Determinism and free will

[pErvinalia]

D'oh, sorry, I just looked up p-zombies and they're David Chalmers love child, not Dennett's. Dennett is a critique of them.

[Brian Peacock]

So what do you mean by free will?

[pErvinalia]

I outlined it a couple of posts ago. It's essentially non-determinism and dualism by very definition. I don't see that there can be any way to marry such a definition of free will with determinism. It seems to me that's why compatibilism came about. Folk psychology infects so much of our awareness and conception of the world. Free will is really at the heart of what we think it means to be human and free agents. It's no wonder it's hard to accept the idea that we have no free agency. It strikes at our very being.

[Brian Peacock]

Would you be comfortable replacing the term 'free will' with 'freedom' in the above?

[rainbow]

So what do you mean by free will?

[Scot Dutchy]

Free will and freedom are illusions of western society. We are never totally free. We accept impositions as the cost for our so-called freedom.

[pErvinalia]

Would you be comfortable replacing the term 'free will' with 'freedom' in the above?

"Freedom" is essentially how the compatibilists define it, so not really.

[rainbow]

Free will and freedom are illusions of western society. We are never totally free. We accept impositions as the cost for our so-called freedom.

Ya keep on puttin' songs into ma heyad!

[Forty Two]

What if the universe was predetermined to be indeterminate? We'd have no choice but to have free will!

[Forty Two]

So what do you mean by free will?

The doctrine that the conduct of human beings expresses personal choice and is not exclusively determined by physical or divine forces.

[rainbow]

What if the universe was predetermined to be indeterminate? We'd have no choice but to have free will!

The Multiverse has an infinite number of outcomes at any point, so Yes.

[Brian Peacock]

Would you be comfortable replacing the term 'free will' with 'freedom' in the above?

"Freedom" is essentially how the compatibilists define it, so not really.

This kind of makes my point; you appear to be taking issue with compatibilism because it's reference to free will is itself incompatible with idea of us being "able to choose a course of action that is independent of everything that has gone before," as you put it, but this is not how compatibilists use or integrate the idea of 'free will'. For them--and I'm not among their number, at least not officially or by choice--'free will' is simply freedom to act according to one's wants and needs, "according to one's motives without arbitrary hindrance from other individuals or institutions" as the previous Wiki-quote puts it, which does not necessarily entail the jettisoning of all of history and circumstance, whether personal or social.

As I said earlier, and without writing a book(!), 'free will' as an idea is unhelpfully bound to Christian apologetics. It is the Christians 'get out of jail free' card, a well-trodden response to their nominated deities claimed for omni-omni-ness and the paradoxes of the problem of evil, the notion of sin, and the presumed ultimate judgement of a presumed ultimate law-giver that flow from that all-encompassing assertion. Here 'free will' represents humans' god-given ability to act without reference God's desires or commands, that is; to act without reference to their (apparently) true circumstances as god-made, god-obliged being, the ignoring of which is the root of all sin, which in turn is the cause of all evil. It's the Christian fable of the Garden of Eden integrated into all human experience as fact. It's bollocks.

But the common understanding of 'free will' is to a large part, thankfully, divested of much of that bollocks, a free will as 'freedom', as Liberty as opposed to Licence if you will. A free will which means we are free to decide and act, to choose coffee rather than tea, Trump rather than Clinton, cardigan rather than jumper, cheese rather than bacon or cheese and bacon, each according to our wants and needs, our motives. In this we are only free within the context of our circumstances: if there is no coffee we'll just have to have tea but if we're free it is because we're not subject to 'arbitrary hindrance from other individuals or institutions' telling what we can and cannot drink. So 'free will' here is now 'a freedom of will' as well as 'a freedom from the will of others' - or more succinctly 'freedom'.

While free will does seem at odds with the doctrines of Determinism Compatibilists reason that, in some particular senses, it is not. Critiquing Compatibilism on the basis that free will is incompatible with Determinism is one thing, but it has to involve compatibilists version of 'free will' and it requires a little more by way of exposition than simply saying that Compatibilism fails because free will is incompatible with Determinism. See what I mean?

[pErvinalia]

Would you be comfortable replacing the term 'free will' with 'freedom' in the above?

"Freedom" is essentially how the compatibilists define it, so not really.

This kind of makes my point; you appear to be taking issue with compatibilism because it's reference to free will is itself incompatible with idea of us being "able to choose a course of action that is independent of everything that has gone before," as you put it, but this is not how compatibilists use or integrate the idea of 'free will'. For them--and I'm not among their number, at least not officially or by choice--'free will' is simply freedom to act according to one's wants and needs, "according to one's motives without arbitrary hindrance from other individuals or institutions" as the previous Wiki-quote puts it, which does not necessarily entail the jettisoning of all of history and circumstance, whether personal or social.

No, it actually makes my point that instead of accepting that free will should be consigned to the bin of silly folklore, the compatibilists had to re-define free will to mean something different so as to be able to have their cake and eat it too. It still retains enough of the original definition to allow them to at least pretend there is some validity to the folk psychology. Well, that's my theory and I'm sticking to it!

But the common understanding of 'free will' is to a large part, thankfully, divested of much of that bollocks, a free will as 'freedom', as Liberty as opposed to Licence if you will. A free will which means we are free to decide and act, to choose coffee rather than tea, Trump rather than Clinton, cardigan rather than jumper, cheese rather than bacon or cheese and bacon, each according to our wants and needs, our motives. In this we are only free within the context of our circumstances: if there is no coffee we'll just have to have tea but if we're free it is because we're not subject to 'arbitrary hindrance from other individuals or institutions' telling what we can and cannot drink. So 'free will' here is now 'a freedom of will' as well as 'a freedom from the will of others' - or more succinctly 'freedom'.

Free will is a metaphysical philosophical concept. "Freedom" is a political concept. The two really have very little to do with each other.

While free will does seem at odds with the doctrines of Determinism Compatibilists reason that, in some particular senses, it is not. Critiquing Compatibilism on the basis that free will is incompatible with Determinism is one thing, but it has to involve compatibilists version of 'free will' and it requires a little more by way of exposition than simply saying that Compatibilism fails because free will is incompatible with Determinism. See what I mean?

It fails because it's comparing apples and oranges. A political philosophy can't say anything about a metaphysical concept.

[Forty Two]

What if the universe was predetermined to be indeterminate? We'd have no choice but to have free will!

The Multiverse has an infinite number of outcomes at any point, so Yes.

Assuming there is a multiverse. That's largely a hypothesis with theoretical physics behind it, but I'm pretty sure that there is no empirical evidence backing that up, yet.

[pErvinalia]

My doppleganger said that there is.