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Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

Enter here to explore ethical issues and discuss the meaning and source of morality.
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Can we have free will and moral responsibility?

Yes
13
65%
No
1
5%
Don't know
2
10%
Don't agree with how the question is presented
4
20%
 
Total votes: 20

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animist
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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#141 Post by animist » April 1st, 2012, 8:21 am

Latest post of the previous page:

Compassionist wrote:
animist wrote:
Emma wrote:I didn't think you were trying to insult him, and I doubt that he's offended. :wink:
correct, I was not offended, but thanks for mentioning it, Emma. It is very difficult when you have very strong views, as Compo does, to accept that others just will not see the truth of what you say :wink:, and so it's tempting to resort to words like "denial". I have done this myself on the thread about Global Warming (encouraged by the fact that Global Warming Deniers is a commonly used phrase), and (though I did not use the word "denial") I said a couple of times to you that I found it hard to accept that you believe what you do about responsibility :idea:
I am relieved to hear that you were not offended. I am still puzzled why compatibilism would be necessary when hard determinism already explains the process of decision making. I define free will as the freedom to choose freely. I don't get to choose freely. I am constrained by my limited awareness, human values and limited abilities. I detest the fact that I live on a planet where the wealthiest 10% own 90% and 90% of humanity suffer in poverty. Every 3 seconds a child dies due to the effects of poverty e.g. malnutrition and preventable or treatable diseases. I detest the fact that pharmaceuticals have patents. Dr Jonas Salk didn't believe in patents. He believed in helping those in need of help. I detest the fact that I can't change the way this world runs. I am a prisoner. I am not free. I am crying as I type these words.
sorry about the last, and sometimes I feel that I should be using my spare time to do whatever I can to help victims of poverty and oppression, rather than indulging in pointless philosophical debates

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#142 Post by Compassionist » April 1st, 2012, 9:35 am

animist wrote:I feel that I should be using my spare time to do whatever I can to help victims of poverty and oppression, rather than indulging in pointless philosophical debates
Yes, good point. I agree. Let's go do that. You are all warmly invited to get involved with our charity, Can With Candle. It is better to light a candle in the dark than to complain about the darkness.

Either we have free will or we don't have free will. Arguing about it is not going to change whether or not we have free will. :D

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Emma Woolgatherer
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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#143 Post by Emma Woolgatherer » April 2nd, 2012, 1:52 pm

animist wrote:if I said that FW was a function of consciousness I was not speaking very precisely.
You mentioned it in the context of cats and dogs, which you thought had a "modest amount" of free will. What you said was: "But I am not saying that dogs have free will because they are trainable; cats have about the same amount despite their not being trainable, since free will is a function of consciousness and hence of intelligence." Later on you referred to "the human capacity to ponder different alternatives on their merits and make a choice which is central to what I think is free will", which does rather suggest that if dogs and cats have your kind of free will it is a very modest amount. :)
animist wrote:For one thing, on the point I have made several times about "automatic" behaviour (in the sense of habitual mundane activities like getting up), these do not seem all that "conscious" - that's why we call them semi-automatic (though of course not in the sense that some inorganic mechanical device would be said to "behave" automatically). So I don't think that there is some linear relationship between FW and self-consciously deliberative behaviour, though I know I gave the calm deliberation of a rational person as a sort of paradigm for FW and MR.
I'm not sure I understand your point here. Are you saying that we are exercising free will just as much when we are behaving automatically as when we are behaving deliberately? Even though we're not pondering different alternatives on their merits? Oh, heck. My understanding of your conception of free will, such as it was, is slipping away from me ... :puzzled:
animist wrote:As far MR goes too, habitual behaviour is I, would say, chosen (because formation of the habit presupposes a decision or in fact several repeated decisions) so one is arguably at least as MR for such habits as for deliberated one-offs.
More puzzlement. Is this another false dichotomy? You seem to be suggesting that human behaviour is either deliberate or habitual. I'd say that there is a fair bit of evidence for some instinctive human behaviour. And a lot of learned behaviour is learned in infancy, or at an age considered (by most) to be below the age of moral responsibility. It might be learned deliberately or accidentally. It might be taught deliberately or accidentally. It might be a consequence of instinctive responses to a particular stimulus being rewarded repeatedly. It might come about as a result of imitation, again at an early age. It might become a habit in one context, where it is benign, and then get transferred, by chance, to another context where it can do harm. It might become attached to a false belief, or a set of false beliefs, so that while the behaviour itself does require conscious deliberation, that conscious deliberation involves the repetition of false beliefs that were not acquired consciously, and the falseness of which one is not conscious. It might be deliberately taught by others for their own ends, good or bad. And yes, it might be deliberately learned, perhaps for the purposes of inhibiting instinctive behaviour. But in general, the formation of a habit does not presuppose a conscious decision to form the habit. And I would say that most habits are not deliberately acquired. And that failure to acquire good habits is mostly not deliberate either. Come to think of it, isn't rational deliberation itself an acquired good habit, learned and taught initially when we're rather young?

In any case, even when our behaviour seems to us to be deliberate, chosen consciously, the neuroscience experiments that we've been talking about do seem to suggest that, at least in some cases, we overestimate the role that our consciousness plays. If it became apparent, as a result of future experiments, that our consciousness is not a driver of behaviour at all, but merely a kind of passive reporter, the brain's way of publicising its unconscious decisions, I wonder how that would affect your conception of FW and MR. Maybe it would make no difference to your FR. Maybe you would argue that, unconscious or conscious, it is still the self making the decisions, unconstrained, uncoerced, unmanipulated. But MR, for you, seems to be more dependent on conscious deliberation and reasoning. FW, you said, was a necessary but not sufficient condition of MR. Ah, but hang on: I'm conflating rationality and consciousness. Can we have unconscious rationality? ... For that matter, can we have conscious irrationality? :shrug: Hmm, leaving all that to one side for the moment, and assuming that consciousness does have an active role (and I think it probably does) in at least some of our decision-making, I still don't understand how it relates to your conception of MR. Do you think we have MR only for the conscious decisions we make to do certain things? Or do we also have MR when we fail to make conscious (rational) decisions to stop ourselves doing certain (bad) things? Is it the conscious (and/or rational) deliberation itself that's key, or merely our capacity for it?
animist wrote:When I mentioned "fuss" I certainly did not mean to imply that you personally were making a fuss, sorry.
I didn't think you were implying that. I just felt the urge to disassociate myself clearly from any fuss-making there was. :D
animist wrote:Having met me, you may know my liking for alcohol in moderation, as a result of which my posts are often in a moderately euphoric haze
I'd never have guessed, either from your posts or from your demeanour when I met you. But now, of course, I shall bear it constantly in mind. :wink:

Emma

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#144 Post by Emma Woolgatherer » April 2nd, 2012, 4:34 pm

Compassionist wrote:Daniel Dennett is a compatibilist. He explained his position in 'Freedom Evolves'. It didn't make sense to me. It's possible that he is right and the hard determinists are wrong ...
OK. Good. That's all I wanted to establish. You are an agnostic about this too.
Compassionist wrote:... but strangely enough, hard determinism makes sense to me. If you penalise people for speeding, it reduces speeding. This is simple cause and effect. No free will is necessary for this process to work. Why would we need compatibilism? It is redundant.
I was going to say that I don't think that compatibilism is a position held solely for the purposes of making the penal system work; rather it's a position about how the world is. But actually, on reflection, I'm not so sure about that. I think that compatibilists are looking for a way to come up with a notion of free will that is compatible with determinism but that also implies the kind of moral responsibility that means that people deserve to be punished for their misdeeds, in proportion to the severity of those misdeeds. Yes, perhaps that is the starting point. Hmmm ...

