The Great Contradiction

[Learner]

No takers?

Because if a hydrogen atom does not possess this magical substance called free will, how does an assembly of hydrogen atoms like myself acquire this thing? Obviously it must be because free will is magical, not something ordinary like the behavior of a hydrogen atom, which btw always makes the right choice.

My take to your "ordinary" hydrogen behaviour and always making the right choice it seems... is actually magic, since its not by God.

And heaven must be the repose of all hydrogen atoms because their behavior never errs.

I see, sort of like having no syntax errors in the writing sort of thing? Nice one.

 

[remez]

No takers?

Here ya go......

Does a hydrogen atom have free will? If it doesn't, how does it know when it's time to become water? How does it decide? Does each hydrogen atom have its own free will magic making it work?

No
No
It can’t.
No
And this………..

I'm full of hydrogen atoms. I'm also full of DNA from other organisms that aren't even me, in fact, their DNA outnumbers my own. I could not survive without those other organisms. Or are they me too? Or am I also them? How do all their hydrogen atoms know when to become carbon molecules? Do those billions upon billions upon billions of other organisms and their hydrogen atoms also have free will? How else do we account for the complexity?

If it isn't free will magic I should fall apart right now, shouldn't I?

Thank you, all you hydrogen atoms for making the right choices with your free will.

….is what you freely reasoned to be your theistic reduction in regards to the mind.
Not even close.
But
Theism not the issue here.

The issue here is the contradiction of your OP.

You deny the existence of free will and yet ask us to freely reason……about theistic blindness regarding your straw man version of the contingency argument.

 

[remez]

No takers?

You're saying that if I can't explain something, you get to arbitrarily declare what the explanation is.

Arbitrary is being quite generous.

 

[Wiploc]

In post 206, remez said,

By free will I simply mean the opposite of determinism.

Randomness is the opposite of determinism. Nobody thinks free will and randomness are the same.

 

[Bomb#20]

Again I’m not trying to get you to agree with me. But I am trying to help you understand the premises, conclusions and reasoning of my position of substance dualism. Which stands opposed to the OP and reasons for the contradiction in it’s reasoning. By all means show me where I wrong.
Let’s focus right here.

That's still a non-sequitur. Even if Haldane simply had to say it, and Bilby had to disagree, and you have to agree, and naturalism rules out free will and choice, how would any of that imply it rules out thinking?

How would that rule out thinking?
Great question.

Let me go back through that again attempting to make the implicit….. explicit…ok…..

"Haldane’s point is from a naturistic viewpoint (foundational to atheism) there is no thinking."

Because the atoms determine the outcome, not Haldane, you or I.

Here you "smuggle in" the assumption that Haldane, you and I are not "the atoms". If in fact we are the atoms, then since the atoms determine the outcome, it very much is Haldane, you or I that determine the outcome.

Atoms don’t think they always do what they do.

Fallacy of composition. Just because an atom doesn't think, you can't legitimately infer that a trillion trillion atoms don't think.

No freedom.

Per your statement in another post, "By free will I simply mean the opposite of determinism.", your argument means "they always do what they do. No nondeterminism." How do you make that final step from "No nondeterminism" to "it rules out thinking"?

"He simply had to say that."

Bc atoms don’t think, there was no freedom to think.

If by "no freedom to think" you mean "there was no nondeterminism to think", then you are making a circular argument. Whether nondeterminism is required in order to think is one of the points in dispute.

Conversely, if by "no freedom to think", you freedom in some other sense, then you are making an equivocation fallacy.

He had to say that. Atoms determined he had to say that.

So what? Do you often experience yourself saying things you don't think? The mechanism by which the atoms determined he simply had to say that would be by first determining he simply had to think that, and then determining he simply had to say what he thought. So he's thinking. Deterministically.

"You had to disagree with him."

Because your determined non-rational atoms made you say that. You had no freedom to reason.

I.e., you had no nondeterminism to reason. But you have not shown that you need nondeterminism to reason. It's the point in dispute, and you keep relying on it as a premise.

If all is determined by non-freethinking atoms then your thoughts that you are thinking are illusion.

