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

You are right - I just looked it up. I'm sorry I don't know the song at all. I really like folk songs; I'm an especial fan of sea-shanties. Living in London I'm lucky enough to have a few odd little clubs that I'm able to attend that play odd little forgotten folk songs.I hope you have a really good holiday.

Oh god... I don't know where my reply has gone so I'm going to have to write it again... grr...Firstly - I've read more of the article now. Its very enjoyable but I fear I'm not understanding the finer points of his argument because I don't have specific enough knowledge. I love it when he lays into people he perceives have misread him though - priceless!I've always accepted that there are very smart people out there who know more about the subject who have opposing views to mine. Its just that I'm still having trouble coming to terms these kinds of attitudes towards decision-making.I don't see a problem with either of your examples that you believe might cause a problem for someone who sees the choice-making system from my perspective.The smoking one doesn't seem problematic to me. You will only consider giving up as a possibility in very certain circumstances. For instance - if you live in a culture that believes tobacco is addictive... and that addiction is bad... etc. If you classify yourself as addicted, and you believe addiction to be bad, or if you can't afford to support your habit any more, then you are developing beliefs that, if they are strong enough, will become sufficiently strong to counter the urge to smoke more. Where do these beliefs come from? I think they are largely external, learned things.I'm a bit unsure how the first one (spelling mistakes) relates to free choice - because mistakes are by definition involuntary. I assume you chose it then more as a means of exploring my model of mind.* The thing is, I'm not sure if the process of cognition is entirely relevant to the question we are addressing. This may sound beyond the pail (pale?) to you, but let me try to explain.Assuming that you are right and there is a cognitive process that allows free choice, I'm speculating that in practice you would be as constrained as someone who was just a behaviourist input and response machine. The learned beliefs that you hold are the scaffolding of your sense of self - your sense of reality. This is what I was trying to talk about when I was talking about the maps. I'm not sure if I was clear enough. Our beliefs are our map of reality. I mean this in a jar-ist way. They merely discribe it - if our beliefs are sufficient to help us see where dangers lie then great. But we don't have any real access to reality.Okay, I'm going off on one. All I mean is, how can you act contrary to your beliefs? Why would you want to? Many of your beliefs keep you alive from hour to hour. All I'm saying is that there isn't an aspect of our lives, our decision-making, which isn't scaffolded and I would argue, determined by these beliefs. Is there?*I'm not sure if this is my model of mind, but just say it is - even then, I don't see a problem in the face of spelling mistakes. I speculate it might work something like this: external pressures (time constraints) make you use a different, less precise way to work out a sum that gives a quicker but less accurate result. Or if it comes to spelling, you use general spelling or syntax rules that are rong in a specific instance, rather than bothering to search your memory for the correct, specific spelling of the particular word.Edited by Tusko, : No reason given.

I'm really glad that you are still thinking. I've never read Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Perhaps I'd better give it a go myself...In the meantime, I've thought of another way of talking about it while I was walking along Chancery Lane. Maybe I've said this before, but here goes....I consider people rational beings. I don't mean rational in an objective sense (I've done my fair share of really stupid things in my time), but rather rational in a subjective sense. That is to say, that every decision we make might not improve our lot, or the lot of others, but nonetheless it is enacted because some part of us believes, consciously or unconsciously that it is the most appropriate course of action at the time.Some people -- very violent men for instance -- will believe that attacking others is the most appropriate course of action even when, in an objective sense, it is probably more dangerous in the short term and more likely to lead society's application of restrictive measures like prison in the long term.However, they will persist in this behaviour until they die, unless that belief is changed. I can see how change might be precipitated from without - by a kind of societal reprogramming, to put it crudely. But for a person to change independently, I can only see this as possible if there is already a seed of the desire to live a more peacable life planted in them.RIGHT! Sudden flash! I get why Locke's relevant here - Tabula Rasa, right? Aha! Right, I think I'd better get on and read that then, as soon as I can find the time.Anyway. I used the example of a violent man - but I feel like that same kind of thing applies universally.I don't know if that's helped you understand my position at all, but Its helped me. Cheers!

