Sounds like you should call yourself an "Incompatibilist" rather than a libertarian. Like the compatibilist you take no position on the deterministic thesis. But unlike the compatibilist you assent to the incompatibility thesis.


PairTheBoard

God/Not-God is utterly underdetermined by the evidence. People who attempt to argue that atheism is more likely than theism haven't done a very good job up to this point. I would like to see their arguments ITT. Why is it more likely that there is no God than God?

Hard determinists are incompatibilists too, though.

I think that you are right that free will could be an illusion. But in order for me to accept something that goes against my experience I would need some form of evidence. I don't believe that such evidence has been presented.

And this is why it is NOT an empirical question. Any datum can be taken as evidence for either side...this is why it's an underdetermined issue. And this underdetermination is structural.

I know this is not the major issue ITT, but durkadurka likes to set people straight with somewhat nitty clarifications, so I take justification in that.

Atheism
1.the doctrine or belief that there is no god.
2.disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.
Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/atheism

Your argument only recognizes definition one, when the majority of atheists today identity with definition two.
The disbelief in a God until proven is clearly epistemologically warranted.

God could show himself to people on a great scale. I think we could live with it.

One sceptic and atheist one time said that he would start to believe in God if the decimals of Pi (3.14159...) at some point would become ...00000000000... infinitely (of course at some spot forward, when the super computers continue to calculate the decimals). This, he said, would be a compelling evidence for the existence of God for him.

I am honestly surprised by this. All throughout history people have made up stories to explain things. It's human nature to do so. And you think that it is equally likely that Yahweh exists and that Yahweh is another one of these made-up stories? There has to be something more going on here man I dont think you are being honest right now.

Why would disbelief in God be the default? Would disbelief that someone built my computer be the default until proven?

This depends. It depends on how you cache out belief. Normally, we do this in terms of your commitments (Brandom, for example; Grice is another; there are many). I think that there is a distinction to be made between belief and assent and a distinction to be made between not belieiving A and believing not-A.

The thing is that atheists are really the latter: they positively believe in not-A. If they don't believe in A, then that doesn't distinguish them from agnostics. So, you may just mean that a large group of atheists are improperly classified as such (they're really agnostics). However, I don't think that this was your point.

So, it should be the case that atheists are defined in believing in not-A and not as not believing A. Atheists take a positive position on there NOT existing God...they aren't identified as merely not believing that God exists.

Both of those are pieces of evidence that might compel you (or someone) to believe in God, but neither should exist necessarily if God exists.

So what necessarily should exist if God (and we are just talking here about the creator of the universe) exists?

And to ask again, what evidence exists that the universe is one big happy series of accidents?

This entirely depends on how you specify likelihood or probability. If it's epistemic, then yes they're equally likely in terms of support by "evidence" since you can't demonstrate that datum x even counts as evidence for one hypothesis rather than the other (this is why the underdetermination is structural).

If it's not epistemic but rather actual probability, then of course I don't consider it equal, but we have no idea how to determine what even approximate values would be for these hypotheses: we can't say that it's probability p with confidence interval c. (See above).

So, why do you think that you can determine that it is more likely that not-God than God?

But we can distinguish between things we should believe because of the evidence and things we should believe (or not) in the absence of evidence being applicable to the question.

Was the universe created billions of years ago or a few seconds ago and made to look like it is billions of years old? This is not an empirical question but does that mean that we should withhold judgement?

This argument points to agnosticism and not atheism.

Disbelief in anything until demonstrated should be the default, believing in everything you cannot disprove is going to make you believe in an awful lot of nonsense.
The problem when we are talking about God is that it is an undisprovable claim. There can be evidence in favor of it, but you can never go out and disprove the existence of a being residing in an open system, especially not an immaterial one.
If you really want to take the consequence of the method for gaining knowledge you advocate here, you now believe in every religion that has ever existed, no matter how incompatible.
You will have to believe in astrology, aura healing, psychic powers, pyramid healing as well as numerology and a ton of similar ideas.
You can simply reject all of these, but that leaves you just special pleading for your God.
I cannot disprove any of those claims, and I am fine with disbelieving until someone demonstrates I have a reason to believe.

I you want to find some of that evidence, take some time for really open minded biology and cosmological study.

Except that it's possible to formalize a system in which responsibility is compatible with determinism, and ergo rationally refute the position that responsibility and determinism are incompatible. Furthermore, most (formal and casual) explanations of responsibility evoke determinism.

