I don’t see the apparent contradiction. Let me try to clarify a bit more:
I’m making a distinction between volition and “free will” because the latter has baggage.
e.g. “Could have chosen differently” is incoherent.
e.g. Many people actually believe that a loving God exists and free will is the reason why he is not culpable for any of the crap that goes down on earth. But that doesn’t make sense either. Reasoned, willful decisions cannot appear out of the blue but must be based on something. They must be based on our experiences and the way we’re wired.
And it is this latter thing that is not only what I think volition means, it’s the only coherent meaning I’ve even heard. Volition is where you take the various inputs: past experiences, kind of person you are etc and make a decision.
Because under determinism, choices don’t exist.
As a compatibilist, I do believe in free will, and choices, however. A choice would be a willful action.
They chose to be where they are. They chose a lack of freedom. If I want the freedom to run a marathon I don’t cut my legs off or do things which might. The law isn’t vague. If I cut my legs off I don’t get to run a marathon. If I murder someone I don’t get to run around having sex with the cheerleading squad and flying to Vegas. They chose. They chose poorly. NO rewind now right?
Oh but we can choose now to free them into society right? We can choose to punish society with thier presence. I choose not to thank you. I like my wife unraped and my children unmolested and things like that. And if you or anyone chooses to think that it is wrong to choose the welfare of innocents over the freedom of someone who chose so very very poorly to be a selfish prick and take away the freedom of society to live without fear of them then I choose to think that is nuts. Or maybe I don’t choose and it just is like a rewound tape.
I could choose to call you names but I would be segregated from this board by the admins. Are they wrong to do so? I don’t think so. It might ruin the place to allow it. Damn it I just gave up the freedom to call you names so I would have the freedom to post here. How about that?
“Compelled” by your own brain and decision-making process.
No; you cannot make the claim “X doesn’t exist” without even defining X.
Or, you could, but it is a statement that conveys as much information as banging a gong.
No; the vast majority did not. They chose to take a risk.
We choose to take a risk every time we cross a road (especially me right now: I’m living in Shanghai…), that’s not the same thing as choosing to be run over.
And they lost. They pay the consequences the same as getting run over because they chose to risk stepping in front of a car. Now we know what they are. They have revealed an amount of selfishness that rightly scares the living shit out of society and informs us that they cannot be free among us. Society has a right to not have to live in fear of them. They chose to risk revealing what they truely are. Sure they want to fuck babies to death or whatever but they risk losing their freedom to live among those who don’t think that should be a freedom. They chose that risk. It isn’t up to society to make fucking babies cool so they can do it. Society doesn’t want the freedom to fuck babies to death so it places limits on the freedom of those who do. It codifies it into law and makes no secret of it.
You did? Please point out the post where you did so.
I’ve said several times what I believe choice is: when a mind makes a decision based upon weighing up various factors.
The fact that there is a parallel account where we describe the mind in terms of neurochemistry is besides the point for this definition. The brain is neurochemical. It is also an information-processing device. At any given time we can favour one description over the other.
As for the distinction between this and a “compatibilistic universe”, I don’t think the question makes sense because compatibilism is a particular interpretation, or description, of reality. It is not an empirical claim about the universe.
I am going to keep pressing for how you define choice, because it is really the crucial point here.
I have never heard a coherent definition of choice that can’t exist in a Deterministic universe, but could exist in another kind of universe.
Well for certain definitions of Compatibilist I am happy to call myself that.
But it is less misleading for me to just explain my actual position: that “free will” as popularly conceived makes no sense, but that there is volition even within Determinism (indeed Determinism is necessary).
This all depends on how free will is defined. What do you consider to be the popular conception?
Why not? It’s subject to observation and experimentation, we’re just limited in what we can currently observe of the cognitive process underlying the making of choices.
Great. And for any straightforward definition of “willful”, such actions clearly exist.
Just now I wanted, I had a longing for, a biscuit. So I reached my hand out and grabbed one.
Unless you wish to say that willful for some reason explicitly forbids the same phenomenon also being describable using a reductionist account, we’re done.
Well that’s just it: the popular conception is incoherent, so I can’t define it any more than anyone else can.
But, broadly, it is a willful, reasoned action that nonetheless is not caused by past events or the agent’s own predilections.
Saying X and Y are compatible simply is not an empirical claim, not without further assertions.
An empirical claim would be “X exists”, or “Y does not exist”.
Wow, a shit ton of unsubstantiated conjecture and opinion and not one damn cite from any of you to back it up. Great Debates is becoming more and more Great Drunken Bar Arguments.
