Compassionist wrote:
If you are a determinist, doesn't that mean you accept that all choices arise inevitably according to variables? There is no such thing as a 'free' choice which is 'free' from the determining variables.
true, but I don't see that rules out freedom in my sense - which is basically a freedom to decide what I want to do which I do have at present and which someone under the influence of an abusive background, drugs, brainwashing, religious or political manipulation and indoctrination etc etc does not have
Compassionist wrote:
Can I really blame Hitler for being Hitler? Would I or a fly or you or a cow or a bacteria not have been Hitler if I or you or they had his genes, environments, nutrients and experiences? How can we judge or blame anyone when identical variables produce identical outcomes? Many times, I have wished that I and others had made different choices but how could anyone have made different choices given identical variables? What mechanism would permit such differing choices? You said that I am confusing power and freedom of choice. What freedom of choice do we have? Do you really think that I chose not to become Albert Einstein or Marie Curie or Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin? No, I don't have any freedom of choice. I am not free from the variables which produce each and every choice.
the variables produce each choice, yes, but they work through our free will to an extent. Of course on e cannot choose to be a different person or even to have a different personality (except that some choices could in principle lead to an altered personality) but within limits one can make decisions after pondering the alternatives. Culpability is a legal concept, but most people in fact accept that the concept is a valid for reasons I have given already: that otherwise we would have no distinction between deserving and non-deserving social sanctions like penalties, which in turn would justify treating people as robots without rights
Compassionist wrote:When I was a child, I had put my finger on a candle flame. It was sore and I withdrew my finger. Was that a free choice? No, it was not. If I had felt no pain, I would not have withdrawn my finger. Also, the experience taught me that I shouldn't touch a flame because it causes pain and damages my cells. There are people with leprosy who can't feel pain and end up burning their fingers while cooking, etc. Your example of failing to refrain from hurting people in the past and getting better at refraining yourself from doing so again also illustrates how choices arise out of variables. Your genes, environments, nutrients and experiences determine your awareness, values and abilities which in turn determine your choices. You are assuming that John Golding could have refrained from his paedophilic actions at the time and place the event occurred. That's like assuming that I could have refrained from touching the candle flame when I was a child. That's also like assuming that you could have refrained from saying or doing hurtful things to others at the time and place you did them. The crux of my argument is that we are not free from the determining variables which lead to our choices. All choices occur inevitably according to causality. Causality rules.
I am confused by your finger burning example, and in fact it seems to illustrate what I am trying to say. As far as WITHDRAWING your finger, then yes, you had no choice, but the decision to touch the flame was to an extent (limited by the fact that you were a child) a free decision.
Compassionist wrote:
You made a distinction between interior and exterior - what do you mean by that? By interior do you mean the subjective experience of what it is like to be you? By exterior do you mean what you look like to others? You said that we are never going to agree. If we are both looking for the truth and are willing to accept what is true and reject what is false then we are both going to agree.
by interior I mean the subjective experience, yes, but by external I mean the objective physical causality that you keep mentioning. I feel you are a bit naïve to think that sincere searches for truth must lead to agreement; your wife is I imagine as sincere as you in searching for truth but the differences between her and your ideas are enormous and maybe unbridgeable.
You might find this article interesting re the status of consciousness, which the author (and I) feel is subjective but not illusory; consciousness and free will are not the same topic, but they share the fact that they are threatened by a reductive take on the mind-body problem which identifies the mind with the brain. ISTM that if consciousness is an illusion, then free will must be, since the free will concept involves the notion of a conscious and reflecting human being:
http://www.pdcnet.org/philnow/content/p ... _0025_0025