems, functions, or even populations of behaviors.

Sure. But so what?

How does modelling the approaching car as a collection of atoms help me to avoid being run down?

How is such an approach more parsimonious than simply treating it as an approximately classical object that will obey Newton's very simple, and certainly accurate enough, laws?

Why do I care that my choices are ultimately due to entirely deterministic physics (assuming ad argumentum that the underlying physics is in fact entirely deterministic)?

I am the physical system that chose to leap onto the sidewalk rather than be run down. That a "god's eye view" would see my survival as an inevitable and predetermined consequence of the starting conditions of the universe, is entirely irrelevant to me even if true.

I am in the slightly odd position of believing both that the physical universe is not, fundamentally, deterministic; while simultaneously believing that this makes exactly zero difference to freedom of will, which has nothing to do with whether or not the underlying physics of the universe is deterministic or not.

That our actions would be completely and unavoidably predictable were we to know the exact status of every particle in the universe at some earlier time, is of zero interest, as not only do we not know that exact status for any time, but we are demonstrably incapable of ever knowing this.

We call the condition of finding out what future actions physics imposes on ourselves "choosing". Often it's something of a surprise. And unless coerced, it's always an action taken by ourselves - my self isn't separate from the physical universe, it's a part of it, and it's the part that chooses to do stuff.

Atoms decide. But those atoms are me.

So, modelling the car as a collection of atoms already happens. It is exactly what keeps you from being run down.

It just happens we have a model of nature within each of us capable of modelling atomic behavior on large and broad scales.

It also happens, due to the nature of reality, that we don't need to know exactly what we are modelling to be doing it. Or even that "modelling" is what we are doing.

Treating it as a "Newtonian object" is still doing exactly that thing of 'modeling it as a collection of atoms'. Because Newtonian physics is a fairly decent model, developed specifically to describe large collections of atoms. Without knowing what they were.

Free will does not depend on the universe being deterministic.

Free will depends on the universe having some constraints around which way a probabilistic field will determine.

You could load up a blank universe into a symmetric "boil" of "high potential instructions" that all cancel out, and change an instruction in any way, deterministic or not, and it will spin out into some similar collection of groups as we see happen in what we call "reality".

Generalities will be forced to exist through the common instruction set, and ignorance through the impossibility of prediction within the system will make for local agencies.

Free will will exist. So can indeterminacy.

This means, however, that it is just as possible in a determined system: if you were to randomize the "dice rolls" for every interaction that would happen from the start of time to the end, you would still end up with an expression of finite, but very large size: just by describing the universal architecturally along with it's inputs you have described a determinacy.

You could play these jackoff games until the stars all turn to iron and the last black holes puff their last stale farts of neutrinos and the universe is a cold dead dance. You can't change the fact that processes in determinant systems still have contention to deal with within their contexts. Designing mechanisms back into those selfsame processes to eliminate, resist, or overcome those contentions is the act of maintaining free will.

 

[DBT]

Determined by the laws or principles of physics, the attributes and behaviour of matter/energy.

So, we arrest the bank robber. Now, how do we go about changing his behavior using only the laws of physics? How do we rearrange the configuration of his matter/energy such that he no longer robs banks?

Did you consider the rest of my comment? I also added - ''Determined by genetic makeup, the nature of life, how life and environment interact. Determined by social conditions, language, culture, personal circumstances, family, friends, education, health, developed tastes and aversions, needs and wants.''

That brings us to Volume 3, the Social Sciences. And here we finally get the tools for altering the bank robber's behavior, psychology and sociology. We also get a whole system of justice and the rule of social laws. Oh, and we also get the distinction between deliberate acts, versus accidental acts, versus coerced acts, versus other unduly influenced acts.

It is the treatment or therapy applied to the bank robber that modifies his neural networks, which in turn result in lines of thought that were not present before he got caught, even the act of getting caught changes his outlook.

Again, nothing to do with free will, whatever happens acts upon him and alters his thought processes and behaviour, not necessarily for the better.

''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. ''

Unfortunately, one of the things our nervous system fails to provide for us, is a way to describe events in terms of neural activity.

Fortunately, our nervous system does provide us with a way to describe our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions. For example, we may ask the bank robber, "What were you thinking when you robbed that bank?" And then, by counseling, education, addiction treatment, job training, and other rehabilitation programs we may get the robber to make better deliberate choices in the future.

Whatever we can or can't do is the work of a brain. How the brain functions is not negotiable. Inputs enter the system and act upon it in ways that we as conscious entities being generated by the brain have no access to or control over.

