Combining Free Will and Determinism.
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Combining Free Will and Determinism.
Fair enough, but why are we reluctant to consider the following?
Guided determinism: the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature, or caused by an agent's act of free will.
Is it because it sounds a lot like a cop-out? Is it because of ontological parsimony considerations? Is it because it entails a contradiction? Is it because an explanation of the emergence of free will would not be a causal explanation? Is it because we cannot objectively observer the mental aspects of persons, including will?
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Re: Combining Free Will and Determinism.
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Re: Combining Free Will and Determinism.
So are you supposing that the complexity of the 100 billion neurons makes "causality" impossible or impractical.Hereandnow wrote: ↑September 14th, 2018, 8:42 pm It is because causality seems pat. But it seems that way because there is a simple model of causality that is allowed to serve as applicable to all cases, neglecting, a) that when we say an effect must have a cause we are really just throwing interpretation at a thing that is utterly alien, and b) that when you put 100 billion neurons together, the "effect" should not be held to an account based on a such a simple pool ball model.
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Re: Combining Free Will and Determinism.
Here is a different take: Watch a pool ball collide with another and you have a model of causality. Witness also that it is not like gravity, say. Gravity could fail before your eyes and it would be surprising, but not like causality. this is a firm intuitive principle that for every effect there must be a cause, that cannot be undone. It's like math in this and it is odd as can be. Anyway, the pool balls are acknowledged in what they do BY you, the observer, a 100 billion neuron system with capacities for relational possibilities that are beyond measure. These are, and this is the tricky part, held to the principle of causality just as the pool balls are; but then you have one system of causality making a statement about causality! Can this possibly hold "knowledge" of causaility? Only answer: You, the observer, "make" the principle of causality, and this is so with all knowledge.LuckyR
So are you supposing that the complexity of the 100 billion neurons makes "causality" impossible or impractical.
A mirror making a reflection of another mirror can present no more than the mirror being mirrored.
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Re: Combining Free Will and Determinism.
Because the last phrase adds nothing to the axiom, since all acts of will are also events which are necessitated by antecedent events, and conditions - specifically life experience, learning, capabilities, mood, and motivation.NicoL wrote: ↑September 14th, 2018, 11:49 am "Causal determinism is, roughly speaking, the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature".Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Fair enough, but why are we reluctant to consider the following?
Guided determinism: the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature, or caused by an agent's act of free will.
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Re: Combining Free Will and Determinism.
Agreed, but "all knowledge" includes pool balls and most accept the causality in that model.Hereandnow wrote: ↑September 15th, 2018, 10:10 amHere is a different take: Watch a pool ball collide with another and you have a model of causality. Witness also that it is not like gravity, say. Gravity could fail before your eyes and it would be surprising, but not like causality. this is a firm intuitive principle that for every effect there must be a cause, that cannot be undone. It's like math in this and it is odd as can be. Anyway, the pool balls are acknowledged in what they do BY you, the observer, a 100 billion neuron system with capacities for relational possibilities that are beyond measure. These are, and this is the tricky part, held to the principle of causality just as the pool balls are; but then you have one system of causality making a statement about causality! Can this possibly hold "knowledge" of causaility? Only answer: You, the observer, "make" the principle of causality, and this is so with all knowledge.LuckyR
So are you supposing that the complexity of the 100 billion neurons makes "causality" impossible or impractical.
A mirror making a reflection of another mirror can present no more than the mirror being mirrored.
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Re: Combining Free Will and Determinism.
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Re: Combining Free Will and Determinism.
At a macro level it is useful to say that humans display something like freewill because they are agents which make conscious choices. At a deeper level, neurology can describe a deeper understanding of how the mind functions and processes the data which determines each individual choice. Just as the description of macroscopic behaviour and quantum behaviour aren't mutually compatible neither is conscious behaviour and the neuro processing, as they each describe different levels of reality.
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Re: Combining Free Will and Determinism.
One thing to consider is that causality is unique among "observed" phenomena in that is grounded in necessity. It is intuitively impossible for an effect to be without a cause. this is not like other empirical principles, like gravity. On the other hand, gravity is by being a principle at all derived from logic, albeit inductive logic, and since logic in both is not something independent of our contribution to the perception of something but is rather exactly what we contribute, principles of physics are expressions of human logic. The differences we acknowldge certainly are bona fide, but since they are by nature understood through logic then a look at the logical differences would be needed. Inductive logic is far different from the "irreducible" intuition of causality, the former being the drawing from particulars to establish generalities, the latter being spontaneous and beyond refutation (imagine a causeless effect: can't be done).Thinking critical:
The attempt of using the principles of causality to describe freewill runs into axiomatic problems
Since they are understood entirely differently, there should be a discussion of these differences figured in to a conception of what they are. If causality is apodictic, and the rules of behavior for all things are bound to causality, the behavior must be apodictically construed. Their must be, that is, in our actions an element of necessity, and when I decide, judge or do or say anything, the analysis of the notion of choice involved must yield to this.
Now the trouble with all of this is that causality says nothing whatever as to the qualitative conditions that apply, and by qualitative conditions I mean reality: causality may apodictic, but how is this apodicticity to be understood in the matrix of cerebral events? That they must be somehow apoditic is undeniable, but since observations about causal apodictivity are confined to models that are observable and relatively simple, it is in human choice that we must observe what apodictivity is IN this mileau, for it is not that of the pool table or in predicting the trajectory of a rocket. One must observe the choice phenomenon to understand apodictivity in human "freedom".
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