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

I feel like the character in the Moliere play who discovers that he's been speaking prose all his life. In another thread AdminNWR banned me from discussing 'compatibilism' with messenjah-of-one. Having never heard this term before I immediately went to Stanford (well, the online encyclopedia of philosophy) to find out what it meant, and discovered, to my surprise, that I'd been a compatibilist all my life.For those of you, like my self of two days ago, who don't know what I'm talking about, here's a brief introduction.One of the implications of the materialist world view underpinning science is that events are linked by an unbroken chain of physical cause and effect. This implication is known as determinism.Now some people argue that, if determinism is true, then my sense of having free choices is an illusion, because each act, preceeded by an unbroken chain of cause and effect, could not have happened otherwise. This position is known as hard determinism.Others, taking the opposite view, argue that it is clear we have free choices, and therefore the assumptions of determinism must be invalid in some way. Someone who holds this position is known as a libertarian.Those, like myself, who take the third view, that determinism and free will are compatible, are known, unsurprisingly, as compatibilists.Now before Purpledawn intervenes to complain about all these -isms, let me explain why the question matters.If the hard determinist position is true, then no-one can really be held responsible for their actions (if you couldn't have done otherwise, then how can you be responsible?). On the other hand, if the libertarian position is correct, then the deterministic model that underlies science must be wrong. That's why much of ethical philosophy is concerned with arguing for one compatibilist position or another.Now, I don't want to discuss the whole of the determinism/free-will debate here, but there is one particular question that I'm intrigued by and think might be woth pursuing as a thread topic.The classic compatibilist position on this question is to argue that what freedom means is freedom from coercion not freedom from causation. So, if I can do what I want, then I am free; if I am stopped from doing what I want, then I am not free. This is the position taken by English empiricists from Locke and Hobbes through to Hume and Mill, and forms the basis for liberal political philosophy.This is a powerful argument in itself, and stands up to scrutiny. But there is a problem that compatibilists have had more difficulty dealing with, and it goes something like this.In order for my action to be considered free, then there must be alternatives for me to choose from. But if determinism is true then, when I make my choice, that action is caused by an unbroken chain of cause and effect, and if it is caused by an unbroken chain of cause and effect, then it couldn't have been otherwise, and therefore my belief that I had alternative choices must have been an illusion.My intuition, like that of most people, is that this argument is faulty in some way. I spend a good part of my day putting a lot of effort into choosing between alternatives - it doesn't make much sense to imagine that these choices would have been the same without me putting in the effort to make the choices.So what's wrong with the argument. My intuition is that the account of determinism in this argument is wrong. It seems to me that the act of making a choice is more complicated than the simple model of cause and effect assumed in the argument. I'll try to address this issue in later posts, but for now I'll just ask this question:Now that I've got to the end of this essay, am I entirely free to post it or not to post it? Or is my action of posting it (or not posting it) already predetermined as I write these words? Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Added the "(determinism vs libertarianism vs compatibilism)" to the topic title.

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

What a coincidence. I work at the science park across the road from the University, near Heslington village. I cycle to work across Walmgate stray every day. I agree, its a great city. Yes, you started your thread just as I was composing my opening post. I've read a few posts, but I didn't want to get too involved in case I got distracted. Personally, I think that hard determinism is just a theoretical philosophical position. As far as I can see, everyone acts as though they have free choice, even when they take a hard determinist position.

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

My own opinions are pretty much the same, I think. But what do you think about the question of choosing between alternatives?

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

Your position here and in your own thread seems to be closer to a compatibilist position than a hard determinist position to me. So let me try to explore the difference a bit more:1. Both the hard determinist position and the libertarian position depend on the same definition of freedom, i.e. as uncaused randomness. If you belive that human actions can be uncaused ('attached to nothing' as Dominion Seraph describes it lower down), then you're a libertarian; if you accept this definition of freedom and don't believe human actions can be uncaused then you're a hard determinist. A compatibilist, on the other hand, believes that this definition is meaningless, so doesn't accept either position.2. The problem with the hard determinist model is that it leads to all kinds of misleading descriptions about human nature, e.g.:(a) You often hear hard determinists talking about man being an automaton. However, an automaton is a thing that follows a pre-programmed set of instructions, and any organism with a brain works in quite a different way. Note that my objection here is not that I think it's morally wrong to talk about man as an automaton, but that it is scientifically misleading.(b) The hard determinist model fails to distinguish between organisms that can make choices and those that can't. The brain is an organ designed to make choices, to separate the organism from immediate stimulus-response mechanisms. If your model of determinism doesn't allow you to make such fine distinctions, then is it very useful?Edited by JavaMan, : typoEdited by JavaMan, : No reason given.

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

Yes, it's very easy to say that an event is inevitable after it has occurred. I'm much more impressed by someone predicting the inevitable outcome before it occurs.