Anyway, I think you're wrong about penalising people who speed in order to reduce speeding being "simple cause and effect". According to the Scottish government, for example, "Little is known about the role of legal enforcement and penalties in influencing driving behaviour and hence safety on the roads." At the moment, when deciding what penalty to attach to a particular offence, most penal systems attempt to follow the principle that the punishment should fit the crime. The more harm an offender has caused by his or her offence (or in some cases the more harm he or she might have caused), the more severe his or her punishment. They don't always succeed in that, but it's a principle that is thought to be a good one to aim for. It chimes with most people's sense of fairness. If a penalty for an offence is determined only by what is necessary for the purposes of deterrence, however that might be determined, then there is no guarantee that it will be proportionate to the severity of the offence. One might end up with certain grave crimes being punished less severely than relatively minor ones, simply because they are less responsive to the deterrent effects of punishment. A system that's based on the assumption that we all have free will and are all morally responsible for our crimes, unless that responsibility is diminished as the result of mental impairment, allows for a retributive system of justice, which allows us to let the punishment fit the crime. And that doesn't just apply to penal systems: it applies to the way people treat each other in their everyday lives, too. It is entirely understandable that people would want to hang on to that principle. I can see the appeal of it myself. But I think the notion of "just deserts" is also hugely problematical.
Compassionist wrote:As I said in my previous post, I am assuming that other people have similar sensory, cognitive and affective processes to myself. Perhaps they don't. If you take away that assumption, it is not possible for me to consider others to be as unfree as I am. I actually feel constrained. I don't feel free. I have to take Seroquel to keep myself from hallucinating. How is this compatible with free will?
Free will, whoever is defining it, does not have to be utterly unrestricted in every way. We all have constraints. The need to take medication would be one of them. There are plenty of others. People who believe in free will believe that one is able to make choices within those constraints. They might not be free to become Prime Minister, or to swim the English Channel, or to walk without the use of a stick, but they're free, they feel, to buy broccoli rather than cabbage for their evening meal, or to switch off the TV if it bores them, or to tell their spouses that they love them. Even if you don't feel those kinds of freedom yourself (which is surprising, even allowing for your medical conditions), you surely are aware that other people feel them. Apart from anything else, they've told you that they do.
Compassionist wrote:I know there are various conflicting definitions of free will. Which one is right? I am using the one that I can relate to i.e. free will is the freedom to choose freely.
It isn't a matter of which one is right. If someone with whom you are discussing free will is saying that he believes in a particular kind of free will, then there is no point in repeatedly asserting that free will does not exist if you're referring to a different kind of free will. You need, at least, to be talking about the same thing. Having said that, I'm still very unclear myself about what animist does mean by free will. So I'm not saying it's easy. :D
Compassionist wrote:Was I being arrogant? It didn't feel that way to me.
I'm sorry, Compassionist. Arrogant can mean very different things. I don't think you were being haughty or conceited. I don't think you were betraying an exaggerated sense of your own importance. So in that sense I don't think you were being arrogant. I should have stuck with just "presumptuous". You were presuming to know what other people really believe, deep down.
Compassionist wrote:It flowed from the assumption that other people's sensory, congnitive and affective processes are similar to mine.
It might have flowed from that assumption, but it also implied that people who believe in free will must know deep down that it doesn't exist but are refusing to accept that uncomfortable fact, which is what "in denial" means. And that when people say that they feel free, as they have done repeatedly in this thread, they somehow don't really mean it. That came across to me as a slur on other people's honesty, though perhaps more honesty with themselves than with other people.
Compassionist wrote:Hard determinism is consistent with all I know about what it is like to be me, other people and reality.
I know, and I do understand that, really I do. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by how blindingly obvious it seems. But I am also prepared to accept that I might be missing something important. That my inability to understand compatibilist arguments is a consequence of the limitations of my intellect rather than of the weakness of those arguments.
Compassionist wrote:How do you know that solipsism is bullshit and not worth the time and the effort?
It is pointless to debate solipsism with anyone because if it's true then only my mind exists and you and everyone else are merely figments of my imagination. And if the person I'm talking to thinks it's true then they think that only their mind exists and that I and everyone else are merely figments of their imaginations. I know that's not true, but nothing I say can possibly convince them of that. As a philosophy it's pointless, absolutely pointless. And rather ugly. Fortunately, very few people actually believe it.[quote="Compassionist?]It actually doesn't take much time or effort![/quote]It's taken both time and effort for me to type the preceding sentences.
Compassionist wrote:What about simulation hypothesis or reincarnation according to karma or afterlife?
I'm not interested in discussing any of them. They are all equally implausible to me.
Compassionist wrote:Thanks to your protest, I will certainly refrain from doing so in the future but I don't think I could have refrained in the past because the variables were different at that point in the spacetime continuum.
I didn't say that you could have refrained in the past.
Compassionist wrote:Are you (the readers of this post) real people or simulations? You might tell me that you are a real human being but are you sure? Could all of us be aliens trapped in a simulation machine? Could death be the only exit from this simulation?
Again, what on earth is the point of thinking along these lines? OK, you can think about it once, the first time you're introduced to the idea (which in my case was over thirty years ago), and it might be sort of fun for a very short period. But then it gets stale. It is not a fruitful train of thought. It is a dead end.
Compassionist wrote:I have already read [Daniel Dennett's] book 'Freedom Evolves' so I am familiar with his stance. I respect everyone's sincerity ...
Good. So when someone tells you that they feel free, believe them.
Compassionist wrote: I still don't understand how the same variables could produce a different choice. A choice doesn't occur in a vacuum. A choice occurs as a result of interacting variables.
Yes. I don't think compatibilists are suggesting that the same variables could produce a different choice. Some compatibilists seem to be saying that different variables, including a person having different wants, could produce a different choice. But I just don't understand how that helps, and how it implies the kind of free will that in turn implies moral responsibility! :shrug: Mind you, compatibilism has evolved. It's a bit more sophisticated than it used to be. There is a supplement to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on compatibilism entitled: "Compatibilism: State of the Art". I think I need to read it several times!

Emma

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#145 Post by animist » April 2nd, 2012, 5:14 pm

Compassionist wrote:
animist wrote:I feel that I should be using my spare time to do whatever I can to help victims of poverty and oppression, rather than indulging in pointless philosophical debates
Yes, good point. I agree. Let's go do that. You are all warmly invited to get involved with our charity, Can With Candle. It is better to light a candle in the dark than to complain about the darkness.

Either we have free will or we don't have free will. Arguing about it is not going to change whether or not we have free will. :D
your charity - it is certainly wideranging and ambitious. Do you have much idea of how it seeks to achieve its ends?