I think you are right - "We're not so different, you and I". I'm just coming back to the differences again because they are the most fun bits to rail over...By the way, I'm experiencing quite a strong desire to stamp back over familiar ground in this post... which is quite hard to resist. Excuse me if this is too familiar to a previous post.For example, when you say: I want to cry out: but recognising a choice is to be made, and weighing up the pros and cons in order to make that choice are totally reliant on what we have learned and what we believe.To use your example: if we lived in a culture that didn't have systematic scientific evidence of the serious health implications of smoking (say Edinbrugh in the 1780s), then we might only be prompted to stop smoking because of the smell, or if our spouse didn't like it. If we liked the smell, and so did they, then stopping might not arise in our minds as an issue.I also think the distinction between beliefs and desires is useful(though maybe "learned behaviours" would be a better way of saying "beliefs").I think that if it was as clear cut that we were attracted to pleasure and repelled from pain, then we would all be uncomplicatedly hedonistic. And there's another apparent problem: pain can be pleasure and vica versa - and not just for masochists. I think these apparent problems - why aren't people always hedonistic? why do people sometimes choose to harm themselves? aren't problems any more if we consider peoples' actions as the result of learned behaviours... although desire - hardwired behaviour - has to play a part too.I'm interested in your contrasting of the two violent men in your last post. Why is the miserable man bothered by society's condemnation and the happy one isn't? I think the reasons to be found in his circumstances. I think you know what I mean here - I feel like I'm repeating myself a bit too much, sorry.I think your assessment of my position is pretty fair. As you say,to me the whole idea of freedom seems meaningless unless we could actually choose between various choices when free to do so. If that freedom doesn't exist - and I don't believe it can - then all we can experience is the same kind of freedom that a boulder enjoys to roll down hill unimpeded by obstacles. It just doesn't seem free to me - and I don't see why this apparently impossible thing called freedom could be attractive. I agree that nothing can be free, in my terms.I think it might be helpful if people questioned the idea of freedom and the limits of it a little bit more.While I accept that you have every right to call your ability to make choices unimpeded by the interference of say, axe-wielding psychopaths or the CIA, it still seems artificial to draw a distinction between external constraints that limit our choices (like people with guns and gravity) and internal ones - like our most uncomplicated desires and our learned behaviours. They all combine to reduce our choices. Now clearly, I'd rather that I didn't do something because I had the belief that it would be dangerous or counterproductive rather than someone was physically restraining me from doing it. But I don't think what I find more palatable has much bearing on the central issue - which is that either way I can't really choose. I can't choose not to be constrained by my beliefs and learned behaviours. In a similar way, I can't choose not to be constrained by a straightjacket if someone puts one on me.Does that make sense?

