Looks like you’re saying the philosophical view, though true, has no practical implications. I have to ask: is this an example of what you earlier called “metaphysical bullshit?”
But there is a difference between A’s behavior and B’s behavior: there is a difference in the role played by their respective volition: A willed the action of pushing B into C; B did not will anything. And because of this difference, it makes sense to apply deterrent punishment to A and not to B.
Clearly neither has autonomy in the libertarian sense. But A’s action was volitional in a way that makes sense of deterrent punishment; not so for B.
Of course there is a practical element to it. There is always a pragmatic element to decisions as to how to divide up the world. Regarding mitochondria as part of the human cell, rather than regarding the human cell as two organisms living in symbiosis, is a practical decision. But a legitimate distinction is a distinction that embodies a genuine difference. My point is that even if you abandon libertarian free will, you have to recognize that there is still a genuine difference between volitional and non-volitional behavior. And so it makes sense to divide the world into A’s volitional action (for which he should be punished) and B’s non-volitional non-action (for which he shouldn’t be punished). That’s why I think compatibilism is still viable.
No. It’s perfectly physical.
And, to follow up, I don’t think that in order to behave as though there is a such thing as true autonomy, we have to behave as though there is libertarian autonomy. Compatibilist autonomy is autonomy enough.
I am going to regret this, but here goes. No, I don’t believe they are “sacrificing” at all–they ALL have options, just as in RL we all have choices. If 2 people CHOOSE to go to the bar, it’s most likely because they want to be togetherfor some unknown reason(to talk smack about the selfish louts who went to the game most likely). Even if they were into this martyrdom stuff, I firmly believe in letting people abide by the choices they make. IOW, get off the cross, we need the wood and we’ll see you after the game. (chances are I’d be one of the ones going to the bar–not out of some perverse call of duty, but because I prefer bars to ballgames–you see why these examples are completely meaningless in RL? There are too many variable to account for)
But it’s not irrelevant–we live in the real world, not some construct made by others in order to reinforce their worldview or values. I feel like these questions are a set up sometimes–supposedly what you answer reveals some moral construct of your own that is either judged worthy or not. Thing is, you could bring up another example which may seem similar in principle and get a completely different answer from the same person.
No, that’s your assumption. In RL and in my hypothetical, there is always someone willing to join the one outcast–human dynamics and group dynamics cannot be parsed like moves on a chess board. That is my point.
This is exactly what I was getting at. So, if I say that none should attend, I’m some kind of communist? Or if I say that there should be a fight to the death for that last ticket, I’m an Ayn Rand fan or something? It’s ridiculous–it’s a frigging ball game–who cares? You can see the game better AND get replays in the bar. Case closed. I don’t think you can extrapolate from the actions of a small group of people regarding a recreational venue the principles by which to govern a society–that is pure BS and why I can’t stand philosophy. YMMV.
No, it’s not–it’s mental masturbation. I can understand the appeal of discussing the train question (although even that one is too simplistic for me–and none of us know what we would do if faced with that choice) and I can see value in asking hypothetical questions and discussing ethics.
What I can’t put up with is the solemn gravitas, the intellectual snobbery I see inherent in philosophical discussions. The scoring of “points”, the attempts to make the discussion more meaningful than it is (comparing the baseball game choice to political ideology as you did above), the obscure and prosy verbiage used to describe the concepts, thereby ensuring that only those with patience and time to waste will commit to the discipline. If it had been up to me, I would have sealed Plato in that damned cave and been done with it all.
OK, so that was a bit of a rant. Sorry. 
I am mad about something else today and it shows. Didn’t mean to shit on anyone’s life dream here…
And the sad thing is I really enjoy talking about ideas -I just can’t do it using the “tools” of philosophy. They drive me mad. Ontological, teleological–gah, I’m starting to foam at the mouth again. Toodles!
Compatibilism makes an intuitively understandable and practical distinction, but I wouldn’t really call it free will. It’s just something we agree to treat as such for pragmatic reasons. It necessitates a qualification of the word “free” which refers to it only in a localized and contextualized way, not in an absolute or ultimately “true” way.
I think it’s kind of like how we tend to operate as though the ground is flat, even though we know it really isn’t. We could even call it “compatiblistic flat earth,” but that wouldn’t really mean that the earth is flat or that the illusion of a flat earth means that a flat earth is “compatible” with a round earth.
At the end of the day, “combatibilistic free will” is a contradiction in terms. It requires a redefinition of “free” that isn’t really free.
For the record, most Anglo-American philosophy in the last seventy years or so has aimed explicitly to avoid this kind of thing–and to my mind, has done a decent job of it.