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#146 Post by animist » April 2nd, 2012, 5:21 pm

Emma Woolgatherer wrote:I was going to say that I don't think that compatibilism is a position held solely for the purposes of making the penal system work; rather it's a position about how the world is. But actually, on reflection, I'm not so sure about that. I think that compatibilists are looking for a way to come up with a notion of free will that is compatible with determinism but that also implies the kind of moral responsibility that means that people deserve to be punished for their misdeeds, in proportion to the severity of those misdeeds. Yes, perhaps that is the starting point....It isn't a matter of which one is right. If someone with whom you are discussing free will is saying that he believes in a particular kind of free will, then there is no point in repeatedly asserting that free will does not exist if you're referring to a different kind of free will. You need, at least, to be talking about the same thing. Having said that, I'm still very unclear myself about what animist does mean by free will. So I'm not saying it's easy.
Emma
it is not easy, and there is something in the charge that compatibilists seek to justify MR by some vague thing called FW - tho' I am not sure that I think people do deserve to be punished for misdeeds, only that maybe they lose the right not to be punished (I must have said that many times). You have linked to the Stanford article on compatibilism, and the discussion at the very start of that article seems to acknowledge the vagueness of the FW concept and the link to MR

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#147 Post by animist » April 2nd, 2012, 5:45 pm

Emma Woolgatherer wrote:In any case, even when our behaviour seems to us to be deliberate, chosen consciously, the neuroscience experiments that we've been talking about do seem to suggest that, at least in some cases, we overestimate the role that our consciousness plays. If it became apparent, as a result of future experiments, that our consciousness is not a driver of behaviour at all , but merely a kind of passive reporter, the brain's way of publicising its unconscious decisions, I wonder how that would affect your conception of FW and MR. Maybe it would make no difference to your FR. Maybe you would argue that, unconscious or conscious, it is still the self making the decisions, unconstrained, uncoerced, unmanipulated
I can't really answer this, and certainly not some hypothetical future experiments; I need to study the stuff more, TBH. I cannot really see how this idea of passive reporting would work, given that actions produce reactions in the environment and these feed back to the agent. I think maybe you make a sort of dualistic dichotomy (which I think was mentioned in the video) but - again - I need to think about all this more.
Emma Woolgatherer wrote:I'm not sure I understand your point here. Are you saying that we are exercising free will just as much when we are behaving automatically as when we are behaving deliberately? Even though we're not pondering different alternatives on their merits? Oh, heck. My understanding of your conception of free will, such as it was, is slipping away from me ... :puzzled:
I am not surprised! As I implied, it is only in the last year that this forum has made me interested in it, and the more I think about it, the more complicated it is. But I don't see the distinction between deliberation and habit as a problem for FW. I was not suggesting at all that all human behaviour was either deliberate or habitual (is that the false dichotomy that you referred to?), and instead I was trying to compare the two as possibly different aspects of FW. Yes, it does seem to be that what I was calling semi-automatic habits which are part of a general pattern of voluntary behaviour (eg tooth-brushing) could be regarded as at least as free as some more momentous and more likely morally significant deliberated action like deciding not to pay council tax. You mention a large number of possible ways that habits might form, and I suppose I am talking mainly about those which are, if not the result of conscious intention to begin the habit, voluntary; for instance, if my habit of brushing my teeth were questioned, I would reply that I was consciously aware of the good reasons for the habit, even if my getting into the habit was not exactly a conscous decision in the way you express this. Whether rational deliberation is itself a habit, a possibility you have thrown in. I have no idea; I suppose one might learn to heart, and act on, repeated injunctions of the kind "look before you leap". And to answer your question about MR for failure to make conscious decisions to stop doing bad things, yes, I would say we do have MR for this, though possibly less than for consciously intentional actions which are wrong: such a failure means a lack of good intention rather than a positively bad intention. Rationality is not consciousness, I agree, and of course one could have unconscious rationality - as computers show; as for conscious irrationality - yes, why not? For rationality and irrationality are actually judgments from without, I suppose, whereas consciousness might be seen as to an extent self-demonstrable; it is just that one might be more likely to be rational while being consciously deliberative. To lead on from that thought and end up for now (tho' I don't think I have answered all your challenges), I am self-evidently conscious while writing this, and FTM I am currently not actually in the euphoric haze I mentioned last time! (But you'll never know for sure, will you?)

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#148 Post by Compassionist » April 2nd, 2012, 7:54 pm

animist wrote:
Compassionist wrote:
animist wrote:I feel that I should be using my spare time to do whatever I can to help victims of poverty and oppression, rather than indulging in pointless philosophical debates
Yes, good point. I agree. Let's go do that. You are all warmly invited to get involved with our charity, Can With Candle. It is better to light a candle in the dark than to complain about the darkness.

Either we have free will or we don't have free will. Arguing about it is not going to change whether or not we have free will. :D
your charity - it is certainly wideranging and ambitious. Do you have much idea of how it seeks to achieve its ends?
Thank you for your question. I don't want to derail this thread by posting off-topic posts, so, I have posted in this thread about the charity.

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#149 Post by Compassionist » April 2nd, 2012, 8:50 pm

Emma Woolgatherer wrote:
Compassionist wrote:Daniel Dennett is a compatibilist. He explained his position in 'Freedom Evolves'. It didn't make sense to me. It's possible that he is right and the hard determinists are wrong ...
OK. Good. That's all I wanted to establish. You are an agnostic about this too.
Compassionist wrote:... but strangely enough, hard determinism makes sense to me. If you penalise people for speeding, it reduces speeding. This is simple cause and effect. No free will is necessary for this process to work. Why would we need compatibilism? It is redundant.
I was going to say that I don't think that compatibilism is a position held solely for the purposes of making the penal system work; rather it's a position about how the world is. But actually, on reflection, I'm not so sure about that. I think that compatibilists are looking for a way to come up with a notion of free will that is compatible with determinism but that also implies the kind of moral responsibility that means that people deserve to be punished for their misdeeds, in proportion to the severity of those misdeeds. Yes, perhaps that is the starting point. Hmmm ...

