MF said:
If he desires to vote for Kerry, why is it suddenly *not* his desire if Black is waiting in the background to force
him to vote for Kerry if he would decide not to vote for Kerry.
Originally Posted by Tournesol
It *is* his desire to vote for Kerry. And he *can* do otherwise -- or at least, wish otherwise. Becasue something has has to
trigger Black's mechanism.
You have put your finger right on the button. We are now moving from the original libertarian premise of “could have done
otherwise” to a new premise of “could have wished otherwise”. You obviously concede from this move that it might be the case that
Black could ensure that Jones could NOT do otherwise (“do” in the sense of “act”), and now you wish to push the point of interest
back before the moment of action, to the moment of wishing. But Black can move his neural intervention back too, so that he detects
the neural precursors (the antecedent mental states) to the “wish”, and by doing so he can ensure that Jones either “wishes” to vote
for Kerry of his own accord (of his own free will) or (if Black detects neural activity which suggests Jones may instead wish to vote
for Bush) then Black intervenes and forces a “wish” to vote for Kerry. In this case, not only could Jones not have “done” otherwise,
he also could not have “wished” otherwise.
I don’t need to explain that this procedure can be placed as far back in the “decision process” as we like. The argument you are
using here is basically the “flicker of freedom” argument, which ends up pushing the flicker back so far down the causal chain
that it eventually extinguishes itself in randomness. For a more detailed examination, see Diana Hsieh, in Defending Alternate
Possibilities, here :
http://www.dianahsieh.com/docs/dap.pdfIf we apply Black’s device to your Darwinian model, and push it as far back as we can, then Black eventually ends up monitoring the
output of the RIG – and then sending countermanding instructions to the SIS if he decides to intervene.
He could just as well adjust the SIS itself, since it is the function of the SIS to filter
possible courses of action in the first place.
In your model, it is the RIG,
and not the SIS, which is effectively “making the decisions” for Jones
No; different parameters in the SIS will make a difference. (Random mutation does not drive ther
direction of evolution).
– and these RIG decisions are of course completely arbitrary
The RIG does not make decisions, only suggestions.
(they have to be, to fulfill the arbitrary libertarian requirement of alternate possibilities)….. that’s ultimately where your
so-called “flicker of freedom” comes from.
Yes, the RIG is where the freedom comes from. It's not where the responsibility comes
from. If you could show that the freedom entails lack of responsibility,
you would be on to something. But you can't. If you could show
that Black's device would work in the absence of any kind of alternative
possibilities, you would be onto something. But you can't.
And as for those idiot metallurgists, thinking steel is a mixtureof iron and carbon...
Any metallurgist who does think that steel is “simply” a mixture of iron and carbon is indeed an idiot – steel is a very particular
kind of mixture, put together in a particular way – “any old mixture” of iron and carbon will not necessarily give you steel.
And “any old mixture” of determinism and indeterminism will not necessarily give you ultimate responsibility and free will.
The point is that you cannot explain just why one particular mixture should give ultimate responsibility and another one not.
Yes I can. That is what the RIG and SIS explain. If you want to continue with this,
you need to explain which particular aspect of FW has been left unexplained.
The point in time is irrelevant - the only relevant issue is the outcome.
says who ?
says “could have done otherwise”. There is no temporal constraint in the phrase.
Then the outcome is no more significant than the "flicker".
Of course if you now wish to change that requirement to “could have wished otherwise” or “could have willed otherwise” or
“could have thought otherwise” then that’s fine – but shifting the goalposts doesn’t change the basic argument (as shown above).
Then why do the libertarians insist that free will entails “could have done otherwise”?
Standard libertariansim needs refinement in order to work.
If only the wish, and not the act, is
important, it follows that what he could have “done” is irrelevant to whether he has free will or not.
Wishes that can never be acted on are nto a kind of FW worth wanting. However, you can
still have "in principle" FW even if youcan't act on certain specific decisions.
I have shown the flaw. Responsibility lies with freely-chose intentions.
And I have shown the flaw in your “flicker of freedom” argument. Black’s intervention can be moved back to the neural states
antecedent to the moment of Jones forming his conscious choice, so that Jones’ conscious choice is always to vote for Kerry
(he cannot choose otherwise), but in one case Black does not intervene (Jones chooses freely) and in the other (when he sees that
Jones neural states indicate that he will form a choice to vote for Bush) he does intervene (Jones does not choose freely).
How do you know that the antecedent to an intention is not another intention ?
What is wrong or missing, do you think, from the following suggested necessary conditions :
1) I did X
2) I wanted to do X
3) I understand the consequences of doing X and of not doing X, and I understand right and wrong.
If an entity meets all 3 of the above conditions, why would we say that entity is not responsible for the act of doing X
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tournesol
It doesn't answer counterexamples about hypnotically-implanted suggestions, compulsions,etc.
