Materialism, idealism, free will and god.

Great Debates
21

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
Badchad: You are the one concerned with attacking the particulars of the JC faith. As I’ve said before I’m not interested in defending them. I started this whole thing out by asking a question about what the assumption of perfection in biblical authorship constrains one who holds that assumption to believe. You started attacking the assumption. I tried to explain several times that I wasn’t interested in that question. You persisted.
[/quote]

Well, to be fair we should also point out that while I thought your assumption irrational for the get go, I did accept it for the sake of argument, and made repeated comments and questions about it, noting in particular that it was incompatible with widely held characteristics the god which you were attributing it too. You ignored this each and every time.

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
I gave up and changed the subject to something that seemed interesting enough to both of us to talk about, the rationality or irrationality of belief in the divine being of philosophically informed monotheism.
[/quote]

I consider “philosophically informed monotheism” a bit of an oxymoron. Also when you talked about your god, you gave him some Christian characteristics. For example, why are you talking about monotheism and not polytheism. I should point out also that, while you were giving your god similar attributes; however, as I recall, you were also modifying them a bit going from their “all loving” and “all powerful” to your “perfect.”
Where “necessary” came from I’m not sure.

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
(Which is not the interventionist god of the scriptures.) Yet you persist in making this about Jesus. It’s not.
[/quote]

I don’t know. While you say you are not interesting in discussing Jesus (we did start on a Christian thread) it does seems that you are uncomfortable talking about him. You’re a big fan of Kant, and as I recall, Kant was a fan of Jesus too. You could just be upfront and say whether you not you believe there to be anything divine about Jesus.

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
And the “werewolf” thing: there is a distinction between a necessary, perfect being, and any old ad-hoc concept you can come up with. For example, the existence of the one is relevant to the way I think about myself, and think in general. The other is not.
[/quote]

Relevance to the way you think, sounds awful opinionish to me. By that logic if you said belief in werewolves affected the way you think, then you should then entertain the idea as real.

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
Ok, then, I believe in a non-decomposing werewolf corpse existing entirely outside the perceptible world.
[/quote]

But that’s really stupid; just as stupid as believing in a perfect and necessary being floating around just outside our perceptions.

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
As for determinism. I have tried to explain the difference between belief in the truth of things on the basis of determinable evidence, and beliefs about things for which there is no conclusive evidence for or against. Yet you persist in pushing the no-evidence-for = irrational-to-believe-in line which runs roughshod over this distinction. (My claim: if there’s no convincing evidence for or against a belief you must evaluate belief or disbelief on different grounds than the presence or absence of evidence — because there won’t be any.
[/quote]

Again, I am saying that your claim that there is no convincing evidence in favor of or against free will, is wrong. There is a mountain of evidence in favor of causality in the observable world, in biology, and in psychology. There is 0.0 evidence in favor of free will.

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
And the evidence for hard determinism is an interpretation of the results of scientific experimentation. As you said yourself, scientists don’t actually operate according to the classical notion of causality, but with statistically significant probabilities.
[/quote]

I think I said that scientist are astute enough to no longer operate theoretically in absolutes. However their findings from all practical standpoints, chiefly in the harder sciences are as close to absolutes as can be reached. The acceptance of causality ruling in the observable world is as close to an absolute as we can get. I’ll grant a little wiggle room for orbiting electrons but that’s it.

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
I’m not in this to score points against your position, but to have a discussion. You’re not willing. So goodbye.
[/quote]

I count it as a win, when my opponent quits in a huff. You can pretend you don’t care now.

22

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
Your position leads to a regress of wants: Why did you want that? because I wanted that(1)…why did you want that(n-1)? because I wanted that(n)…

To which you may respond: yes but your position leads to an unexplained explainer. To which I will respond: guilty, yerronner! But an unexplained explainer (in this case, judgment and/or decision) is better than a regress. An unexplained explainer just tells us that there may be things that can’t be further theorized, but that are axiomatic. Regresses arise when one demands an explanation where an explanation can’t be given, and isn’t appropriate.
[/QUOTE]

I’ll let someone greater than me answer this one.

[Quote=Baruch D’Espinoza]
If a stone has fallen from a roof onto someone’s head and killed him, they will show, in the following way, that the stone fell in order to kill the man. For if it did not fall to that end, God willing it, how could so many circumstances have concurred by chance (for often many circumstances do concur at once)? Perhaps you will answer that it happened because the wind was blowing hard and the man was walking that way. But they will persist: why was the wind blowing hard at that time? why was the man walking that way at that time? If you answer again that the wind arose then because on the preceding day, while the weather was still calm, the sea began to toss, and that the man had been invited by a friend, they will press on — for there is no end to the questions which can be asked: but why was the sea tossing? why was the man invited at just that time? And so they will not stop asking for the causes of causes until you take refuge in the will of God, i.e., the sanctuary of ignorance. (I, Appendix)
[/quote]

We all pursue infinite chains of causality, but we determinists try to keep on the path of reason, while you invent free will along the way. And I’ll repeat, I’m NOT a soft determinist. Free will is not required to explain anything, it can by definition not be proven (the fact that it’s logically inconsistent aside, and there’s nothing to suggest there is such a thing, except the fact that we consider different things. This, however, is not unique to us, computers do it, too.
That someone could have thought free will was a possibility hundreds of years ago is understandable, but how otherwise reasonable people can believe in it after the advent of neuroscience, is beyond me. How can anyone believe freedom of will arises from a network of simple electric and chemical signals? Especially when the more we investigate these, the more determined they appear.

23

Oh badchad, you’re so big and funny.

I’m going to offer some clarifications for a few of your choicest howlers, and then explain for the last time why this is the last time you’re going to hear from me.

A:

  1. Polytheism is not at issue because it is logically impossible for there to be two all-powerful beings. (Cite: Every metaphysician ever from Plato to Plantiga, and Paradise Lost to boot.)

  2. “Necessary being” is the primary philosophical definition of God. Every other being is contingent, in the sense that it relies on something else for its existence. From the definition of God as all-powerful, perfect, etc. it follows that God is self-sufficient: it would be an imperfection, a lack of power, to have to rely on something else in order to exist. (Cite: oh, let’s say Maimonedes, Aquinas, Anselm, Aristotle, Plato, Descartes…shall I go on?)

