Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
H2ouse
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Re: Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

Post by H2ouse »

I see what you are saying, Belinda. My response lies in the argument I made recently in this forum (May 26th, 2012, 11:55 pm) when I called for distinction between causes of a decision on the one hand, and reasons for the decision on the other. Causes are the classic unrecognized motives that fit in well with the determinist model. But reasons are justifications that the free-will recognizes and then uses to form and support the decision that is made. Thus, they are not causes in the same sense -- the direct cause is the action of the free-will itself, which could go either way.

As I tried to show, a motivation can move from the unconscious (ones desire for chocolate) to the conscious mind (ones recognized preference for chocolate, which is less compelling because it can be balanced against other considerations). Of course, it the decision is ultimately made for chocolate, it may be hard to tell if the action was actually due to the subconcious urge or the 'free-will' decision. But if the decision is made for vanilla, and somehow the chooser finally says "chocolate please" instead (compare the struggles to give up smoking or lose weight) this distinction may seem clearer -- the urge for chocolate was countered by the free-will decision for vanilla, supported by reasons for choosing it rather than urges that might cause the opposite behavior.

I don't know if McDoodle will buy this argument, and I suspect that you will not. But please give the argument your best refutation -- I am currently convinced that it does represent a real difference, not just a linguistic one, and that it provides a real support for the existence of free-will (or liberty, to use the less extreme term for the concept)

Thanks.
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JSunya
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Re: Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

Post by JSunya »

It seems to me that "causality" (a method of explanation in terms of hypothetical "causes" and "effects"), "determinism" (a metaphysical assumption that reality works in terms of causality) and "free-will" (a freedom ascribed to a fictitious entity, the ego) are all dead end pseudo issues in philosophy, which is probably why philosophy rarely take them seriously at present.
Belinda
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Re: Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

Post by Belinda »

On the contrary, JSunya, the proponents of either Free Will or determinism align with political right wing or political left wing respectively. The political alignment reverberates in relative absence or presence respectively of social liberalism.

The freewill/ determinism position of lawmakers, whether or not they are philosophers, remains basic to their policies.


It is impossible that a thorough believer in determinism who carries his belief into his daily life can blame people for what they do even although he may deplore what they do. Therefore a penal system based upon determinism will rehabilitate and not punish , certainly not barbarously punish as torturing and legally killing. *************************************

H2ouse, I view reasons(and rationalisations) as varieties of cause. This is because in my view, reasons are not independent of the reasoner , that is, the human. True, a reasoning man generally is more free than an unreasoning man but this is caused by the reasoner's increased information store and refined power of judgement, not by his putative Free Will.

In a similar way, McDoodle's song is created by McDoodle because McDoodle can, to the extent that he is creative,innovatively juxtapose ideas of harmony, melody and rhythm together with a lyric. The key to McDoodle's, or Beethoven's, creativity is not Free Will but special artistic ability, which is got from inherited talent plus socially environmental causes.

The joy of accomplishment that is felt by a maker of any scientific , artistic or practical innovation is caused by the resolution of the crisis which was the high point of not arriving at the perfect resolution. There is a good reason why the creative act is described as giving birth to something.
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Mcdoodle
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Re: Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

Post by Mcdoodle »

Belinda wrote:On the contrary, JSunya, the proponents of either Free Will or determinism align with political right wing or political left wing respectively. The political alignment reverberates in relative absence or presence respectively of social liberalism.
Ey up now, Belinda, I'm a leftie :)

[quote="JSunya]"free-will" (a freedom ascribed to a fictitious entity, the ego)[/quote]

By whom? Not by me. Happy to explore the history of the concept of the ego, JSunya, but it's nothing to do with the free-will argument. It would tidy things up for the rest of us here if you'd explain how this little problem that's perplexed people from Aristotle to Wittgenstein via Hume has now been resolved.

-- Updated May 30th, 2012, 12:34 pm to add the following --

Belinda, I see your arguments about 'reasons' but don't see that they answer the basic problem: e.g., what if two reasons are in conflict? A simple one I've seen debated by philosophers lately is that I have very good reason to eat something yummy, and an on the face of it equally good reason not to eat something yummy. Faced with these reasons, an agent decides. How?

