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Cogito ergo sum

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Is libertarian free will coherent?

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  • #46
    Originally posted by seven7up View Post
    Worse. In most classical theological traditions, the single cause is God Himself / Itself.

    So, ultimately, God is the cause of everything we ever do. So, based on those 'traditional assumptions', you are right.
    That view is known as occasionalism. It is the dominant metaphysical view in Islam and traditional Calvinism.
    Blog: Atheism and the City

    If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.

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    • #47
      Originally posted by Chrawnus View Post
      This thread has already gone on for quite a while, so what I'm saying might already have been stated somewhere, but this is how I view free will. I'm not sure if it qualifies as LFW or not, but frankly, I'm not sure if I care what label is put on it:

      Whenever someone is put into a certain situation, said person has several different impulses with varying degrees of intensity. Free will is essentially being able to choose between these impulses, and not simply going with the strongest impulse at the time.

      For example, if you're in a situation where you and several other people were involved in an accident or catastrophe, your strongest impulse would presumably be to run away and save your own life, while a second weaker impulse would be to try and save atleast some other person, at the risk of endangering your own life. In this case free will is what enables you to ignore the stronger impulse of running away, and instead choosing to act according to the weaker, but arguably more noble impulse of trying to save another person's life.
      That's basically compatibilistic free will. If the choosing factor is your will, and your will itself is not free, then you aren't free in the libertarian sense.
      Blog: Atheism and the City

      If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.

      Comment


      • #48
        Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
        Ok so you're a compatibilist. Fine. Then my post is not for you, it is for libertarians. I'd say most Christians are not compatibilists because most Christians I would say, accept (1)(2) and (3).
        I think it would be helpful to define your terms and 1), 2), & 3) with more detail or nuance to capture something that can be more effectively used to characterize 'most Christians'. For example, the 'Christian' definition that I linked to above whereby compatibilist free will is differentiated from libertarian free will and understood to be the view that a person can choose only that which is consistent with his or her nature and that there are constraints and influences upon our ability to choose? Would you deny that this position is a genuine version of compatibilism? Do you have any real data for saying that most Christians believe in libertarian free will and affirm 1), 2) and 3) in an absolute sense ('not determined by anything') in a strict dichotomy with determinism?
        βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι᾿ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι, τότε δὲ πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον·
        ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους, τότε δὲ ἐπιγνώσομαι καθὼς καὶ ἐπεγνώσθην.

        אָכֵ֕ן אַתָּ֖ה אֵ֣ל מִסְתַּתֵּ֑ר אֱלֹהֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל מוֹשִֽׁיעַ׃

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        • #49
          Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
          That's basically compatibilistic free will. If the choosing factor is your will, and your will itself is not free, then you aren't free in the libertarian sense.
          I'm not sure how anything I wrote made you come up with that conclusion? Care to elaborate? I'm essentially saying that you're able to choose impulses that are contrary to your character and nature.

          Comment


          • #50
            Originally posted by robrecht View Post
            I think it would be helpful to define your terms and 1), 2), & 3) with more detail or nuance to capture something that can be more effectively used to characterize 'most Christians'. For example, the 'Christian' definition that I linked to above whereby compatibilist free will is differentiated from libertarian free will and understood to be the view that a person can choose only that which is consistent with his or her nature and that there are constraints and influences upon our ability to choose? Would you deny that this position is a genuine version of compatibilism? Do you have any real data for saying that most Christians believe in libertarian free will and affirm 1), 2) and 3) in an absolute sense ('not determined by anything') in a strict dichotomy with determinism?
            That would not actually be compatibilism. Compatibilists recognize that LFW is an illusion and that we have no genuine control over our thoughts or actions - it is controlled by physics, genetics, etc. This is true regardless of whether the universe is completely deterministic or indeterministic. They just define free will as the ability to arrive at conclusions through a rational process, even though it is out of our control, and if your thoughts or actions originate in the atoms of your brain as their proximate cause without any influence of other agents or disorders (like tumors), then it is "free."
            Blog: Atheism and the City

            If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.

            Comment


            • #51
              Originally posted by Chrawnus View Post
              I'm not sure how anything I wrote made you come up with that conclusion? Care to elaborate? I'm essentially saying that you're able to choose impulses that are contrary to your character and nature.
              That would be true under determinism, but the "you" that would be choosing would not be your consciousness.
              Blog: Atheism and the City

              If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.

              Comment


              • #52
                Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
                That would be true under determinism, but the "you" that would be choosing would not be your consciousness.


                Of course it would be. I would consciously be choosing to act upon one impulse rather than the other.

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                • #53
                  Originally posted by Chrawnus View Post


                  Of course it would be. I would consciously be choosing to act upon one impulse rather than the other.
                  If you think consciousness has the ability to change the course of your atoms to go one way or the other, and that you could have done otherwise in the same situation, meaning, your consciousness itself is not determined by something, then you would believe in LFW.
                  Blog: Atheism and the City

                  If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.