An illusion? What's an illusion? An illusion is just a perception you mistakenly think is real. To say someone is experiencing an illusion is to presuppose that he is thinking. Your own argument implies that the non-freethinking atoms are thinking real thoughts. Unfree thoughts perhaps, but thoughts all the same.

"That’s the way naturalism" (in this specific narrow context - remez) "works….there is no freewill, thinking or choice."

Because thinking is dependent upon you having freedom to reason over your non-thinking deterministic atoms output. Atoms don’t have the freedom to think …..but you do.

Per your definition above, let me rewrite that for you. It means "Because thinking is dependent upon you having nondeterminism to reason over your non-thinking deterministic atoms output. Atoms don’t have the nondeterminism to think …..but you do."

That's not an argument. You appear to be just endlessly repeating your question-begging assertion that nondeterminism is necessary for thought...

Thus you are not identical to your atoms. Hence my position of substance dualism. Bc………….if you don’t have freedom from your non-thinking determinist atoms…..then no one is thinking. Our thoughts of thinking are ……………

...and yet you appear to believe you made an argument. "Thus". "Hence". So apparently my rewrite of your statement isn't correct. I.e., you must mean something other than "the opposite of determinism" when you talk about freedom. So you are switching definitions of "free" in the course of making your case. That's an equivocation fallacy.

Hence Haldane’s thoughts speak directly to the notion that materialistic determinism solely based upon non-thinking atomic output provides no room to reason. He is not saying that we don’t reason. He is saying that the paradigm of materialistic determinism leaves no room for reasoning.

But he had no case for that, just fallacies.

Thus……………

…..Even if Haldane simply had to say it, and Bilby had to disagree, and you have to agree, and naturalism rules out free will and choice, how would any of that imply it rules out thinking?

I have clearly answered you.

Yes, you have clearly answered me with one identifiable fallacy after another.

So now please help me understand 1. your position

The opposite of determinism is random chance. Random chance is no freedom -- getting to do something if you want to and not do it if you don't want to is freedom. I do not know whether the universe contains non-determinism. Modern quantum physics appears on its face to favor the existence of non-determinism, but I find the case for that hypothesis weak so I remain agnostic on that point. But whether our actions are deterministic or partly random is irrelevant to the question of free will, because, as I said, random chance is no freedom. If the universe is nondeterministic, even then the freedom we in fact have -- the freedom to act if we want to and not to act if we want not to, which is the only sort deserving the name "freedom" -- comes from the cause-and-effect portion of our actions, not the nondeterministic, i.e, random portion. All nondeterminism can do is supplement our mix of caused free actions and our caused unfree actions with an additional smattering of uncaused unfree actions. There is no reason to think a thinking, reasoning, free being cannot be constructed of atoms.

Moreover, it is my position that thinking, reasoning and freedom are all separable. In particular, atoms can be put together in such a way as to think without freedom or reason, and to reason without freedom or thought. Even if you reject my contentions about freedom and nondeterminism and thought, Haldane was wrong purely from consideration of reason. I know for a fact that atoms can reason without thought or freedom. It's my professional expertise. I'm the assistant developer of a computer program for automatic reasoning. My employer's customers pay big bucks for a list of software instructions that tell their computers how to make logical inferences and detect contradictory assumptions. The atoms in their computers do that reasoning. Unthinkingly. Deterministically. Correctly.

and 2. your reasoning against my thoughts………………

How can there be thinking if all is materialistically determined by non-thinking atoms?

I get the sense that you aren't really reading and considering my arguments, and are just reiterating your talking-points. As I told you in the earlier post, it's the "fallacy of composition" to assume non-thinking atoms can't be assembled into a thinking conglomerate. Look, I get it -- you have a dozen people on your case and it's hard to remember what everyone said and take it all into account. If you don't have time for this discussion, just say so and we can suspend it until you have time to address my arguments properly.

Be fair.
I put myself out there.
Put some reason to your inference that you can think without free will.

Do you really imagine you have a free choice about thinking? Free will gives you the freedom to act as you want, not the freedom to think as you want. Here, I'll prove it to you. I have an assignment for you. Read the following instruction carefully, and then, if you are freely willing, go do it. If you can.

