This is a thread to allow discussions about how those lucky enough to have free will make decisions.
As materialism doesn’t explain squat, this thread is a place for explanations from those that presumably have them.
And if they can’t provide them, well, this will be a short thread.
So do phoodoo, mung, WJM et al care to provide your explanations of how decisions are actually made?
Yes, because more people (including in Germany) believe in God than don’t. What’s so hard to understand about that?
Mao did the same thing.
Interesting point.
ETA: I’m not sure about free will being ‘tainted’–but I could see the knowledge changing what is freely done. It’s like a violation of The Federation’s Prime Directive on Star Trek…but God may not have signed that compact.
My view on free will is exactly the same as FMM’s. Keith’s is the same too–though he describes it a bit differently.
phoodoo,
I see you’ve avoided the questions. We all know why.
Thanks. I’m not sure about Plantinga, but van Inwagen wrote a book on free will in the early 80s that was fairly well received. Maybe 20 years ago, I wrote a paper criticizing it from a compatibalist perspective, but no one wanted to publish it. 🙁
walto,
Plantinga’s “free will defense” fails unless free will is libertarian, so I’d guess that he’s a libertarian, not a compatibilist.
Robin,
He’s a heretic regarding the Incarnation, in fact. Though it makes him very uncomfortable to be reminded of that.
newton,
Only if the free will in question were of the libertarian variety, which is impossible anyway.
With compatibilist free will, you would always find yourself freely choosing the option that God had revealed you would, even if you doubted it at the time of the revelation.
walto,
Well, we’re all compatibilists, but fifth maintains that physical systems can’t possess free will, even of the compatibilist variety. I don’t think he has an argument for that view, though.
Says phoodoo, who still can’t answer this simple question:
How do decisions work in phoodoo world?
Get it together, phoo.
keiths, to dazz:
walto:
In a deterministic universe, the causal conditions couldn’t have been different .
Together with the initial state of the universe, it does. The only way to get a different outcome when you “rerun the tape” is to change the laws of physics, the initial state, or both.
phoodoo,
It’s not about anyone else except you on this thread. You constant misdirections are noted. You simply can’t answer the question!
How do they work in a materialist world ? You still haven’t gotten to that (just like I said in my original post that you wouldn’t), so why would I need to go further?
phoodoo,
Take a look at the title of this thread.
keiths:
KN:
No, I don’t think that interlevel causation exists at all, upwards or downwards. The different levels are different levels of description, not of ontology. There’s just one reality being described, with varying degrees of abstraction and accuracy.
That’s a mistake, because lower level descriptions are typically more accurate and more complete. The intentional stance doesn’t accurately model what happens when a brick falls on your head, for example, or when a brain tumor develops, or you have an LSD flashback. Or a conversation with Mung,
The ability to change levels is valuable in such cases, and it depends on the fact that these levels map onto the same ontology. Besides going from higher levels to lower, It also works in the other direction, when accuracy can be traded off for tractability. Note that the level switching doesn’t imply upward or downward causation — these are just changes in the level of abstraction of our descriptions.
keiths,
A decision is what mind can do when it has free will. Now what is it in a materialists world?
That’s an assertion, not an explanation. Phail.
Plantinga’s “free will defense” is just that a defense and not a theodicy.
It’s not concerned with what actually happens in the real world but instead provides a logical defeater to the problem of evil. It works just as well if you replace freewill with sovereign grace as the greater good that requires the existence of evil .
I would assume that he focused on freewill because that is the more common position but I don’t know for sure
peace
I’ve read some Plantinga but not much Van Inwagen Wikipedia says that he is an Open theist that would put him outside of Christian orthodoxy all together IMO.
peace
Not exactly the same.
Keiths is right that I hold that materialism makes freewill of any sort impossible. That put’s me in the phoodoo camp on this one.
I think the compatibilist/libertarian discussion is a distraction when what we are really interested in is minds verses matter
peace
no it’s pretty much what the term means
peace
That assumes that there is a correct understanding of the Trinity and incarnation that is different than the orthodox one.
Since you beleive that the Trinity and incarnation are imaginary concepts. I’m not sure how in your view understanding them would constitute anything other than knowing the orthodox thought on the subject
peace
I’m not interested in “minds versus matter” at all. I regard the entire problematic of “mind vs. matter” to be nothing more than a holdover from 17th century metaphysics. It has no relevance to 21st century philosophy and we’re better off without it entirely.
In fact, I’d go even more step further: I don’t think there’s any question of the priority of mind over matter or conversely, because I don’t believe in either.
Thanks. That’s what I figured, though I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by him on that subject.
Only if you take the physical laws to be necessary. If there’s a possible world in which, e.g., there’s no law of gravitation, then, depending on what sense of “could have” is intended, one can say that the ball could have floated–even given the same prior conditions.
I’m sorry to have misrepresented you. I don’t understand your position, I guess. I’d think that if you take the view that materialism (whatever that is, exactly) is inconsistent with freedom, then you don’t need compatibalism anyhow. You’ve got this “mind” just bopping along on its own. On that view, what exactly IS supposed to be going on is pretty mysterious.
Can you say why you think any sort of compatibalism is required on your view? Is it to explain how the bodily changes can go this way or that way in spite of prior bodily conditions?
