Compatibalism

[shunyadragon]

So what? Psychologists make tons of error, but the field of psychology is sound. There are tons of erroneous theories of economics, but there's plenty that makes perfect sense. There's tons, and tons, and tons of hogwash articles about physics and mathematical rabbit hole abstractions that don't go anywhere, with 99.999% of all theoretical suggestions about new physics being bunk. Most of all of the results, findings, theories and hypotheses in medical science are wrong.

The fact that a field can make mistakes is the norm, not the exception, and not by itself any indication that the field of study is off base.

I do not believe this responds to the problem of the antiquated view of science in Aristotle's philosophy.

That depends entirely what you mean by 'Wrong'. Newtonian mechanics is 'wrong' within a certain narrow definition, and 'verified' within another. Aristotle founded the first notions of rules of logic and deduction, categorized nature, promoted empiricism, and discussed various aspects of art that are still part and parcel of analysing structures of story to this day.

Newtonian Mechanics is not wrong, it just has limited applications to the macro world. The contributions of Aristotle are real, but his antiquated view of science is also very flawed, and limits the application of his philosophy in the modern world.

[The Thinker]

What he recognises, historically, is that his "solution" to the problem is unacceptable to the likes of us. Namely, libertarian free-will is logically incoherent but that God grants it to humans because he loves us. In short, the magic solution.

I don't even think it's that sophisticated. I think he's just stuck on the idea that your consciousness has to be detached from your brain in order to be "rational." But he doesn't realize (or he does realize but is afraid to admit) that this leads to the impossibility of rationality.

[The Thinker]

More automated messages from the sock puppet.

Seer you are in denial about your views. It's obvious you cannot refute the problems of your view so you resort to responses that ironically seem exactly like automated messages from the sock puppet.

[seer]

Seer you are in denial about your views. It's obvious you cannot refute the problems of your view so you resort to responses that ironically seem exactly like automated messages from the sock puppet.

No Thinker, my way of arguing has always been "if this, then that."If you are correct, then you have no control over what you believe think or do. It is all determined, and not only determined but determined by the non-rational. Forces that are neither care about rationality, logic or even our survival. It is all a crap shoot, your so called logical conclusions are too a crap shoot. Why on earth, given the pedigree of your rational abilities, and the fact that conscious rational deliberations play no causal role in the process, should we take anything you say seriously? So my arguments are generally in the negative. And let's remember you could never make a logical argument that on any give subject or instance that you could demonstrate that you were believing a truism. That you were not determined to believe a falsehood to be true. You take it by faith that in a given instance you were determined to believe a correct thing.

[Leonhard]

Tassman, your thinking is getting increasingly fractured. You've advanced no single good point in your entire post. There's little substance to your argumentation at all, which seems pretty much to be some very naive sophomoric scientistic attitude.

Answer at least this: What premise that I've advanced is false.

When I ask for that I'm not asking you to ask me 'what is the scientific evidence for it', I'm asking you to show that the concept itself is shown to be false, given what we already know, or show that the concept is incoherent in and of itself.

If you can't do that, then you've failed to show what I've advanced as faulty or incoherent. At best you could only say that you personally see no good reason for holding it. And whether there are convincing reasons for holding it to be true, I'd leave that for another thread. I simply don't see the point of lecturing you on Thomism, when you're not showing even the least bit attempt at understanding it, at all.

At any rate, in order for you to feel that I've answered you, I've responded to some of the fractured statements in your post, skipping those that are redundant.

No matter how brilliant the logic and argumentation, if the premises are wrong then the deducted conclusion will probably be wrong.

This is the fallacy fallacy.

There are plenty of cases where faulty logic or wrong premises lead to the correct conclusions. A notable example is the derivation of the Schwartzchild radius for the Event Horizon of a Blackhole, which matches exactly that of General Relativity, even though the two theories are incommensurable.

Factually “wrong” is what I mean.

But, in what way?

If our senses and experiences (i.e. ‘hypotheses) cannot withstand rigorous empirical testing then they will not be verifiable...i.e. they cannot be shown to be correct.

Aristotelianism, whether classical or modern, doesn't demand that our senses be perfect.

Is that what you meant, that you think that Aristotelian philosophy demands that our experiences are infallible? Otherwise, I'm not quite sure of what you're saying here.

Libertarian free will is logically incoherent in a world that is demonstrably causally determined.

I asked you whether by 'causally determined' you meant Determinism, or merely that 'things have causes, deterministic or not'. You didn't answer this.

You have not empirically demonstrated that this “internal component” exists.

I don't have to. I'm defending the much simpler notion that libertarian free will is not incoherent. Not the notion that we actually have it. That would be a different thread altogether.

Your metaphysical argument may "make sense"

They do. That's all I'm defending since your main charge was that libertarian free will was incoherent.

