Does Evolution Have An Objective?

Personally, I'd prefer to actually carry on using words that refer to real events in a way that make senseHowever this is going nowhere and I'm thoroughly bored of discussing it.So, let us narrow the notion of choice to decisions made consciously, and insist that this conscious decision making must work in a manner that does not involve the unconscious - despite that being a thing that as far as I know has never been observed, ever - and insist that the consciousness must operate in a manner that is neither deterministic nor probabilistic in order for a choice to be made.Then I accept that, yes, using this utterly nonsense notion of choice, consciousness and who people are, choice is incompatible with reality, yet alone strict determinism.And, indeed, having decided on a version of choice that is contrary to all knowledge and experience and having found that said strawman notion of choice is unsurprisingly contrary to reality I must also concede that since there is no choice anywhere to be found there must also be no freewill.Edited by Mr Jack, : No reason given.

Nope, that's isn't required at all. I don't know why you keep insisting that it is.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

And the straightforward intuitive notion of motion is that things don't keep going until they are stopped by something, that the earth is flat and the sky is a dome. See cognitivie science, neuroscience etc etc.Can you point to any similar 'soul science'?

I don't. Straggler does.

Yeah, and those were perfectly acceptable until shown otherwise. Sure, and actually pointing to the evidence from those things would be a much better reply than just going: "Nuh-uh, they are too compatible". We don't even have to get that far...There could be conscious nondeterministic actually-reality-affecting decision making going on without having to rely on a soul.

No, not really. You just wrongly think he does.

Right, that it doesn't seem compatible with determinism, and yet must be deterministic if it is to make coherent sense is the problem of freewill. Something has to give if we're going to solve it, right? What it demonstrates is that people not philosophically or scientifically savvy aren't really sure what they mean when they use those terms and they just 'feel' something and are disappointed that science says they're feelings aren't quite the way things actually are. Well, perhaps you should think of it was better defining something that was previously ill-defined. The non-compatabilists have to give a definition of freewill that results in moral responsibility and I can almost guarantee that their notion of freewill will be at odds with our intuitions about how we make moral choices.That's the problem of freewill: If it is to be solved, something has to give. Becuase the capacity for moral responsibility is called 'freewill' and that's what the word points to. It would be a terrible solution to the problem of free will if it didn't propose to solve the problem of free will, right?

I don’t understand why you think that being scientifically correct gives you the right to redefine the conceptual meaning of words. Words conceptually mean the ideas they are used to express. And the ideas people wish to express are not always scientifically correct or entirely philosophically coherent. If they were the term "God" would mean something like 'natural laws' rather than some sort of superbeing. In fact I recall that you had a discussion with Oni where you argued that the term 'supernatural' had conceptual meaning despite not being real. Message 337 up and down thread.Can I suggest that you try and apply some of the thinking you demonstrated in that thread to the conceptual meaning of freewill? Hold on a cotton pickin minute!! Who ever said that? Yes - If the intuitive notion of choice, the one that defies all reality and deep philosophical thought, the one that is purely hypothetical is correct then freewill is a delusion.You're catching on......

I'm not using special meanings of words; it's you who is insisting on a special meaning.

No doubt people are upset (in some cases to the point of denial) that their common sense intuitions turn out to be in defiance of scientifically evidenced reality and philosophical coherence. But, whilst it may not stand up to deep philosophical analysis, I don't think it is true to say that people who hold these notions - and don't we all on a day to day practical level? - have no idea what they mean.They mean that we can make conscious decisions regarding genuine possible alternatives and that these decisons are not restricted to a single possible outcome entirely dicated by prior events over which we have absolutely no control. Thus we are responsible for the outcome. It's philosophically imperfect but not entirely meaningless at a practical level. Why? Seriously - Why do they? Moral responsibility and 'freewill' are entwined because historically people based the idea of moral responsibility on the intuitive notion of conscious volition and the ability to genuinely and freely choose between different possible outcomes. If in fact there is no such freewill and there is instead 'determined will' that is entirely dependent on past events over which we have no control then the notion of moral responsibility and the basis on which it should be ascribed should indeed be completely reconsidered. Just saying "He is morally responsible because he has freewill" has very little meaning if the definition of freewill being applied has been invented purely to make that statement true. The real philosophical question would be to ask why we want or need that statement to be true. Would it be so terrible if we intellectually accepted determinism, accepted that freewill is an illusion, accepted that moral responsibility based on such an illusion is flawed - And then embraced the illusion and the notion of attributing moral responsibility on the basis of the illusion because in practise there is no real alternative?I mean seriously - Who is going attribute moral responsibility because Dan Dennet has managed to come up with an impossible to understand definition of the term "freewill" rather than because we must assume that to all practical intents and purposes the perpetrator could have either committed the crime or not as a result of his own volition?

