Complexity, clarity and lack of ultimate answers ITT.

Well, I hope I'm not coming off as a fanatic about it. I think there's a serious argument for it and I think I can make it, it just happens to be the only philosophical argument I can make so I try to get bang for my buck. If you think the argument is not conclusive, then you have no reason to revise your other theories.

I need a source on this, is this from Soteriological Home and Garden?

I don't mean to be dense, but what's bolded is what seems to be at the center of the disagreement or my confusion. Let me step back and give this (simplified) overview first.

If you are a libertarian, you think that a certain kind of radical freedom is required for moral responsibility. That kind of radical freedom is denied by compatibilists and pessimists. If you are a compatibilist, you think that a certain kind of freedom is required for moral responsibility too, but you think that kind of freedom is compatible with determinism. If you are a pessimist, you deny the possibility of moral responsibility period. Now, compatibilists fill out their concept of freedom in different ways (e.g. Frankfurt and higher order volition). Pessimists may concede that the compatibilists describe our attitudes correctly (that they ascribe intent and belief and second order volition correctly), but they will disagree that such descriptions identify features that are actually sufficient for moral responsibility.

So when you say one might justify punishment because the perpetrator intentionally acted unfairly and not because the perp was the first cause, you're really not distinguishing anything that the pessimist considers relevant. The pessimist predictably will say that the perpetrator has no morally relevant control over his intentions. That he acted unfairly was determined by factors outside his control, and the carousel goes round and round.

Now, maybe this is the point I have been missing. Is your point that the principle of fairness is not related to this carousel? That it's simply fair to treat people in the same way, and that's why non-consequentialist punishment can be just? I'm acquainted with the principle of fairness from phil of law I think; the problem of freeloaders? It wouldn't seem right though that you could justify otherwise unjust punishment just to be fair (and all punishment would be otherwise unjust if moral responsibility were impossible, ignoring consequentialist considerations).

All three are empirically underdetermined. It's the difference between metaphysics and science.

Metaphysics need not produce testable predictions...science does. The positivists (and the pragmatists before them) rejected metaphysics for this reason. Fortunately, Popper put the matter to rest and explained how they were undermining their own project by trying to draw the distinction between metaphysics/science the way they were.

Here you go.

So you think that it is not a priori false that extended substance can interact with non-extended substance?

How could it be?

There has been no rejection of such a claim but merely a motioning towards intuitions of such a position as absurd. Dualism is very much "out of style" but not because it's been refuted.

Here's where I'm going with this. Let's stick with the naive Descartes, the Descartes who gets taught in undergrad modern philosophy; the hyperbolic doubter who discovers clear and distinct certainty in the cogito, proves that God exists and is not a deceiver, distinguishes extended substance (body) from non-extended substance (mind), and then claims that the penial gland is where the two substances interact. Of course, this is far from the full story, (but who would ever expect you guys to teach us the serious stuff).

At this point, everybody laughs (including Princess Elizabeth) at the naive Descartes. How could an extended substance interact with a non-extended substance? Extended substances have surfaces; they come in contact with each other. There can be no point of contact between a substance with a surface and a substance without a surface, and therefore there can be no interaction. This seems like a pretty good a priori argument against (naive) substance dualism. I don't know if it's ultimately correct, but empirical underdetermination is not an issue here.

I think empirical underdetermination is similarly not an issue in the free will debate. The hard incompatibilist's argument against the libertarians is an a priori argument. It's an argument against the conceivability of a will that is radically free and non-random. My view is that saying something like "random is not the only kind of indeterminism" is a purely verbal gambit; it does not say anything about the mechanics or the metaphysics required to conceive how libertarian free will is possible.

That's NO argument against "naive" dualism. To say "how could that be the case?" and then laugh and point. That's not an argument. At most that looks a lot like the fallacy of ignorance.

Your claim that there's no logical space between indeterminate and random is similar: "I can't think of how that could work...therefore it can't." Not much of an argument. The only ever so slightly more sophisticated version would be "...and you can't tell me either...therefore it can't." Same fallacy, different words.

Props.

lol ok, I thought humbling you over and over again (repeatedly proving that you had no earthly clue about what pessimistic incompatibilism was and showing the pathetic depths you sank to to try and obfuscate your light-absorbing denseness) would have made it more likely that you'd approach my recent neutral and sincere comment by regulating your comically under-warranted narcissism (you struggle with subtlety, this means you are a loser) and psychotic delusions.

Right now on my screen I have open three summaries of what Descartes wrote about mind-body interaction (includes SEP) which I reviewed *before* I posted, to avoid mistakes. WHAT THE **** ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT when you say it's no argument? How many links will you require this time that all I've done was reconstruct a completely canonical objection to a certain (naive but standard undergrad) reading of Descartes' views on mind-body interaction? Do you know what the Princess Elizabeth allusion was?