Anyway, I think you're wrong about penalising people who speed in order to reduce speeding being "simple cause and effect". According to the Scottish government, for example, "Little is known about the role of legal enforcement and penalties in influencing driving behaviour and hence safety on the roads." At the moment, when deciding what penalty to attach to a particular offence, most penal systems attempt to follow the principle that the punishment should fit the crime. The more harm an offender has caused by his or her offence (or in some cases the more harm he or she might have caused), the more severe his or her punishment. They don't always succeed in that, but it's a principle that is thought to be a good one to aim for. It chimes with most people's sense of fairness. If a penalty for an offence is determined only by what is necessary for the purposes of deterrence, however that might be determined, then there is no guarantee that it will be proportionate to the severity of the offence. One might end up with certain grave crimes being punished less severely than relatively minor ones, simply because they are less responsive to the deterrent effects of punishment. A system that's based on the assumption that we all have free will and are all morally responsible for our crimes, unless that responsibility is diminished as the result of mental impairment, allows for a retributive system of justice, which allows us to let the punishment fit the crime. And that doesn't just apply to penal systems: it applies to the way people treat each other in their everyday lives, too. It is entirely understandable that people would want to hang on to that principle. I can see the appeal of it myself. But I think the notion of "just deserts" is also hugely problematical.
Compassionist wrote:As I said in my previous post, I am assuming that other people have similar sensory, cognitive and affective processes to myself. Perhaps they don't. If you take away that assumption, it is not possible for me to consider others to be as unfree as I am. I actually feel constrained. I don't feel free. I have to take Seroquel to keep myself from hallucinating. How is this compatible with free will?
Free will, whoever is defining it, does not have to be utterly unrestricted in every way. We all have constraints. The need to take medication would be one of them. There are plenty of others. People who believe in free will believe that one is able to make choices within those constraints. They might not be free to become Prime Minister, or to swim the English Channel, or to walk without the use of a stick, but they're free, they feel, to buy broccoli rather than cabbage for their evening meal, or to switch off the TV if it bores them, or to tell their spouses that they love them. Even if you don't feel those kinds of freedom yourself (which is surprising, even allowing for your medical conditions), you surely are aware that other people feel them. Apart from anything else, they've told you that they do.
Compassionist wrote:I know there are various conflicting definitions of free will. Which one is right? I am using the one that I can relate to i.e. free will is the freedom to choose freely.
It isn't a matter of which one is right. If someone with whom you are discussing free will is saying that he believes in a particular kind of free will, then there is no point in repeatedly asserting that free will does not exist if you're referring to a different kind of free will. You need, at least, to be talking about the same thing. Having said that, I'm still very unclear myself about what animist does mean by free will. So I'm not saying it's easy. :D
Compassionist wrote:Was I being arrogant? It didn't feel that way to me.
I'm sorry, Compassionist. Arrogant can mean very different things. I don't think you were being haughty or conceited. I don't think you were betraying an exaggerated sense of your own importance. So in that sense I don't think you were being arrogant. I should have stuck with just "presumptuous". You were presuming to know what other people really believe, deep down.
Compassionist wrote:It flowed from the assumption that other people's sensory, congnitive and affective processes are similar to mine.
It might have flowed from that assumption, but it also implied that people who believe in free will must know deep down that it doesn't exist but are refusing to accept that uncomfortable fact, which is what "in denial" means. And that when people say that they feel free, as they have done repeatedly in this thread, they somehow don't really mean it. That came across to me as a slur on other people's honesty, though perhaps more honesty with themselves than with other people.
Compassionist wrote:Hard determinism is consistent with all I know about what it is like to be me, other people and reality.
I know, and I do understand that, really I do. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by how blindingly obvious it seems. But I am also prepared to accept that I might be missing something important. That my inability to understand compatibilist arguments is a consequence of the limitations of my intellect rather than of the weakness of those arguments.
Compassionist wrote:How do you know that solipsism is bullshit and not worth the time and the effort?
It is pointless to debate solipsism with anyone because if it's true then only my mind exists and you and everyone else are merely figments of my imagination. And if the person I'm talking to thinks it's true then they think that only their mind exists and that I and everyone else are merely figments of their imaginations. I know that's not true, but nothing I say can possibly convince them of that. As a philosophy it's pointless, absolutely pointless. And rather ugly. Fortunately, very few people actually believe it.[quote="Compassionist?]It actually doesn't take much time or effort!
It's taken both time and effort for me to type the preceding sentences.
Compassionist wrote:What about simulation hypothesis or reincarnation according to karma or afterlife?
I'm not interested in discussing any of them. They are all equally implausible to me.
Compassionist wrote:Thanks to your protest, I will certainly refrain from doing so in the future but I don't think I could have refrained in the past because the variables were different at that point in the spacetime continuum.
I didn't say that you could have refrained in the past.
Compassionist wrote:Are you (the readers of this post) real people or simulations? You might tell me that you are a real human being but are you sure? Could all of us be aliens trapped in a simulation machine? Could death be the only exit from this simulation?
Again, what on earth is the point of thinking along these lines? OK, you can think about it once, the first time you're introduced to the idea (which in my case was over thirty years ago), and it might be sort of fun for a very short period. But then it gets stale. It is not a fruitful train of thought. It is a dead end.
Compassionist wrote:I have already read [Daniel Dennett's] book 'Freedom Evolves' so I am familiar with his stance. I respect everyone's sincerity ...
Good. So when someone tells you that they feel free, believe them.
Compassionist wrote: I still don't understand how the same variables could produce a different choice. A choice doesn't occur in a vacuum. A choice occurs as a result of interacting variables.
Yes. I don't think compatibilists are suggesting that the same variables could produce a different choice. Some compatibilists seem to be saying that different variables, including a person having different wants, could produce a different choice. But I just don't understand how that helps, and how it implies the kind of free will that in turn implies moral responsibility! :shrug: Mind you, compatibilism has evolved. It's a bit more sophisticated than it used to be. There is a supplement to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on compatibilism entitled: "Compatibilism: State of the Art". I think I need to read it several times!

Emma[/quote]
I agree with what you are saying. I don't understand how compatibilism validates moral responsibility. That could be because I am not smart enough. The legal system simply assumes that everyone has free will and is morally culpable, except when mentally incapacitated due to illness or injury. Most people seem to live with the same assumption. Reality certainly dishes out consequence whether or not we have free will and moral culpability e.g. someone who blows themselves up, dies, along with others in the vicinity of the explosion.

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#150 Post by animist » April 3rd, 2012, 11:14 am

animist wrote:
Emma Woolgatherer wrote:I'm still very unclear myself about what animist does mean by free will.
to repeat (I think) I do not think it is anything. I am almost coming to the point of adapting my other thread thus: "You can't prove free will, and you don't need to". Neither of you seem to engage (Emma, you probably have in the past but 'fraid I cannot recall it well enough) with what I've said to the effect that this sense of free agency (which is kind of what I mean by FW, not some metaphysical or physical entity) is not an illusion by any stretch of the latter word's meaning, that we all behave as though we do believe in both FW and MR, and that it is doubtful whether any great amount of moral discourse could manage without MR and therefore the assumption of FW

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#151 Post by Emma Woolgatherer » April 3rd, 2012, 6:10 pm

