Compatibilism: What's that About?

[Jarhyn]

''A deterministic system is a system in which a given initial state or condition will always produce the same results. There is no randomness or variation in the ways that inputs get delivered as outputs''

Yes.

Compatibilism is built on semantics. Semantics won't help establish the idea of free will, that takes agency. That will is able to make a difference. Will cannot make a difference to outcomes within a determined system, consequently determinism negates free will agency

No.

Assertion fallacy. If "compatibilism" is built on semenantics, so is math. If math is built on semantics so is physics. If physics is built on semantics, "determinism" is semantic, and so if it is "semantic" (it is not) then nothing can be said of anything.

This leads to an obvious contradiction so we can fairly well throw it out.

I have pointed out a deterministic system. I have shown you how, in that deterministic system, there are agents (machines which interpret wills such as they are, and execute them), and how various wills are observably, objectively "free" and demonstrated how various requirements have observable, objectively causal sources, and how the nature of the source of these requirements impacts the behavior of the system itself, and it's game theory.

You keep thinking this is about "making a difference" as if that's even a sensible thing to have in your head. It is not. It is not about "making a difference". No compatibilist ever set out to "make a difference".

Many have set out to go forth, be seen, do "big" things, but compatibilists know that "making a difference" is nonsense.

Instead, we set out to effectively do what we want. To effectively do what we want does not require doing anything "differently" from the perspective of causality. All it requires is selecting for ourselves what our requirements are, and so our wills, rather than having these things imposed as a reaction to environmental and/or personal dangers.

We cannot be free of how our minds cogitate. We can be free, in that cogitation, of coercion: we can freely hold** a will*. As has been discussed at length, this is a sensible concept.

We can even see when something freely holds** a will* that is not free*, and none of that observation, none of those objective qualities are any less for the fact that they are causally necessary from the prior state.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Let's look at some unnamed serial killer. Let's for a moment see that this person knows they kill people. They hold off their best as they may, but there's just this NEED screaming in their head.

Or, perhaps there is no NEED screaming in their head. Perhaps instead they are sociopathic, and simply enjoy the killing for the sense of control it gives them and because they enjoy the game of avoiding getting caught. Rather than feeding some irresistible impulse, it is simply feeding their ego.

Well, part of them most certainly is, and maybe that part is watching too. You might be describing a different neural group of the same brain as I am.

The point is that this thing can protect itself in some sick way from recognizing that it is evil, by not being connected directly to any of the parts of the mind that operate that capability.

Human neurology is weird, and sometimes regulatory controls present in some are absent in others.

We can recognize that even when someone unfreely holds** such a will*, they nonetheless do have the will*, and everyone including every force of agency within their own skull too has a responsibility to constrain that will* and make the driving impulse behind it unfree*.

If the impulse is irresistible, then it is an undue influence that needs to be treated medically and psychiatrically. That's why free will must be free of any irresistible impulse. It unduly influences our choices, in a way that prevents us from choosing for ourselves what we will do.

 

[Jarhyn]

Let's look at some unnamed serial killer. Let's for a moment see that this person knows they kill people. They hold off their best as they may, but there's just this NEED screaming in their head.

Or, perhaps there is no NEED screaming in their head. Perhaps instead they are sociopathic, and simply enjoy the killing for the sense of control it gives them and because they enjoy the game of avoiding getting caught. Rather than feeding some irresistible impulse, it is simply feeding their ego.

Well, part of them most certainly is, and maybe that part is watching too. You might be describing a different neural group of the same brain as I am.

The point is that this thing can protect itself in some sick way from recognizing that it is evil, by not being connected directly to any of the parts of the mind that operate that capability.

Human neurology is weird, and sometimes regulatory controls present in some are absent in others.

We can recognize that even when someone unfreely holds** such a will*, they nonetheless do have the will*, and everyone including every force of agency within their own skull too has a responsibility to constrain that will* and make the driving impulse behind it unfree*.

If the impulse is irresistible, then it is an undue influence that needs to be treated medically and psychiatrically. That's why free will must be free of any irresistible impulse. It unduly influences our choices, in a way that prevents us from choosing for ourselves what we will do.

Yes! That's where I'm going with this.

We can identify that there are two agents here, both in the same larger brain, the first being violated by a notably evil will/requirement process, and needing the help to grow their own agency to be superior to that of the requirement.

If that is not possible, rather than designing constraints that the agent may put over the sociopathic drive, we design constraints which we may place over the whole person: a locked room, a secure cell, maybe a straight jacket and face mask.

If we cannot engineer a world, create causes that create, of someone, a person whose wills are freely held and are not "kill folks" or a situation where such a sociopathic will is held in perpetual unfreeness by the whole person, we engineer a world wherein the whole person is kept in a state where the will itself is unfree.

Always it comes down to a discussion of how to make some specific will free or unfree in some concrete, objective way in the context of reality.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

What does a deterministic system mean?
''A deterministic system is a system in which a given initial state or condition will always produce the same results. There is no randomness or variation in the ways that inputs get delivered as outputs''

Right. But determinism itself is not the system. The system, whether it be the solar system or the central nervous system (CNS) or an individual person, is deterministic.

So, when my own CNS reads the restaurant menu, considers the many possibilities, and decides I will have the Chef Salad for dinner, it is my own brain that is behaving deterministically, and it is I, myself, that tells the waiter, "I will have the Chef Salad, please".

It is me, and not determinism, that is ordering the salad. And it will be me, and not determinism that will be responsible for the bill.

This is the simple empirical truth of the matter.

How a system operates, if deterministically, may be called - by definition - a deterministic system.

Exactly.

Compatibilism is built on semantics.