  3. Kant liked him some Jesus just fine, but he argued from the philosophical standpoint, not the scriptural. The God he works with is the philosophical notion of God that I’ve been talking about here, plus some things he develops in his own ethical thought. The important thing for Kant is the moral law, which he believes we can reason out for ourselves without help from any tablets or books. (The moral law or ‘categorical imperative’ is the command to respect others’ freedom and happiness, it’s a hard and fast ethical rule, and doesn’t have anything to do with the sense of “moral” that’s been hijacked by the christian right.) The role of God in his system is as a concept that helps orient us in thinking (provides us with things like the distinction between necessary and contingent, and conditioned and unconditioned) and as a judge that stands surety for the moral law. The important thing here is that for Kant the philosophical notion of God, and the moral law trump any interpretation of scripture that would tell you something different. You may have heard of the Enlightenment? Yeah. That guy.

  4. “I consider ‘philosophically informed monotheism’ a bit of an oxymoron.” You utter high handed arrogant crap like this and expect anyone to take you seriously? I’m assuming the philosophy departments of all of the Catholic and Jewish colleges and universities in the world are just a bunch of idiots who don’t know philosophy. Rich. Oh and Plato didn’t know philosophy? And Aristotle too. Descartes? Spinoza? Leibniz? What about Kant and Hegel? What about all the atheist philosophers who argue respectfully with these apparently hoodwinked poor souls who just needed to be shown the way to hard nosed hard determinism and atheism by the Good Shepherd badchad. That leaves Sartre out of it, he liked Kant. Merleau-Pony? Screwed. Derrida and Levinas? Sorry, they’re way into YHVH. American Pragmatism? Peirce, you can stay, you’re funny. The rest of y’all, Dewey, James, get out! Nietzsche? Sorry, he likes Aristotle. Schopenhauer? Nope, derived his system from Kant. Wow, who’s that leave us with?
    Hume. Maybe.

-=-

The problem is, badchad, that your goal is to WIN, whereas I want to explore a question and talk to some people about it without getting hectored by people unwilling to adhere to the most basic standards of debate.

You keep saying you accepted the initial premise for the sake of the argument. You did not. You said ‘Ok I accept the premise. Jeez this premise is stupid. Respond.’ That does not constitute accepting the premise for the sake of argument.

I tried to wean you away from that style of arguing as patiently as I could muster, but, eyes on the prize, you kept at it. (And the ad hominems, and the ridicule.)

So, one more time: Once you accept a premise for the sake of an argument, denying that same premise is out of play for the remainder of the argument.

I simply cannot believe that you don’t understand this, especially after I explained it to you repeatedly. Hence I conclude that you are arguing in bad faith, and choose to say nothing else to you.

24

[QUOTE=yelimS]
And I’ll repeat, I’m NOT a soft determinist.
[/QUOTE]

Did you say that before? You used Hobbes to make your initial argument, and he’s considered one of the originators of the soft determinist line. For him it’s rational self-interest and the pleasure principle. And since then we’ve been talking in terms of wants, not neurology. Everything you’ve said until this last post is consistent with soft determinism.

[QUOTE=yelimS]
Free will is not required to explain anything, it can by definition not be proven (the fact that it’s logically inconsistent aside, and there’s nothing to suggest there is such a thing, except the fact that we consider different things. This, however, is not unique to us, computers do it, too.
[/QUOTE]

These are assertions. There are big philosophical problems with free will, but just so with determinism. (And none of the problems are logical inconsistencies, if by logical inconsistencies you mean contradictions. At best they’re dilemmas: competing compelling but incompatible committments.)

For example, the determinist assumes that thoughts, feelings, perceptions etc. are identical to neural impulses. But there’s nothing in the science that can account for why thoughts, feelings, etc. have the subjective characteristics that they do. And I’m not just talking about why green looks green and not blue, or why we see color at all. I’m talking about hard structural features of thought like intentionality. Intentionality is the way in which a sentence or a thought is “about” something. (“I’m thinking about a dog”…the dog is the intentional object of my thought. “He said you would be here”, “you would be here” is the intentional object of “said.” No one has found an adequate way to reinterpret intentional sentences or descriptions of thoughts non-intentionally.)

[Intentionality is not the same as “intention” in the sense of “doing something intentionally.” The terms are of course related, but this is a technical usage that is used only to indicate the “aboutness” of thought and language.]

Stimuli, impulses, etc. can be produced by objects, of course. They can also be correlated with objects by mapping them onto simultaneous acts. (I assume; I don’t know what the degree of error considered acceptable in neurology) But the neural stimulus story can’t touch the way in which a thought or utterance is “of” or “about” something. All it can do is correlate impulses with acts. To say that amounts to a complete explanation isn’t correct.

Hard determinism is an extrapolation from the scientific data, and it’s not the only one that the data licenses. To go neurons—>determinism you must dismiss the subjective character of thought, feeling, etc. and you must explain away intentionality. A good many thinkers have of course tried to do this, and for a while considered opinion swung in their direction, back in the hoary days of behaviorism. But in the past few decades it’s swung back pretty hard. In any case, the argument is by no means a simple science says x therefore y.

[QUOTE=yelimS]
That someone could have thought free will was a possibility hundreds of years ago is understandable, but how otherwise reasonable people can believe in it after the advent of neuroscience, is beyond me. How can anyone believe freedom of will arises from a network of simple electric and chemical signals? Especially when the more we investigate these, the more determined they appear.
[/QUOTE]

These kinds of “the science says” arguments are often brought up as showstoppers when neither of the parties to the argument are all that clear on exactly what the science says or what conclusions it licenses or doesn’t license. I admit that I am not. My knowledge of neuroscience is of the interested-layman-who-doesn’t-understand-the-hard-math variety.

I am, however, well aware of recent debates in the philosophy of mind as well as the philosophy of science. All of the philosophers involved in these fields are quite well versed in the current science. Some of them are even involved in active scientific research. Yet the debate about free will rages on in ways that the debate about geocentrism doesn’t. (I’ve tried to present a bit of it above.)