(Good god, this is a rambler. Apologies. I have tried to boil it down as much as I can, but more bits keep appearing. I have cut loads of other bits though that I realised didn't make any sense...)As I've said before, from my perspective the idea of freedom, to me at least, literally doesn't make any sense. Still I only see a dichotomy: either the decisions we make are in response to our hard- and soft-wired behaviours, or they are arbitrary determined. Neither seems to be free to me - but that doesn't bother me, like it doesn't bother me when someone tells me I can't do breaststroke faster than the speed of light. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.A compatiblist would say, I think, that this is all fine, but the fact remains that its a free choice as long as it is made without external constraints. Internal constraints aren't problematic for compatiblists because, as you say, if we didn't have the beliefs and learned behaviours that allow us to form our response, then it wouldn't be a personal choice anyway.So we have different definitions of freedom. My (impossible) freedom is something that isn't arbitrary or predetermined. A compatiblist's freedom is simply a choice made without an external compulsion.Central then, to the compatiblist, is that there is some significant difference between external and internal compulsions. I contend that any such distinction is very difficult, if not impossible to draw.For one thing, it is important to note that the barrier between internal and external constraints is a permeable one. All internal constraints, as far as learned behaviours go anyway, are the result of external happenings, rendered into experiences. This is one reason why it might be artificial to draw a distinction between internal and external constraints.From what you've written so far, I can only really see two way that a compatiblist might make the distinction. It could be :1) Essentially emotive: that is, something isn't free when an agent feels unhappy that they have been coerced by external forces, not because what they are doing is necessarily dangerous but because they don't feel in control of their destiny. Likewise, something is free when you feel as though you have made a decision and you are in control of your destiny.2) If we believe that a person holds some kind of ownership over their individual beliefs and learned behaviours, then they can call their exercising of these "free".But I'm not convinced by either.Someone supporting the first instance argues that If you do something without being compelled by external forces, then you are content at some fundamental level, even if the act is self-destructive, because you are in control of your own destiny. On the other hand, if you do something because external forces compel you, you cannot be content on that same fundamental level - even if the act is pleasurable - because you aren't in control of your destiny.But I don't think the fundamental level is very fundamental at all - I think it is merely something that we have learned - i.e. that we should all seek to be in control of our destiny - that makes us feel uncomfortable when factors beyond our control take over. My whole argument is that there probably never is a circumstance when we are anything other than a passenger.So if there is difficulty with that "fundamental bottom line" of wanting to be in control of our own destiny, then we are just left with the emotive angle - that is: do external factors generally make us unhappy when they influence us and do internal factors generally make us happy when they are expressed?As we know, there are a whole load of learned behaviours that can make us very unhappy - just look to the alcoholics, paedophiles, or people with OCD. Acting on these preferences, though probably unavoidable if they are sufficiently strong, will most likely result in less contentment, despite the fact that they come from within.There are also a whole load of external forces that we don't mind - gravity, speed of light, etc... that limit what we can do. You might argue that these things don't limit us in the same way that a criminal who ties us up, but I think they act in just the same way. They both prevent us from doing things that we might want to do. There are many circumstances where we desperately might want to fly, for instance, like you might if a child fell out of a high window.Remember, if we are looking at the world this way then we cannot hold people to moral account any more than we can gravity, because their beliefs will be limiting their actions as well as ours.Also, as a side-note, people would only get comfort from believing they were in control of their own destiny in a society that believed that we can control our own destiny.The other alternative that I can see is that if we assume ownership of our own learned behaviours, then we can call ourselves free.Maybe even to a compatliblist, there is something significant about the uniqueness of the individual's beliefs and preferences that lead to any choice; at least, that's what I understand when you say... But as far as I'm concerned, just because my preferences and inclinations are unique to me, I'm not any more the owner or author of mine than I am of yours. To me this seems just the same as my relationship to external constraining factors, that is, I don't get ownership over external constraints simply because they are unique to me. (If someone was to compel me in a novel way, never used before or again, I couldn't say I was free because the means of compulsion was unique to me.)To me, this seems directly analogous to someone who says that they want to have children so they can pass on "their" genes. Actually, you don't own your genes. You didn't choose your genes. You inherited them. So you are not an owner, merely a vessel.Similarly, I don't see myself as an owner or author of my beliefs, or if I am, it is only in such a limited sense as to be effectively meaningless. I see myself as a vessel for my beliefs: beliefs that I have collected like a saucepan left outside will rain.So if I don't own them, how can my exercising of them be anything other than another kind of compulsion?So in conclusion, I still don't really understand why it's called freedom when I chose something but compulsion when someone makes me do something; the former seems just as compelled as the latter. Its just that we are attuned to recognise the actions of those who try to prevent us from doing things

I agree with what you say about hedonism, and I think it is best understood in terms of learned behaviour. If we were simply attracted to pleasure then we would drink and fuck until everything inside us shrivelled up and went blue, and then it would be too late. Instead we listen to the pain as well, and factor that into our understanding of our raucous behaviour and its effect on us.You need say no more about Masochism!I'm aware that self-harm is different from Masochism. I didn't mean to bracket them together as necessarily pleasurable for the same reason, I merely wanted to draw attention to the fact that pleasure (whether sexual or "emotional") and pain aren't very easily distinguishable in some circumstances.The reason I brought this up was because I thought, erroniously, you were offering an explanation of human behaviour on a hedonistic model rather than the model I favour of learned and biologically hard-wired behaviours.ABE: oh, and for some reason I can't go to the links that you gave for Cicero. I've never read any of him and wonder what he's all about. Also - was Locke enlightening? I haven't got round to getting a copy of On Human Understanding... if that's what its called. I think my dad has one lying around his house.Edited by Tusko, : No reason given.

