Summations Only

But hard determinism asserts that the initial conditions of the universe determine all future states, so there is no room for any randomness. Okay, I'm not inserting randomness into decision making either. What I was trying to offer, was another option: that you are a cause of your own causality. That is, you, yourself, as a cause that is independent of another. A source of cause, so to speak.

Perdition & CS are discussing randomness: Actually - I am, to an extent. I am arguing that what we call and identify within us as Free Will is the sensation of accomplishing what we want in spite of the chaos outside of us and the chaos within us. What we want is of course determined by genetics, physical environment, cultural upbringing and everything else, including seeing a robin fly by our window 30 years ago, plus a feedback not getting what we want all the time and finding out that there were better things we wanted that override the disappointment of not getting the immediate thing we wanted. So yes, Perdition, what we want is very dependent on the previous states. And what we want heavily, almost exclusively, drives our Will. But there is an indeterminancy in the next instantiation of the universe. A small, stubborn element of chaos that is intractable by all analysis right down to the final emission of some photon of interest. Free Will is a sensation of overcoming this chaos. I decide to raise my right arm. The arm does not plunge downward or erupt into butterflies or slap me in the face. It raises as planned. But does it exactly move in the manner that I aimed in my head? No. But it moves close enough to give me the sensation that I am in control. That I am responsible. It's my fault that when I did that I knocked your beer out of your hands. It was not all just chaos.This means I also am making a statement that the universe cannot be not fully determined, it is not a Swiss Watch, it cannot be calculated from the Big Bang forward, or even from a minute ago forward. To disagree with Albert, oh yes, "he" does or has played with dice to the extent that we cannot even prove "he" is necessary (Rrhain's chocolate sprinkles).Just like sometimes we reach hard to return a tennis ball to a hard spot on the other side and fail, sometimes our free will screws up and we miss our aim. It is not exact. Sometimes we think we missed our aim, only to find out on rare occasion that we actually hit a better aim. There is a hysteresis between the initial move and the sensation, perhaps those 0.35 seconds from those experiments, or, at a minimum, those 0.001 seconds Son Goku cited. The thing is, we don't know what we did until after we did it. It's a feedback system. And, when I think about, yes - it is scary!

There's an extra "not" in there... But I get what you're saying.I honestly could go either way, but I'm not convinced that it is fully deterministic. To further complicate it: it could be that its not really random, but random with respect to prediction... If you knew all the states of a person's brain, could you really predict which choice they will make? Maybe, maybe not. If you couldn't, that doesn't necessitate that their choice was a random one. It could just be independent. I'm convinced that I am in control. The chaos has been overcome. Granted, that could just be an illusion. Well I play the piano... sometimes I know exactly which notes to hit next, and am sending the signals to my fingers for exactly what to do, and it still doesn't come out right. Other times, afterwards I'll go: "OMG, how did I pull that off!?" As the saying goes: Shit happens. Gawsh, I can sit here and wiggle my finger at will and know exactly when its going to start moving before it actually does.

Not quite. My degree may be useless for most other purposes, but having a degree in Philosophy does elevate me, at least a little bit, above the common MITS. I agree.