''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. ''

By definition, choosing requires at least two alternate possibilities. If you use the word "choice" then you are asserting that choosing happened, and you are agreeing that there were at least two alternate possibilities. Determinism cannot change the definition of choosing. All that determinism can logically assert is that, whatever we choose, it will have been causally necessary from any prior point in time. All that determinism can assert is that all of the mental events within the choosing operation were equally necessary from any prior point in time, including the events where it occurred to us that "we could do A" and that "we could do B instead". Alternate possibilities will necessarily show up in every choosing operation.

There may be countless possibilities, yet determinism in each and every instance only allows one action to be taken, the determined action.

Where then is the choice? There never was the possibility of any of the possibilities being realized by you in any given instance except the one that was determined.

Where lies the freedom to have done otherwise? It was never there. Hence the wording of the compatibilist definition.

A given theory of compatibilism is judged by how well it demonstrates that determinism and free will are in fact compatible. For example, I've just demonstrated that alternate possibilities are causally necessary.

Alternate possibilities are not realizable, just a determined action each and every time there is a fork in the road.

 

[DBT]

...Nor is it a matter of me 'digging in my heels.'

In case you haven't noticed, there are two sides to this argument, compatibilism and incompatibilism. The reasons why compatibilism is inadequate to prove the proposition of free will have been explained and supported by quotes and references...

You simply prove my point in your reply. Nobody is denying that there are two sides to the argument, and your quote is nothing more than a reference to Pereboom's convoluted "manipulation argument", which has lots of critics and supporters in the literature. Like you, I don't see Pereboom seriously advocating the abolition of criminal law on the grounds that people don't actually have free will. It is really hard to argue for a conclusion that one does not take seriously, so I think that Pereboom deserves some credit for being really good at defending an absurd conclusion. Would you like references to some of his critics, or can you handle the Google search on your own?

Of course there are critics, everyone has a point of view. I have read what Pereboom's critics have to say. Just as there are critics of compatibilism.

What you say about ''advocating the abolition of criminal law on the grounds that people don't actually have free will'' indicates that you don't understand the issue.

Actions that are taken in terms of law, regulation, punishment, are made in response to human behaviour and are meant to modify or prevent undesirable activity, crime, etc.

The knowledge that there are consequences acts as a deterrent for most people, so of course nobody is suggesting abolition of the law.

Some are calling for a review.

Again;

The law
''Because most behavior is driven by brain networks we do not consciously control, the legal system will eventually be forced to shift its emphasis from retribution to a forward-looking analysis of future behavior. In the light of modern neuroscience, it no longer makes sense to ask "was it his fault, or his biology's fault, or the fault of his background?", because these issues can never be disentangled. Instead, the only sensible question can be "what do we do from here?" -- in terms of customized sentencing, tailored rehabilition, and refined incentive structuring.''


On the neurology of morals
''Patients with medial prefrontal lesions often display irresponsible behavior, despite being intellectually unimpaired. But similar lesions occurring in early childhood can also prevent the acquisition of factual knowledge about accepted standards of moral behavior.''

 

[Marvin Edwards]

The Laws of Nature come in three Volumes.
Volume 1: The Laws of Inanimate Objects, whose behavior is governed by physical forces.
Volume 2: The Laws of Living Organisms, whose behavior is affected by physical forces but is governed by biological drives.
Volume 3: The Laws of Intelligent Species, whose behavior is affected by physical forces and biological drives, but is governed by deliberate choosing.

The physical laws only govern the behavior of inanimate objects. So Volume 1, The Laws of Inanimate Objects, is not going to help us to modify the behavior of the bank robber.

Now for an a lesson in reductionism.

Book two reduces to book one, book three reduces to book one. Why? Because, as your titles explicitly demonstrate all behavior is governed by physical forces. All biological drive reduces to physical forces. All choosing reduces being governed by physical forces. The same set of laws cover all behavior.

Yes, that is a good lesson in how reductionism fails. The fact is that biological drives were a new causal mechanism that did not exist in the physical universe until inanimate matter managed to organize itself into a living organism. And imagination did not show up in the physical universe until living organisms evolved intelligence. When matter is organized differently, it behaves differently. That's why we do not cook a turkey in our car or drive an oven to work.

Biological drives? Do you mean circuits and squirts evolved over eons through development of neurosecretory, glandular, autonomic and central nervous systems all composed of atoms and molecules governed by physical forces?