Go outside and walk all the way around the building three times without thinking of the word "wolf".

 

[Wiploc]

Responding to remez in post 207:

Originally Posted by Wiploc

Remez, you quoted Haldane's argument ...

“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”
― J.B.S. Haldane, Possible Worlds



... with, I thought, approval.

I entered this thread to point out that Haldane's argument is garbage.

……..

I'm happy to discuss the OP, but I'd like you to respond to my point about Haldane's argument.
You had the wrong understanding of my reasoning for presenting Haldane’s reductionism to begin with. Haldane’s reasoning is an if-then conditional statement that represented a contradiction.

My point was that the assumption/premise of the OP matched the antecedent of Haldane’s if-then, thus rendering the OP a contradiction in and of itself. Because Moogley is using free will to argue against it existence. I addressed this with you back in post 112….

If I understand, you are agreeing with me that Haldane's argument is garbage. And then you are saying that the argument of the OP is similarly garbage.

Do I have that right?

 

[fromderinside]

No takers?

Because if a hydrogen atom does not possess this magical substance called free will, how does an assembly of hydrogen atoms like myself acquire this thing? Obviously it must be because free will is magical, not something ordinary like the behavior of a hydrogen atom, which btw always makes the right choice.

And heaven must be the repose of all hydrogen atoms because their behavior never errs.

Lots of observable and very real phenomena only exist in aggregate. A hydrogen atom doesn't exhibit entropy, but a large number of them does. The atmosphere in your house doesn't exhibit weather, but a sufficiently large volume of atmosphere does (famously, the vast Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral, where they completed the assembly of the Saturn V rockets, is large enough to form rain clouds if the humidity isn't controlled).

The fallacy of composition is very important - if we assume that the behaviour of the whole of a system is determined only by the properties of its components, then we are very frequently going to be wrong. Patterns of interaction between components of a complex system are frequently more significant than the properties of the components themselves, and this fact is trivially easy to observe. To assume that it will not be true of biological systems, or of human brains in particular, is completely baseless; And to use that baseless assumption as the cornerstone of an argument is to venture into pure fantasy.

If this is the best remez has to offer, then I feel rather sorry for him. And if it isn't, I wonder why he's making such a pointless fuss about it.

Arguing something seen as complex can be named is not an argument for something complex needing a name. Nor is such a thing showing emergent properties.

From: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Emergence https://www.iep.utm.edu/emergenc/#H3

Kim’s supervenience argument is meant to question the very possibility of strongly emergent properties. However, even if strong emergence is possible, there is the further question of whether there are any actual cases of strong emergence in the world.Brian McLaughlin (1992) who grants that the emergence of novel configurational forces is compatible with the laws of physics and that theories of emergence are coherent and consistent, has argued that there is “not a scintilla of evidence” that there are any real cases of strong emergence to be found in the world. This is a commonly cited objection to emergence readily espoused by reductive physicalists committed to the purely physical nature of all the phenomena that have at different times been called emergent and also raised by Mark Bedau who claims that though weak emergence is very common we have no evidence for cases of strong emergence.Hempel and Oppenheim (1948) have argued that the unpredictability of emergent phenomena is theory-relative—that is, something is emergent only given the knowledge available at a given time—and does not reflect an ontological distinction. And Ernest Nagel (1960), agreeing that emergence is theory-relative, argued that it is a doctrine concerning “logical facts about formal relations between statements rather than any experimental or even ‘metaphysical’ facts about some allegedly ‘inherent’ traits of properties of objects.” According to these views, theoretical advance and accumulation of new knowledge will lead to the re-classification of what are today considered to be emergent phenomena, as happened with the case of life and chemical bonding of the British emergentists. However, though these objections can be construed as viable objections to some forms of weak emergence they fail to affect strong emergence (which was their target) because it is concerned with in principle unpredictability as a result of irreducibility.Though this skepticism is shared by a few, some philosophers believe that though strong emergence may be rare, it does exist. Bickhard and Campbell (2000), Silvester and McGeever (1999) and Humphreys (1997) claim that ontological emergence can be found (at least) in quantum mechanics—an interesting proposal, and somewhat ironic given that it was advances in quantum physics in the early 20th century that was supposed to have struck the death blow to the British emergentist tradition. Predominantly, however, the usual candidates for strongly emergent properties are mental properties (phenomenal and/or intentional) that continue to resist any kind of reduction. Chalmers (2006)—because of the explanatory gap—considers consciousness to be the only possible intrinsically strongly emergent phenomenon in nature while O’Connor (2000) has argued that our experience of free will which is, in effect, macroscopic control of behavior, seems to be irreducible and hence strongly suggests that human agency may be strongly emergent. (Stephan (2010) also sees free will as a candidate for a strongly emergent property.)Another line of response is taken by E. J. Lowe (2000) according to whom emergent mental causes could be in principle out of reach of the physiologist, and so it should not come as a surprise that physical science has not discovered them. Lowe argues that, even if we grant that every physical event has a sufficient immediate physical cause, it is plausible that a mental event could have caused the physical event to have that physical cause. That is not to say that the mental event caused the physical event that caused the physical effect; rather, the mental event linked the two physical events so the effect was jointly caused by a mental and a physical event. Such a case, Lowe argues, would be indistinguishable from the point of view of physiological science from a case in which causal closure held.Following this line of thought it can be argued that though we do not have actual empirical proof that emergent properties exist, the right attitude to hold is to be open to the possibility of their existence. That is, given that there is no available physiological account of how mental states can cause physical states (or how they can be identical), while at the same time having everyday evidence that they do, as well as a plausible mental—psychological or folk psychological—explanation for it, we have independent grounds to believe that emergent properties could possibly exist.