Semantics is that branch of philosophy that concerns itself with the meanings of our words and concepts. Meaning is pretty much everything.

Semantics won't help establish the idea of free will, that takes agency.

Semantics helps clarify that determinism has no agency, but a deterministic system may have agency. For example, you and I have agency, and we happen to be deterministic systems.

We do not appear deterministic sometimes, because the complexity of our operation gives the appearance of random and sometimes even chaotic behavior.

We embody all three of the major causal mechanisms: physical, biological, and rational. We can decide (rational) to have eggs for breakfast (biological) and then break three eggs and scramble them (physical).

We may assume that all three of these mechanisms are deterministic within their own domain, and that everything we do will be the reliable result of some specific combination of physical, biological, and rational causation. Thus, determinism holds.

Will cannot make a difference to outcomes within a determined system, consequently determinism negates free will agency.

What you don't seem to understand yet is that WILL IS A COG IN THAT SYSTEM! Will does not operate outside of that system, but is part of what is making that system deterministic! It is an integral part of the operation of the system that is us.

Free will is not a "free-floating will" operating from outside the system. Free will is when our CNS deterministically decides what we will do, while free of coercion and undue influence. Free will is a freely chosen "I will", where the only thing that "freely" means is that we were free of coercion and other forms of undue influence.

This free will, the one where we decide for ourselves what we will do, is meaningfully constrained by coercion and undue influence. It is not meaningfully constrained by determinism, and in fact operates entirely deterministically within a deterministic CNS within a deterministic universe.

But the fact, of everything behaving deterministically, is universal. And, as such, does not provide us with the specific facts we need to understand and deal with the specific causes of specific events. All of the meaningful and relevant information is found in the specific causes. Knowing the specific causes is the source of our freedom and our control over events that affect our lives.

But knowing the single fact of universal causal necessity tells us nothing useful, nothing that helps us to deal with any problems or to help us make any decisions. It is a useless triviality.

Attempting to weaponize this triviality to destroy free will and responsibility is a word game, based upon a paradox, a self-induced hoax. And it has been demonstrated that this nonsense can have harmful effects, by many studies, such as those outlined here in Why ‘Willusionism’ Leads to ‘Bad Results’: Comments on Baumeister, Crescioni, and Alquist .

 

[fromderinside]

Before we can talk of determinism properly we need to resolve the distinction between reality and perception.

I've been pushing a basis for treating how we perceive before we act as if our perceptions reflect reality. Clearly, the evidence does not support the notion that what we perceive is, or can be, a model for reality. That we operate on our perceptions conditioned by our evolutions does not fix the equation. So until one has an adequate demonstration that perception can be a substitute for reality all this looking inward for definitions must be examined and validated by material observation (experiment).

As a psychophysicist I was willing to generalize from observations of reports to material stimuli to generate thresholds and difference limen. Those can adequately predict how one responds to physical stimuli. But what they report are not reality, just an index of what might be a particular relation between what one perceives and what one receives. We speak of ideals with this kind of data relating reality to perception, not to representing reality.

Maths do not substitute for reality better than looking inward for 'evidences'. Maths are constructed from generalizations of subjective thought, perhaps based on experiment, but generated by building systems that operate for particular problems which were arrived at by subjective consideration. Packaging a loaf is not making bread.

 

[Jarhyn]

Before we can talk of determinism properly we need to resolve the distinction between reality and perception.

Again, one freedom is an imagining of, a precursor to a will calculated for it's likelihood to remain free, for the maintainability of the potential for freedom.

This subtle difference between "what we imagine" and "what is and shall be" is easy to get lost in. Both FDI and DBT get lost in it, the former in their discussions of subjective/objective, and the latter in his discussion of "regulatory control".

There is a reality as to which wills are "free", nonetheless, as to their requirements being satisfied.

If you were actually reading the discussion, you might have noticed we have already considered this distinction and found it does no injury to compatibilism.

One is the basis for the decision, and a provisional freedom, a model and an imagining.

Nonetheless this imagining yields a list of actions, a prescription to accomplish the result. The result itself is "an object must do some specific thing", usually an object deep inside the brain.

That's objective. Marvin and I both already understood that I think long before page 51. I've certainly been discussing it for some time now.

Just search "provisional freedom".

There are a bunch of references about it.

"Provisional freedom" is an arbitrary score attached to some imagined series of events as part of the absurd process by which wills are designed.

They tell us how likely a will is to succeed and that is a variable of whatever choice function is the agency of the decision.

This is not what compatibilists are discussing when they discuss "free will".

When compatibilists discuss "free will" they are discussing whether the objective requirements, the real "plate on the bear trap" trigger requirement is met.

It happens that the mechanical "plate on the bear trap" trigger requirement of a specific system with an active set of very loose requirements says "decide for yourself what you will do don't let anybody else tell you what to do".

Or at least some of us have that. Or something like that

When that will is not constantly having it's requirement met, we say "that person lacks free will" because the will we are referring to, is that one specific will. See all references of "free will**". We are not referencing whether it is "provisionally free", we are referencing whether it is objectively, actually free to the requirement. No imagination necessary.

There are a specific set of neurological processes that can, in their action, cause that will to be identifiable as "not free". This is not subjective any more than it is subjective that Urist losing his crutch caused his will to objectively switch tracks, his prior job to be cancelled, and a new job of seeking his crutch to exist.

Do catch up.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Before we can talk of determinism properly we need to resolve the distinction between reality and perception.