[Tassman]

I don't even think it's that sophisticated. I think he's just stuck on the idea that your consciousness has to be detached from your brain in order to be "rational." But he doesn't realize (or he does realize but is afraid to admit) that this leads to the impossibility of rationality.

Well, if his consciousness is "detached from his brain in order to be 'rational'" then his conscious thoughts must arise from a vacuum...which is far from rational. Consciousness is what the brain is doing. We are what our brain is doing. No brain = no us.

BTW: Love your "Fake News" avatar.

[Tassman]

No Thinker, my way of arguing has always been "if this, then that."If you are correct, then you have no control over what you believe think or do.

Who or what is this "you" to which you are referring...how can it be separate from your conscious, functioning brain? Answer: it can't.

[Tassman]

Tassman, your thinking is getting increasingly fractured. You've advanced no single good point in your entire post. There's little substance to your argumentation at all, which seems pretty much to be some very naive sophomoric scientistic attitude.

Answer at least this: What premise that I've advanced is false.

The one premise that you’ve advanced is a pre-scientific, purely academic argument, divorced from what we know of the natural world and how it works.

There are plenty of cases where faulty logic or wrong premises lead to the correct conclusions. A notable example is the derivation of the Schwartzchild radius for the Event Horizon of a Blackhole, which matches exactly that of General Relativity, even though the two theories are incommensurable.

And this is why multiple empirical testing is required to arrive at verifiable scientific fact.

Aristotelianism, whether classical or modern, doesn't demand that our senses be perfect.

Is that what you meant, that you think that Aristotelian philosophy demands that our experiences are infallible? Otherwise, I'm not quite sure of what you're saying here.

I’m saying that Aristotelian arguments based upon "our senses and experiences" are in effect hypotheses that require scientific testing to verify them, just as do all hypotheses.

I asked you whether by 'causally determined' you meant Determinism, or merely that 'things have causes, deterministic or not'. You didn't answer this.

Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, decision and action is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. Libertarian Free-Will violates this concept.

I don't have to. I'm defending the much simpler notion that libertarian free will is not incoherent. Not the notion that we actually have it. That would be a different thread altogether.

Yes you do. Given that your argument comprises an “internal component” which is responsible for exercising LFW, you have no meaningful argument without showing that this proposed ‘internal component’ actually exists.

They do. That's all I'm defending since your main charge was that libertarian free will was incoherent.

You have not defended the proposition that libertarian free-will is logically coherent in our determined universe; merely that it’s logically coherent in your Aristotelian metaphysical bubble.

[The Thinker]

No Thinker, my way of arguing has always been "if this, then that."If you are correct, then you have no control over what you believe think or do. It is all determined, and not only determined but determined by the non-rational.

If you are correct, then you have no control over what you believe think or do. It is all random uncaused events, and you're entirely at the whim of them.

You are in denial about this.

If you disagree then refute this already.

Forces that are neither care about rationality, logic or even our survival. It is all a crap shoot, your so called logical conclusions are too a crap shoot. Why on earth, given the pedigree of your rational abilities, and the fact that conscious rational deliberations play no causal role in the process, should we take anything you say seriously? So my arguments are generally in the negative.

I've already told you why on my view our thoughts are more trust worthy than yours. I've spelled that out a dozen times and you've never refuted it. You just keep reiterating this nonsense point that only my view entails our thoughts are untrustworthy.

And let's remember you could never make a logical argument that on any give subject or instance that you could demonstrate that you were believing a truism. That you were not determined to believe a falsehood to be true. You take it by faith that in a given instance you were determined to believe a correct thing.

I've asked you if anyone can do this and you ignore it. So tell me if you can do this, or if any view can do this. I've already showed it's logically possible. And I've already showed that on my view we'd had a higher probability that our thoughts would correspond to reality than yours. Refute that or shut up.

[Leonhard]

The one premise that you’ve advanced is a pre-scientific,

Chronological snobbery.

purely academic argument,

What does that mean? And why is it bad? Yes, in arguing against your 'purely academic notion' that 'hylomorphic dualism is incoherent' I never referred to any empirical facts.

Because I don't need to; In order to show that a notion isn't incoherent, all you have to show is that it's logically possible, at all.

divorced from what we know of the natural world and how it works.

We don't know that the universe is deterministic. There is absolutely no evidence for that. Nor is there any evidence, at all, that the universe is reductionistic. Neither of these are scientific notions. They belong to the domain of philosophy.

Those philosophers who propose pure scientism, don't go for materialism or determinism, the atheist Alfred Jules Ayer of the infamous Logical Positivists would go so far as call both determinism and reductionism completely meaningless notions, with no more content to them than 'googoo' and 'gaagaa', condemned to the same domains as he placed ethics, beauty and religion. The only thing I think you could pick if you'd want it to be pure science, is some sort of radical nominalism where in only measurements exist.

