I think he didn’t bother to read the thread.
Clearly, but I was trying to be nice about it. 
A computer doesn’t exist. It is a label given to certain combination of entities, themselves also so constituted, recursively, till we hit bottom.
The dictionary defines everything in terms of other things because it is an cognitive artifact created by humans. Each human, presumably, possesses a first-person perspective, and only that, from which everything else is perceived as an object, except the self (as agent and experient, not the same as one’s self-model). So, it’s no surprise nor of relevance that object A is defined by its context amongst object B, object C…etc
But there’s asymmetry between the self and everything else, from the perspective of any first-person.
That ‘if’ is the keyword, and I simply don’t see a better explanation. Reading my response to begbert2, you should know why I think free-will i.e. self-control is unanalyzable in a manner similar to that of objects.
Two points. First, it is not clear we do have introspective evidence of some object, the ‘self’. Certainly Hume thought we had no such evidence.
Second, what we are trying to explain in this debate is not something contentious like the alleged self, but something which is highly analyzable and open to investigation, namely human behavior. The question is: is human behavior to a large degree spontaneous and uncaused, or is the contrary true? And I am saying that since we have good explanations of human behavior which appeal to its causal antecedents, we should choose the latter option. Read a child psychology journal or magazine article, and you will find dozens of examples of causal antecdents of behavior. One of the best-known: children who are praised for their intelligence rather than their effort tend to be less self-confident and less willing to take on challenging tasks at which they fail. Multiply by several thousand the number of such correlations which have been discovered, and you end up with a picture of human behavior which is not spontaneous in the way predicted by the libertarian. So even if there is a self, it does not behave in a libertarian matter. So pointing to an unanalyzable self is at least a red herring.
How would “we” know about introspective evidence?
But the observance of patterns provides no indication to me with regards to their causation, i.e. when I’m hungry, I seek out food. Is it because I am a zombie compelled to, or because I wish to? Constant conjunction is not a proof of causation.
Well, ‘we’ identify the self as something other than a simple, unanalyzable substance.
But this reply has little force against the explanatory power that developmental theory has when it comes to predicting (for example) what child-rearing practices will tend to lead to what character traits. To return to my above example: do you deny that praising a child’s intelligence tends * to cause the child to be more risk-averse? If you agree that there is a causal connection here (and that is the most obvious explanation for the correlation), then you have admitted some degree of determinism in human psychology. And like I said, that is just one small examples among thousands.
And also, your wish to have milk is itself analyzable: into your beliefs about the taste of milk, perhaps also about its nutritional value, your thirst, your desire for milk, etc. What I am saying is that since there is so obvious a psychological explanation for your action, why should we appeal to something that is unverifiable and by your own admission unanalyzable (namely, a core self) to explain this behavior?
- I use the word ‘tends’ on purpose, since human psychology is complex and in complex systems a single cause will not always produce the same outcome.
In other words, the self does not truly exist.
a)this whole debate has the endurance it has because one side says that something very obvious and intuitive (the sense of agency) is not as it seems. Supporting that position by appealing to the "so obvious"ness of alternative explanations, is at the very least, amusing. Unless we both present our reasoning in terms of shared axioms and inferences, I don’t see any potential for agreement.
b)you yourself suggest that reason is itself unverifiable, and hence unanalyzable. Yet that is what we are purportedly employing in this thread.
The self qua simple unanalyzable substance doesn’t exist. But that is very different from saying that people don’t exist, or minds don’t exist, unless you arbitrarily restrict the definition of ‘person’ or ‘mind’ so that only the self can count as one.
a) I don’t see what is so obvious about libertarian free will. In fact, it is so un-obvious that most people who cogitate on it can’t make any sense of it. On the other hand, psychological determinism is highly intuitive–just ask my students when I have them read Hume’s argument that every human action must have an explanation in terms of some motive or feature of the person’s psychology. They all find it highly plausible and (dare I say it) intuitive.
b) Reason can be analyzed; it just can’t be justified in a non-circular manner. However, neither side in the debate can justify reason. We have to accept it, because there is no alternative. There is an alternative to libertarianism.
Is this assertion to be taken on your word? If so, then there’s no reasoning involved, if not, what are the arguments?
Or that you arbitrarily set the condition that the above condition is an arbitrary one.
Fine, but at least one other person does. Also, Wikipedia records Schopenhauer as stating so: Everyone believes himself a priori to be perfectly free, even in his individual actions, and thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of life.
a) Presumably, those find it very obvious don’t set out to cogitate on it. An inkling of skepticism might initiate the cogitation.
b) If these thinkers assume that if free will is true, it can be analyzed, in the manner of other endeavours, then their rejection due to lack of sense is not surprising.
Do we atleast agree that if something is highly intuitive, then it ought to be believed?
I also don’t see how reason is analyzable. One can see the results at the end of the reasoning chain and contrast them with other chains of reasoning. The contrasting is itself another chain of reasoning.
II Gyan II–
I fear we are at an impasse. I maintain that the fundamental thing to be explained is human action, and that human action can (and is) explained by sciences such as psychology in terms of motives and their antecedent causes. This deterministic view of human psychology is prima facie at odds with libertarianism, and so I reject the latter. You seem to start with a different explanandum (namely, the self), and arrive at a different conclusion.
