Compatibilism: What's that About?

[Jarhyn]

Sorry guys. We have the scientific method which permits us to discover realities not perceived by our senses. Once discovered we can compare these new realities with our sense data and make use of that information. If the sense requirement was valid we wouldn't have relativity or quantum mechanics nor would it be possible for us to create or control the bomb which we obviously can.

Not if all we have is our senses, if all we have are the senses of other things, if our senses are the only thing that carry the sense data of those other sensory objects.

WTF??? I specified we have the scientific method in addition to our senses. Nobody gives a shit about responding to conditional that is already specified. Go argue with yourself.

No, we don't. Because the scientific method is... A collection of talking about sense output, which you claim we cannot know.

In your (broken, in fact rejected) language "subjective all the way down I'm afraid". All just "images of images of images processed by imaginations..."

Instead, I would rather expect it's knowledge, understood, with error bars just the same as anything else we sense.

 

[fromderinside]

Everyone who agrees with the statement "All we have are our senses" in response to "we have the scientific method" fails.

 

[DBT]

My point is simple. Causal necessity does not change anything in any meaningful or relevant way. All events are always the result of prior causes. And this happens to include the "free will" event. Free will is an event in which a person decides for themselves what they will do, while free of coercion and undue influence.

If will is fixed by prior causes, it cannot be defined as a free will event. It's just another determined event, neither chosen or willed.

Actions are not willed. Information interacts with neural networks, information exchange, and an action is initiated and reported in conscious form, in that order of events.

Free will is being asserted, not demonstrated. Asserted in the face of evidence to the contrary, a system that entails all actions, where nothing is freely willed.

All causally necessary events actually happen in physical reality. Even mental events correspond to physical brain processes which are happening in physical reality. So, when choosing happens, it is really happening, as a physical event within a physical brain.

Of course. Free will plays no part in the process of evolution of events as they unfold without deviation.

The brain organizes sensory data into a symbolic model of reality. It represents this reality with language and sensory images. With this model, it imagines possible futures (what I can do and what can happen) and possible pasts (what I could have done and what could have happened). It forms plans and sets its intent upon doing specific things (what I will do), either right now (I will have the Chef Salad for dinner) or in the future (my "last will and testament").

Evolved mechanisms that enable the ability to acquire and process information and respond in complex but deterministic ways, each and every increment of information interaction, however complex, being fixed by the prior state of the system, inputs, processing, memory function, output.

A failure in memory function, for instance, disrupting rational response, etcetera.

Rational does not equate to free will.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

What do you think ''All of these events, including my choices, were causally necessary from any prior point in time. And they all proceeded without deviation from the Big Bang to this moment'' means, if not that all facts of the future are entailed?

It simply means that it was inevitable I would not be subject to coercion or undue influence in the restaurant, but that it would be I, myself, that would be choosing the salad rather than the steak, for my own goals and reasons. In other words, it was inevitable that I would make the choice of my own free will.

Every event that happens is always inevitable. It is hardly worth mentioning. One wonders why hard determinists insist upon bringing it up inappropriately, as if it actually made a difference. It does not.

 

[Jarhyn]

Everyone who agrees with the statement "All we have are our senses" in response to "we have the scientific method" fails.

Of course they don't see that sauce for the good is sauce for the gander.

FDI, the scientific method does not transform sense information to anything but sense information, if you do not accept in the first place that things may be known.

The only difference that you could be possible talking about is the difference of whether the image that constitutes the "knowledge" is inside or outside of a neural network and the fact is that there is no specialness across that boundary.

We are tools, as much as we have them. Some more than others.

As it is, Turing made mince out of that failed and foolish idea that we cannot quantify and observe choice.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

My point is simple. Causal necessity does not change anything in any meaningful or relevant way. All events are always the result of prior causes. And this happens to include the "free will" event. Free will is an event in which a person decides for themselves what they will do, while free of coercion and undue influence.

If will is fixed by prior causes, it cannot be defined as a free will event.

But you've seen me do exactly that, simply by using the ordinary, common sense definition of free will: a choice we make for ourselves while free of coercion and undue influence. This is the free will that is used when assessing a person's moral or legal responsibility for their actions. It is the only rational definition of free will.

The definition you're using is the nonsensical "freedom from causal necessity". There is no freedom from reliable cause and effect, because every freedom we have, to do anything at all, requires reliable cause and effect. Thus "freedom from causal necessity" is an oxymoron, a self-contradiction, presenting us with the paradoxical question: "How can we be free of that which freedom itself requires?"

