The kind of free will we have

[ruby sparks]

Sorry Sp, I would rather not get into it with you again, only to have us wrestling pointlessly in a quagmire (again) and spoil what is otherwise a beautiful friendship.

Maybe AntiChris wisely sees this happening if he and I were to attempt similar. I couldn't blame him if he did.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Sorry Sp, I would rather not get into it with you again, only to have us wrestling pointlessly in a quagmire (again) and spoil what is otherwise a beautiful friendship.

Maybe AntiChris wisely sees this happening if he and I were to attempt similar. I couldn't blame him if he did.

I am stumped.

Maybe I could reply with somebody else's jibe, likely also directed at me:

Emotions are human currency numero uno. Anyone who thinks otherwise is not a very good observer of the human condition.

I would agree that emotions are more basic than rational communication, but I guess most people also understand that our way of life today requires something else than emotions to sustain it. And it seems there isn't much outside rationality to help us move forward.

Still, I can see how somebody else's emotions will defeat any amount of rationality I could possibly bring to the table.
EB

 

[PyramidHead]

Here are Strawson's words in context. I must admit, it seems a bit of a departure from what he says both before and after (eg that it all comes down to luck). I wonder what he means by 'weaker' too.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...timate” before “moral responsibility.&f=false

That's actually a really nice interview. In context, Strawson seems to be saying that we are emotionally and psychologically invested in talking about moral responsibility even though it has no real basis. He is hedging a little bit, but still maintains that actor-initiated behaviors have no special status compared to incidental causes. If nothing else, I think that should be the key takeaway from his argument, regardless of what anybody's particular notion of responsibility may be: the causes we regard as especially important for assigning moral responsibility (however we may define it) can't be meaningfully separated from the causes we treat as trivial by any non-arbitrary standard or principle. Our go-to intuition when looking at consequentialist forms of praise and punishment is to focus on the actor, and evaluate the degree to which he should be used as an example based on his causal involvement in whatever he did, but that may be an oversimplification in light of Strawson's conclusion. It may be a better use of resources to forego entirely the process of meting out negative (or indeed, positive) repercussions and focus on the deeper causes of human behavior.

 

[ruby sparks]

Here are Strawson's words in context. I must admit, it seems a bit of a departure from what he says both before and after (eg that it all comes down to luck). I wonder what he means by 'weaker' too.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...timate” before “moral responsibility.&f=false

That's actually a really nice interview. In context, Strawson seems to be saying that we are emotionally and psychologically invested in talking about moral responsibility even though it has no real basis. He is hedging a little bit, but still maintains that actor-initiated behaviors have no special status compared to incidental causes. If nothing else, I think that should be the key takeaway from his argument, regardless of what anybody's particular notion of responsibility may be: the causes we regard as especially important for assigning moral responsibility (however we may define it) can't be meaningfully separated from the causes we treat as trivial by any non-arbitrary standard or principle. Our go-to intuition when looking at consequentialist forms of praise and punishment is to focus on the actor, and evaluate the degree to which he should be used as an example based on his causal involvement in whatever he did, but that may be an oversimplification in light of Strawson's conclusion. It may be a better use of resources to forego entirely the process of meting out negative (or indeed, positive) repercussions and focus on the deeper causes of human behavior.

Yeah.

I admit, my eyebrows went up when he said that people were, "thoroughly morally responsible". I just don't see how his own argument got him to that underlined word. Lol.

He wouldn't be the first person-who-basically-believes-free-will-is-an-illusion to hedge his bets in an interview. It's unpalatable, counterintuitive, controversial and to some (Dennett for example) scary and destabilizing stuff.

The fellow-poster whose views I most accepted even though they were not mine and were at least proto-compatibilist was a person at another forum, who accepted that we probably don't have any actual free will but that until we're more sure about that (too early to say) we should not change the ways we go about stuff in any radical way, we should just let whatever change happens happen gradually if and as more evidence, information and understanding arrive. In other words, he didn't try to argue what I consider to be the impossible or the merely fudgey. That's what I don't get. To me it's like hiding from an unpalatable truth because of potential consequences. He coined the term 'social free will' (cousin of 'practical free will') and said it exists, but only as a 'phenomenon not based of the actual state of affairs'. Illusory but pragmatic, if you like.

Not uncoincidentally, the theist whose views I have respected the most since coming online was a guy who accepted that believing in god was primarily a pragmatic and aesthetic decision.

Personally, I don't think admitting Strawson's argument is going to cause any harm to society (might even do some good). And even if it did, I don't see that as a good reason to deny it.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Strawson: There's a clearly weaker, everyday sense of "morally responsible" in which you and I and millions of other people are thoroughly morally responsible people.

He's just saying exactly what I've been saying from the start.

Where we would still disagree, though, is whether his notion he calls "ultimate moral responsibility" makes any sense at all.

His own argument shows it's not possible for anybody to be that. And most people would say Strawson's argument has nothing to do with personal responsibility. So, I fail to see where it would be established that what he calls "ultimate moral responsibility" has anything to do with personal responsibility, beyond the similarity in the wording of these two expressions. The quote above certainly fails to make that clear and I suspect that Strawson himself isn't aware of the vacuity of his position.

Indeed, he doesn't seem to get that the notion of responsibility is not based on the principle of causality, whereas his "ultimate moral responsibility" is. Well, as I see it, if two ideas are not based on the same principle, then one can't possibly be the ultimate version of the other.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

I see free will as the ability most people have, at least to some extent, to make independent choices, i.e. choices not coerced, limited or influenced by other people.

I think this is the notion of free will most people have.

If you disagree with this, please explain why.
EB

Something on Philosophy 101 classes on compatibilism:

Physicalist says:
September 8, 2016 at 11:05 am
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2016/09/08/consciousness-and-downward-causation/

You are mistaken when you claim, “In all … definitions of the term, “Free Will,” an essential element … is the idea that one can do otherwise.”

This is false. Most Philosophy 101 classes discuss compatibilism, which standardly defines freedom as “doing what you want” with the explicit absence of any reference to the ability to do otherwise.

Broadly the same idea, I would say.
EB