I mean that the molecule of DNA contains the blueprint and the tools needed to create a machine that continues to exist only by successful reproduction. Natural variations in that molecule that enhance successful reproduction in a given environment tend to stick around. The individual atoms have no clue as to what is going on in the molecule. The atoms did not hold a meeting to decide to create such a molecule, and they know nothing about how it works.

Physics is fine for explaining why a cup of water, poured on a slope, trickles downhill. But physics cannot explain why a similar cup of water, heated, and mixed with a little coffee, hops into a car and goes grocery shopping.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Did you consider the rest of my comment? I also added - ''Determined by genetic makeup, the nature of life, how life and environment interact. Determined by social conditions, language, culture, personal circumstances, family, friends, education, health, developed tastes and aversions, needs and wants.''

Yes. You had three statements that happened to correspond to the three levels of nature's laws. I just addressed them separately to demonstrate the limitations of lower level causal mechanisms when explaining free will and responsibility.

It is the treatment or therapy applied to the bank robber that modifies his neural networks, which in turn result in lines of thought that were not present before he got caught, even the act of getting caught changes his outlook.

Exactly.

Again, nothing to do with free will, whatever happens acts upon him and alters his thought processes and behaviour, not necessarily for the better.

Without free will, rehabilitation is impossible. The point of rehabilitation is to release back into the public a person who is safely able to make better choices, on their own, without supervision.

But what will the offender do if we tell him that he was not responsible, because, due to determinism, he had no control over his actions? To be consistent, we would also have to tell him that he likewise will have no control over future actions. And that would make rehabilitation impossible.

''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. ''

I am a bit confused as to why you have posted that quote for a third time. I've explained what "basic-desert" (aka "just-deserts") means, and I'm happy to explain it again (it is an issue of our philosophy of justice, not an issue of free will). But perhaps you're reading something else into that quote that I've missed. Could you explain what you think that quote is saying?

Whatever we can or can't do is the work of a brain. How the brain functions is not negotiable. Inputs enter the system and act upon it in ways that we as conscious entities being generated by the brain have no access to or control over.

I'm pretty sure that conscious awareness will always play a role in any significant decisions we make. You will not find any significant decisions in the Libet-style experiments. A significant decision is one that requires an explanation. Constructing an explanation requires conscious awareness. For example, as I write these words I'm also hearing them, and critiquing them, and often changing them.

But if I'm instructed to squeeze my fist 40 times over 2 minutes, and to do so "randomly" whenever I "felt" like it, then I will be waiting upon some inner sensation to trigger my responses.

Whether conscious awareness is involved upfront, or as an after-effect, is not important. In either case it will still be my own brain that is exercising control, based not just upon external inputs, but more significantly upon its internal inputs. All of those internal inputs are integral parts of who and what I am, and they will control my response to any external inputs. Both the brain itself and all of the internal inputs are me. It is still me making the choices and controlling my own actions.

There may be countless possibilities, yet determinism in each and every instance only allows one action to be taken, the determined action.

Yes. But the causal determinants of my deliberate actions is me. Determinism does not cause anything. It's still me, myself, my own brain, my own thoughts and feelings, my own beliefs and values, that are driving and controlling what the choice will be.

Where then is the choice? There never was the possibility of any of the possibilities being realized by you in any given instance except the one that was determined.

Yes. But it was causally determined by me, choosing it. The fact that who and what I happen to be at the time of that choosing is the reliable result of past events does not contradict the fact that it was me that was actually doing the choosing.

Where lies the freedom to have done otherwise? It was never there. Hence the wording of the compatibilist definition.

The real question here is where is the constraint that you insist I must be free of?

I am doing what I choose to do. So, in what way am I constrained? Why would I ever choose to do differently?

And that's the key to unravelling this paradox. Reliable cause and effect is neither coercive nor undue. It's just how everything works. Without reliable causation, nothing, including us, would work. We, ourselves, are a collaborative collection of reliable causal mechanisms. Reliable causal mechanisms keep our hearts beating and our thoughts flowing. Reliable causal mechanisms enable our brains to control our muscles so we can walk to the kitchen to fix breakfast. Every freedom we have, to do anything at all, requires reliable causation.

So, it would seem better to discard the notion that reliable causation is some kind of monster that robs us of freedom and control. Rather, it is the very means by which we have freedom and exercise control.

Alternate possibilities are not realizable, just a determined action each and every time there is a fork in the road.

But I was going in that direction anyway, so I am not constrained.