I've been pushing a basis for treating how we perceive before we act as if our perceptions reflect reality. Clearly, the evidence does not support the notion that what we perceive is, or can be, a model for reality. That we operate on our perceptions conditioned by our evolutions does not fix the equation. So until one has an adequate demonstration that perception can be a substitute for reality all this looking inward for definitions must be examined and validated by material observation (experiment).

As a psychophysicist I was willing to generalize from observations of reports to material stimuli to generate thresholds and difference limen. Those can adequately predict how one responds to physical stimuli. But what they report are not reality, just an index of what might be a particular relation between what one perceives and what one receives. We speak of ideals with this kind of data relating reality to perception, not to representing reality.

Maths do not substitute for reality better than looking inward for 'evidences'. Maths are constructed from generalizations of subjective thought, perhaps based on experiment, but generated by building systems that operate for particular problems which were arrived at by subjective consideration. Packaging a loaf is not making bread.

This is an old problem, captured already in two thought experiments:
1. Solipsism is a thought problem in which we ask ourselves, suppose I am the only living being and all the world around me is just a dream I'm having.
2. Brain-in-a-vat is a thought problem in which our brain has been separated from our skulls and placed in a nutrient solution. The scientist who removed our brain has hooked up lines running to our sensory nerve endings and being fed data from his computer. This data constitutes everything we currently see, hear, feel, and do.

There is a common solution to these two problems. If that is where our experience of reality comes from, then, for all practical purposes that is reality, because it is the only reality we can ever know. So, we may as well treat it as such, and continue on our merry way.

 

[fromderinside]

Before we can talk of determinism properly we need to resolve the distinction between reality and perception.

I've been pushing a basis for treating how we perceive before we act as if our perceptions reflect reality. Clearly, the evidence does not support the notion that what we perceive is, or can be, a model for reality. That we operate on our perceptions conditioned by our evolutions does not fix the equation. So until one has an adequate demonstration that perception can be a substitute for reality all this looking inward for definitions must be examined and validated by material observation (experiment).

As a psychophysicist I was willing to generalize from observations of reports to material stimuli to generate thresholds and difference limen. Those can adequately predict how one responds to physical stimuli. But what they report are not reality, just an index of what might be a particular relation between what one perceives and what one receives. We speak of ideals with this kind of data relating reality to perception, not to representing reality.

Maths do not substitute for reality better than looking inward for 'evidences'. Maths are constructed from generalizations of subjective thought, perhaps based on experiment, but generated by building systems that operate for particular problems which were arrived at by subjective consideration. Packaging a loaf is not making bread.

This is an old problem, captured already in two thought experiments:
1. Solipsism is a thought problem in which we ask ourselves, suppose I am the only living being and all the world around me is just a dream I'm having.
2. Brain-in-a-vat is a thought problem in which our brain has been separated from our skulls and placed in a nutrient solution. The scientist who removed our brain has hooked up lines running to our sensory nerve endings and being fed data from his computer. This data constitutes everything we currently see, hear, feel, and do.

There is a common solution to these two problems. If that is where our experience of reality comes from, then, for all practical purposes that is reality, because it is the only reality we can ever know. So, we may as well treat it as such, and continue on our merry way.

Yet that "practical purposes" reality is different from scientific reality where material cause leads to material effect. If we accepted your "for all practical purposes" handwave we would not have material physical theory and results from whence all all material scientific discoveries arise. We'd still be rationalists wandering around in the muck coming up with silly characterizations like Aristotle's water, fire, air, and earth, never advancing more or less the way we did from the transition from hunter gatherer to Archimedes.

Science and the empirical method gives us a much richer toy box with which to operate and measure. We know that what we sense isn't sufficient. We know there is a material reality which takes us way beyond "our merry way". It is certainly worth finding ways to connect the material to what we actually do. You are just being lazy.

 

[fromderinside]

Before we can talk of determinism properly we need to resolve the distinction between reality and perception.

Again, one freedom is an imagining of, a precursor to a will calculated for it's likelihood to remain free, for the maintainability of the potential for freedom.

This subtle difference between "what we imagine" and "what is and shall be" is easy to get lost in. Both FDI and DBT get lost in it, the former in their discussions of subjective/objective, and the latter in his discussion of "regulatory control".

There is a reality as to which wills are "free", nonetheless, as to their requirements being satisfied.

If you were actually reading the discussion, you might have noticed we have already considered this distinction and found it does no injury to compatibilism.

One is the basis for the decision, and a provisional freedom, a model and an imagining.

Nonetheless this imagining yields a list of actions, a prescription to accomplish the result. The result itself is "an object must do some specific thing", usually an object deep inside the brain.

That's objective. Marvin and I both already understood that I think long before page 51. I've certainly been discussing it for some time now.

Just search "provisional freedom".

There are a bunch of references about it.

"Provisional freedom" is an arbitrary score attached to some imagined series of events as part of the absurd process by which wills are designed.

They tell us how likely a will is to succeed and that is a variable of whatever choice function is the agency of the decision.

This is not what compatibilists are discussing when they discuss "free will".

When compatibilists discuss "free will" they are discussing whether the objective requirements, the real "plate on the bear trap" trigger requirement is met.

It happens that the mechanical "plate on the bear trap" trigger requirement of a specific system with an active set of very loose requirements says "decide for yourself what you will do don't let anybody else tell you what to do".

Or at least some of us have that. Or something like that

When that will is not constantly having it's requirement met, we say "that person lacks free will" because the will we are referring to, is that one specific will. See all references of "free will**". We are not referencing whether it is "provisionally free", we are referencing whether it is objectively, actually free to the requirement. No imagination necessary.

There are a specific set of neurological processes that can, in their action, cause that will to be identifiable as "not free". This is not subjective any more than it is subjective that Urist losing his crutch caused his will to objectively switch tracks, his prior job to be cancelled, and a new job of seeking his crutch to exist.