The problem here is language and what a word means.When someone is using a word, they are, in essence, using that word as a placeholder for their definition of that word. We can communicate with language because, for the most part, we all have the same definitions of words.If someone comes along and uses the same word as you, but has a completely different definition of that word, then despite the sounds being the same as they come out of the mouth, the word is not really the same.For example, we can go back to the tigers that keep being brought up.I have a definition fo tiger. It includes having orange stripes (for the most part), being a cat, being larger than house cats, etc. So, when I see one an example of something that fits that description, I call it a tiger.Now, someone else has a different definition of the word tiger. For them, tiger means striped hell-cat with fire breath and the ability to steal souls with their eyes.We both go to the zoo, and I point to one of these large, striped cats and call it a tiger. I'm correct to call this a tiger, because it matches the definition I have of that word.My friend points to the big stripey cats and calls it a tiger. He is wrong to do so, because the animal in the zoo does not match his definition of the word.It doesn't matter that the sounds comiong out fo his mouth are the same, he is wrong to call it a tiger, I am right. I would even be correct to tell him that tigers don't exist, because when he hears "tiger" he imagines the hellcat.It is exactly the same as if he called this hellcat thing a garthok. If he pointed at the tiger and called it a garthok, I would say "No, it's not a garthok, garthoks don't exist." There is more confusion, and its a bit more complex when the words being used are the same, but language has to have agreed upon definitions for meaningful conversation to take place.Now, to tie this back to the free will debate. People can point to the same things and call them free will, or caused by free will, but unless they are using the definitions the same way, they can't both be right. The compatibilist is right, because their definition accurately reflects the reality of the situation. A libertarian, and the MITS would be wrong to call it free will, because wht they mean by free will is not the reality of the situation.This is why I kept insisting on the deifnitions being the same, because if they aren't, then the phenomenon can't be accurately called such by the two parties.When I say "Free will doesn't exist," I am using the libertarian definition, and the MITS definition, and the definition I think is accurate. Dr. A can be correct in saying that free will exists, when using his definition. I agree that what Dr. A is describing is correct. I only object to labelling that free will because it doesn't match my definition of free will. I also submit that it doesn't match the common belief or definition of free will, and so using the term is an example of conflation. I think it sows confusion, and I prefer not to do that in language.

I think that's probably the best worded defence of your position you've pulled off to date. This is not a passive aggressive swipe at your previous attempts but a compliment of your recent effort.You even managed to point out the reductio ad absurdum of two people pointing a tiger and calling it a tiger, and one of them being somehow wrong to do that. That is where your position introduces the confusion (as far as the man in the street is concerned)I didn't realize you were a tutored philosophy type, though perhaps I should have deduced that from your posts.I'm not formally qualified, just an avid amateur. I will try wording my position in alittle more philosophese.I'll provide translations for our readers.There is a certain group of real things. They do whatever it is they do. However, in so doing - they are experienced by us. We don't necessarily experience them in a completely true fashion. All we have are 'the way this seems to us to be'. But the the thing itself? We cannot access it directly, only via a medium such as our senses.So there are two categories:
The phenomena of tigers. The way tigers are variously experienced by us. We experience them to be big scary majestic stripy cats that burn brightly in the forests of the night.wiki:

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A phenomenon (from Greek φαινόμενoν), plural phenomena, is any observable occurrence. Phenomena are often, but not always, understood as 'appearances' or 'experiences'. These are themselves sometimes understood as involving qualia.

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The noumena of tigers. This is the way tigers really are. Whether that is 'physical evolved mammals, Panthera tigris, in some sense bound by the laws of physics and biology' or whether that is 'hell-cat{s} with fire breath and the ability to steal souls with their eyes.'wiki

quote:

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Noumenon came into its modern usage through Immanuel Kant. Its etymology derives from the Greek noomenon (thought-of) and ultimately reflects nous (mind). Noumena is the plural form. Noumenon distinguished from phenomenon (Erscheinung), the latter being an observable event or physical manifestation capable of being observed by one or more of the human senses. The two words serve as interrelated technical terms in Kant's philosophy. As expressed in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, human understanding is structured by "concepts of the understanding", or innate categories that the mind uses in order to make sense of raw unstructured experience.