The idea of an open mind in the absence of evidence is ... well ..... novel.

 

[ruby sparks]

In post 206, remez said,

By free will I simply mean the opposite of determinism.

Randomness is the opposite of determinism. Nobody thinks free will and randomness are the same.

Indeed.

 

[ruby sparks]

The people who use that definition -- both dualists like you and also anti-compatibilism materialists like r.s. -- do not use that definition consistently.

I do not use that definition (see above).

 

[ruby sparks]

In post 206, remez said,

By free will I simply mean the opposite of determinism.

Randomness is the opposite of determinism. Nobody thinks free will and randomness are the same.

Indeed.

Thinking about this again, it would be more correct to say that the opposite of determinism would be indeterminism.

 

[ruby sparks]

By free will I simply mean the opposite of determinism.

That's a popular definition in philosophical discussion, but it's an unreasonable one. The people who use that definition -- both dualists like you and also anti-compatibilism materialists like r.s. -- do not use that definition consistently. Take such people out of a philosophy discussion and into a jury box and they'll use "free will" just like normal English speakers: they'll use it to mean "doing something because you want to".

I have a few more thoughts on the above part of your reply to remez.

It’s not the case that those of us who don’t subscribe to compatibilism change the definition we use. In the first instance, I’m not sure I even use a definition of free will any more than I use a definition for god (I tend not to believe in either).

Secondly, if you steal my phone and let’s say it appears to be deliberate, it’s true that I will blame you, but that’s got more to do with me being almost as trapped as anyone in what might be the illusion of free will, and not the changing of a definition.

I say almost (as trapped) because I tend to think that my skepticism about free will allows me to temper my retributive urges, even if not completely or all the time. Imo, free will skepticism is not something that is confined to abstract philosophical discussions. It’s something you can have as part of your everyday outlook.

 

[Bomb#20]

Just one question to clarify your view of compatiblism. Would you claim that for something that you did in the past, some act or thought (intentional or not), could you have acted or thought differently under the same circumstances? Because the classic definition of free will (one generally embraced by the public and even the judicial system) is in the idea that given the same circumstances one could have acted differently.

When the public and the judicial system talk that way, the phrase "the same circumstances" is ambiguous. At any point in time and space there are an infinity of circumstances; people talking about "the same circumstances" rarely have that whole infinity in mind. They have some specific subset of the circumstances in mind. When we're trying to decide whether a litigant signed a contract of his own free will, we're thinking about whether he could have not signed given the circumstance that a mobster had a knife at his throat. We aren't thinking about whether he could have not signed given the circumstance that he wanted the money the contract promised him. "Given the same circumstances" usually excludes circumstances about what a person wants, apart from a few exceptional wants such as wanting not to be murdered.