Do catch up.

I don't have to. Math isn't material. Its a man made construct used in science as a convenient operator with which one can explain material processes. Your problem is you want to take the math and apply it to your schemes for manipulating subjective notions as an experiment The essential elements in science are experiments using direct (material) observation presented with material measurable reference.

Put in teaching form: https://explorable.com/scientific-elements

the elements are:
Observation and Review
Hypothesis
Predictions
Experiment and Measurement (This is a material, not mental, exercise)
Variations.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Before we can talk of determinism properly we need to resolve the distinction between reality and perception.

I've been pushing a basis for treating how we perceive before we act as if our perceptions reflect reality. Clearly, the evidence does not support the notion that what we perceive is, or can be, a model for reality. That we operate on our perceptions conditioned by our evolutions does not fix the equation. So until one has an adequate demonstration that perception can be a substitute for reality all this looking inward for definitions must be examined and validated by material observation (experiment).

As a psychophysicist I was willing to generalize from observations of reports to material stimuli to generate thresholds and difference limen. Those can adequately predict how one responds to physical stimuli. But what they report are not reality, just an index of what might be a particular relation between what one perceives and what one receives. We speak of ideals with this kind of data relating reality to perception, not to representing reality.

Maths do not substitute for reality better than looking inward for 'evidences'. Maths are constructed from generalizations of subjective thought, perhaps based on experiment, but generated by building systems that operate for particular problems which were arrived at by subjective consideration. Packaging a loaf is not making bread.

This is an old problem, captured already in two thought experiments:
1. Solipsism is a thought problem in which we ask ourselves, suppose I am the only living being and all the world around me is just a dream I'm having.
2. Brain-in-a-vat is a thought problem in which our brain has been separated from our skulls and placed in a nutrient solution. The scientist who removed our brain has hooked up lines running to our sensory nerve endings and being fed data from his computer. This data constitutes everything we currently see, hear, feel, and do.

There is a common solution to these two problems. If that is where our experience of reality comes from, then, for all practical purposes that is reality, because it is the only reality we can ever know. So, we may as well treat it as such, and continue on our merry way.

Yet that "practical purposes" reality is different from scientific reality where material cause leads to material effect. If we accepted your "for all practical purposes" handwave we would not have material physical theory and results from whence all all material scientific discoveries arise. We'd still be rationalists wandering around in the muck coming up with silly characterizations like Aristotle's water, fire, air, and earth, never advancing more or less the way we did from the transition from hunter gatherer to Archimedes.

Science and the empirical method gives us a much richer toy box with which to operate and measure. We know that what we sense isn't sufficient. We know there is a material reality which takes us way beyond "our merry way". It is certainly worth finding ways to connect the material to what we actually do. You are just being lazy.

Material is something you can see and touch, something you can trip over or bump into, something you can taste or smell. It's something we experience subjectively. We share those experiences with language and voila: objectivity, science, and the scientific method.

 

[DBT]

''A deterministic system is a system in which a given initial state or condition will always produce the same results. There is no randomness or variation in the ways that inputs get delivered as outputs''

Yes.

Compatibilism is built on semantics. Semantics won't help establish the idea of free will, that takes agency. That will is able to make a difference. Will cannot make a difference to outcomes within a determined system, consequently determinism negates free will agency

No.

Assertion fallacy. If "compatibilism" is built on semenantics, so is math. If math is built on semantics so is physics. If physics is built on semantics, "determinism" is semantic, and so if it is "semantic" (it is not) then nothing can be said of anything.

This leads to an obvious contradiction so we can fairly well throw it out.

I have pointed out a deterministic system. I have shown you how, in that deterministic system, there are agents (machines which interpret wills such as they are, and execute them), and how various wills are observably, objectively "free" and demonstrated how various requirements have observable, objectively causal sources, and how the nature of the source of these requirements impacts the behavior of the system itself, and it's game theory.

You keep thinking this is about "making a difference" as if that's even a sensible thing to have in your head. It is not. It is not about "making a difference". No compatibilist ever set out to "make a difference".

Many have set out to go forth, be seen, do "big" things, but compatibilists know that "making a difference" is nonsense.

Instead, we set out to effectively do what we want. To effectively do what we want does not require doing anything "differently" from the perspective of causality. All it requires is selecting for ourselves what our requirements are, and so our wills, rather than having these things imposed as a reaction to environmental and/or personal dangers.

We cannot be free of how our minds cogitate. We can be free, in that cogitation, of coercion: we can freely hold** a will*. As has been discussed at length, this is a sensible concept.

We can even see when something freely holds** a will* that is not free*, and none of that observation, none of those objective qualities are any less for the fact that they are causally necessary from the prior state.

I have been over this time and again. Whatever is explained is either misconstrued or rejected. Which is why I'm only dealing with one poster and one reply a day.

If you don't understand incompatibilism by now, you never will.

Basically;
1. We have no control over circumstances that existed in the past, nor do we have any control over the laws of nature.

2. If A causes B, we have no control over A, and A is sufficient for B, then we have no control over B.

3. All of our actions and thoughts are consequences of past events and the laws of nature.

4. Assuming responsibility requires control, we are not responsible for what we do or think (2, 3).

 

[Jarhyn]

Whatever is explained is either misconstrued or rejected

It is not misconstrued. It IS rejected, because it is fallacious. We explain why, and then you ignore it. Round and round we go. WHEEE!

If A causes B, we have no control over A

and there it is, where you insert the non-sequitur.

You are making a bald assertion and you seem blind to it.

A causes B, yes, but we are A, and we absolutely have control over ourselves.