Mods, quick question. I no longer think durka participates in good faith on this forum. Can I just make fun of him for being a massive twit for my and the community's amusement, or should I stop responding?

edit: had to add "massive" to "twit"

I am not a moderater here, but I believe that humor has worth, in and of itself.

As an relevant aside, it would be good if we could agree on rules of engagement (for the forum) and then have to live within these rules.

Just because people have said it doesn't make it an 'argument'. Just analyze it for ****'s sake!

What precisely is the criticism of dualism?

"How can non extended mind-stuff interact with extended body-stuff?! That's absurd!"

That's the criticism of dualism. Does that look like an argument to you?

From the IEP:

Do you see?!!?? "How is mind-body interaction possible?" THAT'S THE OBJECTION! It's a huge fallacy of ignorance! Where's the argument? Where's the demonstration that such a thing REALLY IS ABSURD?! No, it's just a big intuition pump.

Check out that section from the IEP because immediately following is basically the exact comment that I'm making: these are not really 'arguments' but questions that the dualist need not actually answer.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/dualism/#H7

Section 7c.

So perhaps you'd like to retract the 'massive twit' comment because what I've said is nothing new. But, perhaps you'd like to do a little better to give credit to someone who might know more about these things than you. Just because you read something on SEP doesn't mean you understand the implications or the intricacies of the arguments. News flash: famous philosophers commit fallacies! Famous philosophers can have bad arguments published. Whole groups of famous philosophers can be seduced by a bad argument.

Dualism has NOT been refuted: it's merely out of style.

To a degree. But perfect clarity is never necessary, nor is it sufficient. There is, I think, a point of diminishing returns in seeking greater clarity (especially with obscure subject matter).

If you haven't read Borges, now is a good time to start.

But no, what I mean is that interpretation of any statement is subjective to some degree.

Beside the point. You said (paraphrasing) that if a work of writing can be interpreted in more than one way, it is not clear and the writer hasn't done his or her job. But most of the classics have competing interpretations - even when one interpretation is "accepted," typically a number of academics disagree.

A common position in literature today is that the reader (not the author) constructs the meaning of a work. Some take it so far that they even claim author intent has no bearing on the accuracy or legitimacy of a particular interpretation (I don't go that far, in fact I'm pissed off at that whole faction, but it's still a common position).

Before it gets off track, more technical forms of writing are also open to multiple interpretations. Some people come away from Darwin's "The Origin of Species" with more misconceptions about evolution than they had before. Just look at how few people actually understand what "survival of the fittest" means. It's a beautiful phrase, I think, but I wish it had never been coined because essentially nobody "gets" it.

Or look at Nietzsche, the most verbally elegant philosopher I've ever read, at least. But he was frustrated even in his lifetime at how blatantly people misinterpreted him, and he's probably spinning in his grave now.

Look at the law of large numbers, and how it is sometimes used to defend the gambler's fallacy. No matter how clear it is, someone will find a way to misinterpret.

And all the way back on track with the thread, I'm writing in a special context of trying to create a concrete set of grounds for my position according to the terms of my opponents, to set the stage for their forthcoming (haha, not) formal refutation. The bulk of my posts here (the "chains" with durka and Aaron) are intended for that purpose and within that context, and only for that purpose and within that context. If you aren't reading with a mind to how my posts apply in that context, then you've misinterpreted before you have even started reading the damned posts!

If the best writers can't present works with single clear interpretations, then either this criterion is not a necessary condition for good writing or the best writers are still "not doing their jobs as writers."

If you want to talk specifics, then go to it, but for now you're making general statements that it is always (or at least, by default) the writer's fault when misinterpretation happens. I think the fact that even the very best writers are frequently misinterpreted is a strong counterexample against this general position.

Hegel was clear enough to impact the major philosophers of his day, and leave a mark on history. If you ask me, that makes him a good communicator. Even if the technical elements of his writing were lacking, he managed to communicate ideas that most people of his time were not even able to think up in the first place.

The waters get turbulent when the conceptual depth increases. Any author is going to seem either convoluted or coy in that territory. I'm willing to forgive almost anything if I can be navigated to a firm conclusion.

I doubt I'd agree with you about the common definitions. But the context here is an assault on my specific position. I need to do some commandeering of the definitions in order to express the concepts peculiar to my position, because there are no "common usages" that correspond to my way of looking at things. My choices (no pun intended) are to invent new terms, use hopelessly vague metaphors, or redefine. I've done the latter.

I think very few people are actually following the thread closely. Regardless, I think this is itself an over-generalization. I think the reasoning applies well in general, but not under the circumstances (particularly when I'm playing a purely defensive - and not an offensive or explanatory - role). When I'm actively explaining it to make it easier for people to understand, my style is obviously different. If you say that what I've written in those threads is bad writing, then I'll accept your opinion on that. I can definitely use some work.

But in a thread where I'm arguing with a special context, you have to take that special context into account in order to evaluate my arguments.