This is why my original (2) was :
2a) I would have done X, even if I could have done otherwise
Which would answer the hypnosis and compulsion (and Frankfurt) cases. Perhaps you prefer condition 2a to condition 2?
2a doesn't answer counterxamples about addictions and other compulsions. And the wholething
doesn't suggest that you can actually act on your sense of right and wrong, by refraning
from doing what you, absent morality, wnat to do.
Does a person under hypnosis “want” to do X? How could we tell?
We can tell that the hypnotic suggestion does not have hte
causal history that characterises a free choice.
In what sense is a person with a compulsion not responsible for what he does, as long as he does it willingly (ie he wants to do it)
You mean over and above the compulsion?
and he understands the consequences of what he does?
If his consious desires line up with the compulsion, then the responsibility is mixed.
For instance, drug addicts who come to the attention of the law are offered treatment programmes.
If they fail to make any effort -- if the "go along" with their addiction -- they are
then treated more punitively.
what additional necessary conditions for responsibility would you add, or what would you change, to answer the counterexamples you
have suggested?
2: the want needs to have the right causal history.
3: A sense of right and wrong is of no use
unless it can override what you would otherwise do.
(understanding that we cannot add “free will” or “ultimate responsibility” as conditions, because this simply
results in a tautology, and we cannot add “could have xxxxx otherwise”, where xxxxx stands for done/wished/willed/chosen etc
because the Frankfurt cases show that this is not a necessary condition for responsibility)
The Frankfurt cases you quote are not a knowck-down arguemnt. The Hsieh paper itself
says so.
The main reason is because nobody, including yourself, has come up with a plausible and coherent mechanism which shows how free will
works.
This is going in circles. if I ask you why my mechanism isn't "plausible and coherent", you just produce the fictitious
"mixture" issue.
The best anyone can do is a form of hand-waving with a conclusion “well it looks like it could make reasonable and unpredictable
decisions, so I guess it has free will”.
Puh-leaze
"If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck it is a duck".
Free will (of the libertarian kind) entails ultimate responsibility (UR). To have Free Will, an agent must be ultimately
responsible for its actions. The problem we face is in defining exactly, in a coherent and rational fashion, just what is meant
by UR. Most libertarian accounts of Free Will gloss over the interpretation of UR and do not enter into detailed examination of the
coherency of the concept. A typical example :
“Freedom is not mere caprice, nor does it lie in being the puppet of circumstances, it is self-determination, a gradual evolution of
selfhood”
This kind of freedom definitely sounds like something we would all like to have. But is it a coherent notion, or is it just a
warm and fuzzy feeling? If incoherent, then the notion is simply an idle fantasy. Self-determination is another libertarian way of
saying that to be free we must be ultimately responsible for what we do. The tricky thing with UR is that to be ultimately responsible
for what you do, you must also be ultimately responsible for the way you are (because the way you are, in absence of mere caprice,
determines what you do). But to be ultimately responsible for the way you are, you would have to have intentionally brought it about
that you are the way you are. Intentionality is a fundamental aspect of UR (if what we do is not what we intend to do, how can we be
held ultimately responsible for what we do?). But to intentionally bring about a certain state N, you must have had a prior state N-1
which led to the intentional development of your state N (if N is an arbitrary state in the sense that you had no state prior to N
which intentionally brought about state N, then you can hardly be responsible for state N, can you?). But this also means that state
N-1 must have been brought about intentionally in a similar fashion, which means there must have been some prior intentional state
N-2…… and so on ad infinitum. UR thus entails an infinite regress of intentional states. The only escape from such regress is to
postulate either some arbitrary intentional starting state, or that the self is somehow magically and mystically able to pull
itself up by its own bootstraps, the original causa sui (cause of itself). Your Darwinian model vacillates between the two.
You are mistakenly assuming that FW must be devoid of any outside influence whatosever.
Without that assumption, the causal chain "fades out", like the First Mammal.
I would say the notion that free will actually exists (as opposed to being an illusion) is a pre-scientific idea.
As are: "memory exists" , "intelligence exists", "thought exists".
Good thing its just the pre-scientific explanation that is wrong, not the pre-scientific idea.
No you don’t. You think free will actually exists, and is a particular (not just any old) mixture of indeterminism
(not indeterminability) and determinism. But you cannot show how this belief works in practice.
You cannot mount any counter argument beyond "I know you have fulfilled every possible
criterion for FW, but that doesn't mean you have actually explained FW".
If there is some further X-factor, you need ot say what it is.
I am saying that what we “like” to call free will is not free will in the libertarian sense, it is simply a mixture of
determinism and indeterminability.
And steel isn't steel...
We have the illusion that we act freely simply because we do not have access to the detailed reasons underlying our decisions and
actions, and this illusion is what we call “free will”. But some of us (libertarians) believe that the illusion is not an illusion,
that we are indeed ultimately responsible for our actions.
That is a claim, not an argument.
Being a mixture of iron and carbon doesn't stop steel being steel!