 

[Bomb#20]

By free will I simply mean the opposite of determinism.

The people who use that definition -- both dualists like you and also anti-compatibilism materialists like r.s. -- do not use that definition consistently.

I do not use that definition

Yes, you certainly do.

(see above).

What, post #228? That is an example of you not using remez's definition. Are you under the impression that you can refute a charge of (doing X but not consistently) merely by providing an example of you not doing X?!?

Could you derive the contradiction, please?
For example: Assume that the real word is deterministic - not even randomness. Assume I wrote this of my own free will. Derive a contradiction. Could you do that, please?

Something that is causally determined (and/or random) is not freely willed or freely done. I don't think I know how to put it any more simply than that. It's like saying up is down or black is white. One is not the other.

Clearly, that argument is invalid by its form, unless it has implicit premises:

Premise 1: X is determined.
Conclusion: X is not freely done.

The argument has the same form as:

Premise 1: X is clever.
Conclusion: X is not freely done.

That is not valid. Of course, you might have implicit premises that make your argument valid. Could you please make a valid argument, making the required premises explicit?

That makes no sense whatsoever, I'm afraid.

Because freely-willed and determined (constrained) are effectively opposites.

Premise 1: X is up
Conclusion: X is not down

You have been caught red-handed relying on that same definition, not once but twice. If you want to refute the charge, you have to explain away the examples of you doing it, not just exhibit examples of you not doing it. All citing post #228 shows is that I'm right about your inconsistency in addition to being right about your using the same definition as remez.

But as Thomas Aquinas said, when faced with a contradiction, draw a distinction. So knock yourself out. By all means, show us a hair-splitting distinction between "By free will I simply mean the opposite of determinism" and "Because freely-willed and determined (constrained) are effectively opposites.".

While we're on the topic of you thinking like remez, you also appear to both use the same definition of "contradiction". Just like remez, you appear to have a special fondness for taking an opponent's premises, mixing them with your own premises, deriving an absurdity, and then accusing your opponent of contradicting himself.

If you have a plausible case (for free will) that is not just a total (and contradictory) fudge (eg Hume or any form of compatibilism) I’d be interested to hear it but I doubt you have because it has never been provided by anyone ever, as far as I am aware.

Thinking about this again, there is another way it is like the OP, in that the belief that free will is compatible with determinism is arguably one of the great contradictions.

By all means, exhibit Hume contradicting himself and compatibilism contradicting itself, as opposed to exhibiting them merely contradicting you.

 

[Bomb#20]

By free will I simply mean the opposite of determinism.

That's a popular definition in philosophical discussion, but it's an unreasonable one. The people who use that definition -- both dualists like you and also anti-compatibilism materialists like r.s. -- do not use that definition consistently. Take such people out of a philosophy discussion and into a jury box and they'll use "free will" just like normal English speakers: they'll use it to mean "doing something because you want to".

I have a few more thoughts on the above part of your reply to remez.

It’s not the case that those of us who don’t subscribe to compatibilism change the definition we use. In the first instance, I’m not sure I even use a definition of free will any more than I use a definition for god

You have to have some mental association between the words and meanings, or you wouldn't be able to use them intelligibly in sentences. Those associations are in substance definitions, even if you don't think of them that way or try to put them into words.

(I tend not to believe in either).

Case in point. What is the referent of "either" in that sentence? Well, on your account, it doesn't have any referent -- that's what saying you don't believe in them amounts to. So how can your sentence containing "either" be comprehensible when "either" has no referent? As Kant pointed out in his famous refutation of St. Anselm, existence is not a property. "Unicorns do not exist." cannot ascribe a property of nonexistence to unicorns since there are no unicorns to have the property. Rather, existence is a quantifier over properties -- it states the quantity of stuff possessing some identified property. "Unicorns do not exist." means "Not (There exists an X such that X possesses unicornhood)". Likewise, to say you tend not to believe in a god means you tend not to believe (There exists an X such that X possesses godhood"). Now why on earth would you say such a thing unless you have some notion of what godhood involves? Godhood must be some property in your mind. You are ascribing the property of nongodhood to everything in the universe; well, what is this property you are ascribing to me, to yourself, to your toothbrush, and so forth? Whatever it is you are ascribing to us all, that's the (reversed) definition of "god" you use. It may be implicit and it may be subconscious, but it has to be there.