Keiths, I agree with pretty much everything you said there except for this:
I think that design stance descriptions and explanations, and physical stance descriptions and explanations, often invoke measurements, hence quantification, and the intentional stance almost never does. That doesn’t make the former stances more “accurate” than the latter, as if the intentional stance is only a rough approximation. There are all sorts of counterfactually robust, predictively reliable patterns that can only be brought into view by adopting the intentional stance — beliefs, for example. The fact that we can’t quantify beliefs doesn’t make the intentional stance less accurate; it just follows different constitutive rules.
Likewise, “completeness” also doesn’t work here. More complete according to what criterion? By what standard? Sure, there are all sorts of pathologies that can be disclosed only by going to the design stance, but what of it? That only tells us that the intentional stance doesn’t have the necessary concepts for explaining everything that it can describe. Sometimes the brain just doesn’t work properly and you have to treat the patient like a broken machine that needs to be fixed (if possible).
That doesn’t make neuroscience more complete than the intentional stance at which we engage with each other as norm-governed concept-users whose beliefs and desires are accountable to reasoning. It just means that neuroscience looks at a different range of spatio-temporal phenomena, at a smaller scale of resolution. At that smaller scale of resolution, real patterns can become salient that weren’t salient at the level of persons.
I provided the dictionary definition of “choose”:
a) pick out or select (someone or something) as being the best or most appropriate of two or more alternatives.
b) decide on a course of action, typically after rejecting alternatives.
Do you have a different definition that does not beg the question?
Based on all available evidence, the immediately previous state of the brain and the environment in which it finds itself. Do you have any evidence that anything else is involved?
Attention fifthmonarchyman! This is what I mean by a definition that begs the question.
It’s ok. ‘Free will’ is what a body exemplifies when it does what it wants. 😉
Hmmm…I’ve not counted that many myself. Which folks are you counting?
For myself, I’m not aware of anything that prevents some form of freedom of choice in materialism. The only people who insist that materialism is deterministic appear to have the silly notion that atoms behave like billiard balls. They don’t. By extension, neurons don’t behave like computer circuits and brains don’t behave like microprocessors. When really studied, there is nothing within the material system preventing freedom of choice and decision.
Theists – at least those who subscribe to omni-deities – are out of luck on the free will score however. Such concepts automatically lead to Your Future In Robotics as I’ve shown.
Citation please. I’ve not seen anyone make such a claim at all.
I don’t qualify for your challenge, so I’ll just wait for someone who does.
Why does the ‘extension’ apply to neurons, but not billiard balls (and computer circuits)? Atoms there too, no?
I don’t believe there’s a coherent definition of free will. Or determinism. We have physical theories that imply determinism, but I don’t see how they are relevant to politics or policy regarding personal responsibility or criminality.
Yea a bit overwrought,I was going to use the prime directive metaphor.
As for God, a common explanation for an omnipotent being allowing atrocities like the Holocaust to occur is Free Will, if God is violating free will by telling us what we are going to choose for breakfast, then that justification for evil is mute
Yeah…and?
Just because it’s “the orthodox one” doesn’t make it correct.
I’m not clear on what you mean above. Here’s my take on what I think you mean, but feel free to correct me if I’m wrong:
Since I view the Trinity and Incarnation as metaphors, then my understanding of them could only consist of knowing the orthodox thought on the subject.
My answer to that is no; my understanding is not limited to the orthodox thought on the subject. There are a variety of interpretations and understandings of both the Trinity and the Incarnation. For instance, there’s the Gnostic understanding, which is clearly not orthodox. There’s the Islamic understanding. And there are others I’ve perused as well.
Here’s an interesting summary of the philosophies concerning the Trinity:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/
Then why offer it as an explanation without how it is explanation?
I think I see the problem Phoodoo (and likely others) are having here. They can’t envision how, if thought is a brain-state, brain-states can will (or intentionally cause) a different brain-state.
But that’s exactly what we do. As we develop and grow from babies through adulthood, neurological, physiological, and chemo-electrical (along with a slew of hormonal, lymphatic, and other pathways) develop based on activities and thoughts. We actually learn induce brain-states specifically to change brain-states). That’s what thinking is (in part anyway). So we learn to consciously cause those changes, much like we learn fine motor control for writing or typing or learning fine tongue/lung/mandible control for speaking.
Patrick,
So you reject free will?
Ok.
I don’t understand your question. Can you elaborate?
Robin,
I think I see the problem Robin is having.
He hasn’t given the slightest thought to his beliefs.
seems like a reasonable position
I don’t know. There are arguments, I think, not worth pursuing or participating in.
LOL! Says Phoodoo who can’t even answer a simple question! D’oh!
Seems a lot like arguing sports, uninteresting unless you have something at risk.
I just do it because I’m interested in the concepts in the abstract.
Entertainment for me, also.
But I learn less on threads like this than I do in the biology threads.
You have said, if I understand you, that it is wrong to analogize neural transmissions with, e.g., electronic circuits, because atoms don’t act like billiard balls. But the electronic circuits are composed of atoms, just like the neurons, aren’t they?
I think that’s fallacious reductionism. Rain and rocks are both made of atoms, but we don’t model their behaviour the same ways. Cognition has lots of parallelism and feedback IIRC.
phoodoo,
Still dodging questions? Pathetic.