Second, I don't feel you answered this question:
Mcdoodle wrote:
Belinda wrote:Now it may be objected that there are many discoverable and many unguessed causes for some specific choice. But among the causes for a choice there still may be free will , an uncaused thing, even a tiny little piece of this uncaused thing. True, but what is the use of this free will then? Also, how could it possibly have evolved in the human by natural selection if it has no function in predicting where the sabre toothed tiger lurks? And also,how is there any ethical advantage of this putative free will if it is nothing but randonmness?
'True'? If there is even a tiny little piece, then it's irrelevant what its use is, or its evolutionary justification, or its ethical advantage. If you're saying 'True' then you're accepting the existence of free will aren't you?.
Now, thirdly, you say about creativity:
Belinda wrote:McDoodle's song is created by McDoodle because McDoodle can, to the extent that he is creative,innovatively juxtapose ideas of harmony, melody and rhythm together with a lyric. The key to McDoodle's, or Beethoven's, creativity is not Free Will but special artistic ability, which is got from inherited talent plus socially environmental causes.

The joy of accomplishment that is felt by a maker of any scientific , artistic or practical innovation is caused by the resolution of the crisis which was the high point of not arriving at the perfect resolution. There is a good reason why the creative act is described as giving birth to something.
I think your use of the passive tense here is a way of slipping out of the question. Yes, when Beethoven solved how to climax the Fifth Symphony all these descriptions could be used. Are you however saying that all these external causes reached Beethoven and only Beethoven? And that when he sat down at his manuscript a chorus of preceding events caused his hand to move they way it did, inlcuding changes, erasures and corrections? When you use the words with which you reply to this question, is there any 'freedom' in the words you shape, and if so, how is it to be distnguished from the exercise of free will? I simply am not understanding the answers to these questions!

Anyway, to reassure those who disagree with me, I've just bought Sam Harris's Free Will and am taking it away for the holiday weekend to see if that can covince me otherwise :)

-- Updated May 30th, 2012, 12:37 pm to add the following --

Two of my posts got elided together above and I don't know how to un-elide them. I hope they're comprehensivble, although the formatting has gone awry in ways that didn't show up in the preview!
Belinda
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Re: Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

Post by Belinda »

McDoodle wrote:
'True'? If there is even a tiny little piece, then it's irrelevant what its use is, or its evolutionary justification, or its ethical advantage. If you're saying 'True' then you're accepting the existence of free will aren't you?.
Yes, in a way, if the choice is either it exists or it doesn't. But I have said that my choice for determinism is based upon faith. I now add that it is based upon probability, according as I view the probability of it. The lack of usefulness , the lack of evolutionary justification indicate the probability that Free Will does not exist. The ethical dis-advantage of Free Will (Free Will means that some persons can be blamed with no extenuating circumstances) go against my lefty feelings, and the probability that Free Will does not exist is the justification of my lefty feelings.

McDoodle wrote:
Belinda, I see your arguments about 'reasons' but don't see that they answer the basic problem: e.g., what if two reasons are in conflict? A simple one I've seen debated by philosophers lately is that I have very good reason to eat something yummy, and an on the face of it equally good reason not to eat something yummy. Faced with these reasons, an agent decides. How?
Intuition ,perhaps. Or perhaps by tossing a coin. Or perhaps by shelving the problem or jumping sideways if possible. The core problem in your question is, will the choice be random or is it caused by Free Will? I plump for random i.e lack of predictability. You have no way of knowing whether or not the fish and chips have been sneezed over.

Beethoven was so much more free than I to compose The Pastoral Symphony than I because of his natural ability, his musical education, possibly his sharper ear for natural sounds, his Romantic freedom of choice , the availability of large orchestras, and the public mood that was ready for Romantic orchestral music.There are causes for Beethoven's freedom to produce great music as compared with the complete lack of causes a lack that restricts my freedom to do so.

I agree that passive voice is a bad move and I slipped up there.