A computer doesn’t exist? How are you posting then? Congratulations, you have crossed over the edge of absurdity.
If, to defend your position, you have to twist your definitions so much that you can’t accept aggregates as existing, something which is clearly true (of course aggregate objects exist, good grief), then your position can be safely assumed to be wrong.
So what?
The arguments against a magic ‘volition’ particle are given upthread. Decisions about the real world must be based in knowledge of the real world, and once you split those out your decider particle can’t possibly decide anything sensibly. Ergo, there can be no ‘volition’ particle beyond a simple, brainless randomizer.
Can this perhaps be phrased in a less nonsensical way? I don’t understand it.
Yes, it’s amazing how obvious things are when you don’t understand what you’re even talking about. If you understand what libertarian free will is, and what it entails, then suddenly it’s not so obvious (or it’s obviously not so).
And I dunno about you, but even with my terrible memory, I still have the mental capacity to know that my decisions do not spring fully formed from the forehead of Zeus. I remember how I reach at least some of my decisions, and they weren’t pooped out by some incomprehensible particle. They result from a chain of cognition and analysis, that itself invites analysis.
I don’t know what you are that you don’t have thoughts backing your decisions, but from what I hear that’s not the norm.
Oh, you mean like how it’s intuitive that the earth is flat, that all gravity points in one direction, that sun orbits the earth, and that bad things happen because the victim deserves it somehow? Those kind of obvious things?
No, sorry. Intuition isn’t the be-all and end-all of information acquisition.
Um, or you could just analyze the chain of reason itself. I mean, if you’ve had one of them yourself, you know it’s just made up of ideas connected together in an analyzable causal way.
For the record, there’s at least one very well respected philosopher who articulates a position similar to the one you’re arguing against. Peter Van Inwagen argues in Material Beings that the only things that exist are elementary particles and organisms. Yes you read that right.
-FrL-
Based on a quick reading of a relevent wiki or two, I fail to see how he gets away with allowing organisms to exist, despite the fact that organisms are composed of the same elementary particles as everything else. I mean, presumably he wants that so he can pretend there are souls without actually having to saying so and therefore admit his real goals, but I still can’t see how he’d intelligibly argue for the exception.
Regardless, and all entertanment aside, redefinitions of existence which deny the existence of clearly evident objects merely due to their divisibility are clearly nonsense, done only to obfuscate the issue via redefining terms. They add no information, only confusion. Use of such redefinitions (rather than the existing words and terms which already mean the equivalent) always strikes me as immidiately suspicious, regardless of where I encounter it; why do it if you’re not trying to throw up a smokescreen over reality?
begbert2,
…meet begbert2.
I’ll keep this short. If you tie two tennis balls together with a string, does that make it an object? Due to physical constraints, their dynamics show similarity. If one moves five feet, so does the other. But they are not an object i.e. they don’t share an identity. Everyday objects, like a knife, are a contingent web of relations. They can not be shown to have any ontological existence other than as convenient bundles of perception.
“Magic volition particle”? Good luck, you’re arguing with yourself.
Of course, it is somewhat arbitrary the way we divide up objects. Unless you are a hardcore realist (who thinks that the only thing that exists are elementary particles and souls), then you must think that an object can exist even if it falls under a human-constructed kind. For example, single-celled organisms with mitochondria arose when one cell incorporated another; that’s why mitochondrial DNA is different from cellular DNA. So is a cell one cell or two? In one sense, who cares? Not much is riding on it. But there are good reasons (both instrumental and otherwise) for treating individual humans as separate organisms and individuals.
Besides, your argument is kind of a version of the “that would suck” fallacy, IMO. “If there were no irreducible self, then we couldn’t individuate individuals.” If true, bad, but it wouldn’t provide an *evidential * reason for believing in such selves.
Peter van Inwagen believes what God tells him to believe, evidence be damned. He is the one who writes that he can’t make any sense of libertarian free will, and it seems incoherent to him, but it must exist for God to hold us responsible for our actions, so he’s going to believe in it anyhow. IMO, a very sorry way to conduct yourself as a philosopher.
What does ‘exist’ mean when referring to a human-constructed object?
What does “exist” mean when referring to anything that exists, on your view?
-FrL-
Look, if you think that ‘exists’ has a meaning handed down from the Gods and that only indivisible simples can ‘exist’, then nothing that is said to you here is going to convince you. But language doesn’t work like that. It’s more flexible and context-sensitive. To take your example of two tennis balls tied together, whether that is one object or more depends on context, too. You might regard it as two (or three) objects; or, if the object was constructed to be a bola, then I would regard it as one object. A human is a single organism, with a single brain, and so exists as a single person.
ETA–But then again, on your view, nothing exists except for quarks (or whatever they are made of) and selves. How plausible is that?
Let me see if I have this right, Gyan. You don’t “see much scope for practical results” in inquiring into free will and yet you wallow in this useless metaphysical game. I don’t know what to make of that.