animist wrote:[T]here is something in the charge that compatibilists seek to justify MR by some vague thing called FW - tho' I am not sure that I think people do deserve to be punished for misdeeds, only that maybe they lose the right not to be punished (I must have said that many times).
Most people do believe that people deserve to be punished for their misdeeds. And by most people I mean nearly everybody.
animist wrote:I can't really answer this, and certainly not some hypothetical future experiments; I need to study the stuff more, TBH.
Fair enough. I shouldn't have asked.
animist wrote:I cannot really see how this idea of passive reporting would work, given that actions produce reactions in the environment and these feed back to the agent. I think maybe you make a sort of dualistic dichotomy (which I think was mentioned in the video) but - again - I need to think about all this more.
I don't think I was making a dualistic dichotomy. Actually, I'm inclined to think that consciousness is not merely a passive reporter, but I'm willing to accept that some of what we feel to be deliberate, consciousness-directed behaviour is in fact triggered by unconscious impulses, and then immediately published through our conscious thoughts in a way that makes us think we initiated the behaviour consciously. I think that's sort of what the experiments suggest. And actually, although I've avoided the word "illusion" in relation to free will, I think that might be described as an illusion. But I do think there's a role for conscious deliberation triggering actions, which is why I shouldn't have asked you the question I did.
animist wrote:I don't see the distinction between deliberation and habit as a problem for FW. I was not suggesting at all that all human behaviour was either deliberate or habitual (is that the false dichotomy that you referred to?)
Ah, good. Yes, that was what I meant.
animist wrote:... and instead I was trying to compare the two as possibly different aspects of FW. Yes, it does seem to be that what I was calling semi-automatic habits which are part of a general pattern of voluntary behaviour (eg tooth-brushing) could be regarded as at least as free as some more momentous and more likely morally significant deliberated action like deciding not to pay council tax. You mention a large number of possible ways that habits might form, and I suppose I am talking mainly about those which are, if not the result of conscious intention to begin the habit, voluntary; for instance, if my habit of brushing my teeth were questioned, I would reply that I was consciously aware of the good reasons for the habit, even if my getting into the habit was not exactly a conscous decision in the way you express this.
OK. That seems to be something rather different from a sense of agency, but I suppose a person brushing her teeth can easily move from doing it automatically to doing it consciously. I'm not sure that's true of all habits, though.
animist wrote: Whether rational deliberation is itself a habit, a possibility you have thrown in. I have no idea; I suppose one might learn to heart [?], and act on, repeated injunctions of the kind "look before you leap".
Well, I was thinking more of the habit of thinking things through, weighing things up, considering possible consequences and risks, making mental lists of pros and cons (including moral pros and cons). People do this to different extents, and I think it's something we learn to do to different extents. Those who do it as a matter of course may have got into the habit of doing it, perhaps at a relatively early age.
animist wrote:And to answer your question about MR for failure to make conscious decisions to stop doing bad things, yes, I would say we do have MR for this, though possibly less than for consciously intentional actions which are wrong: such a failure means a lack of good intention rather than a positively bad intention.
Right. OK. So MR doesn't require conscious deliberation either.
animist wrote:
Emma Woolgatherer wrote:I'm still very unclear myself about what animist does mean by free will.
to repeat (I think) I do not think it is anything. I am almost coming to the point of adapting my other thread thus: "You can't prove free will, and you don't need to".
So are you suggesting that free will is ... a negative? :puzzled:
animist wrote:Neither of you seem to engage (Emma, you probably have in the past but 'fraid I cannot recall it well enough) with what I've said to the effect that this sense of free agency (which is kind of what I mean by FW, not some metaphysical or physical entity) is not an illusion by any stretch of the latter word's meaning ...
Compassionist has engaged very directly with this, by insisting that he doesn't feel free; he doesn't have the sense of free agency that you insist is universal. I, on the other hand, have admitted that I do feel free, and that I do have a sense of agency (I don't think it requires a modifier), but that I don't think this sense has implications for the kind of moral responsibility that implies that we deserve to be punished for our misdeeds. It does have implications for what might be called our sense of responsibility, which is closely related to emotions like guilt, shame, remorse, regret, embarrassment, humiliation, pride, triumph, etc. But there are instances where we feel responsible for things even when we don't feel that sense of agency, either because we did them accidentally or because we were forced or manipulated into doing them, and sometimes we feel responsible for things that other people have done, simply because of a close connection we have with those other people.
animist wrote:... that we all behave as though we do believe in both FW and MR ...
If by that you mean that we all believe as though we have the senses of agency and responsibility, and that we assume that other people have them, then yes, I'd say that was for the most part true, although I'm prepared to accept that there are people who don't have one or other or both of those senses. But you talk about FW and MR in a way that suggests you mean something slightly different. Not necessarily a metaphysical or physical entity. But some kind of law or principle. Otherwise, why the certainty that MR requires FW?
animist wrote:and that it is doubtful whether any great amount of moral discourse could manage without MR and therefore the assumption of FW
Again, if you're talking about our senses of agency and responsibility, then I'd agree with you. I think those senses play a vital role in the making of morality. Along with the sense of empathy that I'm always banging on about. But if we're talking about some kind of law that states that we "have" free will, and that implies that we "have" moral responsibility, which means that we deserve to be punished for our misdeeds [---][/---] or that we don't deserve not to be punished, or whatever it is that it does imply [---][/---] then, unsurprisingly, I don't think that's essential for moral discourse, and I can believe that it might even restrict moral discourse.

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#152 Post by animist » April 4th, 2012, 2:37 pm

I have watched the Marcus du Sautoy (MS) video again (actually I think this was Simon Pegg playing a nutty professor!). The comments of John-Dylan Haynes (JDH) seemed actually to nullify those of MS: some of the former's phrases clearly rejected the nonsensical dualistic implications of MS that he was somehow being controlled by something outside himself, and in fact, JDH sounded (to me) almost Compatibilistic, stressing the integration of consciousness with the brain as a whole. And anyway, how can it be that this FW notion, which seems to be meaningful only in the context of MR, could somehow be threatened in principle by scientific experiments which show that we decide to something before we are actually aware of this decision? The decision is made, that is all that counts, and I am quite prepared to believe that ALL decisions are in principle like this. What difference can this delay phenomenon possibly make to the question of individual responsibility in principle for a morally significant action?

This leads me onto say that what I think scares people about this sort of research (in reality even if they are not aware of it!) is not that it threatens the notion of FW in general but that it might be used to nullify individuals' actual FW. Imagine that JDH could not only could "see" MS's decisions before the latter was aware of them but that he could also change the colours (or variables, as Compo would say) which his screen associated with MS's decisions. MS would then presumably "choose" to do something which he had not originally intended - and without any knowledge of this intentional outside manipulation! This really would be a "choice" which was in fact an illusion. I think this fits in with my earlier attempts to make the FW concept include lack of manipulation as well as lack of constraint and coercion. Compo seems sometimes to confuse FW with simple freedom, and maybe it is this element of manipulation which converts plain freedom, lack of which is usually all too clear to us, into "full" freedom which includes FW. Someone on the Theo forum correctly pointed out that, if I am in a dungeon, my freedom is heavily restricted but my FW may not be - if I have not been intentionally brainwashed (or abused in some way which prevents my normal thought processes from operating); so just as one can have a freedom of sorts without FW, one can in principle also have the reverse.

Taking this further, one might hope that this type of research, far from devaluing FW, might make us more aware of, and thus able to deal with, threats to it. Emma constantly and correctly points out how little we know of ourselves; this is quite true, and surely the more we do know from brain research, the more honest we can hope to be in assessing our motives for what we take to be our considered opinions.

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#153 Post by animist » April 4th, 2012, 3:31 pm

Emma Woolgatherer wrote:
animist wrote:I cannot really see how this idea of passive reporting would work, given that actions produce reactions in the environment and these feed back to the agent. I think maybe you make a sort of dualistic dichotomy (which I think was mentioned in the video) but - again - I need to think about all this more.
I don't think I was making a dualistic dichotomy. Actually, I'm inclined to think that consciousness is not merely a passive reporter, but I'm willing to accept that some of what we feel to be deliberate, consciousness-directed behaviour is in fact triggered by unconscious impulses, and then immediately published through our conscious thoughts in a way that makes us think we initiated the behaviour consciously. I think that's sort of what the experiments suggest. And actually, although I've avoided the word "illusion" in relation to free will, I think that might be described as an illusion. But I do think there's a role for conscious deliberation triggering actions, which is why I shouldn't have asked you the question I did.
I am sure that all our thinking is triggered by unconscious impulses, and again I don't see this as a problem. You do seem to be to be making some dualistic distinction between consciousness and these "impulses". As to illusion, I have explained many times that IMO FW is not an illusion because it does not lead to disillusion. Having said that, I think, from what you say, that there could be an illusion of sorts on the lines that you suggest, due to the ignorance of all of us about how we make decisions. As I said in my last post, maybe this research will dispel this type of illusion and make us essentiallly freer than we were.