I wish I could see you with your Sam Harris book in a shelter on the Esplanade. :) I would like to se a play that begins with a man sitting in a shelter on the Esplanade reading Sam Harris !

Any song that I wrote would not please me. This is because I lack the ability to compose music.My musical ability as compared with McDoodle's is not that McDoodle has Free Will that enables him and I lack the aforesaid Free Will ( I have tried to compose!)but that McDoodle has those caused abilities in music composition which give him the freedom to compose, the freedom to compose which I lack because of my different nature or different nurture whichever.

(There now! You see how being a determinist enables me to forgive myself :)
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Mcdoodle
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Re: Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

Post by Mcdoodle »

Belinda, thanks a lot for making me laugh and being illuminating at the same time :)

There are some point-by-point things - for example, I think free-will is useful in an evolutionary sense, for (a) to work out how to create a tool to effect a task, (b) to decide to reproduce that tool, (c) to persuade others to be trained in the manufacture and use of such tools - I think these are damn useful, and that while (a) may be the result of trial and error, (b) and (c), in my system of thinking, are the product of conscious reflection and free-will.

But I do realize maybe I need to take a meta step back. Why do I regard some enacted choices as free will which you regard as caused or random? I'm just looking at a bit of Wittgenstein: '115. If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.' (evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ ... tein03.htm) What supposed certainties is each of us bringing to the discussion table that means we can't find common ground?

I've peeked into Sam Harris's book and am already disappointed by page 4. It's very flashy-young-man polemic. But I'll grapple with it, perhaps on a Lake District hill rather than an esplanade :)

One interesting certainty he immediately brings to the table is about physics and matter. He is inclined to the view that the 'laws of physics' take precedence over other 'laws', and that this precedence is actually in the order of events too - that the neurons fire ahead of the thought and therefore 'cause' them. (He justifies this from Libet and others' simple experiments about conscious decision-making, but doesn't say so far that his is a minority view!) For myself, I think 'neurons firing' and 'thoughts' are probably simultaneous: two different discourses about the same event.

I came to this subject from reading about modern consciousness studies and suspect that that's at the heart of how I see it. Consciousness does seem to be unique in nature, if not as unique to humans as we once thought - so to me it might well be related to what you, Belinda, refer to as the 'unique' quality of putative free will, that it's 'un-caused' - I see this as interesting common ground, while quite accepting that from it I go off up the free-will hill and you take the determinist slope!
H2ouse
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Re: Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

Post by H2ouse »

Belinda wrote:H2ouse, I view reasons(and rationalisations) as varieties of cause. This is because in my view, reasons are not independent of the reasoner, that is, the human. True, a reasoning man generally is more free than an unreasoning man but this is caused by the reasoner's increased information store and refined power of judgement, not by his putative Free Will.
Somehow I don't think I will persuade you, Belinda, of my argument, but I want to articulate it as clearly as I can so that other readers on this site -- including myself -- can see it laid out and judge whether it has merit.

I'm making my distinction between causes and reasons because I believe that causes have one of type relationship to the events and actions that follow, whereas the reasons for a decision have a totally different relationship to the consequences that take place -- even if those consequences are in fact quite similar.

Causes to me can include
  • physical events which lead directly to other physical events, such as a huge explosion that blows a bystander to the ground
  • instinctive psychological reactions that lead to physical events, such as a not-quite-so-violent but still terrifying explosion in which the bystander, by reflex, ducks and falls to the ground
  • learned responses to a situation leading to physical events, such as a (more distant?) explosion that elicits a "roll and cover" response that the bystander (a marine, perhaps) learned during basic training
  • decisions consciously made that lead to physical events, such as a deliberate drop to the ground by the bystander to avoid any possible after-effects of an explosion
I would argue that each of these events can be a direct cause of the consequence that is described. The direction of flow is all one-way: the first event happens and then the second event happens.

By contrast, reasons by my definition exist only within the context of conscious decision-making, and they do NOT directly cause the decision that is made. Instead they are weighed by the decision maker and may, or may not, ultimately influence the event that follows. Even if the decision maker in the fourth item above included, as one of the options to be taken, the idea of falling to the floor to avoid any after-effects of the explosion, and then did so, there is a complex back and forth in the flow of contributing factors to the final action. It is no longer a simple matter of event #1 (the reasons) leading to event #2 (the decision) leading to event #3 (the drop to the ground).