Simply “being a mixture of iron and carbon” is not sufficient for “being steel”!
No, the particular nature of the combination is important AND I HAVE EXPLAINED THAT TOO!
My critics don't seem to have an alternative analysis.
The “alternative analysis” is the free will skeptic or the compatibilist analysis – both camps deny the coherency of libertarian
free will. To these camps, free will and ultimate responsibility of the libertarian kind are simply the product of illusions and
wishful thinking in the minds of libertarians. The free will skeptic or the compatibilist analysis is the only analysis which is
complete, coherent and rational.
What I meant was that your claim that I have failed to explain
what FW is because I have failed ot meet all the criteria.
You are talking as though there is some other analysis of FW into a set
of criteria, but you don't say what it is.
That has nothing to do with compatiblism or scepticism, which basically work
from the same criteria.
I can define the necessary and sufficient conditions for “steel”, and I can apply those conditions to objectively distinguish
between a sample of steel and a simple mixture of carbon and iron. If you want anyone to take your claims about the Darwinian model
seriously, you need to do the same for ultimate responsibility. Don’t just claim your model possesses ultimate responsibility, give
us some rational reasons for believing that it does.
I have done in
http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_darwin.html
Again, you do not tell us how you would distinguish between genuine free will on the one hand, and a simple
indeterminable mixture of determinism and indeterminability on the other.
Rationality, the RIG, the SIS.
Again, you do not tell us how you would distinguish between genuine free will on the one hand, and a simple
Saying that it “behaves indeterminably” or that it “behaves rationally” is not enough – because (a) a simple machine can
behave both indeterminably and rationally, but it does not necessarily possesses free will,
It *does* necessarily possesses free will if it possesses all the criteria,
and the combination of CHDO and rationallity are the necessary criteria.
and (b) UR is a necessary condition of
free will – how would you go about showing that your model possesses UR?
The way I have done: by showing that UR consists of Causal
origination and Rational Self Conctolr, both of which
are supplied by the model.
Allow me to re-interpret your claim. If there are indeterministic processes operative within an entity, then those processes
may be the sources of chains of events. It does not follow simply from the presence of indeterministic processes within an entity
that the entity in question is necessarily responsible for any particular events resulting from such processes.
No: rational self-control -- the SIS -- is needed too.
[/QUOTE]
Simply “mixing together” criteria such as indeterminism, rationality and self-control does not necessarily result in an entity
with responsibility, much less ultimate responsibility.
Yes it does; they fulfil all the criteria I know of.
If you believe there is some further X-factor you need to say what it is.
This would simply make the original cause random. Are you suggesting that UR is grounded in an initial random event? How can I be
ultimately responsible for a chain of reasoning which is grounded in a random event?
Your SIS does not have to act on every impulse of the RIG.
This does not answer the question. Whether the RIG produces an impulse which the SIS acts upon or not is not under the
control of the SIS – the SIS has no choice in the matter.
The SIS does not act on every impulse of the RIG.
The RIG will either produce an impulse that the SIS acts upon
or it will not – and it will do this arbitrarily (that is what the RIG is there for). The SIS is acting deterministically,
it has no control over what it does, it is simply operating according to a deterministic algorithm, thus whether a random
event (an input to the SIS) results in an action by the SIS (an output from the SIS) depends, for any given SIS, only on
the nature/characteristics of that random event – the SIS has no “choice” in the matter. This is where your Darwinian
model falls down – the SIS is not making a choice (it is deterministic after all, it cannot do anything other than what
it is “programmed” to do),
The total system is making a choice.
and given the deterministic algorithm of the SIS the actions of the entire model depend only
upon (are determined by) the random output of the RIG. Thus I ask again – how can I be held responsible for the random
output of the RIG?
The SIS is not fixed -- it evolves gradually according to external and
internal events. Reward and punshiment are external events
that adjust the SIS. By punishing someone
for acting on the wrong impulses, you adjust their
SIS to filter out those impulses. Thus it makes
rational sense to hold possesors of a SIS responsible.[/QUOTE]
If you are going to reply that I am responsible because I am responsible for my SIS, then you fall into the infinite
regress problem of UR
[/QUOTE]
I am not going to reply that.
– if I am responsible for my SIS, then how did it come about that I am responsible for my SIS in
the first place – there must be yet another mechanism which underlies your model which creates UR for the SIS, and if
you claim it is yet another Darwinian mechanism then we are into “turtles all the way down”. The only way you can avoid
the infinite regress is by hand-waving and refusing to explain the detailed mechanism (which seems to be your current
tactic), or to appeal to supernatural forces (which neither you nor I believe in). Seems you’re stuck, doesn’t
it?
The current state of your SIS depends on the past history of internal and
external events. Internal events include the SIS/RIG interaction itslef.
You should do some research on cybernetics.
Self-control and self-modification are enabled by feedback loops,
they do not require infinite regresses.