                  Comment


                  • #54
                    Originally posted by Chrawnus View Post
                    This thread has already gone on for quite a while, so what I'm saying might already have been stated somewhere, but this is how I view free will. I'm not sure if it qualifies as LFW or not, but frankly, I'm not sure if I care what label is put on it:

                    Whenever someone is put into a certain situation, said person has several different impulses with varying degrees of intensity. Free will is essentially being able to choose between these impulses, and not simply going with the strongest impulse at the time.

                    For example, if you're in a situation where you and several other people were involved in an accident or catastrophe, your strongest impulse would presumably be to run away and save your own life, while a second weaker impulse would be to try and save atleast some other person, at the risk of endangering your own life. In this case free will is what enables you to ignore the stronger impulse of running away, and instead choosing to act according to the weaker, but arguably more noble impulse of trying to save another person's life.
                    Interesting. I would actually say the exact opposite: the strongest impulse is the one you ultimately follow. I think we tend to confuse immediacy with strength.
                    I'm not here anymore.

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                    • #55
                      Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
                      It is not begging the question if the question is answered.

                      How is that begging the question? If all thoughts are not things we can choose, then the thoughts that give rise to other thoughts are just as out of our control as the original thought.

                      It is not begging the question if the question is answered.
                      It is when the premise of the thread is asking if LFW is coherent. You're providing answers claiming that it isn't in answer to the questions. Your answers are also primarily assertions that aren't necessarily held by advocates of LFW.


                      Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
                      Many LFW holders claim (1)(2) and (3) and very few if any refuse to accept either. Do you concede all three? The "choice" of what thoughts to act upon faces the same problem as the original thought - it is also something you cannot choose because you cannot have a thought, about a thought, before you have the thought. You seem to be taking a compatibilist view. My thread is not about that, it is about libertarian free will, not compatibilistic free will.
                      Nothing in LFW requires you to have control over the thoughts, only which actions you take as a result of those thoughts. I do not find LFW to be incoherent, though your caricature of it definitely is.
                      I'm not here anymore.

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                      • #56
                        Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
                        One simple question to ask the libertarian is: do our thoughts have causes? Yes or no?

                        If our thoughts have causes, what ever caused that can't be our will or our mind, because our thoughts are our will and mind.
                        I think you need to define "thoughts" more carefully. You seem to be using it far too broadly. (In another post you even include "The exercise of the will is itself a thought".)

                        Because it would seem natural to me at least to distinguish between (1) the mind, which has the capacity to think thoughts, and (2) the thoughts that the mind thinks. Also, by "thought" most people probably mean an idea contemplated. So it's not at all clear that the exercise of the will is itself a thought. The will may be a faculty different from the faculty of contemplation of ideas. And I think others have pointed out that willing an action seems different from contemplating an idea.

                        Saying that the soul causes the thoughts just pushes the issue back one step further, because the question now becomes, does the soul have a cause? If it does, then what ever caused it can't be the soul or the mind or the will, it has to be something other. And once you have that, you are essentially admitting that your will is not truly free, since it has a cause that is not us and that we cannot control.
                        Let's be clearer about your question, "does the soul have a cause?"
                        If you mean a cause for its having come into being, then that's not relevant.
                        I think what you mean is: did something external to the soul cause the soul to cause the thoughts? If so then the proponent of LFW will obviously answer "no". But how is that at all a problem for LFW? Saying that nothing external caused the soul to act as it did does not at all imply that the soul did not cause the thought/choice.

                        On top of that, the ability to choose your thoughts is logically impossible. You can't have a thought, about a thought, before you have a thought. You can't choose what your next thought, desire, or idea will be. In order to do that, you'd have to think about it, before you think about it. That's incoherent. If you can't choose your next thought, or any of your thoughts, how is your will or mind controlled by you, and in what sense is it free? It isn't. Thoughts arise in consciousness and we have no control over it.
                        Except that people, every day, do make choices about what to think about. A person can choose to turn his mind for the next hour to the study of Calculus, intentionally contemplating specific ideas in that field.

                        If your argument were sound, it would imply that humans have no control over what to think about at all. It would even rule out a deterministic mind controlling what thoughts it thinks. It would imply that thoughts are entirely random, and the mind thinks whatever random things drift in and out.

                        And then others have pointed out already that even if we had no choice about what we think (what ideas we contemplate), that isn't the same thing as the faculty of deliberating among ideas, and choosing how to act physically.