In fact, events #2 and #3 may not occur at all. The bystander may look about and then sprint to a nearly building that will provide better cover, or may instead elect to turn around and rush to see if anyone needs to be helped, or decide to act as if nothing had happened (let's say he set off the explosion himself), or just continue on his errand because he judges it to be of greater importance. These alternative possible actions all derive from the decision-making act itself: that is the direct cause of whichever action follows. So to what extent can we say that the decision-making act was in turn directly caused by the reasons that were considered? Should we view them simply as prior causes of the decision.

Let's look at the prior causes of each of the four examples listed above. The explosion could have been caused, directly, by a leaking gas main and a car going past it, or a large firework being ignited by a mischievous human being, or worse options that I will not describe -- but they are all causes flowing in one direction. The same with the next two examples: an instinctive reaction has ancient and deep causes arguably stemming from aeons of natural selection and genetic development; a learned reaction results from careful drill and training (even if the training itself was willingly entered into when the bystander was a young man). In all cases, I can accept the argument that these action occurred as a direct result of the prior cause mentioned.

But does a decision act result directly from the reasons that are considered? Is there a direct causal flow from the considerations pro and con (the reasons) to the decision that is made? At the least, the situation is more complex. In a carefully pondered decision, the decision-maker reviews the situation and actively searches out alternative responses -- this is a conscious strategy, and it seems to fly in the face of direct causation: the decision act starts by deliberate brainstorming for, and generating, other options and reasons that might be relevant and preferable. Even in an emergency situation the overall situation is speedily evaluated and some other options are considered. In both cases, the consciousness appears to lead to the reasons which will be reviewed in the decision, rather than the reasons forcing themselves upon the consciousness as prior causes of the decison to be made. I think that this is counter to a clear 'cause to effect' flow.

Then this excess of possible reasons for different actions is weighed: again this is not a clear 'cause to effect' flow from reasons to deliberate decision act. And, once the decision is made, the effect is as much to weed out reasons and possible actions as to link reasons and the final action taken. It is the decision act itself that creates the final flow of apparent prior "causes" to final effect (inverted commas deliberate, because I consider the prior considerations in a decision to be reasons and not causes). This picture seems very different from an impersonal determinism of prior causes shaping a predetermined future.

The next step in this argument will be to suggest that free-will is involved in the decision making process. Not the abstract, absolute free-will that operates on a totally level playing field of options, and therefore can be accused of making only random decisions, but a more realistic type of free-will, similar to what Belinda calls "liberty" but which I claim is actually free of determinism and thus mutable in the present.

I will also argue that natural selection could play a part in favoring the existence of free-will if free-will is the arena in which tussles about self interest vs altruism, anarchy vs ethics, and ugliness vs beauty are played out. But this posting is already too long, both to have written, and to read comfortably. (Apologies for that, I try to keep it crisp but the arguments do run on so -- I'd sooner be clear and boring :| than pithy and puzzling!)

So here it is: please attack or support as you will.
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Belinda
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Re: Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

Post by Belinda »

H2ouse, I agree that there is a difference between considered decisions and instinctive or automatic reactions.It's a difference of degree not a difference of kind. I understand you to say that you call well-considered decisions free will and contrast those with reactions such as dropping to the ground on hearing an explosion, such as may be instinctive or ingrained by training.

I do not call the considered, well informed and well judged decision that you describe 'free will'. I call it an increase in personal freedom for the person who is enabled to think and judge with reflection. I reserve 'Free Will' for this supposed thing which is not caused by reflection, knowledge, or judgement but the results of its employment are completely uncaused except by the 'free will' itself.