Very few philosophers are willing to argue for Cartesian dualism and the existence of ‘mind’ as a substance independent of matter. Most are materialists of some stripe. But materialism doesn’t imply hard determinism, and few are willing to argue for the neuroscience=no freewill stance.

25

On Free Will:

If humans are to have free will we must grant the same to a protoplasm. He must be allowed to do as he pleases, live a wonderful life and indulge in bodily pleasures just like ourselves. Trees should be able to jump up and down as well.

Plants and animals do not have free will, nor do humans. Einstein often referenced Schopenhauer’s quote, "A man can do as he will, not will as he will. "

If God created free will and thus allows evil than he is not omnibenevolent. According to Einstein man acts by neccessity, a God cannot favor nor punish his own creation that obides by scientific laws. Nor should a God punish one’s forefathers with original sin, a child would perhaps forgive the transgressions of another if his elders did some sort of wrong, original sin is the adoption of meaning in life and it subsequently makes God’s ultimate forgiveness less than human. He is worse than a child.

26

[/Quote=I Tichy]
Wait a second here. badchad is not a compatibilist. He’s arguing a hard determinist line, or rather, asserting it again and again. I’m sorry if I slipped into using “determinism” sloppily.
[/Quote]

[QUOTE=yelimS]
So am I.
[/QUOTE]

I shouldn’t have quoted that last sentence there, it might have caused some confusion.
I’ll admit that if I venture into a discussion on current neuroscience, I might miss out on some new findings. However, I was mentioning neuroscience (I don’t consider my own theorizing “science”, but I do read some, just not enough to debate it) merely as a side argument. The main objection to a free will that I can think of, is the most common so far in this thread:

[Quote=Arthur Schopenhauer]
Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.
[/quote]

Were is this final, free want that you speak so highly of?

27

The Schopenhauer quote is compatible with the soft and hard versions of determinism.

Soft: We can’t choose to not want happiness (or the good, or gratification, there are different versions of it.)

Hard: Whatever we think we choose is actually determined by external causal factors.

(Schopenhauer’s whole theory is another story, see below)

-=-

I agree with the claim that there is some top want that we all want. The problem is that the top want is necessarily so loosely defined that it doesn’t add up to determinism in any robust sense. Most definitions of happiness or pleasure define it as something like ‘the kind of thing we want for itself, instead of for something it can get us’ and then either move to a bit tent and say that the top want could be different for different people and hey great, or argue for a more or less restrictive account of what the top want ought to be, claiming that the others are mistaken and produce pain or unhappiness in the long run.

-=-

I’m surprised the Schopenhauer keeps getting brought up…because the conclusion he draws from that quote is that this is a horrible situation and we should stop willing altogether, but we can’t because what we really really are is Will and any belief that we’re not really will through and through is abject self-deceit. According to Schopenhauer, to say that we want this or that or anything in particular is deceitful. We actually just want, indiscriminately. His position is actually quite confusing and doesn’t seem internally consistent. His entire system is built around will – Will is the ‘thing in itself’. He then denies the freedom of the will, while somehow preserving the hope of enough freedom to somehow stop ourselves from willing at all anymore, because willing is the source of suffering. (This is the stuff Nietzsche runs with, claiming that Schopenhauer was willing to will nothingness rather than not will at all.) It also leads him to some very strange arguments about art.

The scientistic hard determinism stuff denies the existence of a will on the basis of causal factors: impulses, stimuli and the such. Objective, measurable things. (My argument against it is that the scientific evidence for determinism is underdetermined. Determinism is an interpretation of the scientific data, it does not simply follow from it deductively, and there are competing interpretations.)

28

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
The Schopenhauer quote is compatible with the soft and hard versions of determinism.

Soft: We can’t choose to not want happiness (or the good, or gratification, there are different versions of it.)

Hard: Whatever we think we choose is actually determined by external causal factors.

(Schopenhauer’s whole theory is another story, see below)

-=-

I agree with the claim that there is some top want that we all want. The problem is that the top want is necessarily so loosely defined that it doesn’t add up to determinism in any robust sense. Most definitions of happiness or pleasure define it as something like ‘the kind of thing we want for itself, instead of for something it can get us’ and then either move to a bit tent and say that the top want could be different for different people and hey great, or argue for a more or less restrictive account of what the top want ought to be, claiming that the others are mistaken and produce pain or unhappiness in the long run.

-=-

I’m surprised the Schopenhauer keeps getting brought up…because the conclusion he draws from that quote is that this is a horrible situation and we should stop willing altogether, but we can’t because what we really really are is Will and any belief that we’re not really will through and through is abject self-deceit. According to Schopenhauer, to say that we want this or that or anything in particular is deceitful. We actually just want, indiscriminately. His position is actually quite confusing and doesn’t seem internally consistent. His entire system is built around will – Will is the ‘thing in itself’. He then denies the freedom of the will, while somehow preserving the hope of enough freedom to somehow stop ourselves from willing at all anymore, because willing is the source of suffering. (This is the stuff Nietzsche runs with, claiming that Schopenhauer was willing to will nothingness rather than not will at all.) It also leads him to some very strange arguments about art.

The scientistic hard determinism stuff denies the existence of a will on the basis of causal factors: impulses, stimuli and the such. Objective, measurable things. (My argument against it is that the scientific evidence for determinism is underdetermined. Determinism is an interpretation of the scientific data, it does not simply follow from it deductively, and there are competing interpretations.)
[/QUOTE]

I am confused as to “will”. When I think of “willing” something I think of “willing” a belief. When Schopenhauer says, “a man can do as he will but not will as he will”, I simply interpret it as a man can do what he sets his mind to, but not set his mind to anything. And with this a tree can’t set it’s mind to start jogging, etc.

In regards to pleasure I am running through a writeup from Julia Annas on Aristotle and Goodness, to sum things up, pleasure can perpetuate a good act, in other words receiving pleasure from learning will cause us to learn all the more and it equally makes a man more wicked. Associating ‘pleasure’ with goodness is foolhardy in the sense that a man can receive pleasure from base matters and pleasure from noble ones. The same can be said of pain’s. It is associating whether one ought to induce pleasure from a particular activity that makes a man good, this according to virtue ethics.