Perhaps; but at this point I’m not sure what’s at stake any more. If we are going to recognize that there is a genuine difference in different types of behavior, and punish and reward one type of behavior and not the other, then who cares really if we call the one type of behavior free? We’re acting as though it is, and there is a respectable theoretical basis for our acting in this way. (As I said–it’s a distinction with a genuine difference.) Some philosophers have argued that there is an ordinary language basis for using the word “free” in a way that means “incompatible with compulsion” rather than “incompatible with determinism,” but like I said, it may not matter what you call it as long as you have the essential features of a practice of free will and moral responsibility.
I think the only real significance is theological.
I agree with you on that. For example, I don’t think the free will theodicy makes any sense at all on any but a libertarian conception of free will. But since I don’t believe in God anyhow, it’s all good for me.
Yeah, to atheists it’s just a mind exercise, like pondering solopsism.
Martin Gardner made this point somewhere in his writings.
I greatly appreciate the ability to opt out of any questions whose wording made me feel I could not answer without asking some clarifying questions first. (Or knowing more than was made available to me in the question as worded, at any rate). Most surveys do not do that.
Why can’t it?
Because it’s regressive. If you’re deciding what your will is going to be, then you need another will to decide it…and another will to decide that will…and another will to decide that will…ad infintum.
Understand that there is a distinction between the expression of a will – the active “choice,” and the will itself. You can decide to choose the vanilla over the chocolate, but you can’t decide to WANT the vanilla more without regressing into more and more meta-wills.
Not the bit of philosophy I has in nursing school–early 1980s. Not any discussions here (but then again, I don’t want people to “dumb down” their discussions here in the slightest).
I think I am too impatient these days for these idle musings and types of discussions. I have a full plate and not enough time to accomplish what needs to be done. Perhaps if I had more idle time, I would feel differently about the questions. If nothing else, taking the quiz clarified some things for me, so it’s all good.
Where and how did the word “your” sneak its way into this sentence?
We have not established whose will it is that is determining itself, if the will is indeed determining itself. We have not even established that the will meaningfully “belongs” to anyone or that “the individual person” exists at all in any meaningful way. (Hey don’t point the finger at me, YOU opted for determinism which pretty much does the same thing). Perhaps the individual person is just a locus that is defined by what it is not, much as this lampshade is defined by the faces. with the “negative” of the individual person being the sumtotal of prior events as well as the cultural and social milieu, yadda yadda. The question is, if that conventional, classic, yet flawed notion of “the self” is either to be discarded or at least deprived of its primary classical “self-quality”, the possession of free will, does it necessarily follow that free will therfore doesn’t exist anywhere else either? Or that no other sense of identity / self may exist as a more accurate locus for it?
It’s irrelevant whether the will “belongs” to anybody. The regressive problem still exists for calling a will autocratic. The definition of “self” is neither here nor there. The point is that it’s regressive for a will to will itself.
ETA the answer to your last question is that free will can’t exist anywhere.
How is “will” defined?
I understand that that’s your assertion, I am asserting that this is not just “a fact that is out there” as if it were compellingly obvious to anyone who bothers to look. It’s not my interpretation by any means.
Locating free will in a specific place, whether it be the individual person, the collectivity of chemical interactions that comprise my brain activity, the microprobablistic fluctuations that generate the behavioral patterns that we conceptualize as “subatomic particles” that comprise the atoms that comprise the molecules that comprise the chemicals, or, in the other direction, society entertaining long-wave notions as it ‘plays them out’ across the generations, reaching conclusions as it goes, or the spectacular occurrence variously called “Big Bang”, universe, or “everything that has ever been so far”… may be problematic.
But linear causality does not wipe out the notion of free will itself, at least not for me (and you have not demonstrated that it “simply does so”). On the one hand, reductionism is a bit of a logical fallacy when used like that: just as there really is a “me” in the sense that a person posting to this board as AHunter3 does indeed exist, as opposed to merely being an illusion of structure and caused by the interaction and interplay of the component atoms that comprise me — because the complete and utter truth of those atoms does not make the existence of my body an untruth — the ability to accurately describe any event as the result of prior events and circumstances does not mean that a different description, in which an event occurred because the participants in it made it happen, is wrong.
And should you to insist otherwise and try to get all regressive on my ass, I will kick the whole works into the largest context. The Big Bang is the only thing that has ever happened (all divisions thereof into separate events and distinct phenomena are made by our minds as convenient logical slices but they do not exist independently in spacetime), and since that is true neither it nor any separate events artificially divided off from it can be said to be attributable to prior causation.
I’m not saying it is not a useful way of viewing reality, merely that it is not sufficient reason to discard the notion of free will, which is another way of viewing reality with different but nevertheless valid explanatory power.