I agree that the considered, well informed and well judged decision making ability is probably an evolved trait of humans, that is, especially if is cultivated in individuals.However I don't call this 'free will', and I think that within philosophy it is not called free will which is a term reserved for the uncaused thing.
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H2ouse
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Re: Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

Post by H2ouse »

Belinda wrote:H2ouse, I agree that there is a difference between considered decisions and instinctive or automatic reactions.It's a difference of degree not a difference of kind. I understand you to say that you call well-considered decisions free will and contrast those with reactions such as dropping to the ground on hearing an explosion, such as may be instinctive or ingrained by training.

I do not call the considered, well informed and well judged decision that you describe 'free will'. I call it an increase in personal freedom for the person who is enabled to think and judge with reflection. I reserve 'Free Will' for this supposed thing which is not caused by reflection, knowledge, or judgement but the results of its employment are completely uncaused except by the 'free will' itself.

I agree that the considered, well informed and well judged decision making ability is probably an evolved trait of humans, that is, especially if is cultivated in individuals.However I don't call this 'free will', and I think that within philosophy it is not called free will which is a term reserved for the uncaused thing.
Thanks, Belinda, for your thoughtful reply. You've persuaded me to check the article on free-will in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which is written by Timothy O'Connor of Indiana University and looks at first reading to be a fairly comprehensive account of philosphers' views of and definitions of free will. I scanned the article and it does not seem to agree that philosophy reserves the term free-will for the extreme case of random decisions with no biasing pressures from the outside world. However, I need to review the article much more closely.

Until then, I need to say that you and I clearly disagree with regard to the words we use, but I don't think that matters, and it's not the main issue. It's becoming clearer to me that we agree on a lot of descriptions, but we differ in the importance we assign to the distinctions between them. You see a difference in degree between instinctive or automatic reactions (A), and actions that are taken after considered decisions (B), to which you ascribe the added quality of increased personal freedom, or liberty. You argue that these two types of actions are both compatible with a consistently deterministic view of causality dictated by material laws. Free-will to you is totally distinct, an absolute concept (C) that would be totally different in kind from A and B, and you argue that while it might exist, you see little evidence for it.

By contrast, I see your concept of absolute free-will (C) as a realistic possibility, and this is because I view it merely as the extreme case of actions taken after considered decisions (B), in which I believe that free-will also plays a large part (hence I am tempted to claim that your concept of increased personal freedom is one and the same as free-will). By contrast, it is instinctive and automatic reactions (A), that are distinct in my book, because they take place only in the arena of material laws.

I am nowhere near speculating to my satisfaction on the nature of free-will, but I do think that in some sense it truly challenges the notion of absolute material determinism. Instead I think free-will complements the actions of material causality by adding a different type of causation, which may also be commonly influenced by the material world, but which operates in a totally different way from material causality. I am very sure that you reject this idea -- unless I can persuade you to the contrary :) .
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Belinda
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Re: Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

Post by Belinda »

H2ouse wrote:
By contrast, I see your concept of absolute free-will (C) as a realistic possibility, and this is because I view it merely as the extreme case of actions taken after considered decisions (B), in which I believe that free-will also plays a large part (hence I am tempted to claim that your concept of increased personal freedom is one and the same as free-will). By contrast, it is instinctive and automatic reactions (A), that are distinct in my book, because they take place only in the arena of material laws.
But I don't see absolute free Will as a realistic probability regardless of how it may be logically possible, as a transcendent God is logically possible.I think I do understand now what it is that you are referring to as free will.You are correct that what I think of as free Will is not the same as increased personal freedom.

Instinctive and automatic reactions are what education and the more intellectual religions seek to improve upon by adding compassion and reason to the basic dinosaur. However compassion and reason aren themselves caused by nature. which is causal as far as we understand 'causal'. I don't mean 'causal' merely in a simple linear way, but causal as is the huge web of interlinked circumstances across all times and places.