You are alleging unfreeness in every will in the universe; well, what is this property you are ascribing to all our wills?

Secondly, if you steal my phone and let’s say it appears to be deliberate, it’s true that I will blame you, but that’s got more to do with me being almost as trapped as anyone in what might be the illusion of free will, and not the changing of a definition.

You called free will an illusion before.

Absent a convincing or coherent alternative explanation, you are, it would seem, ‘merely’ a very, very, very complex physical/biological/chemical machine that is doing stuff which is dictated by prior natural causes at every instant, but 'you' (ie the system/machine that calls itself 'me') is under the illusion that this is not the case.

Poppycock. You had no evidence. Angra Mainyu had given you no observational reason whatsoever to imagine that he was under the illusion that it was not the case that he is a very, very, very complex physical/biological/chemical machine that is doing stuff which is dictated by prior natural causes at every instant. You ascribed such an illusion to him because you assumed he meant the same thing by "free will" that you meant. But he means something different. He means something reasonable, something people obviously have, something that actually matters for purposes of assigning blame. Practically anyone would blame me if I stole his phone and it appeared to be deliberate. It takes a special kind of ideological blinkers to doggedly insist against all evidence that everyone applies blame in this situation because everyone is under the illusion that we aren't complex physical/biological/chemical machines, rather than because we're looking at the situation as it really is and correctly applying a more sensible concept of "free will" than yours.

I say almost (as trapped) because I tend to think that my skepticism about free will allows me to temper my retributive urges, even if not completely or all the time.

Why? Why would skepticism about free will temper your retributive urges? Would a person nondeterministically deliberately stealing your phone promote your retributive urges? What would the nondeterminism add to the moral calculus apart from making the thief the victim of bad luck?

 

[ruby sparks]

Just one question to clarify your view of compatiblism. Would you claim that for something that you did in the past, some act or thought (intentional or not), could you have acted or thought differently under the same circumstances? Because the classic definition of free will (one generally embraced by the public and even the judicial system) is in the idea that given the same circumstances one could have acted differently.

When the public and the judicial system talk that way, the phrase "the same circumstances" is ambiguous. At any point in time and space there are an infinity of circumstances; people talking about "the same circumstances" rarely have that whole infinity in mind. They have some specific subset of the circumstances in mind. When we're trying to decide whether a litigant signed a contract of his own free will, we're thinking about whether he could have not signed given the circumstance that a mobster had a knife at his throat. We aren't thinking about whether he could have not signed given the circumstance that he wanted the money the contract promised him. "Given the same circumstances" usually excludes circumstances about what a person wants, apart from a few exceptional wants such as wanting not to be murdered.

Correction: YOU are thinking about whether he had a knife to his throat.

Some of us don’t think about determinants and constraints in those extremely shallow and superficial terms.

Some of us take it, or at least tend to think it likely true, in the absence of any explanation as to how it could possibly be otherwise, that he literally, actually had no way of freely willing himself to do otherwise than sign the contract.

Compatibilism effectively pretends, or at least allows, that it is otherwise, without offering any explanation as to how it could be the case. Fudging the definition doesn’t count. We could do that for god and then god would exist. We could do it for almost anything, if we needed for some reason to deny the likely actual truth.

 

[ruby sparks]

I do not use that definition

Yes, you certainly do.

(see above).

What, post #228? That is an example of you not using remez's definition. Are you under the impression that you can refute a charge of (doing X but not consistently) merely by providing an example of you not doing X?!?

Could you derive the contradiction, please?
For example: Assume that the real word is deterministic - not even randomness. Assume I wrote this of my own free will. Derive a contradiction. Could you do that, please?

Something that is causally determined (and/or random) is not freely willed or freely done. I don't think I know how to put it any more simply than that. It's like saying up is down or black is white. One is not the other.

Clearly, that argument is invalid by its form, unless it has implicit premises:

Premise 1: X is determined.
Conclusion: X is not freely done.

