Before I respond (I don't have to respond if I don't want to; but I want to (in the direction of greater satisfaction because I feel compelled to correct you), I'm asking you to kindly not bring up anything from ff which is only to mock me and get others to do the same thing. There's no other reason Pood. So please STOP!!!!!
DBT is maintaining, perhaps without even knowing it, that all our acts are necessary acts — that they could not have been otherwise.
That is 100% true.
But this means he makes no distinction between propositions like “triangles have three sides” and “I chose Coke instead of Pepsi.” But surely there is some relevant difference between the two propositions.
This is where you are comparing different animals. You cannot compare a triangle to human choices and think your logic stands. Human decision making is based on things unseen except by the person making the decision. So what appears to be changeable is not in actuality, just like the triangle. DBT also said that everything is fixed which, looking back, is predetermined. These attitudes and desires are included in the antecedents which drive our behavior from the day we are born to the day we die.
In the “possible worlds” modal-logic heuristic, “possible worlds” refers to logically possible worlds. A world is logically possible insofar as it is possible to imagine such a world without invoking a logical contradiction. If I can imagine such a world, then the proposition is contingent (could have been otherwise) and not necessary (could not have been otherwise).
You are 100% incorrect based on faulty logic. Just because the proposition is contingent does not mean it could have been otherwise after the fact. We can imagine that it could have been otherwise until the cows come home, but here is where your logic goes off the rails: just because our choices are contingent on antecedent events and circumstances does not mean that other possibilities could have occurred given the exact same time and place. It actually proves the opposite; namely, that these contingencies push us in one direction, or it would make a mockery of why we were given the attribute of contemplation. God doesn't make these kinds of mistakes. lol
Now surely, I can imagine a possible world, without invoking a logical contradiction, in which I choose Pepsi over Coke. I can imagine no such world where triangles have more or less than three sides. So, “triangles have three sides” is a necessary truth (true at all logically possible worlds), and “I chose Coke over Pepsi” is a contingent truth (true at some logically possible worlds, false at others).
Again, the premise that just because it appears you could have chosen Pepsi instead of Coke because it's not a hard fact like triangles have three sides, doesn't prove your case whatsoever. I wonder who made this *#$%# up? Most people fall for things because they want them to be true, but that doesn't change their falsity. I'm not pointing the finger at just you Pood. We all have certain confirmation biases.
Suppose someone must choose between taking a job in Boston or New York. She weighs the relevant factors in making her choice, which include “I like money” and “I would prefer to live in Boston rather than New York (though heaven knows why).” Now it turns out that the job in New York offers more money, so now she must weigh her desire for more money against her desire to live in Boston rather than New York.
Suppose she chooses the New York job, just because it pays more money, even though she would have preferred to live in Boston. She would say something like, “If the job in Boston had paid more than the New York job, I would have taken it.”
And clearly she COULD have taken the job in Boston, and WOULD have, too, IF it had offered more money than the New York job. So, she could, and would, have done otherwise, had antecedents been slightly different.
Yes, if the antecedents had been slightly different, she could have made an altogether different choice, but you're bringing up a future scenario. The fact is, at that exact moment, the antecedents weren't slightly different. So why bring this up? You are creating something that is not even under discussion. We are discussing the options she had before the antecedents changed. No one is disagreeing with you that circumstances at a later date may have given her different options. I have said this many times that anytime we are given new options, they may contribute to new choices. For example, if you found out that a new study concluded that Pepsi was ten times healthier than Coke, it may change your decision to choose Pepsi (in the direction of greater satisfaction) the next time you are at the store, even if you like the taste of Coke more. So what! This doesn't negate this invariable law that proves man has no free will, never had, and never will have.
The point is that she chose as she did, even though the choice may have been a close call, because she WANTED extra money MORE than she wanted to live in Boston. So, she did what she wanted.
Now the hard determinist is going to protest that the antecedents COULD NOT have been different, given that all antecedents were fixed by the initial conditions of the universe. But this is false in two ways. First, the initial conditions themselves were contingent — could have been otherwise, in the sense of “I could have chosen Pepsi over Coke.”
I refuted that, so that's a moot point.
And second, if you could “back up” the history of the whole universe and replay it, with the same initial conditions, some things would still turn out differently because of quantum indeterminism.
It is a theory that because quantum mechanics states there is no way anyone can predict how a wave will react does not change anything on the macro level of human decision making and therefore cannot be used to prove man's will is free to choose other than what he chooses. That theory is rudimentary. Giving them the benefit, even if quantum mechanics were true, it has no bearing on the invariable movement from a position of feeling dissatisfied in some way to a position of feeling more satisfied. This occurs every single moment of life, without exception.
Free will in the compatibilist just means, “I would have taken the job in Boston had antecedents been different, but they weren’t, so I took the job in New York instead.” In others words, “I did what I wanted to do, or what I most wanted to do, given the particular circumstances (which could have been different) that I found myself in.”
Yes, I would have become a nurse practitioner if the circumstances were different, but they weren't different, so I had to choose the next best thing. Once again, you are talking about two different times and places. It could not have been different at that exact time and place because the antecedents would not have been different. It could only have been different in your imagination or at a later time and place.
To ask, COULD she, or WOULD she, have done differently under the exact same circumstances, is just irrelevant.
It is extremely relevant. You're trying very hard to make it appear irrelevant, but the truth wins out every time.
One can shrug and reply “She did what she wanted to do, or most wanted to do, under those circumstances. Why would you expect her to do differently?”
There is only one history, and people will do what the want to do under the circumstances they find themselves in.
They will do what they want to do, that's true, but that doesn't mean they can do otherwise since what they want to do is part of the antecedent cascade of conditions (such as their genetics, their environment, their predispositions, their wants and desires, etc.) that compel them to make the choices they make.