I looked at the Stanford university article and found it more difficult that the polemical stuff that I have tended to read i.e. Spinoza , and Honderich, althought to be fair to myself I have also read Hume, and I am only human so I also have the unexamined feeling that free will is true. I think I wrote that no modern philosopher believes in free will, and I will have to withdraw this opinion. The following article is easy and concentrates on the problem of moral responsibility:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/scien ... wanted=all

I think that the way out of compatibilism is via the elevation of reason and compassion as twin gods which together provide the standard of moral measurement. True, reason and compassion are Earthly, natural and evolved qualities. This does not matter too much as mankind is also Earthly , natural and evolved and it is man who owns those qualities more than other life forms.It is in our nature to obey compassion and reason, and to the extent that we do otherwise we fall short of the best that human nature can be. It is therefore our duty as human beings to personally obey compassion and reason , and to help others to do so too.( We have to guard against the idolatry of viewing some individual or some idea or some big book as the objectified god-twin itself.)

The following is from the Santa Clara University website

According to the 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume, compassion is innate. "There is some benevolence, however small, infused into our bosom," he writes, "some spark of friendship for human kind, some particle of the dove kneaded into our frame, along with the elements of the wolf and the serpent." This small particle is the leaven that raises us to our full humanity and links our lives to those of suffering men and women. Nurturing that spark seems to me an appropriate goal for a university.

-- Updated Sat Jun 02, 2012 3:14 am to add the following --

My pleasure, H2ouse. You, and McDoodle are giving me a lot of need to rethink, and the opportunity to look up useful material.
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Re: Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

Post by Leonid »

The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action. It means, that causality which governs the action of an object is defined by its very nature. The nature of life is a self-generated process and as such it is driven by self-causation. The nature of man is reason. Volition therefore is a self-causation on conceptual level.

-- Updated June 2nd, 2012, 5:13 am to add the following --

Hume was an empiricist. For him everything was or emotions, this feeling in the bosom, or innate knowledge or percepts. He ignored the most important part of the human nature-his thinking mind. Emotions are nothing more (but also nothing less) than automatic value-judgments, based on the previously consciously integrated and internalized values and premises. Friendship and love are based on the sharing of these values. Compassion, however, is a sharing of the lack of values.
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Re: Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

Post by H2ouse »

Belinda wrote:H2ouse wrote:
By contrast, I see your concept of absolute free-will (C) as a realistic possibility, and this is because I view it merely as the extreme case of actions taken after considered decisions (B), in which I believe that free-will also plays a large part (hence I am tempted to claim that your concept of increased personal freedom is one and the same as free-will). By contrast, it is instinctive and automatic reactions (A) that are distinct in my book, because they take place only in the arena of material laws.
But I don't see absolute free Will as a realistic probability regardless of how it may be logically possible, as a transcendent God is logically possible.I think I do understand now what it is that you are referring to as free will.You are correct that what I think of as free Will is not the same as increased personal freedom.
Belinda, I'd like to pursue this further by focussing on the area I labeled 'B' above -- the making of considered decisions. This is the best area to examine in my opinion: for me it is the place that makes sense of free-will, because considered decisions are where I think free-will manifests itself (I'm not sure that the extreme case, which I labeled 'C', ever really occurs) -- while for you it is the place where what you have called increased personal freedom or liberty operates -- which in your opinion is totally distinct from free-will.

I'm interested to understand in more detail how you consider this 'liberty' works -- exactly what it is, and why you are so convinced that it is made from the same basic causal threads as instinctive and automatic reactions (though a far more complex weave), and why you reject the idea that there might be a free-will thread mixed in there (which I maintain makes all the difference). These are two separate questions, by the way: I think your concept of how area 'B' works is distinct from your rejection of area 'C', though the two are obviously interrelated.

I'm looking forward to when McDoodle returns to the fray with his own take on these issues. I believe he is with me in thinking that free-will is a part of area B, but with you in saying that all the threads that make up considered decisions are basic causal threads: his position if I understand it is that free-will too is a reflection of something material, thus preserving the position that material causality is the only game in town (though he may believe that one or two 'different' rules are included in materialism as well).

I also hope we hear from others (RJG has been the most determined determinist,but has been quiet for quite a long time) because the more views are expressed in this forum, the more clearly we all have to think about our arguments.
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Re: Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

Post by Belinda »

H2ouse, I agree that area B , considered decisions , is the area we nned to think about . I am glad that you agree that area C can be dispensed with, if I understand you.

I think the best practical illustration of area B is the aim of psychoanalysis, or on a smaller and less expensive level, cognitive behavioural therapy.