The argument has the same form as:

Premise 1: X is clever.
Conclusion: X is not freely done.

That is not valid. Of course, you might have implicit premises that make your argument valid. Could you please make a valid argument, making the required premises explicit?

That makes no sense whatsoever, I'm afraid.

Because freely-willed and determined (constrained) are effectively opposites.

Premise 1: X is up
Conclusion: X is not down

You have been caught red-handed relying on that same definition, not once but twice. If you want to refute the charge, you have to explain away the examples of you doing it, not just exhibit examples of you not doing it. All citing post #228 shows is that I'm right about your inconsistency in addition to being right about your using the same definition as remez.

But as Thomas Aquinas said, when faced with a contradiction, draw a distinction. So knock yourself out. By all means, show us a hair-splitting distinction between "By free will I simply mean the opposite of determinism" and "Because freely-willed and determined (constrained) are effectively opposites.".

While we're on the topic of you thinking like remez, you also appear to both use the same definition of "contradiction". Just like remez, you appear to have a special fondness for taking an opponent's premises, mixing them with your own premises, deriving an absurdity, and then accusing your opponent of contradicting himself.

If you have a plausible case (for free will) that is not just a total (and contradictory) fudge (eg Hume or any form of compatibilism) I’d be interested to hear it but I doubt you have because it has never been provided by anyone ever, as far as I am aware.

Thinking about this again, there is another way it is like the OP, in that the belief that free will is compatible with determinism is arguably one of the great contradictions.

By all means, exhibit Hume contradicting himself and compatibilism contradicting itself, as opposed to exhibiting them merely contradicting you.

Good catch. It seems I did use the same definition as remez. On reflection I think I was inaccurate and incorrect. The opposite of determinism is indeterminism.

What I perhaps should better have said was that free will and determinism are mutually exclusive, and thus their (supposed) compatibility is effectively a contradiction.

 

[ruby sparks]

I have a few more thoughts on the above part of your reply to remez.

It’s not the case that those of us who don’t subscribe to compatibilism change the definition we use. In the first instance, I’m not sure I even use a definition of free will any more than I use a definition for god

You have to have some mental association between the words and meanings, or you wouldn't be able to use them intelligibly in sentences. Those associations are in substance definitions, even if you don't think of them that way or try to put them into words.

(I tend not to believe in either).

Case in point. What is the referent of "either" in that sentence? Well, on your account, it doesn't have any referent -- that's what saying you don't believe in them amounts to. So how can your sentence containing "either" be comprehensible when "either" has no referent? As Kant pointed out in his famous refutation of St. Anselm, existence is not a property. "Unicorns do not exist." cannot ascribe a property of nonexistence to unicorns since there are no unicorns to have the property. Rather, existence is a quantifier over properties -- it states the quantity of stuff possessing some identified property. "Unicorns do not exist." means "Not (There exists an X such that X possesses unicornhood)". Likewise, to say you tend not to believe in a god means you tend not to believe (There exists an X such that X possesses godhood"). Now why on earth would you say such a thing unless you have some notion of what godhood involves? Godhood must be some property in your mind. You are ascribing the property of nongodhood to everything in the universe; well, what is this property you are ascribing to me, to yourself, to your toothbrush, and so forth? Whatever it is you are ascribing to us all, that's the (reversed) definition of "god" you use. It may be implicit and it may be subconscious, but it has to be there.

You are alleging unfreeness in every will in the universe; well, what is this property you are ascribing to all our wills?

Secondly, if you steal my phone and let’s say it appears to be deliberate, it’s true that I will blame you, but that’s got more to do with me being almost as trapped as anyone in what might be the illusion of free will, and not the changing of a definition.

You called free will an illusion before.

Absent a convincing or coherent alternative explanation, you are, it would seem, ‘merely’ a very, very, very complex physical/biological/chemical machine that is doing stuff which is dictated by prior natural causes at every instant, but 'you' (ie the system/machine that calls itself 'me') is under the illusion that this is not the case.