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The Compatabilist notion is to agree on the phenomena, but disagree on the noumena of free will. They agree that the phenomenon that people experience that they assert is 'free will' is a real experience that we have. However, they believe that that the noumena of free will is not 'free of determinism'.Phenomenologically speaking, the two people in your example are both in agreement over their utterance 'That is a tiger.', they both mean the same thing, phenomenologically.Noumenologically speaking they disagree. We can never know noumena of course, but we can have beliefs about them. I believe we can infer information about the noumena from the phenomena they produce if we are sufficiently careful in acquiring and analyzing the phenomena (ie., science). When I say 'evolution is true' I harbour several beliefs about what I think evolution really is.But in common, not confusing language - we care more about phenomenology. That's why, even though a child might conceive of a tiger as being noumenologically (or to put it into terms of your own explanation: definitionally) 'A lion with stripes', we don't tell them 'No that is not a tiger, tigers are either rare or non-existent figments of your imagination'.Now of course, it is important when we are discussing something in depth, to be able to understand what each other's beliefs are about the noumenon in question. What do they think it is, what do they really think they are referring to when they use the terms? However, I think it is a mistake to essentially write-off the importance of the phenomenological agreements and disagreements.What do you make of my analysis of the matter?

Well, according to you it would be correct; because you don't think that tigers are hellcats. But he, of course, thinks that you are wrong because tigers are hellcats and you don't think that they are. From his point of view, then, it would be equally "correct" for him to tell you that tigers don't exist.Which is going to lead to some interesting conversations.You: No, you're wrong, that is not a tiger.
Him: No, you're wrong, that is not a tiger.
You: Tigers are mythical!
Him: That's so stupid. Tigers are mythical!
Me: What are you two arguing about?
You: I was just telling my friend Bob here that that animal is a tiger and that tigers exist.
Him: Not so fast, look at Dr A's lapel pin!
You: OMG, you've joined the hellbeast faction!
Me: Yes, after talking to Bob last week I now firmly believe that tigers don't exist.
You: Oh, in that case I was just telling my friend Bob here that that animal is not a tiger and that tigers don't exist.
Me: It's no good you standing there saying "tigers don't exist", as though tigers existed, when Bob here has convinced me that tigers don't exist. Bob, I would like to thank you for convincing me that tigers exist. As for you, Perdition, shame on you for trying to convince me that tigers exist.
Him: Yes, it's so silly of him to think that they don't exist when they clearly do.
You: Oh no they don't!
Me and him: Oh no they don't!
Him: Yes, Dr A, you keep on telling him tigers exist. Keep on telling him "tigers don't exist" ...
Me: Wait, I think they do.
Him: Ah, it's that old use-mention distinction problem that we've had ever since the Straggler-Perdition language reforms of 2012. You ought to tell him "tigers don't exist" and you ought to tell him tigers do exist.
Me: What?
Him: Wait, I'll write it down for you so you can see the quotation marks ...Or we could agree to use words to refer to phenomena and not to our interlocutor's concepts, and that would be ... well, among other things it would be what we actually do. It would be the English language as it is currently spoken. Your way is confusing.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No doubt we can all intuitively agree that a man with a gun to his head isn't operating under entirely under his own free-will. But I thought the point of compatibilism was to provide a more rigorous basis for such conclusions than mere intuition. No? If Internal Vs External doesn't provide a rigorous basis for distinguishing beetween that which is free and that which is not what does? How does the compatibilist position you are advocting define what is free? The ultimate determining factor in this situation will be whether you decide that you want to live or not. The fact that pretty much everyone will want to live because we are instinctively programmed to do that (ultimately an external cause over which we have no control - So is that "free"....?) doesn't in itself make the gun the determining factor. There is no such thing as a external-decision. The term is practically oxymoronic. ALL decisions are internal because decision making is innately and inherently an internal process.Sure you can put a gun to my head and seek to strongly influence my decision to conform to your will. But you cannot make the decision for me. Because ALL decisions are internal.Equally if you take the causes of any decision far enough back down the causal chain they will be external to the decision maker.So the whole Internal Vs External thing seems to be an exercise in dressing intuitive notions of what is free and what isn't in false rigor. The deciding factor will always be internal. Because it is only internally that you can decide how important the various external factors in play are to your decision.So how can we rigorously define a decision that is not taken freely?