The client has a need to examine her motivations, prejudices, fixed ideas, emotional reactions, and misinformation which are causing her either pain or put her in some social danger or even some danger of her life and health. True, a lot of mental and bodily behaviour has physical causes, but psychoanalysis is akin to education in that the process is for leading the subject into increased understanding and knowledge about her own motivations and thus to find a path forward through the maze of what had been restricting her choices.The successful subject will have traversed from her area A into her area B.

Thus I view the occupant of area B as having more freedom of choice than than the occupant of area A. The freedom is relative to what I suppose is an inconstant application of what she has learned through the psychoanalysis, as perhaps she will have spells of less good judgement or perhaps even acts of unthinking impulsivity.

The whole process of psychoanalysis is based upon cause and effect in both method and theory, and is thus deterministic. Free Will as in area C has nothing to do with it. I see that there is a firm dichotomy between on the one hand, areas A and B and on the other hand, area C. I also see that areas A and B are of the same kind, both natural, but they differ from each other in degrees of understanding, judgement and knowledge.

I could give other illustrations of the contrast between area A and area B from international diplomacy, and from policing.
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Re: Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

Post by Mcdoodle »

Belinda wrote:H2ouse, I agree that there is a difference between considered decisions and instinctive or automatic reactions.It's a difference of degree not a difference of kind. I understand you to say that you call well-considered decisions free will and contrast those with reactions such as dropping to the ground on hearing an explosion, such as may be instinctive or ingrained by training....[snip]

I agree that the considered, well informed and well judged decision making ability is probably an evolved trait of humans, that is, especially if is cultivated in individuals.However I don't call this 'free will', and I think that within philosophy it is not called free will which is a term reserved for the uncaused thing.
I don't know if my mind is clearer or not from jubilee-avoidance on Lake District Hills but...

I see I am an extremist here :) I don't accept that there is necessarily a difference between considered and unconsidered decisions. I'm not clear how in logic you can yoke the preceding 'consideration' to the decision itself. Thoughts precede r don't precede a decision. Then a conscious decision is a leap into the unknown. Having thought carefully about how to write these words, I find them forming themselves as I type, and my consciousness mulls over them and makes changes.

Secondly, isn't the practitioner of type B thinking-before-decisions, as you're designating them, a tragic fool. If all is caused by events independent of her conscious will, isn't she just an idiot to waste time on reflection?

If she isn't an idiot, then what? Is the subsequent world different, based on her 'free' decision, than it would have been otherwise? If it is, then at the fork in the road represented by her decision, more than one world could have unfolded. So the 'same' causes, as I understand what you're saying, could have led to two different outcomes? Is that so?
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Re: Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

Post by Belinda »

McDoodle wrote:

Secondly, isn't the practitioner of type B thinking-before-decisions, as you're designating them, a tragic fool. If all is caused by events independent of her conscious will, isn't she just an idiot to waste time on reflection?

If she isn't an idiot, then what? Is the subsequent world different, based on her 'free' decision, than it would have been otherwise? If it is, then at the fork in the road represented by her decision, more than one world could have unfolded. So the 'same' causes, as I understand what you're saying, could have led to two different outcomes? Is that so?

Yes, she's an idiot! But she is not an idiot for want of trying to be better than an idiot. Trying to be better than an idiot is the mark of humanity that makes us different from the other animals for better or for worse.My faith in human nature is such that I hope that the trying will make us better,despite what current and past evidence has to show to the contrary. After all, if we don't try to be better than idiots our inevitable extinction will probably happen sooner by thousands of years.

As I said, I am a determinist not a fatalist.We are agents who if we abandoned our active agency would be prey for the worst among us. Determinism is therefore the default position upon which we build our positive intentions.

The tools for building, if we choose survival of our species or more than that, are reason and compassion because those tools work, and they are the only tools we have, actually, that are suited to our species to use. We have reason and compassion ready to hand at most times. Greed doesn't work in the longer term.

There is nothing terribly evil about Free Will belief, it is simply an completely unnecessary weight to carry and causes us to blame instead of trying to put things right.
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