29

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
I agree with the claim that there is some top want that we all want. The problem is that the top want is necessarily so loosely defined that it doesn’t add up to determinism in any robust sense. Most definitions of happiness or pleasure define it as something like ‘the kind of thing we want for itself, instead of for something it can get us’ and then either move to a bit tent and say that the top want could be different for different people and hey great, or argue for a more or less restrictive account of what the top want ought to be, claiming that the others are mistaken and produce pain or unhappiness in the long run.
[/quote]

Top want: stay alive. I suppose it could be argued that we, as a relatively bright species, has had the side effect of putting pleasure, our carrot for survival, above survival itself, but it doesn’t matter. I’m sure the brain can use the systems meant for calculating how to survive, to calculate how to achieve most pleasure. I’m also quite certain the brain would have no difficulties ranking its favourite pleasures, and anyway, it seems quite obvious it is too trivial a point to require the introduction of free will to the explanation.

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
I’m surprised the Schopenhauer keeps getting brought up…because the conclusion he draws from that quote is that this is a horrible situation and we should stop willing altogether, but we can’t because what we really really are is Will and any belief that we’re not really will through and through is abject self-deceit. According to Schopenhauer, to say that we want this or that or anything in particular is deceitful. We actually just want, indiscriminately. His position is actually quite confusing and doesn’t seem internally consistent. His entire system is built around will – Will is the ‘thing in itself’. He then denies the freedom of the will, while somehow preserving the hope of enough freedom to somehow stop ourselves from willing at all anymore, because willing is the source of suffering. (This is the stuff Nietzsche runs with, claiming that Schopenhauer was willing to will nothingness rather than not will at all.) It also leads him to some very strange arguments about art.

The scientistic hard determinism stuff denies the existence of a will on the basis of causal factors: impulses, stimuli and the such. Objective, measurable things. (My argument against it is that the scientific evidence for determinism is underdetermined. Determinism is an interpretation of the scientific data, it does not simply follow from it deductively, and there are competing interpretations.)
[/QUOTE]

It seems to me, you are implying that Schopie’s conclusion on this is hardly his best work. To that I have no objection. We need something for the balance to topple over, and free will doesn’t make it. What’s free will, anyway? Will implies it’s got some preferance, and free implies it doesn’t.
I can’t see you’ve given any theories as to how such a will would work, am I missing anything? It is getting late, after all.

30

[QUOTE=yelimS]
Top want: stay alive. I suppose it could be argued that we, as a relatively bright species, has had the side effect of putting pleasure, our carrot for survival, above survival itself, but it doesn’t matter. I’m sure the brain can use the systems meant for calculating how to survive, to calculate how to achieve most pleasure. I’m also quite certain the brain would have no difficulties ranking its favourite pleasures, and anyway, it seems quite obvious it is too trivial a point to require the introduction of free will to the explanation.

If you say this is “hardly his best work” you’re saying that The World as Will and Representation is “hardly his best work.” It’s his primary work, his magnum opus. (I’m going to indulge myself and assume that I’m the only person on this board who has worked his way through Schopie’s other main work, the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. It’s good, but it’s no Will and Representation. Fourfold Root’s the overture, Will and Rep’s the opera. Fourfold root’s “Paranoid Time”, Will and Rep’s “Double Nickels on the Dime.”)

Horn-tooting aside, I don’t get your argument here at all. It doesn’t line up with your interpretation of the “you can do what you want but can’t will what you want” quote. I think you may be stuck on some connotation of the word “free” that you don’t like, and that I’m not grasping.

It’s not the “gays can choose not to be gay” crap, is it?..If it is I’m right with you, the Xtian right line on this is bullpuckey. Gays can’t choose to be straight anymore than I can choose to be Korean. The existence of hard constraints on our action or desire doesn’t scuttle free will. I will within the constraints of my personality, etc. This is why I said I’m not arguing for that Sartrean radical free will that says I can will to do anything anytime. I accept that a variety of factors shape and constrain our will. All I deny is that they constrain our will completely.

Thus I’ve accepted – to a point – that we can’t will willy-nilly. Aside from the constraint-talk I accept above, we’re at the very least bound by a ‘top want’, such as the desire for happiness: we can’t just up and decide that we don’t want to be happy. But all that means is that all of our decisions take place under the aegis of “I’d like to be happy.” To have an ingrained (and loosely defined) aim is not the same as lacking free will, because we must yet decide for ourselves what it is – what acts, relationships, vocations, bedmates, and breakfast foods – that will fulfill this top want.

Sheer survival is a precondition for happiness (or pleasure, or whatever…), but it certainly isn’t the same thing as happiness. Of course we want to live, but we also want to live for something, or at least we would like to have our lives be one way (fulfilling or at least moderately pleasurable) rather than another (shitty and full of meaningless heartbreak and pain).

And why do I need to theorize how a will would work? I’ve already said will is an unexplained explainer. This means that I postulate will as an axiom. To uproot an axiom you’ve got to show how the axiom can be explained by something else (which then becomes the axiom). And I’ve offered a bevy of arguments against the supposedly better explanations that have been offered so far.

31

[QUOTE=pragmatic55]
I am confused as to “will”. When I think of “willing” something I think of “willing” a belief. When Schopenhauer says, “a man can do as he will but not will as he will”, I simply interpret it as a man can do what he sets his mind to, but not set his mind to anything. And with this a tree can’t set it’s mind to start jogging, etc.
[/QUOTE]

I think this might be a bit garbled. Do you mean that we can pursue our desires, but we can’t decide to alter what those desires are? If so, then I think you’ve god the Schop. right. I don’t think the examples of trees and animals are helping you, though. Trees don’t move under their own power (except for heliotropes and those marsh walking vines, but those movements are generally mechanical) and animals don’t have the ability to reason. Animals and trees won’t set their minds to things because they don’t have minds in the sense that we do. (Note: this does not imply a metaphysical substance “mind”. A good way to draw the distinction: an animal that can learn and use a language in a way that goes beyond rote repetition “has” a “mind.” So far that means humans, and maybe Koko.)

