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?
I’m not really hearing about a superior non-materialistic alternative..
It’s not immaterialism’s task to match your pathetic level of detail.
Or so they’d like to think.
Glen Davidson
Rich,
We’re sure seeing a lot of tap dancing, though.
CharlieM:
How do you decide whether a motive “comes wholly from within without any external influence”?
Suppose someone rescues the man because they simply feel it’s their duty to do so. Does that count as a free act, in your view?
That’s not right.
If one insists on calling “materialism” a watered-down version of Epicureanism, then it’s trivially easy to say that immaterialism must be true.
But then you’ve basically “won” only by refuting the stupidest possible view that anyone could hold.
Whereas, if one thinks about what sorts of explanatory resources are available for the most minimal sort of metaphysical naturalism — nothing over and above the rejection of all ‘supernatural’ entities — then a naturalistic conception of reasons suggests itself: reasons are non-coercive mechanisms of social coordination.
(Preliminary exercise: reflect on what reasoning does and what reasoning is for, all the diverse ways in which we reason, and how reasoning is often used in lieu of violence, manipulation, or some other kind of overt or covert coercion.)
I think that something would need to be done to cash out this distinction between coercive and non-coercive mechanisms of social coordination, but it’s a good start.
OK. Which of the events giving rise to the high energy particles that later collided in a subsequent event was the cause of the event.
I said no such thing.
I said why would you expect to be able to find the method.
Likewise a material God or Gods could react with the world. But nothing says it needs to materialize, just because it would make it so convenient for all the fish in the aquarium.
And I said if an immaterial cause affected the material world, you’d expect to see some effect.
I don’t need a material God. No need for him to materialize. I am just suggesting if God decides to intervene in some way in the material world, there must be an effect (presumably observable) from that intervention.
Alan,
That question is also confused. Nothing limits an event to having a single cause. Remember the mesh?
I like the mesh, remember! If you can’t pick the cause, how can you follow the chain?
I think that addiction is a really interesting case to consider here.
Let’s consider the sense in which addicts are not free. In Dennett’s nice metaphor, addicts have less “elbow room” than non-addicts. If they are high-functioning addicts — say, someone who can do her job perfectly well but just really needs that cocktail come happy hour — they still have fewer possible courses of action open to them. Satisfying the addiction must be factored into their plan for the day; it’s a constraint to be planned around.
And it’s a weird kind of constraint, right? It’s not a self-constraint in the sense that it’s a constraint that one has chosen in light of other goals. It’s not like going on a diet, where one chooses to forego second helpings and dessert. An addiction is a constraint of the self but not endorsed in light of one’s life-plans, goals, and ideals. It’s something that is both alien to the self and yet also part of it. (“That wasn’t me, baby!” says the gambler who just lost the family savings.)
That looks to me like a confusion between liberty and virtue. Surely those must be different, if vice is a result of liberty (perhaps a misformed or mis-informed one).
The person who saves a drowning person but acts from a desire for glory — though I think the case is too fanciful to aid us in doing good philosophy — would be someone who is acting freely but wrongly. (Yet they might be willing to risk their lives, so in that sense they are courageous.) The wrongness lies in taking something that is not morally relevant — say, fueling their own narcissism — and treating something of moral importance — saving a life — as a means to an end.
In that sense this person has taken morality itself as a means to an end, rather than recognizing that being moral is intrinsically valuable. By saving the drowning man in order to be famous, she has missed the point of morality.
Every event has multifarious entangled causes that would take an infinite mind to discern. What we specify as “the” cause of an event is what we are interested in controlling, predicting, or or preventing.
Alan,
Because you mistakenly thought it was non-directional. That’s not right. Causes lead to effects, not vice-versa.
If you’re aiming for a comprehensive account, you look at all causes of an event. Otherwise, you focus on the one(s) of interest.
If my taillight doesn’t work, I’m more interested in potential causes such as the bulb burning out than I am in the fact that my truck was manufactured at some point. Both are causes of the event, however. My taillight can’t malfunction without first coming into existence.
The kind of moral sociopath that you describe seems an apt description of one Keith Vaz, a British politician recently fallen from grace.
Alan Fox,
There are two kinds of politicians: sociopaths who have been caught and those who haven’t been.
I disagree. You dodge the simple example. A collision between two particles is the simplest event that occurs to me off-hand. The events that generated those two particles, both need to happen for the collision to happen. The bifurcation means irreversibility.
That is undoubtedly true in this case as events will show in due course.
Whichever it is is not dependent on what I decide. But for the actor the ideal situation would be to know the motive for all their actions. There was a good reason for for the phrase “know thyself” above the gate of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.
No. To do one’s duty is to follow a standard given from without. A free act must come from within the individual.
keiths:
CharlieM:
Not if the duty is self-imposed. Do you regard it as a free act in that case?
Alan:
keiths:
Alan:
There are multiple confusions here.