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#154 Post by animist » April 4th, 2012, 3:38 pm

Emma wrote:Compassionist has engaged very directly with this, by insisting that he doesn't feel free; he doesn't have the sense of free agency that you insist is universal....
I don't know that Compo has addressed this, but I may have missed some of his stuff (quite possible). He certainly said several times that he has no such feeling, but I think he may confuse freedom in general with this FW sense of agency. I queried him over this point, reminding him that he presumably does not actually feel compelled to write posts to this forum on a computer keyboard, and I don't think he has replied to this.
Emma Woolgatherer wrote:I'm still very unclear myself about what animist does mean by free will.
animist wrote:to repeat (I think) I do not think it is anything. I am almost coming to the point of adapting my other thread thus: "You can't prove free will, and you don't need to".
So are you suggesting that free will is ... a negative? :puzzled:
not quite, no. I think that, given that we all experience it and that is not clearly an illusion, it should be regarded as the default option in the same way that non-existence of entities should be regarded as the default option. It should be up to those who deny it to disprove it, that is what I say. Somehow I doubt that you will concur :wink:

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#155 Post by animist » April 8th, 2012, 9:52 am

Emma wrote:That sees to be something rather different from a sense of agency, but I suppose a person brushing her teeth can easily move from doing it automatically to doing it consciously.
that is actually the reverse of what I meant. Surely one can consciously start to do something which seems good, then get into a habit of it. The conscious intentionality of this does not really disappear and will reappear if the person is asked why they are performing this semi-automatic action, but by definition the person will not have a conscious sense of agency on each and every occasion that they perform this action.
Emma wrote:But you talk about FW and MR in a way that suggests you mean something slightly different. Not necessarily a metaphysical or physical entity. But some kind of law or principle. Otherwise, why the certainty that MR requires FW?
I think I have said before that "ought" entails "can" - so yes, that is the principle on which MR requires FW
Emma Woolgatherer wrote:
animist wrote:[T]here is something in the charge that compatibilists seek to justify MR by some vague thing called FW - tho' I am not sure that I think people do deserve to be punished for misdeeds, only that maybe they lose the right not to be punished (I must have said that many times).
Most people do believe that people deserve to be punished for their misdeeds. And by most people I mean nearly everybody.
back to punishment, I see. I think that this issue is not quite as central to the FW debate as is blame, and that we probably agree about retribution. But I get the impression that you have shifted ground over blame, which IS central to FW and MR - is that so?

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#156 Post by Compassionist » April 9th, 2012, 3:10 pm

animist wrote:
Emma wrote:Compassionist has engaged very directly with this, by insisting that he doesn't feel free; he doesn't have the sense of free agency that you insist is universal....
I don't know that Compo has addressed this, but I may have missed some of his stuff (quite possible). He certainly said several times that he has no such feeling, but I think he may confuse freedom in general with this FW sense of agency. I queried him over this point, reminding him that he presumably does not actually feel compelled to write posts to this forum on a computer keyboard, and I don't think he has replied to this.
I did reply and addressed the issue in two previous posts. In the first post I said,
Could any of us have made a different choice from the one we made at the time and the place of the choosing? I think not. I am convinced that all choices occur inevitably according to causality. I could not have posted this message even a second sooner. All of reality synchronised according to causality to ensure that this reply was posted at the exact time it was posted from the exact location these words were typed at.
In the second post I said,
I find that 'freedom' is an illusion. I experience a degree of illusory freedom e.g. I am free to eat strawberry flavoured ice-cream instead of chocolate flavoured ice-cream. However, my preferred flavour is not freely chosen - it is the result of my unique blend of genes, physical environments, nutrients and experiences. I recommend that you read A Mind of its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives. The book shows how the neurochemical activities of the brain generates choices unconsciously. It is only later on that we become conscious of a choice.

If I could have sent my reply sooner or later than I did, why didn't I? You could say that it was because I chose to post the reply at the instant it was posted but you would be inaccurate. The posting took place according to the unique and inevitable interactions of my genes, physical environments, nutrients and experiences. The timing was inevitable.
I will now add the following to the above.
Emma wrote:Compassionist has engaged very directly with this, by insisting that he doesn't feel free; he doesn't have the sense of free agency that you insist is universal....
Is it possible that I don't experience the sense of free agency because I have a neuropsychiatric condition called Bipolar Disorder and because I have PTSD? I don't know. I have discussed the issue of 'feeling free' or having 'free will' with others with various neuropsychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, PTSD, Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's Disease, amnesic-confabulatory syndrome, epilepsy, etc. They all said that their respective conditions affected their agecy or free will. I discovered that we all experienced things (e.g. flashbacks in the case of PTSD and mood swings in the case of Bipolar Disorder) we didn't want to experience. We could not will away flashbacks or mood swings or amnesia, etc. Is it possible that people without neuropsychiatric conditions experience a freedom or free will that people with neuropsychiatric conditions do not? I don't know. It would be useful to carry out large scale comparative studies involving functional MRI and PET scanners on the experience of free will. I don't have the resources to carry out such a study. We have already discussed the research which allowed scientists to predict in 60% of cases whether the subject would press the left or the right button six seconds before the subjects themselves became conscious of their decision. That research is too narrow. It would be great to do research with a broader scope.
animist wrote:he (Compassionist) presumably does not actually feel compelled to write posts to this forum on a computer keyboard
I have been reflecting on this for several days. I have been wondering whether or not I felt compelled to reply to this particular post. What about all the other posts I have posted in other threads in this forum or even other forums? What caused me to post any post in any of the forums? I sense desire (wanting to post), awareness (that the forums exist), values (being polite even when debating passionately), abilities (being able to see, knowledge of English, touch-typing) played their parts in my decision to post. The interacting variables must have reached the tipping point that leads to posting every time I posted. Similarly, the interacting variables must have failed to reach the tipping point that leads to posting all the times I did not post. Why did I post in certain threads but not in others? Again, interaction of variables explains the causal steps. This is causality in action. Why would I or anyone else need 'free will' for such decision making?

Different living things make different decisions because they have different genes, physical environments, nutrients and experiences.

Quoting from Wikipedia:
Rats in Skinner boxes with metal electrodes implanted into their nucleus accumbens will repeatedly press a lever which activates this region, and will do so in preference over food and water, eventually dying from exhaustion. In rodent physiology, scientists reason that the medial forebrain bundle is the pleasure center of rats. If a rat is given the choice between stimulating the forebrain or eating, it will choose stimulation to the point of exhaustion.
Human addicts behave in a similar manner. They forego work, family, healthy eating, exercising, etc. in favour of consuming drugs such as heroin. Do the rats and the addicts have free will? I think not. Does anyone have 'free will'? I think not. Although, there are people who claim to have free will and ascribe it to others. How would such claimants prove to skeptics like me that their 'free will' is real?

I bet that if I had my wife's genes, physical environments, nutrients and experiences, I would not have posted any messages on this or any other internet forum. My wife thinks it is a waste of valuable time. Although, I would say that I have found reading and replying to posts to be educational and entertaining. I have also made some friends on this and other forums. These are people who live far away from me, people I would never have interacted with, if it were not for this and other forums I have posted in.