[QUOTE=pragmatic55]
In regards to pleasure I am running through a writeup from Julia Annas on Aristotle and Goodness, to sum things up, pleasure can perpetuate a good act, in other words receiving pleasure from learning will cause us to learn all the more and it equally makes a man more wicked. Associating ‘pleasure’ with goodness is foolhardy in the sense that a man can receive pleasure from base matters and pleasure from noble ones. The same can be said of pain’s. It is associating whether one ought to induce pleasure from a particular activity that makes a man good, this according to virtue ethics.
[/QUOTE]

As far as I’m concerned, Prof. Annas is going to get your Aristotle done right. She’s the real thing. When you’re done with that book, seek out her book on ancient skepticism. I agree with this interpretation of Aristotle. He distinguishes between three types of person: the person who does vicious things, the person who does good things but takes no pleasure in them because he’s constantly fighting against his desire to indulge himself, and the person who does good things with pleasure and finds pleasure in them. This last person is the one that Aristotle calls virtuous. Thus pleasure is a good, but it’s not the good, because it can attach itself to bad things. The good for Aristotle is what he calls “virtuous activity” and identifies with happiness.

32

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
Yeesh. “Stay alive”? Sounds like a dreary existence if that’s all we’re after. What about once the stay alive stuff is taken care of, or at least settled to the point that we’re not running around like panicked little bunnies all the time. Then what? Then we need to make decisions about how we want to live. “Stay alive” isn’t the top want, it’s the first want, the want without which there are no other wants. Of course to live a good life, one must first live a life. And of course dyin’ don’t do that too well. And “pleasure” is as loosely defined as happiness: compare the pleasure of sex to the pleasure of good food, to the pleasure of a good discussion, to the pleasure of a damn fine banjo breakdown. “Pleasure” doesn’t really help us distinguish between these because they’re all pleasures (assuming you’re as into the banjo as I am). It’s another blunt term. I accept it in its bluntness, but still claim that what I call freedom takes place in the individual person’s definition of this term – which then sharpens it up.

[/quote]

Existence doesn’t have to not be dreary, we’re products of an evolution that doesn’t care about anything but fitting us for survival. I fully acknowledge that as a side product of this, we have discovered that pleasure is more important to our experience, which indeed is all of life, but you can’t really dismiss living for survival because it’s “dreary”.
No matter. We are pursuing pleasure, not just survival. Sure, pleasure seems a vague term, but there’s no reason for it being vague to our brains. Will still is a set of preferations, and it hardly matters how these work. When we choose something, we choose it because we prefer it, or it’s consequences, or because we concieve we would prefer it or it’s consequences. If we were to consider two choices exact equals, we might simply chose the first (or last) option, by some default of the brain. If we were to rely on a free will, I don’t see what good it could do, because at least to me, freedom excludes will and will excludes freedom, so free will is a contradiction, and since true contradtictions can’t exist other than as ideas, I can’t see we have any.

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
If you say this is “hardly his best work” you’re saying that The World as Will and Representation is “hardly his best work.” It’s his primary work, his magnum opus. (I’m going to indulge myself and assume that I’m the only person on this board who has worked his way through Schopie’s other main work, the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. It’s good, but it’s no Will and Representation. Fourfold Root’s the overture, Will and Rep’s the opera. Fourfold root’s “Paranoid Time”, Will and Rep’s “Double Nickels on the Dime.”)
[/quote]

I’m not. I’m saying that Schopenhauer’s apologism for free will is hardly his best work (I should perhaps have said idea), not that the entire book isn’t. Actually, I haven’t read The World as Will…, but the ideas you mention appear in the one I have read (so far, so far), Über die Freiheit des menschlichen Willens, and I found it a wonderful book right until the last few pages which I thought a drunken rant.

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
Horn-tooting aside, I don’t get your argument here at all. It doesn’t line up with your interpretation of the “you can do what you want but can’t will what you want” quote. I think you may be stuck on some connotation of the word “free” that you don’t like, and that I’m not grasping.

It’s not the “gays can choose not to be gay” crap, is it?..If it is I’m right with you, the Xtian right line on this is bullpuckey. Gays can’t choose to be straight anymore than I can choose to be Korean. The existence of hard constraints on our action or desire doesn’t scuttle free will. I will within the constraints of my personality, etc. This is why I said I’m not arguing for that Sartrean radical free will that says I can will to do anything anytime. I accept that a variety of factors shape and constrain our will. All I deny is that they constrain our will completely.
[/quote]

What then, if not some highest want, drives us to decisions? You can say all you want about qualities of different pleasures, I find nothing vague about a system of electrical and chemical signals deciding the qualities of life. Even if there was, you still have to make the choice you prefer, not one of them, like there could be two or more equally agreeable ones.

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
Thus I’ve accepted – to a point – that we can’t will willy-nilly. Aside from the constraint-talk I accept above, we’re at the very least bound by a ‘top want’, such as the desire for happiness: we can’t just up and decide that we don’t want to be happy. But all that means is that all of our decisions take place under the aegis of “I’d like to be happy.” To have an ingrained (and loosely defined) aim is not the same as lacking free will, because we must yet decide for ourselves what it is – what acts, relationships, vocations, bedmates, and breakfast foods – that will fulfill this top want.

Sheer survival is a precondition for happiness (or pleasure, or whatever…), but it certainly isn’t the same thing as happiness. Of course we want to live, but we also want to live for something, or at least we would like to have our lives be one way (fulfilling or at least moderately pleasurable) rather than another (shitty and full of meaningless heartbreak and pain).

[/quote]

This sounds like a view on humans as fundamentaly and absolutely different from other creatures. We have evolved from creatures requiring nothing of life except that it lasts as long as they can make it last, and just because we’ve gradually aquired a taste for pleasure, we don’t need to have gradually evolved a free will, our brains have just increased in complexity, as to choose determinately between causes for more pleasure (and, when needed, survival).

[QUOTE=I Tichy]
And why do I need to theorize how a will would work? I’ve already said will is an unexplained explainer. This means that I postulate will as an axiom. To uproot an axiom you’ve got to show how the axiom can be explained by something else (which then becomes the axiom). And I’ve offered a bevy of arguments against the supposedly better explanations that have been offered so far.
[/QUOTE]

You don’t really. I’ve argued in another thread against a common view on consciousness without really offering a better one, but a better explanation would strengthen both our cases.
You do bring a lot more sensible arguments than most free will proponents I’ve seen, but I still can’t say I’m any less convinced about determinism than before I found this thread. Will is will and freedom is freedom, they can’t be mixed. The only freedom of will I acknowledge is Spinozas, and I hardly doubt that’s the one you’re defending.