                        Right now I'm only asking for a justification of (1) above. ["(1) We are in control of our will"]
                        I think maybe that's not a good way to state the point. If we define our will as our faculty of controlling, then it would be improper to speak of controlling our will. Rather "the will" just refers to our capacity to control our actions. The way you state it seems to make it improperly circular. The real question then reverts to: Does the agent have any capacity to control its actions, or is it entirely controlled by external forces? Which likely ends up just being a restatement of the question of LFW.

                        Basically, I want to challenge all believers in libertarian free will to make a positive argument for the coherency of libertarian free will. I don't need every single detail explained, I just need you to show how it is even logically coherent and not self-refuting.
                        I'm not sure it is reasonable to ask for a positive proof that something is not self-refuting. You are asking for a proof of a negative (that there does not exist any argument that would prove LFW to be self-refuting). Proofs of a negative are notoriously difficult to come by (like asking for a positive proof that there does not exist any unicorn). So I would think the burden of proof would be on the person claiming that LFW is self refuting, to provide the proof showing it is self-refuting.

                        That is, you would start with LFW as the premise, and from it alone deduce a series of propositions, ultimately ending in a contradiction:

                        Premise) LFW
                        Conclusion 1) ...
                        Conclusion 2) ...
                        ...
                        Conclusion k) X and Not-X.


                        So far it does not seem that you have given any reason to think that LFW is self-refuting.

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                        • #57
                          Originally posted by One Bad Pig View Post
                          Thanks! Good dinner reading.
                          I'm glad you enjoyed it.


                          Originally posted by One Bad Pig View Post
                          The second link seems to have a narrower conception of compatibilism that you imply here. Based on the arguments there, I think I would identify more with LFW than compatibilism.
                          Honestly, one of the hardest things about philosophy (in my opinion) is the variation in definitions. What compatibilism means to one philosopher is not the same as how it's used by another. I've heard of a paper wherein the author discussed 'good' and used subscripts to denote specific meanings. I seem to remember he ended up with at least seven or eight different meanings for 'good'. At least he was smart enough to use subscripts.

                          Frankly, I strongly encourage people to not use labels where possible. As a general statement of "I'm closest to X", they work ok, but a real conversation doesn't happen until you've laid out premises and arguments based on those premises. A good philosopher should be able to evaluate the validity of an argument without having to accept the premises as true.

                          You've got a basic understanding now, so it's worth asking, "What does LFW mean to you?"
                          I'm not here anymore.

                          Comment


                          • #58
                            Originally posted by Joel View Post
                            If your argument were sound, it would imply that humans have no control over what to think about at all. It would even rule out a deterministic mind controlling what thoughts it thinks. It would imply that thoughts are entirely random, and the mind thinks whatever random things drift in and out.
                            Not entirely random, but we do acknowledge that random thoughts pop into our head all the time. Most thoughts, though, are related to something. I couldn't think about doing calculus if I didn't know about calculus, and I wouldn't choose to do calculus unless I had a reason to do so.


                            I agreed with everything else in your post, FWIW.
                            I'm not here anymore.

                            Comment


                            • #59
                              Originally posted by Carrikature View Post
                              Not entirely random, but we do acknowledge that random thoughts pop into our head all the time. Most thoughts, though, are related to something. I couldn't think about doing calculus if I didn't know about calculus, and I wouldn't choose to do calculus unless I had a reason to do so.


                              I agreed with everything else in your post, FWIW.
                              Sure, and to be clear, I was not suggesting that humans have total control of their thoughts. But it's obvious that the amount of control we have of our thoughts is more than zero.

                              And if a random thought pops into our head, we have some amount of ability some of the time, to decide whether to focus/meditate/contemplate on that thought or move on to something else.

                              Also, Thinker was arguing that you can't decide whether to think a particular thought until you think it. But one can see in the calculus example, how your decision to spend time studying particular ideas in calculus is by their relation. When making the choice, you may be thinking of calculus only in the abstract, and then while enacting the choice, you probably start intentionally trying to recall more specific thoughts about what chapter/lesson you are on, and then more specifically intentionally recall and review the mathematical ideas in the lesson, particular theorems, proofs, etc. You can choose to meditate on them for some amount of time, and repeatedly, considering the ideas in different ways, with the intention of understanding them better, and of fixing them more solidly your memory, etc. The first decision to spend an hour thinking those thoughts did not involve thinking all those particular thoughts, but rather an abstract idea about calculus or school or the like. Although they are related, they are not the same thought.

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                              • #60
                                Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
                                That would not actually be compatibilism. Compatibilists recognize that LFW is an illusion and that we have no genuine control over our thoughts or actions - it is controlled by physics, genetics, etc. This is true regardless of whether the universe is completely deterministic or indeterministic. They just define free will as the ability to arrive at conclusions through a rational process, even though it is out of our control, and if your thoughts or actions originate in the atoms of your brain as their proximate cause without any influence of other agents or disorders (like tumors), then it is "free."
                                This sounds wholly determinist to me.
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