From there the rest of your assertions fall apart.

 

[Jarhyn]

Before we can talk of determinism properly we need to resolve the distinction between reality and perception.

Again, one freedom is an imagining of, a precursor to a will calculated for it's likelihood to remain free, for the maintainability of the potential for freedom.

This subtle difference between "what we imagine" and "what is and shall be" is easy to get lost in. Both FDI and DBT get lost in it, the former in their discussions of subjective/objective, and the latter in his discussion of "regulatory control".

There is a reality as to which wills are "free", nonetheless, as to their requirements being satisfied.

If you were actually reading the discussion, you might have noticed we have already considered this distinction and found it does no injury to compatibilism.

One is the basis for the decision, and a provisional freedom, a model and an imagining.

Nonetheless this imagining yields a list of actions, a prescription to accomplish the result. The result itself is "an object must do some specific thing", usually an object deep inside the brain.

That's objective. Marvin and I both already understood that I think long before page 51. I've certainly been discussing it for some time now.

Just search "provisional freedom".

There are a bunch of references about it.

"Provisional freedom" is an arbitrary score attached to some imagined series of events as part of the absurd process by which wills are designed.

They tell us how likely a will is to succeed and that is a variable of whatever choice function is the agency of the decision.

This is not what compatibilists are discussing when they discuss "free will".

When compatibilists discuss "free will" they are discussing whether the objective requirements, the real "plate on the bear trap" trigger requirement is met.

It happens that the mechanical "plate on the bear trap" trigger requirement of a specific system with an active set of very loose requirements says "decide for yourself what you will do don't let anybody else tell you what to do".

Or at least some of us have that. Or something like that

When that will is not constantly having it's requirement met, we say "that person lacks free will" because the will we are referring to, is that one specific will. See all references of "free will**". We are not referencing whether it is "provisionally free", we are referencing whether it is objectively, actually free to the requirement. No imagination necessary.

There are a specific set of neurological processes that can, in their action, cause that will to be identifiable as "not free". This is not subjective any more than it is subjective that Urist losing his crutch caused his will to objectively switch tracks, his prior job to be cancelled, and a new job of seeking his crutch to exist.

Do catch up.

I don't have to. Math isn't material. Its a man made construct used in science as a convenient operator with which one can explain material processes. Your problem is you want to take the math and apply it to your schemes for manipulating subjective notions as an experiment The essential elements in science are experiments using direct (material) observation presented with material measurable reference.

Put in teaching form: https://explorable.com/scientific-elements

the elements are:
Observation and Review
Hypothesis
Predictions
Experiment and Measurement (This is a material, not mental, exercise)
Variations.

The computer is absolutely material, and the word you use "determinism" is a concept of math.

You don't seem to see that, or understand it, for all your bloviation.

Math is not something humans made, it is something that the universe adheres to that people just discovered and described. It may perhaps be the foundation of all ideas of description in general.

When YOU say "the universe is deterministic" you are taking a structure of math "determinism" with requirements produced by what determinism is in math, and saying the universe itself satisfies all those properties.

When you say "the universe is deterministic" you are saying "the universe is a mathematically perfect machination of particle behaviors" whether you want to or not.

When you say "determinism rules out free will**" you are speaking not of one thing, but an entire class of things in math.

All I have to do is find ONE thing in that class, just one, and show that your statement is false of that ONE thing in that class to disprove your silliness.

Moreover, in doing so, I also objectively prove free will exists specifically in this universe because it will be proven of a mathematically deterministic system that exists in this universe.

You are the one who says "deterministic systems do not allow free will**"

Secondly, while this is in one aspect a solid, hard math, it is also a material deterministic object existing in a universe which you claim is deterministic... And those objects, which statistically are bound as mathematical constructs of a deterministic universe still have observable, objective wills, and some of those observable extant wills are objectively "free".

Just not that one will to open that one door. That will is freely held** but is not free*.

Again, we are talking about what "determinism" means and your contention is that "this cannot exist in determinsm."

I fairly well know determinism because I study the behavior of deterministic systems. In fact I commonly reverse engineer them.

If you wish to weaken your claim to "the free will you describe can exist in deterministic systems but we are incapable of that because (hand-waves neurology)" then we can move to that argument, but it would require you to drop this silly notion of yours about determinism and what it "allows".

If you wish to step into that argument, you abandon hard determinism.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Basically;
1. We have no control over circumstances that existed in the past, nor do we have any control over the laws of nature.
2. If A causes B, we have no control over A, and A is sufficient for B, then we have no control over B.
3. All of our actions and thoughts are consequences of past events and the laws of nature.
4. Assuming responsibility requires control, we are not responsible for what we do or think (2, 3).

The argument fails at the first premise.

My past includes what I did yesterday. And I clearly controlled that part of the past, by my own choices and my own actions.

As to the laws of nature, I happen to be a natural object, behaving as I naturally do. How I operate, as I go about controlling what I do next, and having an affect on the other objects around me, is all well documented in those laws as me being myself and doing those things myself, for my own reasons and interests. That's what the laws of nature say that I do.

So, it turns out that the control of what I do is located specifically within me. And the control of what other similar objects do is located specifically within them. After all, that's the law.

 

[DBT]

What does a deterministic system mean?
''A deterministic system is a system in which a given initial state or condition will always produce the same results. There is no randomness or variation in the ways that inputs get delivered as outputs''

Right. But determinism itself is not the system. The system, whether it be the solar system or the central nervous system (CNS) or an individual person, is deterministic.

Yes. Which, given no choice or regulative control as to how things unfold, does not, and cannot logically equate to free will.