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[QUOTE=I Tichy]

I’m going to offer some clarifications for a few of your choicest howlers, and then explain for the last time why this is the last time you’re going to hear from me.
[/quote]

Your going to explain again, why this is the last time I will hear from you? Shouldn’t the last time have done it? How about the time before that? It’s almost as if its causality and you just can’t stop yourself.

[QUOTE=I Tichy]

  1. Polytheism is not at issue because it is logically impossible for there to be two all-powerful beings. (Cite: Every metaphysician ever from Plato to Plantiga, and Paradise Lost to boot.)
    [/quote]

I think you said that it was impossible to say what was on the other side of Kant’s great divide. So how than can you say that polytheism is impossible. Also who says the god’s must be all-powerful? And while were on the topic of all powerful, weren’t you just putting limits to gods power, claiming him unable to affect the perceptible world? Why yes, you were, this quote is yours:

”If we’re talking about God we’re talking about something that lies beyond possible experience, and thus is not part of the perceptible world. (Nor can it affect the perceptible world in perceptible ways.”

It really seems like you are making up distincitons however suites you.

[QUOTE=I Tichy]

  1. “Necessary being” is the primary philosophical definition of God. Every other being is contingent, in the sense that it relies on something else for its existence. From the definition of God as all-powerful, perfect, etc. it follows that God is self-sufficient: it would be an imperfection, a lack of power, to have to rely on something else in order to exist. (Cite: oh, let’s say Maimonedes, Aquinas, Anselm, Aristotle, Plato, Descartes…shall I go on?)
    [/quote]

You’re citing a bunch of pre-Darwin, and largely pre-scientific-method philosophers and apologists. You’re trying to define god into existence. God could exist optionally. He could exist along side the universe and not be its creator. He could have existed and now be dead. He could be the son of Cronus. You’re just putting the word necessary in front of a turtle and claiming that makes it ok that it supports the world without being supported itself, while ignoring the possibility that the universe could be “necessary” all by itself. And while were deciding which things are necessary to believe in, it’s probably wisest to give precedence to those things we can sense.

Also saying an all powerful god can’t give birth to other gods like himself, split or clone himself, is only another limitation of his power? And while were at it, why should your god not to be able to intervene with the physical world. If he can intervene but doesn’t, isn’t it a lack of goodness, or should we say perfection?

[QUOTE=I Tichy]

You utter high handed arrogant crap like this and expect anyone to take you seriously? I’m assuming the philosophy departments of all of the Catholic and Jewish colleges and universities in the world are just a bunch of idiots who don’t know philosophy. Rich. Oh and Plato didn’t know philosophy? And Aristotle too. Descartes? Spinoza? Leibniz? What about Kant and Hegel?
[/quote]

Did you notice that every philosopher you cited here is pre-Darwin and pre-(a whole lot of science)? Back then it was excusable and to some degree forgivable to hold superstitious views. However, this is the 21st century and you don’t have that excuse of ignorance. The best argument for god you have given is that he lives outside of perceptions and we can’t prove he’s not there. That’s a piss poor argument, and an argument that you don’t seem to really accept for other equally contrived ideas.

[QUOTE=I Tichy]

What about all the atheist philosophers who argue respectfully with these apparently hoodwinked poor souls who just needed to be shown the way to hard nosed hard determinism and atheism by the Good Shepherd badchad.
[/quote]

You should not confuse their kindness with your reasonableness.

[QUOTE=I Tichy]

You keep saying you accepted the initial premise for the sake of the argument. You did not. You said ‘Ok I accept the premise. Jeez this premise is stupid. Respond.’ That does not constitute accepting the premise for the sake of argument.
[/quote]

Yes, I accepted your premise, prefacing that I thought it was stupid for reasons I illustrated and then asked you questions. In all the typing you have done, you still never responded to those questions, which I had posted again and again. There is no rule that says I have to respect your premise to entertain it for the sake of argument.

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And there’s more.
To return to an earlier point, determinism doesn’t have to be bad. This isn’t an argument for or against it, but I hardly think I need saying that we humans are inclined to disagree with ideas we don’t like, and so, some arguments as to why determinism is good might be persuasive. To me, the main thing a belief in determinism does, is soften my frustration when things go bad. A belief in determinism is accepting the world as it unfolds, and if I could fully accept the world as it is, I would have no further needs. I’m not there yet, but I certainly think I have found the logical groundwork for it in determinism.
By the way, while this is not an argument for determinism, it is an argument for believing in determinism. While I believe truth should be pursued as one of the best means for achieving long-term happiness, I don’t consider it an ultimate goal in itself (I consider happiness to be that). If I couldn’t live with the truth, I’d rather lie. It only seems I don’t have to. (I trust you don’t find a contradiction in me holding happiness highest, and at the same time saying we are evolved solely for survival).

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[QUOTE=yelimS]
And there’s more.
To return to an earlier point, determinism doesn’t have to be bad. This isn’t an argument for or against it, but I hardly think I need saying that we humans are inclined to disagree with ideas we don’t like, and so, some arguments as to why determinism is good might be persuasive. To me, the main thing a belief in determinism does, is soften my frustration when things go bad. A belief in determinism is accepting the world as it unfolds, and if I could fully accept the world as it is, I would have no further needs. I’m not there yet, but I certainly think I have found the logical groundwork for it in determinism.
By the way, while this is not an argument for determinism, it is an argument for believing in determinism. While I believe truth should be pursued as one of the best means for achieving long-term happiness, I don’t consider it an ultimate goal in itself (I consider happiness to be that). If I couldn’t live with the truth, I’d rather lie. It only seems I don’t have to. (I trust you don’t find a contradiction in me holding happiness highest, and at the same time saying we are evolved solely for survival).
[/QUOTE]

Ah! So it is good old Schopenhauerian Buddhism. I was not aware that Einstein subscribed to it. It’s a pretty stunning doctrine and I acknowledge its power. You really must read some of Nietzsche’s stuff on Schopenhauer; the student attacks the master but still loves him dearly. It’s Alcibaides complaining that Socrates won’t bed him. The good stuff.