If people apply the same terminology to two very different concepts is that not usually known as "conflation"....? Then the accusations of conflation when Dr A insist they mean the same thing would seem rather warranted. "More or less" barring some rather important aspects such as the existence of genuine alternative possibilities. But why is that, rather than the conceptual meaning, the important thing when discussing the meaning of the term "free will".....?

So you do accept that your use of the term "free will" is very conceptually different to that being applied by the-man-in-the-street? Or not? Nor do they generally insist that two people using the same word with different conceptual meanings being applied mean the same. If you'll recall the Straggleresque position is as follows: At one point you agreed that the revisionist approach was justified. But then you realised that would actually entail acknowledging that the man-in-the-street meaning of "free-will" would need revising to be compatible with your own. And that couldn't work if, as you insist, you and the man in the street already mean the same thing.So let me ask you - Is the revisionist approach a sensible one in your view?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Oh sure, if you ask a compatabilist, especially an analytical philosopher, I'm sure he'd regale you with long analyses on why a man with a gun to his head should be regarded as not acting under his own free will. But I am, alas, not the man for that job. I think I've given a reasonable account of what 'free' means. To succinctly wrap it up: 'without excessive psychological coercion'.or maybe another person might say something like, 'whatever liberty is necessary for us to be able to assign moral responsibility'. What I mean in referring the gun being a determining factor was 'all other things being equal, if it weren't for the gun, I'd have done otherwise'. Your decisions are external to me. Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

I refer you to the work I did in Message 336 regarding the different categories of meaning at play here, and my argument as to why the one you are implicitly discounting is useful.

But ALL your decisions are internal to you. And thus would seem to qualify as "free" if being internal is somehow definitional. Which is patently nonsense because we all agree that not all decisions qualify as "free". All other things being equal I'd choose to not be limited by the laws of physics and to have some sort of libertarian freedom. Alas all other things are not equal except to the extent that we decide which "other things" are relevant to us at any given decision point. But that which qualifies as "excessive psychological coercion" is an internal decision itself derived from prior external influences (e.g. evolved instinct to live). That's the problem for the Internal Vs External definitionist. Who do you think would be? Someone like Dan Dennett?

Message 336I think anyone replying any further in this thread should read your post and the one by Perdition that you are replying to before commenting further.

Of course, it is my will to obey our gunman, and that is internal. But it cannot be said to be free because of the narrowing of acceptable options by said external agent.If it is anyone's free will, it is the gunman's, not mine. I was just saying that if the situation was exactly as it was, but without the gun, the person's decision making engine would come up with a different result. And that makes it a 'deciding factor'. I believe I have said this earlier, but I'm not denying that internal decisions are being made. I'm not saying that an internal decision is a free decision. I'm not saying that a decision is free, only if there are no external influences whatsoever.I'm talking about something called coercion, a psychological effect. It's a real experienced thing. A determinist might pedantically remark that a person is essentially coerced into every decision, but that destroys the meaning of the word in the process. The general guideline would be something like 'would the person feel as if they had no choice but to perform the action or face unthinkable negative consequences?' If so, it was probably not of their own free will (further analysis would be required for different hypothetical cases). The factors that generally apply here are external forces, though some arguments have been made regarding internal factors such as brain tumours/strokes/injuries or the hypothetical brain chips Perdition mentioned earlier. We might even come up with some other examples where free will is in question, and we could have a jolly old time with I'm sure. However, we would have exceeded the capacity to care of the man in the street.I'm not a 'Internal Vs External definitionist', as you put it. You seem to have read too much into what was little more than a working definition, to give an idea of the phenomenon I was referring to. I'm, in fact, not a definitionist at all.I have previously argued that there is no right definition of free will. There are merely different definitions that have their uses and pitfalls. Whatever definition we choose to use, however, we are all functionally in agreement over the phenomenon that is trying to be defined.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.