I could have taken the other path, and perhaps someday I'll want to explore to see what's down that way. But not today. Even though I did not choose it, it remains a real possibility. It does not become impossible by my not choosing it.

 

[fromderinside]

But I was going in that direction anyway, so I am not constrained.

I could have taken the other path, and perhaps someday I'll want to explore to see what's down that way. But not today. Even though I did not choose it, it remains a real possibility. It does not become impossible by my not choosing it.

If you have no choice you have no freedom. It's called Determinism, not "Well if I wanted to,.." or "Well there are options ..."

 

[DBT]

Did you consider the rest of my comment? I also added - ''Determined by genetic makeup, the nature of life, how life and environment interact. Determined by social conditions, language, culture, personal circumstances, family, friends, education, health, developed tastes and aversions, needs and wants.''

Yes. You had three statements that happened to correspond to the three levels of nature's laws. I just addressed them separately to demonstrate the limitations of lower level causal mechanisms when explaining free will and responsibility.

Put them together and add detail to get a more comprehensive description of determinism. It is all of these element and more that shape our being and behaviour. It is the treatment or therapy applied to the bank robber that modifies his neural networks, which in turn result in lines of thought that were not present before he got caught, even the act of getting caught changes his outlook.

Exactly.

Without free will, rehabilitation is impossible. The point of rehabilitation is to release back into the public a person who is safely able to make better choices, on their own, without supervision.

But what will the offender do if we tell him that he was not responsible, because, due to determinism, he had no control over his actions? To be consistent, we would also have to tell him that he likewise will have no control over future actions. And that would make rehabilitation impossible.

''Free will'' is just a term. A term that tells us nothing about our makeup or what drives our behaviour, be they psychological

How we treat the offender acts upon his brain and mind. The treatment the offender gets effects their mind and and behaviour.

Telling someone that they have no 'free will' would most likely not be understood.

Why? Because the common perception of free will is the ability to make decisions. Decision making is taken to be free will.

I am a bit confused as to why you have posted that quote for a third time. I've explained what "basic-desert" (aka "just-deserts") means, and I'm happy to explain it again (it is an issue of our philosophy of justice, not an issue of free will). But perhaps you're reading something else into that quote that I've missed. Could you explain what you think that quote is saying?

I posted it to make sure the point that actions produced by deterministic processes are no less of a challenge to freedom of will than compulsion by external agents is being considered rather than brushed aside.

It's a point that seems to be treated far too lightly.

I'm pretty sure that conscious awareness will always play a role in any significant decisions we make. You will not find any significant decisions in the Libet-style experiments. A significant decision is one that requires an explanation. Constructing an explanation requires conscious awareness. For example, as I write these words I'm also hearing them, and critiquing them, and often changing them.

But if I'm instructed to squeeze my fist 40 times over 2 minutes, and to do so "randomly" whenever I "felt" like it, then I will be waiting upon some inner sensation to trigger my responses.

Whether conscious awareness is involved upfront, or as an after-effect, is not important. In either case it will still be my own brain that is exercising control, based not just upon external inputs, but more significantly upon its internal inputs. All of those internal inputs are integral parts of who and what I am, and they will control my response to any external inputs. Both the brain itself and all of the internal inputs are me. It is still me making the choices and controlling my own actions.

Of course conscious awareness plays a role. An indispensable role. It is our conscious 'map' of the external world and our place in it. But it is not free will.

You do something 'whenever you feel like it' because the brain has already processed the necessary information and sent signals to muscle groups milliseconds before you 'felt like it.'

''When it comes to the human brain, even the simplest of acts can be counter-intuitive and deceptively complicated. For example, try stretching your arm.

Nerves in the limb send messages back to your brain, but the subjective experience you have of stretching isn't due to these signals. The feeling that you willed your arm into motion, and the realization that you moved it at all, are both the result of an area at the back of your brain called the posterior parietal cortex. This region helped to produce the intention to move, and predicted what the movement would feel like, all before you twitched a single muscle.

Yes. But the causal determinants of my deliberate actions is me. Determinism does not cause anything. It's still me, myself, my own brain, my own thoughts and feelings, my own beliefs and values, that are driving and controlling what the choice will be.

But it's not only ''you'' - countless external elements act upon 'your' system, body/mind/brain, in ways that you are not aware of or have control over. Your conscious experience of the world and self has no access to brain activity, we don't know what our neural networks are doing. Consciousness comes after the event, thoughts form because the underlying information processing is generating conscious activity in response to stimuli. You encounter something, read this post, then lines of thought are brought to mind.