So, when my own CNS reads the restaurant menu, considers the many possibilities, and decides I will have the Chef Salad for dinner, it is my own brain that is behaving deterministically, and it is I, myself, that tells the waiter, "I will have the Chef Salad, please".

The brain is the system, and as a conscious entity, it is not ''your'' brain to control as if you are the controller of 'your' brain. The brain generates you, your existence, your experience of self, thought and action through its information processing activity.

The state of the brain equals the condition of you, which does not equate to free will.

And again, nobody is denying the brain the ability to respond to its inputs, menus, driving, writing, walking, etc....all performed by the brain's information processing activity.

A computer can select options from a menu based on a set of criteria, but has no means of consuming its choice.


Decision making does not equate to free will.

It is me, and not determinism, that is ordering the salad. And it will be me, and not determinism that will be responsible for the bill.

This is the simple empirical truth of the matter.

It's you brain that acquired and processed the information that determined the choice that was made in that instance, milliseconds before you the conscious Marvin Edwards was aware of it. Processing precedes conscious representation in the form of conscious thought; I'll take the Spanish Mackerel was decided before the thought came to mind.

Information processing is not free will.

Semantics is that branch of philosophy that concerns itself with the meanings of our words and concepts. Meaning is pretty much everything.

Arguments fail to prove their proposition if their premises are flawed. Premises are flawed if they neglect vital information.

The vital information that compatibilism neglects to include is inner necessitation;

''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.''


''Wanting to do X is fully determined by these prior causes. Now that the desire to do X is being felt, there are no other constraints that keep the person from doing what he wants, namely X.'' - cold comfort in compatibilism.

Will cannot make a difference to outcomes within a determined system, consequently determinism negates free will agency.

What you don't seem to understand yet is that WILL IS A COG IN THAT SYSTEM! Will does not operate outside of that system, but is part of what is making that system deterministic! It is an integral part of the operation of the system that is us.

Oh, but I do understand the role of will quite well, which I have described numerous times. The point being that it is not will that regulates brain activity or makes 'freely willed decisions,' and that it is precisely what you say "a cog in the system.''

A cog in the system that has no agency in terms of what decisions are made or which actions are taken.


The personal narrative;
''For example, in one study, researchers recorded the brain activity of participants when they raised their arm intentionally, when it was lifted by a pulley, and when it moved in response to a hypnotic suggestion that it was being lifted by a pulley.

Similar areas of the brain were active during the involuntary and the suggested “alien” movement, while brain activity for the intentional action was different. So, hypnotic suggestion can be seen as a means of communicating an idea or belief that, when accepted, has the power to alter a person’s perceptions or behaviour.''

''All this may leave one wondering where our thoughts, emotions and perceptions actually come from. We argue that the contents of consciousness are a subset of the experiences, emotions, thoughts and beliefs that are generated by non-conscious processes within our brains.

This subset takes the form of a personal narrative, which is constantly being updated. The personal narrative exists in parallel with our personal awareness, but the latter has no influence over the former.''

Free will is not a "free-floating will" operating from outside the system. Free will is when our CNS deterministically decides what we will do, while free of coercion and undue influence. Free will is a freely chosen "I will", where the only thing that "freely" means is that we were free of coercion and other forms of undue influence.

That's a declaration of belief. Our CNS works according to its physical makeup and electrochemical information processing activity, not will, not free will.

The brain as a biological [parallel] information processor functions in terms of senses, Neural networks, electrochemical processes, memory function (criteria), not free will.

A Computer as a linear information processor makes decisions (selects options) according to its hardware (silicon chips, circuitry) and software (criteria), not free will.

Not free will because in each and every instance of a selection being made, it is the non willed, non chosen state of the system that fixes the 'selected' option.....in other words it is determined, fixed by the state of the system.

Not willed. Not freely willed.

Fixed.

This free will, the one where we decide for ourselves what we will do, is meaningfully constrained by coercion and undue influence. It is not meaningfully constrained by determinism, and in fact operates entirely deterministically within a deterministic CNS within a deterministic universe.

A declaration of belief - for the reasons outlined above and described elsewhere (articles, experiments, case studies, etc)


For example:

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.''

Free will? Hardly.

 

[Jarhyn]

given no choice or regulative control

Not a given.

A computer can select options from a menu based on a set of criteria, but has no means of consuming its choice.

The dwarf DOES in fact have a means of consuming it's choice... Which I think is entirely the point of why I undertake that exercise.

Urist, a thing existing in the behavior of a computer system, is an object. This object is a subset of all the particles of the computer, placed in the way of an occasional service by the process which operates his existence.

He has a will. That he has this will is undeniable and objective.

The will is "open the door".

The causality of where that will came from is also undeniable and objective.

That will, "to open the door" is "not free".

The dwarf does not know this. If the dwarf had an active ability to assess wills, he would still not know this. He would think incorrectly, subjectively, that he had a free* will*, were I to enable this. Still his imagination of freedom is not this actual freedom I am referencing.

The actual freedom I am referencing (or lack thereof) is created by prior causes: the door being locked.

Again, he has a real will, and that real will has an observable objective truth value in the context of his system.

Whether his will is free or not is not his choice to make.

Were he to have the power to unlock doors, his will would be free; he would simply unlock the door.

Shortly, when he has transformed into a were-rabbit, his will to open the door will be free on account of him having the power to simply smash it down.

Sadly, he will not really freely hold** that will*. He will hold it through coercive process: he is coerced into transforming into a were-rabbit.

 

[pood]

''A deterministic system is a system in which a given initial state or condition will always produce the same results. There is no randomness or variation in the ways that inputs get delivered as outputs''

Yes.