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

According to the hard determinist position, if I post my message then that event was inevitable, it could not have occurred in any other way. But let's imagine that I read through the message one last time and realise that it's a crock-of-sh*te. I decide to save my face and don't send it. Again the hard determinist would say that this outcome is inevitable.But hold on a minute - five seconds previously, a different outcome was inevitable, wasn't it? This inevitability seems to be a bit evanescent - it's like a will o' the wisp. Is there any point at which you can say beforehand that such and such an event is inevitable, or is hard determinist inevitability an after-the-event thing, a kind of philosophical told-you-so?To elaborate on nwr's point about randomness. Note the difference between the situation I've just described here and the case where I don't post the message because I've lost contact with my internet provider. That is an example of my actions being determined by random events over which I have no control, quite a different thing than me choosing not to send the post for reasons of my own.ABE: Although randomness doesn't really help our argument about free will, it does make a mockery of the claim of inevitability. To return to my original scenario, imagine that my daughter starts crying before I make my final read through the message. As a result of this random event (random from my point of view rather than hers, of course) I post it, still confident that it makes sense. It's still my choice to post it, of course, but what has happened is that some random event has intervened to influence (not cause) my actions.Edited by JavaMan, : Added paragraphEdited by JavaMan, : typos

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

Sorry to be pedantic, but that isn't Hume's fork. This is:

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

Life isn't a videotape. You can't rewind it and play it again to prove that an event was inevitable. All you can do is assert that it was inevitable because it happened. Like I said, if you told me what was inevitable before it happened, then I might be impressed.

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

I don't really understand this argument. Does it mean that 'choice' would be meaningful only if both outcomes had occurred? (This seems to be the implication of the argument that because only one outcome occurred, then the action leading to that outcome was inevitable.) Neither can I . You certainly can't change what you've already done, but are you saying that what you will do for the rest of your life is already mapped out in some way? Are your future actions already inevitable, and if not, at what point will they be inevitable?Edited by JavaMan, : typo

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

I'd happily answer these questions if I understood the relevance. I'm quite aware that the range of options available to me is limited by my environment.I'm not arguing that I have perfect freedom to do anything, simply that the notion of making free choices is meaningful even within a deterministic model of the world.

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

I'd agree with this, apart from the limitation of 'beings with the ability to reason'. I'd change this to 'beings with the ability to choose' - reason is only a very small factor in most of my choices; there seems to be a whole realm of unconscious processing in there. You seem to have accepted that freedom defined as 'freedom from causation' is meaningless, so I think you're half-way to a compatibilist position . The sticking point is choosing between alternatives.I like coffee and tea pretty much equally, and when my work colleagues ask me what I'd like to drink, it's pretty arbitrary which I choose. I could make it perfectly arbitrary by tossing a coin every time I was asked the question and it wouldn't make any noticeable difference to my quality of life.On the other hand I prefer pistachio to strawberry ice cream, and, given the choice, I would nearly always choose pistachio. I could fulfil the determinist/libertarian definition of freedom by tossing a coin every time I was asked which ice cream I wanted so that my choosing was independent of causation. But the result would be a bit paradoxical, don't you think? In order to prove that I can choose equally between alternatives I would end up doing something that I would prefer not to do, i.e. eat strawberry ice cream.Now there's nothing to stop me going through the whole of my life like this, and if I did, then the hard determinist would have to accept that I was acting freely, because I'm acting in a way that is free from causation.A compatibilist, on the other hand, arguing that freedom is 'freedom from coercion', rather than 'freedom from causation', would not accept that I was acting freely because I was not doing what I wanted.Which position would you take?

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

I'm not a philosopher. I'm just winging it . It's as much an exploration for me as it is for you. Yes, I know. Which is why I needed to throw a coin to be sure that the choices were arbitrary. My point with these two examples was to show that it is possible for me to live in a way that isn't bound by determinism, but that the 'freedom' so gained is meaningless, and isn't what anybody really means by freedom anyway. On the contrary, freedom for a compatibilist is freedom to do what I want - and what I want is determined by my biological inheritance and previous experience. They are what make me, me. So as long as I'm free to choose pistachio over strawberry ice cream, then I'm free in the compatibilist sense. But if someone coerces me into choosing strawberry ice cream when really I want pistachio (if the ice cream police make dealing in pistachio an offence, for example) then my freedom is lessened.

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

But you haven't yet provided a definition of freedom where one could be said to have choice. You've already rejected the determinist/libertarian definition as being meaningless. And you reject the compatibilist notion because you say 'To me that isn't freedom in any sense'. So what is your definition of freedom?

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

I hope you realise how silly that sounds. In what way is it artificial to distinguish between you doing something because you want to do it, and you doing something because someone is holding a gun to your head?

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

Yes. I'm going to have to think about it. I may be some time ... . I hope you don't feel as though I'm picking on you. I'm responding to your posts more than other people because you're making a good fist of putting forward a coherent argument. And don't be too intimidated by the people arguing against you - we're not that clever - we've just got a secret stash of arguments from Hobbes, Locke, Hume and Mill that we can call on when things get sticky .

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang