Do I have a choice? (determinism vs libertarianism vs compatibilism)

If an action is uncaused then no one did it.

Sorry, but your actions conflict with your assertion that you're sure that I'm not arguing that.Try again, and say what you mean.

Okay, this is helping me understand compatablism obviously... I thought I totally disagreed with it.Either everything is arbitrary (which from casual observation doesn't seem to be the case), or everything is caused by previous events - which I'd be at home with, or some things are caused and some things are arbitrary? Also that sounds okay. I don't see any room for 'choice' - that is that a person could choose to do two different actions at a particular point if you reran the tape of history. I don't think that could ever happen and that's the only way I can see choice as being meaningful.I think that freedom as uncaused randomness doesn't sound like freedom at all. If choices are arbitrary then they can't be meaningful and if they can't be meaningful there doesn't seem to be any way in which the freedom is meaningful. Maybe that makes me sound like a compatablist?But I think that I disagree with compatablists if they say that when people make an unconstrained choice that can be called freedom. I simply don't think that there is such a thing as an unconstrained choice. I cant choose to fly and I won't be able to choose to come back to life when I die, and I don't believe that I could ever choose to do something other than what I have done and will do. However many times you played history back I think I'd do the same, so I don't think I have the ability to make two different meaningful choices, and so I don't have freedom.Does that make sense?

What actions? What assertion?My post consisted of a question - admittedly a rhetorical question. If it could be taken as asserting anything, then it is asserting that you are arguing that, and wrongly so in my opinion.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

quote:

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Whatever optiosn are available to you in the situation. Which does not, of course, guarantee that the future would be signfiicantly different.

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I still cannot see how determinism and free will are compatible. The options must be different future states. In order for a future state to be to be considered an option it must be possible for that future state to come about.Determinism states that there is only one possibility for the future, one option. Given that there is one option, there can be no choice.Can you explain why it would be wrong to say "the moon chose to orbit the earth" and it makes sense to say "I chose to write this post" if determinism is true? In both cases the previous states are responsible for the present state.Humes Fork: Either our actions are determined, in which case we are not responsible for them, or they are the random, in which case we are not responsible for them.Edited by JustinC, : No reason given.

That's really the issue with determinism isn't it? Are we, or are we not responsible? I have a solution that you may not like, but it is a solution. The only one I know of.We have free will, and we don't have free will. God's will is not free for us really, but we can have it His way. if we choose not to have it, then we can have our way (whatever horror that brings).As for the the outcome, it certainly pertains to the concept of sin... I ask you to take it seriously!This is the situation with mankind. We are who we are because of our environment and our DNA. Richard Dawkins, the renowned naturalist at Oxford said, "There is no such thing as right and wrong, we're all just dancing to our DNA." That is, by the way, a Biblical doctrine called 'the natural and sinful man'.
So in light of Dawkins statement, how much more profound and up to date... are Jesus' words, "You must be born again!"If the world is falling apart as the Bible says, and if the creation is in decay and we along with it, then we half rightly ask, ”how is it, that I am condemned for being what I have no control to be otherwise?’ If the whole universe is collapsing simply because one component (mankind) has failed in his divine duty, then how is that my fault?It’s a good question . But that is not the issue. The issue is that God has reached down from eternity, into our universe of finitude and decay, and offered His own right hand to pull us out, and we refuse!He offers us a new birth into a living hope and we refuse!And we do so because we have made peace with our sin and learned very quickly to enjoy it. We have become allied with evil and enemies of God by choice.We confidently insist that we have it under control and will find the answer apart from God. In the mean time, we intend to take all that we can ”now’, and plunder whatever pleasures we can experience at the whim of our own will."In every guilty man, there is some innocence. This makes every absolute condemnation revolting." Albert CamusIs Mr. Camus absolutely condemning the concept of 'absolute condemnation'?He is! And he proves that justice must be absolute by imperitive and displays the irrationality that motivates a crowd to choose ignorance over reason when given the clearest of two options. Such a choice is the lesser of the two threats to the will of the crowd, who chooses to live their own way, absolutely.Matthew 27: 21 "Which of the two do you want me to release to you?" asked the governor. "Barabbas," they answered. 22 "What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?" Pilate asked. They all answered, "Crucify him!" 23 "Why? What crime has he committed?" asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!" 24 When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood," he said. "It is your responsibility!"Such a scene is absolutism, condemning absolutism...It is mankind, crucifying himself!

That's a false dichotomy.If our actions are determined by us, then we are responsible. It is only if the actions are determined by factors over which we have no control, that we are not responsible. They can also be partly caused by us, and partly due to random factors. In that case we are partially responsible.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

With you so far...although, if our actions are a product of the interplay of our individual natures and our environment, broadly speaking, it is difficult to put my finger on what portions we control.As I used to say in reply to my father's plaint, "What's wrong with you, kid?":"I dunno, Pop, what do you think--heredity or environment?"He really hated that. Aren't you assuming your conclusion here, and shifting terms a bit in substituting "caused" for "determined"? Responsible or not, we can be links in a causal chain, but "determined by us" suggests free agency.Like the biochemical and developmental factors that determine my taste for vanilla ice cream, do not all my actions and inactions have causes of similar types? In constructing an ethics of responsibility, how and at what point does one become an agent of primary causation? In other words, what is the "bootstrap" mechanism that lifts a product of nature and nurture into free, and thus responsible, agency?Had you said, "If they are partly determined by us..." I could go along with that, too. But that's a big if to leave out.

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You asked a question. That would be an action. "Surely not." Which means it would be an assertion.
Tack on the, "surely not," and now we have you disagreeing with yourself. Think things through, and then read my point again.
Delirium would be a configuration problem -- not a problem with inputs.

You are making a distinction between "caused" and "determined" that I had not intended. We need to distinguish between "caused by us" and "caused by our physical bodies". Your comment may be appropriate for "caused by our physical bodies", but "caused by us" implies intentional behavior, at least as I use the expression.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

Actually, that's independent of determinism. The question is, are you your own creator? If you are, you're responsible. If not, you're not. Nothing else needs to be considered.Oh, and someone please take care of that Fundie claptrap.

By what formula? Like the formula, perhaps?

I'm not sure what you are asking there. There is no mathematical equation that can be used to predict human behavior. And I don't expect that there ever will be such an equation. What exactly do you mean by "formula"?

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

Dominionseraph writes: I agree that that does it... but I think your analysis is incomplete...I am not my own creator, but I do have a choice to become something other than 'what I am now' according to God. Now if that is true, and if I choose to stay the way I am, then I become my own creator by imposition of my will and am guilty.Now for many years I did just this. My conscious was like a huge spring that took all of my effort to intentionally hold down. I intentionally supressed the truth. Put it out of my mind clear into the subconscious for a long time until some Christian came along and hit me upside the heart with the sword of the Spirit. The truth was more powerful than my supression of it!But that is the sin as Paul states clearly in Romans: It's worth considering and not really very fundie...

So it's random? There really is no method to your madness? If it ain't random, there is one.Edited by DominionSeraph, : No reason given.