Compatibilism is built on semantics. Semantics won't help establish the idea of free will, that takes agency. That will is able to make a difference. Will cannot make a difference to outcomes within a determined system, consequently determinism negates free will agency

No.

Assertion fallacy. If "compatibilism" is built on semenantics, so is math. If math is built on semantics so is physics. If physics is built on semantics, "determinism" is semantic, and so if it is "semantic" (it is not) then nothing can be said of anything.

This leads to an obvious contradiction so we can fairly well throw it out.

I have pointed out a deterministic system. I have shown you how, in that deterministic system, there are agents (machines which interpret wills such as they are, and execute them), and how various wills are observably, objectively "free" and demonstrated how various requirements have observable, objectively causal sources, and how the nature of the source of these requirements impacts the behavior of the system itself, and it's game theory.

You keep thinking this is about "making a difference" as if that's even a sensible thing to have in your head. It is not. It is not about "making a difference". No compatibilist ever set out to "make a difference".

Many have set out to go forth, be seen, do "big" things, but compatibilists know that "making a difference" is nonsense.

Instead, we set out to effectively do what we want. To effectively do what we want does not require doing anything "differently" from the perspective of causality. All it requires is selecting for ourselves what our requirements are, and so our wills, rather than having these things imposed as a reaction to environmental and/or personal dangers.

We cannot be free of how our minds cogitate. We can be free, in that cogitation, of coercion: we can freely hold** a will*. As has been discussed at length, this is a sensible concept.

We can even see when something freely holds** a will* that is not free*, and none of that observation, none of those objective qualities are any less for the fact that they are causally necessary from the prior state.

I have been over this time and again. Whatever is explained is either misconstrued or rejected. Which is why I'm only dealing with one poster and one reply a day.

If you don't understand incompatibilism by now, you never will.

Basically;
1. We have no control over circumstances that existed in the past, nor do we have any control over the laws of nature.

2. If A causes B, we have no control over A, and A is sufficient for B, then we have no control over B.

3. All of our actions and thoughts are consequences of past events and the laws of nature.

4. Assuming responsibility requires control, we are not responsible for what we do or think (2, 3).

1. We do not need to have control over the laws of nature, because they have no control over us. They are descriptive and not prescriptive. You have dodged this point every time, at best only glancingly addressing it.

2. If A causes B and we are B and we cause C, then we have direct control over C.

3. Our actions and thoughts are not consequences of past events, only influenced by them. Our actions and thoughts are not consquences of the laws of nature; the laws of nature, when we correctly take laws to be descriptions of what happens in the world, are consequences of our actions and thoughts.

4. Responsibility does not require control over our neuronal states (though we do have some control over that) because we are our neuronal states. Therefore we are responsible for what we do and think.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

The brain is the system, and as a conscious entity, it is not ''your'' brain to control as if you are the controller of 'your' brain. The brain generates you, your existence, your experience of self, thought and action through its information processing activity.

The answer to your riddle is this: If my brain generates me, my existence, my experience of self, my thoughts and actions, through its information processing activity, then it logically follows that, in all matters of my conscious awareness, my brain is identical to me.

I am my brain, or, at the very least, my brain's narrator function. When my brain decides something, and then informs me what it has decided, then I have decided it. Any actions that my brain consciously controls, I control.

My brain is controlling my choice, therefore I am controlling my choice. And the waiter will bring me the bill for my dinner.

The state of the brain equals the condition of you, which does not equate to free will.

Depends. Are you talking about libertarian free will or compatibilist free will?

Compatibilist free will only requires that, while the brain is choosing what I will have for dinner, it will not be subject to coercion or other undue influences.

Libertarian free will requires that the self must exist separate from the brain. And that seems to be the free will that you're constantly interjecting into this discussion. And it is also the free will that your favorite neuroscientists constantly speak of.

If you wish to discuss libertarian free will, then please start your own thread. This thread is about compatibilism.

And again, nobody is denying the brain the ability to respond to its inputs, menus, driving, writing, walking, etc....all performed by the brain's information processing activity.

Rather odd that you would leave the brain's decision-making ability off your list. After all, that is what free will is about, choosing for ourselves what we will do. Decision-making is kind of the single essential function of compatibilist free will.

A computer can select options from a menu based on a set of criteria, but has no means of consuming its choice.

Right. A computer can make logical decisions based upon its programming. But the motivation and direction that created the computer was caused by human will. The computer has no will of its own.

It's your brain that acquired and processed the information that determined the choice that was made in that instance, milliseconds before you the conscious Marvin Edwards was aware of it. Processing precedes conscious representation in the form of conscious thought; I'll take the Spanish Mackerel was decided before the thought came to mind.

Good, then we agree that (1) my own brain is choosing the Spanish Mackerel, and (2) that I was consciously aware of that choice before I told the waiter, "I'll have the Spanish Mackerel, please", and therefore, (3) I am responsible for the order and thus the waiter will bring me the bill.

Nothing at all is changed by any of the Libet styled experiments.

We can shorten your description, Marvin's brain "acquired and processed the information that determined the choice that was made in that instance, milliseconds before you the conscious Marvin Edwards was aware of it", into its simpler and more common form, "I decided to".

For example, when I say, "We decided to go out for dinner after work", what I mean is that "each of our brains acquired and processed the information that determined the choice that was made in that instance, milliseconds before we were consciously aware of it".

Got it? Okay. So, we decided to go out for dinner after work. We discussed where we might go, and we decided to go to Ruby Tuesdays. We got in our cars, drove to the restaurant, went inside, sat down, and began reading the menu.