It's just another determined event, ...

Choosing the salad was indeed just another determined event. It was causally necessary, from any prior point in time t, that I would be making that choice, for my own reasons, while free of coercion and undue influence, and thus "of my own free will".

neither chosen

The salad was chosen, so "not chosen" is empirically false.

or willed.

The menu of alternate possibilities required me to make a choice. So, I willingly considered my options and chose the salad. So, "not willed" is also empirically false.

Actions are not willed.

And the action that necessarily followed my choosing the salad was to communicate this intent to the waiter, "I will have the Chef Salad, please".

All of these claims have been refuted repeatedly by the empirical evidence.

Information interacts with neural networks, information exchange, and an action is initiated and reported in conscious form, in that order of events.

You are simply choosing another way to describe the exact same event in order to hide the facts. For example, it was a fact that I considered the juicy steak for dinner. And it was a fact that my goal of eating more vegetables brought to my awareness that I had already had bacon and eggs for breakfast and a double cheeseburger for lunch. And it was also a fact that I then turned my conscious attention to the Chef Salad, and then chose to order the salad instead of the steak. Finally, I told the waiter, "I will have the Chef Salad, please".

This event is commonly known as "a choice of my own free will". And, of course, it also involved my own physical neural network processing information and involving conscious awareness at key points in the process.

Free will is being asserted, not demonstrated.

Meaningful free will is clearly demonstrated in every restaurant, every day. This is an indisputable fact. So, the claim that free will is not being demonstrated is false.

Asserted in the face of evidence to the contrary, a system that entails all actions, where nothing is freely willed.

Universal causal necessity does not contradict the meaningful definition of free will. It simply means that all free will events are inevitable, just like all coercion events are inevitable, just like all events involving undue influence are inevitable. There is nothing in a world of perfectly reliable cause and effect that happens outside of perfectly reliable causation.

Therefore, the claim that a perfectly deterministic system that entails all actions is "evidence to the contrary", is clearly false. Rather it is evidence that free will events are just as inevitable as all other events.

All causally necessary events actually happen in physical reality. Even mental events correspond to physical brain processes which are happening in physical reality. So, when choosing happens, it is really happening, as a physical event within a physical brain.

The brain organizes sensory data into a symbolic model of reality. It represents this reality with language and sensory images. With this model, it imagines possible futures (what I can do and what can happen) and possible pasts (what I could have done and what could have happened). It forms plans and sets its intent upon doing specific things (what I will do), either right now (I will have the Chef Salad for dinner) or in the future (my "last will and testament").

Evolved mechanisms that enable the ability to acquire and process information and respond in complex but deterministic ways, each and every increment of information interaction, however complex, being fixed by the prior state of the system, inputs, processing, memory function, output.

Yes. However, we've also learned that irrational beliefs can lead to false conclusions, which result in harmful actions. The belief that universal causal necessity absolves us of all responsibility for our actions, is one of those false beliefs. And it can have harmful effects, as summarized by Eddy Nahmias in Why ‘Willusionism’ Leads to ‘Bad Results’: Comments on Baumeister, Crescioni, and Alquist :

"When interpreted in ways that the evidence does not justify, the willusionist claim can lead to ‘bad results.’ That is, telling people that free will is an illusion leads people to cheat more, help less, and behave more aggressively"

 

[pood]

1

What do you think ''All of these events, including my choices, were causally necessary from any prior point in time. And they all proceeded without deviation from the Big Bang to this moment'' means, if not that all facts of the future are entailed?

What part of “I do not accept causal necessity as a valid modal cateogry,” which I have stated about a bazillion times, do you fail to grasp?

 

[fromderinside]

Where do you get modal category from investigation? What you think is for you alone. What we know is from all of us via developed methodologies. All you have to do is look things up and connect the thoughts in sequence. You know what underlies sequence don't you. Pro.....

 

[Jarhyn]

Where do you get modal category from investigation? What you think is for you alone. What we know is from all of us via developed methodologies. All you have to do is look things up and connect the thoughts in sequence. You know what underlies sequence don't you. Pro.....

No, you just said what you know is from your senses including the existence at all of "all of us".

If you want to reject knowledge, the bowl full of solipsism is right over there shining and pure white. I even left a donation in it just recently.

 

[pood]

Where do you get modal category from investigation? What you think is for you alone. What we know is from all of us via developed methodologies. All you have to do is look things up and connect the thoughts in sequence. You know what underlies sequence don't you. Pro.....

Is this directed at me? I assume so, based on the question about “modal category.” The rest of it I can’t parse, sorry. Why do you end with “Pro…” What does that mean?