Wouldn't my time be better spent on some other task instead of debating free will and moral responsibility given that debating can't change whether or not we have free will and moral responsibility? Possibly. However, I couldn't refrain from replying. Even though this discussion serves no practical purpose and doesn't help anyone, I still felt compelled to reply. Why is that? Could it be because the interacting variables has now reached the tipping point that initiates the actions required for posting a message (e.g. switching on the computer, logging on to this forum, clicking the Post Reply button)? What would be the detailed neurochemical explanation of such interactions? I don't think our neuroscience is advanced enough to answer that yet.

I have said freedom of agency or free will is an illusion i.e. it is not what it appears to be. While I experience a degree of illusory freedom, I don't 'feel free' or have free agency or free will.

Animist said in a previous post on Tue Apr 03, 2012 at 10:14 am that he thinks free will is not an illusion. Animist could not have posted that posted any sooner or any later than it was actually posted. Causality ensured that. Our choices occur according to causality, not outside it. I still think that freedom of agency or free will is an illusion because those who claim to experience this 'freedom of agency' or 'free will' do not appear to become disillusioned about it. This is rather like the rotating face mask illusion. Even when one knows that the mask is hollow, one can't shake off the illusion or become disillusioned about the illusion of face the rotating face mask creates.

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#157 Post by animist » April 10th, 2012, 8:22 am

Compassionist wrote: Possibly. However, I couldn't refrain from replying. Even though this discussion serves no practical purpose and doesn't help anyone, I still felt compelled to reply....
of course you were not compelled to reply, at least in the normal sense of "compelled", which denotes some physical addiction or external agency. You are not an addict when it comes to internet forums, are you?
Compassionist wrote: I have said freedom of agency or free will is an illusion i.e. it is not what it appears to be. While I experience a degree of illusory freedom, I don't 'feel free' or have free agency or free will.
this sounds like a self-contradiction, or else a very confused statement. You say that that you do experience a feeling of freedom (even though you think this is illusory) and then you say that you don't feel free during this experience. Whatever am I supposed to make of this?
Compassionist wrote: Animist said in a previous post on Tue Apr 03, 2012 at 10:14 am that he thinks free will is not an illusion. Animist could not have posted that posted any sooner or any later than it was actually posted. Causality ensured that. Our choices occur according to causality, not outside it.
I have to say it is a bit annoying if not insulting that, even now, you do not seem to realise that I believe in causality and nothing outside it; please actually read what I say
Compassionist wrote:I still think that freedom of agency or free will is an illusion because those who claim to experience this 'freedom of agency' or 'free will' do not appear to become disillusioned about it. This is rather like the rotating face mask illusion. Even when one knows that the mask is hollow, one can't shake off the illusion or become disillusioned about the illusion of face the rotating face mask creates.
it does not seem at all like this illusion. If you make an analogy, you need to explain just WHY the analogy fits the bill
Compassionist wrote:Human addicts behave in a similar manner. They forego work, family, healthy eating, exercising, etc. in favour of consuming drugs such as heroin. Do the rats and the addicts have free will? I think not. Does anyone have 'free will'? I think not. Although, there are people who claim to have free will and ascribe it to others. How would such claimants prove to skeptics like me that their 'free will' is real?
how indeed? But you move from rats and addicts, who I agree may not have free will, to the rest of us, without any evidence that non-addicts cannot have free will. The point I am trying to make is that it is almost a defining attribute of an addict that he or she simply is not responsible for his or her actions when the addiction takes over - can you not see that? I think that you confuse two very different things here: one is about addiction, and the other is a much more metaphysical concern about whether causality in general is compatible with what most people would consider to be freely arrived-at actions.

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#158 Post by Compassionist » April 10th, 2012, 9:47 pm

animist wrote:
Compassionist wrote: Possibly. However, I couldn't refrain from replying. Even though this discussion serves no practical purpose and doesn't help anyone, I still felt compelled to reply....
of course you were not compelled to reply, at least in the normal sense of "compelled", which denotes some physical addiction or external agency. You are not an addict when it comes to internet forums, are you?
My wife says that I am an addict to internet forums given the thousands of posts I have posted in various forums, including more than 1805 posts on this forum. She is a medical doctor but I am not entirely sure whether or not I am addicted to internet forums. I have spent many hundreds of hours on the forums but I am not sure what the clinical criteria for such a diagnosis is.
animist wrote:
Compassionist wrote: I have said freedom of agency or free will is an illusion i.e. it is not what it appears to be. While I experience a degree of illusory freedom, I don't 'feel free' or have free agency or free will.
this sounds like a self-contradiction, or else a very confused statement. You say that that you do experience a feeling of freedom (even though you think this is illusory) and then you say that you don't feel free during this experience. Whatever am I supposed to make of this?
Sorry for the confusion I have caused. According to A Mind of its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives neurochemical activities of the brain generates choices unconsciously. It is only later on that we become conscious of a choice. This means that neither I, nor anyone else, makes choices. We just become aware of choices that are made unconsciously. That's why the freedom to choose is an illusion. I don't feel free because I am not free. I am 'free' to post or not post in this forum but this freedom is illusory as the choice to post is made unconsciously and I just become aware of the choice later on. Do you understand what I am saying?
animist wrote:
Compassionist wrote: Animist said in a previous post on Tue Apr 03, 2012 at 10:14 am that he thinks free will is not an illusion. Animist could not have posted that posted any sooner or any later than it was actually posted. Causality ensured that. Our choices occur according to causality, not outside it.
I have to say it is a bit annoying if not insulting that, even now, you do not seem to realise that I believe in causality and nothing outside it; please actually read what I say
I am not trying to annoy you or insult you. You have said several times that you believe in causality and nothing outside it but what I don't understand is how you can have free will when choices are already being made for you by unconscious neural activities which work according to causality?
animist wrote:
Compassionist wrote:I still think that freedom of agency or free will is an illusion because those who claim to experience this 'freedom of agency' or 'free will' do not appear to become disillusioned about it. This is rather like the rotating face mask illusion. Even when one knows that the mask is hollow, one can't shake off the illusion or become disillusioned about the illusion of face the rotating face mask creates.
it does not seem at all like this illusion. If you make an analogy, you need to explain just WHY the analogy fits the bill
It is impossible to shake off the illusion of the face even when one knows that the mask is hollow. Similarly, it is impossible to shake off the illusion that one makes choices even when one knows that the choices are made unconsciously and we just become conscious of it later.
animist wrote:
Compassionist wrote:Human addicts behave in a similar manner. They forego work, family, healthy eating, exercising, etc. in favour of consuming drugs such as heroin. Do the rats and the addicts have free will? I think not. Does anyone have 'free will'? I think not. Although, there are people who claim to have free will and ascribe it to others. How would such claimants prove to skeptics like me that their 'free will' is real?
how indeed? But you move from rats and addicts, who I agree may not have free will, to the rest of us, without any evidence that non-addicts cannot have free will. The point I am trying to make is that it is almost a defining attribute of an addict that he or she simply is not responsible for his or her actions when the addiction takes over - can you not see that? I think that you confuse two very different things here: one is about addiction, and the other is a much more metaphysical concern about whether causality in general is compatible with what most people would consider to be freely arrived-at actions.
I know that the brains of addicts work differently from the brains of non-addicts. Drugs cause the brains of addicts to work differently. The experiments A Mind of its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives talks about were carried out on non-addicts. In normal healthy brains, choices are made unconsciously. We just become aware of the choices later on. That's the evidence I have been talking about. "Freely arrived-at actions" are not actually freely arrived-at. When I first mentioned the book you were dismissive of it. I think you should borrow it from a library and read it and that might help you understand what I am saying.

