Summations Only

Why? Well, this is untrue simply by definition. By definition, the compatibilist viewpoint is that one can have determinism and free will simultaneously. You may argue that this viewpoint is wrong, but you cannot argue that this is not the compatibilist viewpoint, because that is exactly what the compatibilist viewpoint is.

No.

Well I seem to manage OK.The way I look at it, my actions are determined, by the state of my brain, which is me, i.e. my actions are determined by me, which is what I mean by free will. Anyone asking for more "freedom" is in effect asking that their will should be so free that it's free of them, in which case it wouldn't be their will.So I'm perfectly happy with compatibilism.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

The state of my brain is determined by the prior state of my brain, plus input through my senses.Should the last bit give me pause? I don't think so. I'm going to cross the road, I see a car coming, I change my mind ... this is good. It would not be more like "free will" if I marched out into the road like a blind automaton and got squished. Well they're in the same boat. Just because something is invisible doesn't make it immune to the deterministic/random dichotomy. Some of them apparently think it does, but how could it? It's just the same old thing ... "How can I resolve this question ... I know, I'll postulate the existence of an invisible man having the property of resolving this problem."This has never worked out well.

Yes, but it still is my brain, i.e. me. Again, to complain about this and say my will isn't free enough would be to demand that my will should be free of me, in which case it wouldn't be my will.

Compatibilism isn't an alternative to hard determinism, it's the assertion that we can have free will despite it. Perhaps you could expound a bit on the problem.If you're worried that people might use it as an excuse, then it's not a very good one, because what it boils down to is: "Yes, my client did do all those really bad things. But in mitigation, I would point out that he only did them because he's a really bad person."

The difficulty of persuading other people of my point of view is not a fault in my point of view. It's not like I'm trying to sell it and make a profit, I'm trying to be right.

Or, to put it another way, I don't want to rape a nun, so I'm not going to.This is what we call free will. Yes, there are some things that my brain doesn't want to do. Which are, by a complete noncoincidence, the things that I don't want to do. My brain being the physical instantiation of my will. "Bits of my brain that I have no control over?" No, bits of my brain that I am.I am not a helpless puppet of that sinister puppet-master, my brain, because I am my brain. There are no strings --- the fact that I always think the same as my brain does is because I always think the thinks I think, not because my brain, as agent, is acting on me, as patient, and making me think the things that it does.It's as though someone were to say: "There was no free vote at the last election --- the electorate only voted the way they did because the people of the United States compelled them to do so, which is coercion." No, it's actually just a very strange description of what was in fact a free vote; a strange description because it represents the electorate and the people as two entities when they are in fact one.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

They had a choice. The fact that that choice was determined by them doesn't make them innocent, it's what makes them culpable."Yes, m'lud, my client did eat those people. But only because, by a sheer stroke of bad luck, he happened to be John Wayne Gacy, which could have happened to anyone. If he had had the good fortune to be Francis of Assisi, you'd be nominating him for sainthood. I therefore move ..."Now, the question I would ask the defense lawyer, apart from "can I have what you're smoking?" is --- who, precisely is he exculpating? He's talking as though there were two people, his client and J.W.G, and his client, who is different from J.W.G, just suffers from the appalling bad luck of being J.W.G.And again, when he says "it could have happened to anyone", what does he mean? Could it have happened to me? Only if there is a "me" that is not Dr Adequate, and is not to be identified with Dr A's thoughts, opinions, feelings, and marked preference for not eating people.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

He could, but there is nothing in the doctrine of compatibilist free will that compels one to receive that argument. It might be misrepresented as such, but then I've seen people misrepresent evolution as giving support to racism, and that isn't an argument against evolution, it's an argument against people misrepresenting things.In any case, even if the attorney was right, it is still the case the argument from consequences is invalid. If c.f.w. implied something that was false, that would be an argument against it, if it merely implied something that we don't like, then we'd have to bite it.