Nothing in science points to a modal category called “causal necessity.” The fact that classical experiments yield cause/effect relationships does not indicate that these relations are necessary, nor do they say anything about free will. They only confirm Hume’s “constant conjunction.” As I have repeatedly argued, the only valid modal category of necessity is logical necessity.

But more, you yourself raised quantum mechanics. The ability of our thought and instruments to extend our evaluation of reality beyond our immediate senses, by your own elaboration, reveals that the world is actually indeterministic. Since the whole world is quantum, it would follow that the classical world of determinism is a statistical artifact and an illusion our our senses. I agree that our senses give us no access to Kant’s noumena. Are you taking a Kantian line?

 

[fromderinside]

Where do you get modal category from investigation? What you think is for you alone. What we know is from all of us via developed methodologies. All you have to do is look things up and connect the thoughts in sequence. You know what underlies sequence don't you. Pro.....

Is this directed at me? I assume so, based on the question about “modal category.” The rest of it I can’t parse, sorry. Why do you end with “Pro…” What does that mean?

Nothing in science points to a modal category called “causal necessity.” The fact that classical experiments yield cause/effect relationships does not indicate that these relations are necessary, nor do they say anything about free will. They only confirm Hume’s “constant conjunction.” As I have repeatedly argued, the only valid modal category of necessity is logical necessity.

But more, you yourself raised quantum mechanics. The ability of our thought and instruments to extend our evaluation of reality beyond our immediate senses, by your own elaboration, reveals that the world is actually indeterministic. Since the whole world is quantum, it would follow that the classical world of determinism is a statistical artifact and an illusion our our senses. I agree that our senses give us no access to Kant’s noumena. Are you taking a Kantian line?

Nice post. pro...cess

While I agree that our thought processes support indeterministic views of perceived reality I am nowhere near accepting quantum mechanics as fundamental. Whatever the origin of things there was an origin. Everything we understand points that way including initial temperature indices.

Kant was bright, pompous and, IMHO, wrong. He couldn't shake deity since he couldn't shake logical presumption. And, face it, logical presumption is very far from where I sit. The mind is derived by mind, circling wagons, FCS.

I left the rational route behind long ago, tools made by tools infinitum? I actually spent ten years as a tool tool tool maker. The secret in successfully making tools is understanding what needs to go into the process which is mostly the result of fortuitous circumstances.

 

[fromderinside]

Sorry guys. We have the scientific method which permits us to discover realities not perceived by our senses. Once discovered we can compare these new realities with our sense data and make use of that information. If the sense requirement was valid we wouldn't have relativity or quantum mechanics nor would it be possible for us to create or control the bomb which we obviously can.

Right. With the scientific method we have multiple observers checking up on each others observations and conducting controlled experiments. But having multiple senses also provides a means of checking our subjective data in different ways. For example, we walk up to what appears to be a bowl of fruit, and pick up an apple, but the apple is too light. We tap on it with our knuckle and it sounds hollow, and it doesn't have an apple's smell. Turns out to be a bowl of artificial fruit, put there for decoration, but not for eating.

Its not about looking over shoulders it's about discipline in process. If the model is wrong it doesn't matter who is watching the wrong process they are watching the wrong process.

 

[DBT]

1

What do you think ''All of these events, including my choices, were causally necessary from any prior point in time. And they all proceeded without deviation from the Big Bang to this moment'' means, if not that all facts of the future are entailed?

What part of “I do not accept causal necessity as a valid modal cateogry,” which I have stated about a bazillion times, do you fail to grasp?

What you happen to accept or not accept is irrelevant. The issue here is the question of compatibility - free will in relation to determinism as it has been defined by compatibilists.

Your remarks, concerns and objections are irrelevant because you ignore the terms and conditions of the debate.

 

[DBT]

neither chosen

The salad was chosen, so "not chosen" is empirically false.

Choice requires a possible alternative. No possible alternatives exist within a deterministic system, ie, your ''no deviation'' clause. No deviation is essentially the no choice principle of determinism

or willed.

The menu of alternate possibilities required me to make a choice. So, I willingly considered my options and chose the salad. So, "not willed" is also empirically false.

Actions are not willed.

And the action that necessarily followed my choosing the salad was to communicate this intent to the waiter, "I will have the Chef Salad, please".

All of these claims have been refuted repeatedly by the empirical evidence.

But you had no free choice to begin with. The no choice principle is entailed in your definition of determinism: all events proceed as determined without deviation.