You are arguably using technical or specialist meanings as invented by compatibilist philosophers.But this thread quite evidently demonstrates that you are not using these terms in the way that people generally conceive them. Hence the objections you have faced throughout.Were you planning on responsding to Message 164?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Simply saying "Nuh-uh, you are!" is the worst reply you can offer.

I am using the word choice in exactly the way someone saying "I chose to wear the pink shirt" is using it. It is you who is importing dualist crap with it.

To appeal to Dennett again try this thought-pump.You are playing golf and are putting 18ft. You miss and then make the claim "I could have got that" and I enquire "What do you mean?', you might suggest that if the circumstances were repeated 10 times, you'd make it 9 times out of ten. Of course, the counter argument is that repetition of the exact same circumstances is impossible.We exist in a certain world. But from our limited knowledge perspective there are many possible worlds and we're not sure which one we are in. If we fall down a lift shaft, we still try to avoid dying because we might be in the world where survival is possible.This is where free choice comes in - it is merely an artifact of us being unsure which world we are in. Are we in a world where we choose to take the money in the wallet, or in a world where we hand the wallet in? We don't know until we do one of them, so it seems that it wasn't determined until we 'chose' it.There are therefore 'genuine possible alternatives' from the perspective of the chooser, even if there is only one possible outcome in actuality. There is a disconnect from what it feels like to be a chooser and from what it actually is to make a choice.The genuine possible alternatives are the other 'possible worlds' that you can't be sure in which one you exist.Which is mind-bending, and I can see how some people would be disappointed with it. A bit like people that are annoyed when they learn how a trick was done. Because that's kind of 'the problem of freewill', or at least one understanding of it. Agreed, it should be completely reconsidered. But reconsidering what it means to have moral responsibility doesn't mean throwing away moral responsibility. Trying to do this successfully is the problem of freewill. There is a real alternative. We punish people so as to make sure the payoffs for committing 'moral crimes' are balanced so that the optimal strategy is as close to 'do not commit moral crimes' as possible. This leaves us open to considering non-punitive methods of maximising adherance to the cooperative ideal.The alternative that we are agents that are free of deterministic causes - then we can't blame them for doing something...their actions were just essentially random and the threat of punishment is non-deterministically linked with the choice to commit the crime. I have no idea what this means. Dan Dennett didn't invent compatabilism, but he has popularised it. If our actions are determined by our perceptions of the world we live in, we want the perception to be that commiting a crime will result in punishment so that agents living with such a perception with deterministically not commit moral crimes.

Modulous, Straggler, Catholic Scientist, Mr. Jack,This is a fascinating discussion but at this juncture there is a lot of confusion on the ideas each of you express.We could always backtrack through the entire thread to try and gain some clarity of each position but this is a tedious chore which most of the lurking community are reluctant to take on.If the Great Moose in the Cybersphere will allow I would ask on behalf of the lurking contingent (minus the search-bots which most probably have no concept or capacity in the area of free will ) that we pause a moment and make a check point of your positions.I'm thinking it would be helpful if each of you would take the time to give us one message each (without arguing or comparing any other position) answering the following:1. Is this universe deterministic, probabilistic, random, irrational, other?2. Do we as sentient beings have the capacity to exercise free will?3. What is your definition of free will?4. Please use this example to demonstrate:You drove down the street, turned left on 2nd Ave, and had pizza for lunch. (I know, Straggler, the lunch you had may have looked and felt a lot like fish-n-chips but it was actually a deep-dish New York-style pizza).At that specific place at that specific time with the structure of the universe as it was then set, did you have the capacity to turn right onto 3rd Ave instead and have a beef and broccoli dish in a savory brown sauce with an egg roll on the side instead of the pizza?5. Any additional comments related to your position.This will help remind the gallery of your individual positions.If you think this request if full of guano, then tell me I'm full of guano, and I will go away.Thanks, guys.Edited by AZPaul3, : tense fix