1) Bifurcation does not imply irreversibility. Particle physics is time-reversible, bifurcation or no bifurcation.
2) The fact that an event has more than one cause does not change the fact that the causes lead to the effect, not vice-versa.
3) The time-reversibility of physics does not erase the distinction between causes and effects.
What duty is may be a culturally dependant standard, but one has a choice whether or not to do one’s duty, surely?
keiths,
And which event caused the collision?
Done for the evening.
Alan:
I answered that already:
Richardthughes,
Per my “us backwards” comment:
Physics, Chemistry.
What about information?
So?
Is there something in the laws of physics that prevents an infinite regress?
No information without a media / medium.
and
If you want peace, you should drop the facile bullshit. I asked two serious questions, and you gave wordplay as answers.
Richardthughes,
Is there physics or chemistry without media/medium?
No. That is, nothing to react.
I find myself agreeing with you. But the form is not material, the form is not the medium.
And I agree with you . We can have 3 rocks or 3 atoms or 3 stars.
Yes, well, while 3 may be immaterial, I’m not sure it’s a form. 🙂
I could be wrong, I’m no expert on forms.
Aristotle argues at length that numbers cannot be forms, because they lack the requisite powers to structure stuff. But they are a good example for him of substances that lack hyle. (I think that’s his view, anyway. Aristotle on numbers always seemed confusing to me. Aristotle is much better on concreta than on abstracta, Plato the opposite.)
I did not give wordplay I gave serious answers.
Just because this stuff is simple when you are unencumbered by your presuppositions does not mean I’m being intentionally facile.
peace
I’m not sure about the stupidest possible view but certainly among the top. 😉
Listen I’m perfectly willing interact with more nuanced views but they would need to be articulated. I don’t think that most folks here have even given their worldview that much thought. For the average fellow here all that matters is that God is not involved
peace
This is a good case in point.
You throw out the word ‘supernatural’ in scare quotes but you don’t bother to define what you mean by the word.
Reasons themselves are supernatural but I would bet that when you use the term here you mean only to exclude straw-man deitys and demigods that no one actually believes in.
Why is that? Why not interact with an actual position?
peace
Scientists asked what the shape of the world was God revealed that the world was spherical this was was later verified by circumnavigation and eventually satellite imagery.
Scientists asked how massive objects interacted gravitationally God revealed that ripples existed in spacetime and this was later verified at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory.
Scientists asked why some fundamental particles have mass God revealed the existence of a Higgs boson and this was later verified at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland.
I could go on but I hope you get the point.
peace
You mean like a giant aquarium, with systems, and laws and water that flows, and energy that never disappears?
Or do you mean like inanimate molecules that turn into life?
Or perhaps you mean like inanimate molecules that can contemplate themselves and the world?
Or do you just mean something simple, like a planet with a sun that causes warmth, and a moon which causes tides, that cycles through day and night, causing plants to grow, and love to flourish?
Do you mean those effects? Or are you waiting for creme puffs?
fifthmonarchyman,
The world is not spherical, it is an irregular oblate spheroid. Sphere is less wrong than flat, though. What revelations have you had? If you’re using the bible there are at least as many wrong claims (genesis) as right ones.
Poorly chosen words may condemn us all!
Citation please
so when I decide to buy chocolate ice cream it is that same mechanism created the universe? Plastic or paper, incarnation?
I thought all that required an immaterial molecule
I am willing to accept that you think you gave serious answers. My apologies. But in fact you communicated nothing. Would you care to try to give me an answer I can understand as meaning something?
Obviously not.
Again:
What a bore you are, fifth.
Constantly yammering about revelation, but unable to explain how you can determine whether a revelation is real or imagined.
Without an answer, your presuppositionalism never gets off the ground.
KN,
Unless you can demonstrate causal incompleteness at the subpersonal level, with the gap being filled by downward causation from the personal level, then all of the operations of the human intellect are the product of physical interactions at the subpersonal level.
We’ve had a similar discussion before, but at the time you were unable to supply any instances of bona fide downward causation.
Have you come up with any since then?
No. Are you alluding to the anthropic principle here? I’m happy to concede Deism is as good an explanation for “why is there a universe?” as any other.
I don’t subscribe to vitalism. The fact that we can perform quite complex biochemistry in vitro refutes that idea.
There’s a difference between molecules and systems that consist of molecules. I’m persuaded by the idea of emergent properties.
As I said, I think Deism is a reasonable position to hold, except for the fact it really only provides reassurance and lacks testability and predictive or explanatory power.
You’ve lost me here.
Phoodoo
I’m still not clear if you think that God intervenes subsequent to creating the universe. My point remains that we seem to exist in a real environment that pushes back if we poke it. For God to intervene, I would have thought some poking would be involved. I’ll concede that God is mysterious and the rest but intervening (or its result) must produce some change. If there is such a change, it must be observable (and defy our understanding of the laws of physics) or if unobservable, what can have changed?