Funnily enough I’ve read both (damn) volumes of Will and Rep, and Fourfold Root, but I haven’t read the essay on the will you mention. Is the doctrine in that book like this: We are at root Will, blind striving will, which is perpetually dissatisfied. In order to try to escape this dissatisfaction the will projects a world of objects of desire that it can pursue. (This is the world of representation.) This is a bad solution. The world of representation is governed by hard causality; we will it into existence, but once we’ve done so we have no control over what particular objects we pursue within it. Crudely put: from the standpoint of the world of representation will is an engine, but has no steering wheel. (This is the ‘can’t will what I want’ part if I’m not mistaken.) Solution: recognize that the will’s attachment to objects is a self-deception (because the will actually creates the objects it’s attached to, they’re not real) and the source of suffering and extinguish it. (Hence, “Buddhism”.)

That’s my reading of Will/Rep. Is it the argument of the essay you’re talking about?

Also, I freely admit that the determinist thesis has a strong allure, especially when it culminates in that powerful buddhistic resignation that we see in Schopenhauer (which Nietzsche claims isn’t really resignation: his view of Schopenhauer is that he’s in a battle with the will, that it is the thing that summoned his great strength. Nietzsche loves warriors almost as much as he hates soldiers).

I only enjoy arguing against positions that I consider to have merit, and against people who defend them well. Otherwise its shooting fish in a barrel, or an interminable unpleasant fistfight with someone who refuses to engage with you and just wants to score points.

-=-

To your other post:

I do claim a difference in kind between animals that reason and use language and those that don’t. I don’t load up that difference with theological baggage, and acknowledge that it may not be an uncrossable line: I believe that humans evolved from non-reasoning, non-language using primates, which means it’s entirely possible that some other animal could do so as well. We just haven’t found any yet. If we did, I believe we would be bound by reason, and ethically, to consider them to be persons.

This is why I went on about intentionality in thought and language in previous posts. It’s the one thing that seems to be irreducible to impulses, drives, and the such, and as far as we know, only creatures that are language-users exhibit intentionality. (Thoughts that are “about” things, utterances that refer to things.) Also, this defines what I mean by “language”. It’s a narrow definition that doesn’t include all of the modes of communication other animals display. (I’m reminded of the old farside cartoon ‘If we could understand the language of dogs’ that shows the dog going “HEY! HEY! HEY!”) A crude version of the definition: if it can’t construct a sentence its not a language-user.

I assume you mean that you doubt this is the one I defend, and you’re right. Spinoza for me is like the optimist to Schopenhauer’s pessimist. “World as Will” is a kind of pantheism, the difference is that Spinoza’s reality is a divine geometer, and Schopenhauer’s is a blind satyr.

First of all, why couldn’t there be two or more equally agreeable choices? This is the old Buridan’s ass problem. The wiki on it’s not too bad: Buridan's ass - Wikipedia

My contention is that the idea of a top want is not determinate enough for the determinism thesis to ride on it. If we try to define it strictly, we end up with something like brute physical pleasures. These lead to Buridan’s Ass problems of paralysis in the face of equally enticing alternatives that require at least the freedom of deciding to flip the coin. If we allow it to be defined loosely, like Aristotle’s “happiness”, then all it means is that we want the life we want, but it tells us little about what that life is, thus requiring that we think and act our way through an at least partially indeterminate world. (And thus requiring masterful books like the Nichomachean Ethics.)

Another way of putting this: In some mundane cases I don’t have a preference, or I produce one on the spot. Someone says do you want mint or butter pecan. I like both. I make a decision. It seems a little silly to go back through that act and say that there must have been some determinate factor that caused me to choose one way or the other. Maybe I just turned on a little randomizer in my head because I didn’t have a compelling reason to choose one or the other. (In this case, both the determinist and the freewiller add something to the sheer accounting of events.)

But when it comes to bigger questions, like how ought I live, I can change my preferences if I learn that my current set of preferences is leading me into unhappiness and pain. In many cases it’s not easy, and requires practice and self-discipline that takes a while to take effect. (See Aristotle’s theory of “habituation” for an account of this.)

For example: I want happiness, I also want meaningless sex all the time. At some point I perhaps discover that the meaningless sex is actually producing emotional pain that outweighs the physical pleasure. I have the thought: this feels good but I’m somehow unhappy even though I’m currently in a state of physical pleasure. A shocking thought, because I’d thought that pleasure = happiness. On the basis of this realization that physical pleasure is not the same thing as happiness, I recognize that the thing I really want (that we all want) isn’t satisfied by the thing I thought would satisfy it. This is the first step on a path towards achieving the top want, but it doesn’t determine what will achieve it. It just tells me that indulging this particular impulse isn’t doing the job. (Perhaps a life of study and occasional meaningless sex will do the job. Perhaps labor organizing and serial monogamy. Perhaps celibacy and becoming a sous chef…)

God I’m long winded: in any case, it’s possible to tell a strictly causal story about the series of events I describe above, but the more “human” a story you tell – i.e. peopled with the feelings, thoughts, relationships, decisions, blind alleys, etc. that we all experience – the less plausible it sounds. The suspicion grows that the causal story leaves out something important.

36

I have just done my best to understand Einstein’s theory on the meaning of life and perhaps it relates to this discussion:

If as Einstein believes, actions have two properties…

  1. To fulfill a desire by an action or its consequences
  2. To prevent undesired consequences

Than it is quite possible that your dilemma between mint or butter pecan was quickly decided to limit the consequences of a faux pax or social blunder.

Personally I would not want to spend all day choosing so I would choose to choose quickly. The selection of your mint or butter pecan wasn’t completely at random less you would not have chosen it so quickly or dilly dallied forever.

Simply because one cannot recognize a particular desire does not mean it doesn’t exist. This in essence is man’s reason for religion, if man knew humans were perhaps unique for pondering the question of the meaning of life and they have evolved from religions of fear to religions of social feelings… (a good who consoles, loves through hardship, etc) perhaps they would be more open to their core reasons for belief.