Information interacts with neural networks, information exchange, and an action is initiated and reported in conscious form, in that order of events.

You are simply choosing another way to describe the exact same event in order to hide the facts. For example, it was a fact that I considered the juicy steak for dinner. And it was a fact that my goal of eating more vegetables brought to my awareness that I had already had bacon and eggs for breakfast and a double cheeseburger for lunch. And it was also a fact that I then turned my conscious attention to the Chef Salad, and then chose to order the salad instead of the steak. Finally, I told the waiter, "I will have the Chef Salad, please".

What you considered is just as fixed as your 'choice' and action. Every step of the 'consideration' process is entailed by prior states of the system. Hence there is no freedom to choose or freedom of will.

Choice, as pointed out requires the possibility to take another option.... Determinism allows no other option, all events must proceed without deviation. Taking a different option is deviation, something that cannot happen in a deterministic system as it has been defined.

This event is commonly known as "a choice of my own free will". And, of course, it also involved my own physical neural network processing information and involving conscious awareness at key points in the process.

It was never a choice. The option and action taken is determined to happen before it happens. That is entailed in your definition of determinism.

There is no way around this. No wriggle room. No back door. No escape clause.

Asserting free will in the face of actions fixed by antecedents does not prove the proposition.

Evolved mechanisms that enable the ability to acquire and process information and respond in complex but deterministic ways, each and every increment of information interaction, however complex, being fixed by the prior state of the system, inputs, processing, memory function, output.

Yes. However, we've also learned that irrational beliefs can lead to false conclusions, which result in harmful actions. The belief that universal causal necessity absolves us of all responsibility for our actions, is one of those false beliefs. And it can have harmful effects, as summarized by Eddy Nahmias in Why ‘Willusionism’ Leads to ‘Bad Results’: Comments on Baumeister, Crescioni, and Alquist :

"When interpreted in ways that the evidence does not justify, the willusionist claim can lead to ‘bad results.’ That is, telling people that free will is an illusion leads people to cheat more, help less, and behave more aggressively"

Information alters the state system. Telling someone there is no god, if they are convinced, it changes their view of the world.

Some who come to believe they have no free will may be affected in negative ways, but that has no bearing on the status of free will in relation to determinism.

Plato suggested using the Royal Lie, maintaining the illusion of gods, to keep the masses content and well behaved, so perhaps maintaining a version of the Royal Lie in relation the illusion of free will may be beneficial for some?

''Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.'' - Sam Harris.

 

[Jarhyn]

What do you think ''All of these events, including my choices, were causally necessary from any prior point in time. And they all proceeded without deviation from the Big Bang to this moment'' means, if not that all facts of the future are entailed?

What part of “I do not accept causal necessity as a valid modal cateogry,” which I have stated about a bazillion times, do you fail to grasp?

What you happen to accept or not accept is irrelevant. The issue here is the question of compatibility - free will in relation to determinism as it has been defined by compatibilists.

Your remarks, concerns and objections are irrelevant because you ignore the terms and conditions of the debate.

No, it's because YOU ignore the terms and conditions. You ignore the definition of choice to supplant it with your own.

Your remarks, concerns, objections are all irrelevant because your position is fundamentally a theological one, circular in nature that all depends on this canard that "there is no could".

Of course, to say that, you ignore that "could" is just "shall/is/did, IF ((SoA & X) == X)"

The point is that sometimes IF ((SoA & X) == X) gets satisfied and sometimes it doesn't, but the statement itself is always sensible even when it is not satisfied.

The language we use to describe this phenomena of "how the statement resolved" with respect to particular aspects is "he could and he did" Or "his will was free" or even "he could but he didn't" and "that will was not free"

 

[Jarhyn]

Yet I learned to defend myself or chose to take a blow to avoid letting things get out of control. It was all by training design and intention.

Reading through the forums today I came upon this little gem.

It appears FDI does actually believe in choice, given their statement that they have, in fact, participated in making a choice or two.

 

[pood]

1

What do you think ''All of these events, including my choices, were causally necessary from any prior point in time. And they all proceeded without deviation from the Big Bang to this moment'' means, if not that all facts of the future are entailed?

What part of “I do not accept causal necessity as a valid modal cateogry,” which I have stated about a bazillion times, do you fail to grasp?

What you happen to accept or not accept is irrelevant. The issue here is the question of compatibility - free will in relation to determinism as it has been defined by compatibilists.

Your remarks, concerns and objections are irrelevant because you ignore the terms and conditions of the debate.