Well, what of it? I can't help people being stupid. The world is as it is. But in fact the dualists are in the same boat. Let's imagine an ethereal metaphysical mind which is not the brain. Very well then. Your actions are either determined by the state of your mind, or random with respect to it. In the latter case, I should say that you do not have free will; in the former case, if you want to think you have free will you need to be a compatibilist. What you cannot do is demand a will so free that it is free of your will, because that makes no sense. Whether it's a physical brain or a metaphysical soul, the sort of free will I believe in is the freest sort of will you can have.The fact that I am also a mental materialist has nothing to do with my arguments really. You could take any place where I say "brain" and substitute "immortal soul" and it would still work out the same. The reason that I deny that the automatic door has free will is not because I think that I am immune to causality, or that I think I have no physical substrate, but because I think that the automatic door has no will. I do the things I do because I desire to do so, but I do not attribute the same consciousness to the door.

Well, suppose that the common conception of dinosaurs is that they were cold-blooded. I think they were warm-blooded. However, it would not be helpful, nor in the last analysis honest, if I went around saying "Dinosaurs did not exist" and "Dinosaurs are illusory".The reason why it would not be honest is that people think a lot of other things about dinosaurs as well. If I say: "Dinosaurs did not exist" then interpreted in plain English people would understand me as saying that there were no sauropods and no ceratopians, and so forth, not that I differed from them about whether dinosaurs were endotherms.Now in the case of free will, people think that we have free will, that it is our capacity to make choices, that free will means that we do what we want to do, that we are morally culpable for doing evil, and so on and so forth. But they also, when you prod their metaphysics, seem to think that real free will should be so free that it is free of our will. It is only on this last point that I disagree with them, because that's really stupid and amounts to a denial of free will in every other sense in which they mean it. It is therefore more honest to say that I think we have free will, and to explain what I mean by that, then to go about saying that we don't and then explaining that in every other respect I agree with them that we do.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

If I have a consistent philosophical theme it is that we should stick as closely as possible to ordinary language.So, for example, in talking about epistemology, I do not say: "There is no such thing as proof in science". Because that statement is, in plain English, false.Instead, I say: "Of course scientists can prove things. The world is not flat. This has been proved." Then I might bring in the philosophical caveats, and say: "It is of course true that when I say "proved", I do not mean proved beyond all conceivable doubt, such that you are presently confined in a mental hospital hallucinating the "proof" that the world isn't flat, or that you are beset by a Cartesian demon. I mean, in the ordinary sense, that this has been proved."Someone who changes the definition of "proved" so that it includes these recondite epistemological anxieties, and so that he goes about saying "nothing can be proved" is simply lying.Now it might be shown that an ordinary person, quizzed about his epistemology, thinks that "proved" means "proved beyond all conceivable doubt", but this is only because the ordinary person has not contemplated the Cartesian demon. It is not a concession to his naive views to go about saying "science can't prove anything", rather, it is a mean dirty trick to play on his naivety. Precisely because he is an ordinary person and not a philosopher, if I say to him "there is no such thing as proof in science", I am telling him the most enormous lie.Therefore, when we do philosophy, we should choose our terms to be as close as possible to ordinary language. We should not strut about stating our conclusions as: "there is no such thing as proof"; "there is no such thing as free will"; because if the ordinary person does not, on hearing these blatant lies, recognize us as liars and fools, then he will fall into an even greater error --- he will believe us.

FAME AT LAST!

Yes it was. It is precisely my choice and my will not to rape a nun. That's why I don't. By whom? Where is the puppet-master? I am the puppet-master and the puppet. It seems that I don't want to rape a nun, and so a nun is not raped by me. Well, damn you, I, for deciding what me should do! Oh ... wait ... that's a purely grammatical distinction.I don't see what you would want for me to have free will. Would it be an exercise of free will if I raped a nun even though I don't want to? But surely that would be the opposite of free will.This is where you run into difficulties. Apparently what you mean by free will is that my will should be free of me, that I should have a will so free that I am not making the decisions any more, but instead I stand idly by while my body rapes a nun, something that I personally have no intention of doing. But this is the opposite of having free will. Free will means that my actions are determined. They are determined by me, the guy who doesn't want to rape a nun. Because I don't want to, I don't. That's free will.---And this is what I've been talking about in my previous posts. Tangle has this idea that to have real free will I should be able to rape a nun even though I don't want to rape a nun. Well, when I say that I have free will, I am not asserting that I have free will in the sense that Tangle means it. But that doesn't mean that in deference to his bizarre definition of "free will" I should admit that I have no free will.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.