There are no atoms. Just measurements on instruments.

There are plenty of cases where faulty logic or wrong premises lead to the correct conclusions. A notable example is the derivation of the Schwartzchild radius for the Event Horizon of a Blackhole, which matches exactly that of General Relativity, even though the two theories are incommensurable.

And this is why multiple empirical testing is required to arrive at verifiable scientific fact.

...The Schwartzchild radius coincidence has nothing to do with empirical tests, it's just an example that you can't use a fallacy to argue that something 'is probably false'.

Which is what you did.

I’m saying that Aristotelian arguments based upon "our senses and experiences" are in effect hypotheses that require scientific testing to verify them, just as do all hypotheses.

"Require scientific testing." Is a very nebulous demand, seeing as there's no such thing as 'scientific testing' in and of itself. Several decades of analytic attempts of boiling down what it is that scientists are doing when they explore the world hasn't yielded a single methodology. It's dozens of practices mutually agreed upon to be reliable at arriving theories within various domains of the science. The methods of psychology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, gastronomy, history, geology, climatology, ethology, evolutionary biology, microbiology, chemistry, solid-state physics or physics within extreme domains such as what is explored at the LHC, or astrophysics who's methodologies again are quite their own.

There's so little overlap between them. Not even testability has the same notion between them. You can't test neutron stars or historical events.

What about the premise, makes it not something that could be considered within the domain of philosophy of mind?

Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, decision, and action is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. Libertarian Free-Will violates this concept.

So?

You have not defended the proposition that libertarian free-will is logically coherent in our determined universe; merely that it’s logically coherent in your Aristotelian metaphysical bubble.

You're [url=http://www.fallacyfiles.org/begquest.html]begging the question.[/quote]

I don't have to grant that our universe is entirely deterministic. At all. You've given me no good reason for doing so.

[Leonhard]

If you are correct, then you have no control over what you believe think or do. It is all random uncaused events, and you're entirely at the whim of them.

What kind of definition of 'random' are you using here? The epistemological one, or the metaphysical one. If it's the former, wherein what a person chooses involves an input from their 'spirit', and this input is itself in no way determined by anything else (free of external and internal pressures) and is an expression of that person's will, then while it's true that such a choice would be random in so far as you couldn't determine exactly what the choice would be (hence epistemologically random), it would still be a choice of the person that he would be accountable for because he is the source of the choice. Not his circumstances.

[Tassman]

What does that mean? And why is it bad? Yes, in arguing against your 'purely academic notion' that 'hylomorphic dualism is incoherent' I never referred to any empirical facts.

Because I don't need to; In order to show that a notion isn't incoherent, all you have to show is that it's logically possible, at all.

Your argument is based upon the notion of an “internal component” responsible for exercising LFW. This is either an argument about the natural brain, which is the province of neurobiology, OR it’s an unverifiable supernatural claim.

We don't know that the universe is deterministic. There is absolutely no evidence for that. Nor is there any evidence, at all, that the universe is reductionistic. Neither of these are scientific notions. They belong to the domain of philosophy.

There is no logically coherent alternative to materialism. It works. Your highfalutin metaphysical notions don’t work except as empty academic exercises of no practical value.

...The Schwartzchild radius coincidence has nothing to do with empirical tests, it's just an example that you can't use a fallacy to argue that something 'is probably false'.

Black holes are part of the natural universe and so are all proposed hypotheses about their qualities.

"Require scientific testing." Is a very nebulous demand, seeing as there's no such thing as 'scientific testing' in and of itself.

Scientific methodology is not “nebulous” at all. It’s a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge.

What about the premise, makes it not something that could be considered within the domain of philosophy of mind?

There’s no good reason why the brain/mind would be the only complex physical object in the universe to have an interface with another realm of being, rather than have a material explanation subject to scientific explanation.

I don't have to grant that our universe is entirely deterministic. At all. You've given me no good reason for doing so.

You have presented no viable alternative to determinism. Your argument is of no more practical value than Aristotle’s dynamics of the celestial spheres was of value. In short, of no value at all...except as a picturesque idea perhaps.

[Leonhard]

Your argument is based upon the notion of an “internal component” responsible for exercising LFW. This is either an argument about the natural brain, which is the province of neurobiology, OR it’s an unverifiable supernatural claim.

It's not a supernatural claim. Also, you're making a false dilemma fallacy: The field most appropriate for discussing this is philosophy.

There is no logically coherent alternative to materialism.

Yes, there is. There's nothing logically incoherent about Thomistic metaphysics. You have failed to point out even one significant conceptual problem. You just repeat ad nauseum that it's incoherent, yet you're unable to demonstrate what is incoherent about it. Or you simply don't understand what 'incoherent' means.