No - I think I haven't made myself clear enough. I think there is a difference between wanting something as a baby might cry for the breast and believing that it is desirable or even possible to have a free choice from a range of actions. The first is a reality and the second is a belief or projection. I think, for example it is possible to want something and to recognise that you don't have any choice in the matter. Well... its complicated. I recognise that I am my beliefs and that if I had whisked back in time on the day of my birth to 1st century Mesopotamia, then I wouldn't have been me in any meaningful sense. But it is possible for me to imagine that man, and with some research I might start to understand more what he would have been like. Barring accidents or premature death he would be like me biologically, but would just hold different ideas. I can imagine lots of different 'me's, all with different beliefs. They wouldn't be me really, but I feel kinship with them nonetheless - especially the ones who only differ over one or two trivial beliefs.Because I don't think that I can choose my beliefs, and that circumstances instead determine them wholly or to a large extent, then I don't think I could ever have been any of these other people so they are entirely hypothetical. Even one who was identical but hated anchovies. I entirely agree here.These questions that follow look good. Let me try to answer them. Yes, I think that it might be possible for my actions as a therapist to help you change your behaviour as an addict. I don't know what techniques I would use, but there are a range that might be effective given enough time, and assuming my knowledge and ability were of a sufficient standard.With this answer I am implicitly buying into the assumption that there is some kind of causal buck that stops with the therapist, when in fact I don't really see this as true. But for practical purposes I think its reasonable to talk in those kind of terms. Yes, I think it would be possible to change your behaviour on your own. But I tend to think that - and the same goes for question a - it would either be inevitable or impossible, and not a case of probabilities. Lest you are wondering, I'm not making any predictive claims here. Yes I think on balance its probably a good idea to restrain people who are a proven danger to others. But that isn't to say that rehabilitation would be impossible during a period of incarceration.With our present level of technology it isn't possible to predict with sufficient accuracy whether someone can be rehabilitated or not so we should always try to tailor the most effective program of rehabilitation to the individual. This of course leaves the door open for an apparently dystopic future where everyone is predestined by computers or something, but I think thats sufficiently far away for me not to lose any sleep over the implications right now!

Unless you happen to be cursed (blessed?) with an inability to remember, then I think learned behaviour makes for as dynamic model of behaviour as you could really require. I believe that every experience might potentially effect on your future actions.I'm really busy at the moment and I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to have a look at any Cicero in the immediate future. The Locke remains high up on my "should read list". I have plenty of dead wood that needs stripping away.

Ah - okay. I didn't really see the distinction between restraints like incarceration and changing someone's behaviour against the will because both seem to be examples of changing someone's behaviour against their will.It sounds as though you are specifically talking about influencing people in a Clockwork Orangey kind of way though. I think that something like this is probably wrong.Allowing anyone this kind of control over an individual might be dangerous because it might have negative emotional effects on both the perpetrator and target. If it didn't, and I can't really see how not, then I don't see much of a problem.Imagine if someone invented the 'De-Paedo Booth', which people could be offered as an alternative to prison. It would quickly and painlessly replace the potentially harmful attraction to children in convicted paedophiles with a more socially acceptable sexuality of their own choosing. As long as you gave them the choice, then I think this would be a fantastic solution to a difficult problem. However, I think that if people were forced to use it then the unwished change to their identity might be upsetting. Also, I fear for the emotional well-being of those who routinely bend the wills of others.However, I'm not sure if my gut reactions to scenarios like this are very helpful. After all, Ive been brought up ina culture that glorifies freewill and denegrates those who take it away. I'm bound to feel a bit uneasy at such a prospect.