Interesting fact: Prior to reading the menu, no one had a clue that the menu would include Spanish Mackerel. No ones conscious or unconscious brain functions had any access to this information. Got it?

Unconscious processes, including reading skills, then informed both our conscious and unconscious functions that Spanish Mackerel was a real possibility.

Information processing is not free will.

It is odd that you keep making this claim, when free will happens to be a decision we make for ourselves through information processing, while free of coercion and undue influence.

The vital information that compatibilism neglects to include is inner necessitation;

Nope. Free will is information processing and free will is specifically the inner necessitation by the decision-making function that chooses what we will do.

Compatibilism neglects nothing that is meaningful or relevant to this issue.

Oh, but I do understand the role of will quite well, which I have described numerous times. The point being that it is not will that regulates brain activity or makes 'freely willed decisions,' and that it is precisely what you say "a cog in the system.'' A cog in the system that has no agency in terms of what decisions are made or which actions are taken.

As has been pointed out repeatedly, it is the decision-making function that controls the will, not the other way around. The function of will is to sustain conscious intent until a given task is complete.

 

[Jarhyn]

The function of will is to sustain conscious intent until a given task is complete

Well, not even always conscious. I know I put together certain wills, particularly open-ended ones, and they can go in the background forgotten for years until they are just "hey, doing the thing!"

For example "the will to defend myself and others" that was laid down. I remember it more often because it makes a good example of a re-programmed reactive will.

Thankfully, for me, that's only ever woken up a few times. I've gotten into fights and sometimes because I initiated the physical altercation.

I have a better hold on that these days but it's still there.

Unlike Urist, though, I have the power, the regulatory control, to constrain my will to "FIGHT!"

I had spent a long time putting together principles to describe and constrain my will to fight, and indeed my will to do many other things besides.

I do this not merely as Urist does, by having higher priority desires in my "will stack", but rather by shoving a requirement on the initiation and selection of such a thing, by making a decision that "in general, it is inappropriate to fight except when defending oneself or others from unnecessary injury to the freedoms of their wills and to set their own requirements, within the bounds of mutual consent and good faith."

And owing to the fact that such situations are rare, I rarely find myself even approaching fighting.

Given the fact this has not always been the case and I know the times, days, situations, the very moments that both the will to FIGHT was born and when the constraints of requirement to initiate were laid down, I would like to point out for DBT, it is clear there are regulatory controls within the system that regulate the initiation of wills.

I would expect no less of anyone who holds a will that can do damage to society if left "wanton".

The whole point of this discussion for me is to eventually get to the point where we can prescribe abnegation, automatic constraint of personal will.

I think this power of abnegation is fundamentally the thing lacking in the sociopath, the human monsters of this world.

It's definitely lacked in me whenever I have been monstrous.

And it is uncontroversial among the vast majority of people that the power to do so exists, and is expected to be learned, and applied when someone has a will that drives a requirement that is erosive to society and which is not so constrained.

 

[fromderinside]

Before we can talk of determinism properly we need to resolve the distinction between reality and perception.

I've been pushing a basis for treating how we perceive before we act as if our perceptions reflect reality. Clearly, the evidence does not support the notion that what we perceive is, or can be, a model for reality. That we operate on our perceptions conditioned by our evolutions does not fix the equation. So until one has an adequate demonstration that perception can be a substitute for reality all this looking inward for definitions must be examined and validated by material observation (experiment).

As a psychophysicist I was willing to generalize from observations of reports to material stimuli to generate thresholds and difference limen. Those can adequately predict how one responds to physical stimuli. But what they report are not reality, just an index of what might be a particular relation between what one perceives and what one receives. We speak of ideals with this kind of data relating reality to perception, not to representing reality.

Maths do not substitute for reality better than looking inward for 'evidences'. Maths are constructed from generalizations of subjective thought, perhaps based on experiment, but generated by building systems that operate for particular problems which were arrived at by subjective consideration. Packaging a loaf is not making bread.

This is an old problem, captured already in two thought experiments:
1. Solipsism is a thought problem in which we ask ourselves, suppose I am the only living being and all the world around me is just a dream I'm having.
2. Brain-in-a-vat is a thought problem in which our brain has been separated from our skulls and placed in a nutrient solution. The scientist who removed our brain has hooked up lines running to our sensory nerve endings and being fed data from his computer. This data constitutes everything we currently see, hear, feel, and do.

There is a common solution to these two problems. If that is where our experience of reality comes from, then, for all practical purposes that is reality, because it is the only reality we can ever know. So, we may as well treat it as such, and continue on our merry way.

Yet that "practical purposes" reality is different from scientific reality where material cause leads to material effect. If we accepted your "for all practical purposes" handwave we would not have material physical theory and results from whence all all material scientific discoveries arise. We'd still be rationalists wandering around in the muck coming up with silly characterizations like Aristotle's water, fire, air, and earth, never advancing more or less the way we did from the transition from hunter gatherer to Archimedes.

Science and the empirical method gives us a much richer toy box with which to operate and measure. We know that what we sense isn't sufficient. We know there is a material reality which takes us way beyond "our merry way". It is certainly worth finding ways to connect the material to what we actually do. You are just being lazy.

Material is something you can see and touch, something you can trip over or bump into, something you can taste or smell. It's something we experience subjectively. We share those experiences with language and voila: objectivity, science, and the scientific method.

Material is all those things we sense. Its just that with them we don't depend on our senses to appraise them. We do that by employing the scientific method to objectively measure them. Comparing subjectivity versus objectively reveals our weaknesses re using our senses with respect to the real world. Our sense and other subjective experiences demonstrates, when compared to the scientific measurement of the material world, how deficient we are in subjectively understanding and exploiting the real world.