And to Einstein, when a man ponders why humans uniquely assert there is a god, it is the attempt to affirm a desirable consequence or dissuade an unfavorable consequence. To think of a God whose responsible for humanity relevant to his actions is to suppose a God’s actions and desire’s arbitrarily match up with our desires to believe.

This is a paradox because man according to Einstein acts due to necessity via desires and the fear of particular desires, a God cannot punish him or her based on this law of causation. Much less, what are God’s reasons for action that all of a sudden much up to our actions for believing?

Thus determinism is ingrained in humans less their actions would be different from the premises above.

37

And I would very much like to add I agree with Einstein’s assertion relevant to all actions.

While pondering the merits of Ayn Rand’s theory of Selfishness… to which she secretly encourages psychological egoism but insteads claims to be a proponent for ethical egoism because the former is a paradox… I realized that man acts through his own desires.

According to psychological egoists… all desires are selfish strictly beause they come from man. This of course ignores the end of a particular action, if the end of an action is to help than a man will perhaps receive pleasure from such a thing. The desire “to help” cannot be a selfish desire if it’s own end. However, a man who does not associate this benevolence with salvation would either help because he expressed sympathy towards humanity… or he would help because it would be pleasing.

The man who helps because its pleasing will eventually cease helping when it is no longer pleasing… but the man who loves humanity will help regardless of pleasure… or perhaps if he viewed it as a duty… and the man who helps even when it stinks and ‘loves the unlovable’ is doing it for the egotistical endeavor of salvation.

Thus a man always acts according to desires… these desires could lead one to taking his own life… but perhaps it is determinism still… this due to the case that his desires relate back to himself… he does not have the freedom to ‘will’ anything he cannot physically do… and a man would not act on desires he did not desire… (unless he choose to do so to prove a point… in which he desired to desire to not desire something… and its still determinism)

38

I think this will perhaps clear einstein’s theory once more, I cannot edit my posts so if I want to write more you must bear with me:

I can see no reason to doubt this and I agree with yeslim, the quote he gave that Einstein used as consolance during hardships from Schopenhauer, “A man can do as he will, but not will as he will”.. is in line with our discussion.

Russell believed such a doctrine and this is grounds for why many reject God’s existence. I believe it was in his diary at the age of 19 that Russell refuted the doctrine of free will.

A man can do as he desires.. but not desire as he desires. Perhaps this is a faulty interpretation but I can in no way find a man who denies himself the will to choose… this man is denying his choice for a reason less he would not do such a thing.. and he is still acting according to his desires. Man cannot accidentally stop acting according to his desires as far I can see.

I think one particular support of determinism is Aristotle. For he believed that all men desire to be happy… to which Einstein viewed this end as only proper for swine. The ‘happiness’ Aristotle spoke of related to a Good life. Man can be “happy” via certain circumstances and it has nothing whatsoever to do with bodily pleasure.

For instance, a man can condone the pleasures of the body in an ascetic life and suffer in recluse… his desire to be ascetic gives him pleasure.. just as the man who puts much stock into his vain apperance and bodybuilds.. this man fufills the desire to be regimented in his nutrition and workouts… and he receives pleasure from such a thing.

It follows that a man always acts according to his desires.. and what a man ultimately deems as good and ‘worthy’ will be the ends that lead him to happiness… not base pursuits such as ‘meaningless sex’ or ‘great food’ or something of that sort.. if this was the case we’d all desire to go back into child hood and be fascinated with every simple thing.

Hooray for determinism!

39

“I only enjoy arguing against positions that I consider to have merit, and against people who defend them well. Otherwise its shooting fish in a barrel, or an interminable unpleasant fistfight with someone who refuses to engage with you and just wants to score points.”

Oops. I reread my post and thought that this bit might make yelimS think that I’m accusing him of the stuff in the second sentence. I’m not. I’m very much enjoying this exchange, for the reasons in the first sentence.

And pragmatic55, I’ll need a little time to read your posts and respond. But right now, dinner beckons.

40

Pragmatic55: I’ve read your posts now, here goes.

I want to be clear: For the purposes of this discussion I’m endorsing the claim that all our acts are motivated by desire. (I’m leaving the Kantian notion of a purely moral motivation out of it for now.) What I deny is that this leads directly to determinism. I’m using the Aristotelian claim that happiness is our ‘top want,’ because I like it a lot and I think we can all basically agree on it.

But “we all desire happiness” leads to determinism in only the very minimal sense that certain kinds of willing are impossible: namely, I cannot desire to be unhappy. But that leaves a very broad range of activities, objects and vocations to choose from. To say that there are some things that I cannot possibly do is not the same thing as saying that I don’t have the freedom to choose among all of those things that I can possibly do. And to say that I generally speaking will seek out things that bring me pleasure and avoid things that bring me pain is not the same thing as saying that there’s a calculator in my head tallying up the pleasure/pain quotient and driving me towards the option that comes up with the best ratio. (I resist the quantification of pleasure.)

The options are not determinism or acting arbitrarily. There’s a middle road: acting for reasons. These reasons generally speaking array themselves under one overarching but very broad desire: happiness. This is the psychological arena in which we operate. Of course the game has rules, and of course we can’t choose not to play, because we’re thrown into the arena at birth. (Suicide is decision by forfeit.) But given all this, we still choose how we want to play, what position, whether we’re going to be a power hitter or a finesse strategist, and whether to shoot for a job in the front office or the announcer’s booth after our fastball gets droopy.

-=-

BTW, If Einstein really complained that Aristotle’s ‘happiness’ (Eudaimonia) is fit for swine, I don’t think he understood him correctly. If you’re reading Annas on Aristotle, I’m sure you know this. For Aristotle, what is required for happiness is virtue, and a little bit of luck. (A virtuous person starving to death while being tortured by his enemies will deal with the injustice and pain better than an unvirtuous person will, but he’s certainly not happy.)

Aristotle presents two different images of the happy person, 1) a person integrated into the life of his city, actively involved in its good governance, and furthering its cultural life while surrounded by loyal friends who are doing the same, and striving with him in friendly competition, or 2) a philosopher devoted to the study of nature and metaphysics culminating in a true intellectual contemplation of the highest things. There’s still debate about whether he considered one or the other of these better. In any case, it’s a philosophy that sets the “happy” bar pretty high, and it’s ideal is definitely not animalistic.