Your highfalutin metaphysical notions don’t work except as empty academic exercises of no practical value. ... Your argument is of no more practical value than Aristotle’s dynamics of the celestial spheres was of value. In short, of no value at all...except as a picturesque idea perhaps.

The metaphysics of materialism and determinism have no practical value either, if by practical value you mean that you can make technology out of it. You need not believe that atoms are anything more than useful fictions used to categorize measurements under general statements, in order to build a nuclear reactor.

Again, as soon as you go beyond nominalism, you've entered the land of philosophers and metaphysics.

...The Schwartzchild radius coincidence has nothing to do with empirical tests, it's just an example that you can't use a fallacy to argue that something 'is probably false'.

Black holes are part of the natural universe and so are all proposed hypotheses about their qualities.

And that does not change the fact that you made the fallacy fallacy: You argued that a premise being false means that the conclusion is unlikely to be true. No amount of special pleading is going to change that.

Scientific methodology is not “nebulous” at all. It’s a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge.

There is no such as thing as 'The Scientific Methology'. Each of the fields I mentioned has its own methods and its own way of proceeding about testing ideas. Many of them have nothing in terms of verification, such as the historical fields.

A physicist is completely unequipped to discuss the science of biology, or even to evaluate it. He has nothing sensible to add to the discussion, at all. Likewise, a chemist has nothing useful to say to a historian, about history. Those two are relegated to role of technitians in those discussions, Carbon-14 dating and analysis of clues that they can provide to the historians who can make useful theories out of them. But outside of those munchkin roles, they're useless.

There’s no good reason why the brain/mind would be the only complex physical object in the universe to have an interface with another realm of being,

You're describing Cartesian dualism again, not Hylemorphic Dualism. You're still mixing up the two.

You have presented no viable alternative to determinism.

What's unviable about indeterminism? Quantum physics which is already completely non-mechanical by all empirical observations lends itself easily to indeterministic interpretations.

[shunyadragon]

What's unviable about indeterminism? Quantum physics which is already completely non-mechanical by all empirical observations lends itself easily to indeterministic interpretations.

This is an odd description, but indeterministic interpretations of Quantum physics only apply tentatively to observations of behavior at the Quantum Mechanics level of our physical existence. There are too many unknowns here to go beyond this. Ultimately it is possible that the Quantum World is not indeterministic at all.

[Tassman]

It's not a supernatural claim. Also, you're making a false dilemma fallacy: The field most appropriate for discussing this is philosophy.

It is a claim that’s not supported by factual evidence from the natural world therefore it is a “supernatural”...or non-natural claim if you prefer.

Yes, there is. There's nothing logically incoherent about Thomistic metaphysics. You have failed to point out even one significant conceptual problem. You just repeat ad nauseum that it's incoherent, yet you're unable to demonstrate what is incoherent about it. Or you simply don't understand what 'incoherent' means.

It is only logically coherent within your metaphysical bubble; it’s an academic word-game unsupported by empirical evidence.

The metaphysics of materialism and determinism have no practical value either, if by practical value you mean that you can make technology out of it. You need not believe that atoms are anything more than useful fictions used to categorize measurements under general statements, in order to build a nuclear reactor.

Again, as soon as you go beyond nominalism, you've entered the land of philosophers and metaphysics.

Metaphysics can only marshal the facts available to it and, no matter how logically coherent a metaphysical argument may be, if it’s contradicted by verified scientific knowledge then it’s invalidated.

And that does not change the fact that you made the fallacy fallacy: You argued that a premise being false means that the conclusion is unlikely to be true. No amount of special pleading is going to change that.

How is this not true of the natural universe?

There is no such as thing as 'The Scientific Methology'. Each of the fields I mentioned has its own methods and its own way of proceeding about testing ideas. Many of them have nothing in terms of verification, such as the historical fields.

A physicist is completely unequipped to discuss the science of biology, or even to evaluate it. He has nothing sensible to add to the discussion, at all. Likewise, a chemist has nothing useful to say to a historian, about history. Those two are relegated to role of technitians in those discussions, Carbon-14 dating and analysis of clues that they can provide to the historians who can make useful theories out of them. But outside of those munchkin roles, they're useless.

Science assumes philosophical naturalism and is based upon methodological naturalism as the only viable methodology, regardless of the scientific discipline.

You're describing Cartesian dualism again, not Hylemorphic Dualism. You're still mixing up the two.

Hylemorphic Dualism is motivated by prior theological dogma and only makes sense if you accept discredited Aristotelian ontology. There’s no scientific reason to think that the mind and consciousness cannot be reduced to the neurological function of the brain and nervous system.

What's unviable about indeterminism? Quantum physics which is already completely non-mechanical by all empirical observations lends itself easily to indeterministic interpretations.

Our understanding of quantum physics is guided by probability. We can know only how things will behave on the average—but we know that very precisely.