Poppycock. You had no evidence. Angra Mainyu had given you no observational reason whatsoever to imagine that he was under the illusion that it was not the case that he is a very, very, very complex physical/biological/chemical machine that is doing stuff which is dictated by prior natural causes at every instant. You ascribed such an illusion to him because you assumed he meant the same thing by "free will" that you meant. But he means something different. He means something reasonable, something people obviously have, something that actually matters for purposes of assigning blame. Practically anyone would blame me if I stole his phone and it appeared to be deliberate. It takes a special kind of ideological blinkers to doggedly insist against all evidence that everyone applies blame in this situation because everyone is under the illusion that we aren't complex physical/biological/chemical machines, rather than because we're looking at the situation as it really is and correctly applying a more sensible concept of "free will" than yours.

I say almost (as trapped) because I tend to think that my skepticism about free will allows me to temper my retributive urges, even if not completely or all the time.

Why? Why would skepticism about free will temper your retributive urges? Would a person nondeterministically deliberately stealing your phone promote your retributive urges? What would the nondeterminism add to the moral calculus apart from making the thief the victim of bad luck?

I’m on my phone at the moment so not able to edit replies properly.

But just on your last question. The reason that retributive urges are tempered by free will skepticism (as suggested in a number of studies) is taken to be the at least partial acceptance that the person responsible may not have been able to have done otherwise. It is effectively allowing some clemency, humility, understanding and a measure of forgiveness, or at least reduced judgementalism on grounds of (perceived) ultimate lack of personal blame.

In other words, “He is not a bad person, he just did a bad thing, and I would have done it if I had literally been in his shoes”.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

In other words, “He is not a bad person, he just did a bad thing, and I would have done it if I had literally been in his shoes”.

Okay, so you think there is such thing as immoral behavior, but not bad people. But why? Take, for example, a serial rapist and killer. He habitually engages in despicable behavior. How is not he a bad person? He has horrendous intentions, as a habit. Being a bad person is a character trait, and he sure seems to have it.

Also, you say "I had literally been in his shoes". But what do you mean by that?

Because if you mean the exact situation, particles and all...then that would not have been you at all. It would have been the serial rapist and killer in question, who is not the same person as you - or at best (if your expression allows it) a physically identical serial rapist and killer, who is also not you. So, it's not the case that you would have done it, but that he would have done it - as he did. But the fact that he would have done it - not you - gives you no reasons not to blame him.

On the other hand, if you do not mean the exact same situation, then why would you think you would have committed the same heinous crimes as he did?

And if you do not think you would have committed the same heinous crimes, then why would you feel less inclined to blame him?

 

[ruby sparks]

In other words, “He is not a bad person, he just did a bad thing, and I would have done it if I had literally been in his shoes”.

Okay, so you think there is such thing as immoral behavior, but not bad people. But why? Take, for example, a serial rapist and killer. He habitually engages in despicable behavior. How is not he a bad person? He has horrendous intentions, as a habit. Being a bad person is a character trait, and he sure seems to have it.

Also, you say "I had literally been in his shoes". But what do you mean by that?

Because if you mean the exact situation, particles and all...then that would not have been you at all. It would have been the serial rapist and killer in question, who is not the same person as you - or at best (if your expression allows it) a physically identical serial rapist and killer, who is also not you. So, it's not the case that you would have done it, but that he would have done it - as he did. But the fact that he would have done it - not you - gives you no reasons not to blame him.

On the other hand, if you do not mean the exact same situation, then why would you think you would have committed the same heinous crimes as he did?

And if you do not think you would have committed the same heinous crimes, then why would you feel less inclined to blame him?

I do mean the exact same situation, and yes if i had been in the exact same situation (arising from the same history) then you’re right, I would have been him, the serial rapist and killer. It’s a version of ‘there but for the grace of god go i’ without the god part.

Added to which, if I think that he could not have done otherwise, then there is less reason to attach personal blame or want retribution.

Which is a slightly separate issue to asking what measures would be taken with him/me/the rapist killer.

 

[Wiploc]

In post 239, Ruby Sparks said:

Added to which, if I think that he [the serial rapist and killer] could not have done otherwise, then there is less reason to attach personal blame or want retribution.

If he can't do otherwise, then we can't either. In which case, we cannot change the amount of blame or retribution.