I’m sorry but you don’t get personally to set “the terms and conditions of the debate.” All this means in practice is that you set the terms and conditions in such a way as to beg the question for hard determinism.

I have already explained why, several times, I part company with Marvin in refusing to accept “causal necessity” as a valid modal category. Would you care to go back and actually address my concerns rather than dismissing my remarks as “irrelevant” just because they disagree with your question-begging definitions? In addition, would you care to answer the following question at last, clearly and succinctly: Do the so-called laws of nature PREscribe what happens in the world, or DEscribe what happens in the world. Which is it?

 

[pood]

Since DBT doesn’t seem to read other posts carefully for comprehension, I think he believes that when I reject “causal necessity” it means I am saying that under causal determinism, any old thing can happen, sort of like indeterminism.

I have neither said nor implied any such thing. I am very careful to say I endorse causal determinism, but causal determinism is not the same thing as causal necessity. Perhaps DBT would like to reread the many posts in which I have spelled out what I think are the differences between the two.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

No deviation is essentially the no choice principle of determinism

Quite the opposite. No deviation means that choosing will inevitably happen, and there is nothing we can do about it actually happening.

Without deviation, we will choose to have dinner at the restaurant.
Without deviation, we will be confronted with a literal menu of alternate possibilities.
Without deviation, we will consider the steak and reject it because we had bacon and eggs for breakfast and a double cheeseburger for lunch.
Without deviation, we will decide it will be better to have the salad rather than the steak for dinner.
Without deviation, there will be no coercion or undue influence involved in our choosing, such that:
Without deviation, it will be a choice of our own free will.

Things will happen just so, without deviation.

But you had no free choice to begin with.

Free from what? Causal necessity? Well, of course not. There is no such thing as "freedom from cause and effect". Why? Because it is an insane notion: (a) because every freedom to do anything at all REQUIRES reliable cause and effect and (b) what we will do by causal necessity is exactly identical to what we would have done anyway!! Causal necessity is not something that we need to be free of! That is the illusion that the hard determinist is pedaling, that causal necessity is something we need to escape.

Free will is when we choose for ourselves what we will do, while free of coercion and undue influence. Nothing more. Nothing less.

 

[pood]

The abstract of this paper sums up my own view on the matter of “causal necessity.”

Hume thought that if you believed in powers, you believed in necessary connections in nature. He was then able to argue that there were none such because anything could follow anything else. But Hume wrong-footed his opponents. A power does not necessitate its manifestations: rather, it disposes towards them in a way that is less than necessary but more than purely contingent. In this paper a dispositional theory of causation is offered. Causes dispose towards their effects and often produce them. But a set of causes, even though they may succeed in producing an effect, cannot necessitate it since the effect could have been counteracted by some additional power. This would require a separation of our concepts of causal production and causal necessitation. The most conspicuous cases of causation are those where powers accumulate and pass a requisite threshold for an effect to occur.

The problem with “causal necessity” is that it just doesn’t exist. “Necessity” always refers to logical necessity. A truth is logically necessary iff (if and only if) it is impossible to maintain its converse without instantiating a logical contradiction. Consider the proposition, “triangles have three sides.” If I were to maintain that “some triangles have four sides,” or “some triangles have more or less than three sides,” I have instantiated a logical contradiction, because the proposition “triangles have three sides,” is an analytic truth, like 2+2=4.

Not so Marvin ordering salad for dinner. I can conceive without logical contradiction Marvin ordering steak instead, so Marvin ordering salad can never be a necessary truth about the world.

Since Marvin ordering salad is a contingent truth about the world, this just means that Marvin could have ordered steak, without logical contradiction, but he didn’t. This nicely captures the compatibilist stance that given antecedents x,y,z, Marvin WILL order salad, but it does not follow that he MUST do so.

Similarly, gravity is universal. So far as we know it exists everywhere and has always existed and will always behave in exactly the same way. Nevertheless, gravity is a contingent truth about the world, not a necessary truth. This is because I can imagine without instantiating a logical contradiction the absence of gravity, or gravity behaving in such a way that things fall up. Of course, in such a logically possible world, the “laws” of physics (descriptions of how things are) would have to be different, in the same way that for Marvin to order steak instead of salad, antecedent conditions would be different. This is easy to see. There is a possible world, modally very close to our own, in which Marvin does indeed order steak for dinner because he had a light breakfast, whereas in the actual world he ordered salad because he had a heavy breakfast. The world in which Marvin ordered steak instead of salad is called a possible non-actual world. David K. Lewis believed all possible non-actual worlds are actual to their own inhabitants.