But you're right about the other side, nobody has ever suggested any rational reason to believe in the incompatibility thesis. It comes from "intuition" (emotional sentiment).

So, why do you think that you can determine that it is more likely that not-unicorns than unicorns?

Could you please briefly formalize such a system? This is something that I have never understood how it can be possible either.

Start naming names and systems.

Actually, for the most part, discussions of responsibility try to avoid the free will question as much as possible.

Furthermore, the intuition that people can't be responsible in locally fatalistic cases is common even among compatibilists. If you're handcuffed to a chair, are you responsible for not being able to leave the room? If I take your hand and beyond your control punch someone, are you reponsible?

Except that fatalism was "prima facie true" in some ancient Greek cultures. In fact, the majority of ancient cultures have no reference to any kind of libertarian free will, you don't see that idea in cultures that don't have contact with Western culture in some form.

I can give plenty of examples of cultures which accept (as self-evident) premises that directly contradict the idea of free will. If everyone experiences free will, then how is that possible? And how is it possible that some people (such as myself) have never believed in or "experienced" free will even when indoctrinated into the idea?

People run around claiming that free will is "how we experience reality," but you know what? Nobody has yet presented one shred of evidence that this is the case, or even attempted to refute my fairly strong evidence that it isn't. Do you doubt that there were cultures where people believed that everything was fated and that human action resulted from the will of the gods? If not, then how do you explain whole societies in which nobody believes in free will, if it's so self-evident? Every culture has some word for consciousness, for awareness, words for numbers, words for logical concepts, every culture we know of invokes these ideas so you can get away with calling them "self-evident" if you like, I don't agree but they are universal. Free will, however, is something people only believe in when they're taught to believe in it. So you can't get away with this. You're just being arbitrary. "We" don't experience libertarianism in reality, you do. And across human history, you're probably in the minority. And frankly I doubt anybody actually "experiences" technical points relating to the incompatibility thesis in the first place, you're really stretching to suggest that your experience of free will somehow implies incompatibility. There's nothing in your experience that says "this cannot be a result of a series of causes."

Even durkadurka just said that the reason he accepts it is that he "doesn't understand how you can have responsibility without libertarian free will," which is called the "argument from incredulity." I think it's absurd that he actually thinks that has merit, but hey, he gets points for admitting it. Your belief that your actions can't be expressed as a result of prior events isn't part of your basic subjective experience, you probably had your experience of free will before you even had a concept of the incompatibility thesis.

Originally Posted by PairTheBoard
"Sounds like you should call yourself an "Incompatibilist" rather than a libertarian. Like the compatibilist you take no position on the deterministic thesis. But unlike the compatibilist you assent to the incompatibility thesis."



Not if "incompatibilist" is defined similiarly to "compatiblist". Soft Determinists deny the incompatibility thesis too. It's only by your technical definition of "compatibilist" that you can't say "Soft Determinists are compatibilists too". You should have a simliar technical definition for "Incompatiblist". Or at least some term to differentiate your position from a true Libertarian.

Evidently you take no actual position favoring the existence of Free Will/Responsibility. If you did then by implication of your denial of the incompatibilist thesis you would also be taking a position denying determinism.

In fact, as far as I can tell from your descriptions, none of the camps actually take a position favoring the existence of free will/responsibility. And only Hard Determinists take a position denying it.


PairTheBoard

Wat? Hard determinists accept the incompatibility thesis. Soft determinists and compatibilists deny it. Libertarians, soft determinists, and hard determinists take very clear positions on the existence of free will/responsibility. Compatibilists take a position on the nature of free/will responsibility but just don't take a position on the deterministic thesis.

Wat?

The way I see agnosticism described, is the belief that the knowledge of Gods existence is unknowable, which is completely different from atheism, which goes to belief.
Whether or not you think something can be ultimately known, you do know if you believe it.

I do not see why you can claim to know what atheists think. Asking for evidence is not necessarily the same as rejecting the claim; besides, is it not a general part of critical thinking, that the person making the claim should be able to demonstrate it?
If a person claims to have knowledge of something extraordinary, but refuses to show me, are you seriously suggesting I am not justified in rejecting it until they can produce evidence?

Is there any consensus among philosophers for this understanding. Because this view has been so pounded into the ground around here it almost amounts to a 2+2 heresy to hold it.

The distinction you're making is usually described as hard and soft, or strong and weak atheism here. I've made the charge that people here often describe themselves as soft atheists (agnostics to you) but argue from the viewpoint of hard atheism.


PairTheBoard