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#159 Post by Emma Woolgatherer » April 11th, 2012, 6:30 pm

animist wrote:I have watched the Marcus du Sautoy (MS) video again (actually I think this was Simon Pegg playing a nutty professor!). The comments of John-Dylan Haynes (JDH) seemed actually to nullify those of MS: some of the former's phrases clearly rejected the nonsensical dualistic implications of MS that he was somehow being controlled by something outside himself, and in fact, JDH sounded (to me) almost Compatibilistic, stressing the integration of consciousness with the brain as a whole.
Well, he doesn't sound at all Compatibilistic to me. :shrug: I did feel that Marcus du Sautoy rather ignored the points JDH was making, but apart from when he made that "hostage" comment, which was good in that it encouraged the response that JDH gave, I don't think he was saying that he was somehow being controlled by something outside himself. He was just shocked by the fact that he didn't consciously know what he had decided for six seconds after he had "decided" it, while JDH did consciously know what he had "decided" [---][/---] although actually that's not true: he could merely predict it with 60% accuracy. While I do think MdS went a bit over the top, as most TV popular science presenters do, I think he was probably expressing what a lot of people would have felt, to some degree, under the circumstances.

I also think that JDH overstated the internal harmony of the various mental processes, conscious and unconscious. From what I've read, there's quite a lot of conflict between those processes [---][/---] among the unconscious ones, as well as among the conscious ones, and not just between unconscious and conscious ones. If all these processes were leading in the same direction, then it might be possible to associate them with a "will" of some kind. But if there's something much more haphazard going on, more chaotic, then some of those "decisions" about things like pushing the left button rather than the right, or even about pulling a trigger or not pulling a trigger, might be quasi-random, or possibly even random. And the whole idea of a single "will", free or otherwise, is much harder to pin down.
animist wrote:And anyway, how can it be that this FW notion, which seems to be meaningful only in the context of MR, could somehow be threatened in principle by scientific experiments which show that we decide to something before we are actually aware of this decision?
If FW refers simply to the absence of external coercion, constraint or manipulation, then it's not threatened. But if it refers to something that we "know" we have, simply because we're aware of it, we feel it, when we make conscious decisions, then it might easily be threatened. If consciousness is not the be-all-and-end-all, then we need, at the very least, to rethink FW. That feeling of free will that seemed to be so important evidently isn't.
animist wrote:The decision is made, that is all that counts, and I am quite prepared to believe that ALL decisions are in principle like this. What difference can this delay phenomenon possibly make to the question of individual responsibility in principle for a morally significant action?
Well, I don't think it makes a difference, because, like you, I consider both conscious and unconscious mental processes to be equally determined. But until recently, you've given the impression that you, like man others, associate FW with consciousness. And in fact you still do, when you talk about the experience of free will. But if all you mean now by FW is action in the absence of external coercion, constraint or manipulation, then all this talk about our experience of FW and whether it's illusory is utterly beside the point.
animist wrote:This leads me onto say that what I think scares people about this sort of research (in reality even if they are not aware of it!) is not that it threatens the notion of FW in general but that it might be used to nullify individuals' actual FW. Imagine that JDH could not only could "see" MS's decisions before the latter was aware of them but that he could also change the colours (or variables, as Compo would say) which his screen associated with MS's decisions. MS would then presumably "choose" to do something which he had not originally intended - and without any knowledge of this intentional outside manipulation! This really would be a "choice" which was in fact an illusion.
Hmm. Sounds like the stuff of a (bad) sci-fi movie. I still think you're rather ignoring the fact that for a lot of people free will is something that is very much linked to conscious choice. The word "will" itself implies conscious deliberation.
animist wrote:I think this fits in with my earlier attempts to make the FW concept include lack of manipulation as well as lack of constraint and coercion. Compo seems sometimes to confuse FW with simple freedom, and maybe it is this element of manipulation which converts plain freedom, lack of which is usually all too clear to us, into "full" freedom which includes FW. Someone on the Theo forum correctly pointed out that, if I am in a dungeon, my freedom is heavily restricted but my FW may not be - if I have not been intentionally brainwashed (or abused in some way which prevents my normal thought processes from operating); so just as one can have a freedom of sorts without FW, one can in principle also have the reverse.
I don't really know what you mean by "simple freedom", since freedom seems to me to be anything but simple. And I don't see why manipulation can't be seen as a limit to freedom, in one or other of its definitions. It seems to me that anyone who is locked in a dungeon is constrained, and probably, to some degree, coerced and manipulated too. Hence his or her FW is, by your definition, restricted. If his or her "free will" is felt to be intact, then maybe that's because he or she feels free to make conscious choices within the constraints of the dungeon.

I also want to pick up on your proviso, "If I have not been intentionally brainwashed." I think we've talked about it before, but I think that word "intentionally" is interesting. I suppose that's the definition of manipulation, isn't it? It is an intentional thing. But If one's mental processes have been steered in one direction or another, what difference does it make to one's own FW whether the steering was intentional or not? What has someone else's intent (or lack thereof) got to do with it? When we talk about constraint in the context of FW, we're not restricting ourselves to deliberate constraint, are we? Or are we?
animist wrote:Taking this further, one might hope that this type of research, far from devaluing FW, might make us more aware of, and thus able to deal with, threats to it. Emma constantly and correctly points out how little we know of ourselves; this is quite true, and surely the more we do know from brain research, the more honest we can hope to be in assessing our motives for what we take to be our considered opinions.
Yes, I agree with this last point.
animist wrote:I am sure that all our thinking is triggered by unconscious impulses, and again I don't see this as a problem. You do seem to be to be making some dualistic distinction between consciousness and these "impulses".
I am making a distinction, but not a dualistic one. I accept that what we call the self involves both conscious and unconscious mental processes, but by definition the conscious ones are the only ones we're ... um ... conscious of. That makes them distinctive. And when most people talk about the experience of FW, they're referring to conscious mental processes.
animist wrote:
Emma Woolgatherer wrote:So are you suggesting that free will is ... a negative? :puzzled:
not quite, no. I think that, given that we all experience it and that is not clearly an illusion, it should be regarded as the default option in the same way that non-existence of entities should be regarded as the default option. It should be up to those who deny it to disprove it, that is what I say. Somehow I doubt that you will concur :wink:
I am not trying to deny the sense of agency that most of us experience. What I'm doubting is that it has some special significance when it comes to the issue of moral responsibility. It is up to you to demonstrate that it does.

Emma

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#160 Post by Compassionist » April 12th, 2012, 11:06 am

Let's assume that someone has free will (I don't see how that would be possible but let's assume it for the sake of the discussion). Could he or she quit having the free will if her or she did not want to have free will?

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Re: Do/can we have free will and moral responsibility?

#161 Post by animist » April 12th, 2012, 12:02 pm

Compassionist wrote:Let's assume that someone has free will (I don't see how that would be possible but let's assume it for the sake of the discussion). Could he or she quit having the free will if her or she did not want to have free will?
no I don't think so. You don't really operate FW as some activity, it is just a feature to some degree of many activities. You could of course enslave yourself to something like a drug intentionally, knowing that your addiction would limit your future FW. Does that help?

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