You love me and you know it.

I do not believe in normative status as you understand it, and don't believe that anyone with even a modicum of education does either. I think this is obvious. Right and wrong do not exist outside of opinion if you are worried about normative status (which I am only interested in as an intellectual exercise of great import). That we have shared values states nothing about the universe, even though it makes the philosopher's job easier. (bottom up approach is horrible in determining Truth!!!)

Ethics and all the rest are human conceptions and nothing more. They do not and cannot exist as things-in-themselves. Moral law is opinion, even where everyone agrees.

Dude, I am not begging any questions at all. STOP it or I will smack the "begging the question" right off your face. Noting that the sky is appears blue, or that it is raining cannot (in any sense of the phrase) be "begging the question."

Otherwise, this is good. Obviously we disagree, and this is worthy of further discussion. Deliberation is a process, and not a thing. It is verb-ish, rather than noun-ish.

no the main concern is if it is true or not. when someone tells you there is a tsunami about to hit, you dont say "I dont think so because that would be bad for our city."

Yes, it would seem to be so... but perhaps is because we have framed it in such away that it becomes one - becomes a paradox, much like the envelope problem.



Well no shyt!

If compatibilism doesn't explain or provide grounds (in the normative sense) for moral responsibility, then that would threaten the theory, as most people think moral responsibility exists.

I find it interesting that the hard determinist will claim the burden of proof is on someone else prove free will exist, that the default position ought to be non belief in the same way as in atheism. But while the god/creator concept is at best a hypothesis without supporting evidence, even the determinists will admit every one of us seems to experience free will. To claim it is a global illusion seems to be the position requiring evidence, imo.

Not to be mean (but to be sort of mean), you're getting close to Billy Madison levels of "at no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought". If you don't want to read this thread to get a grasp on what the issues and positions are, you could read the SEP entries on this topic or consult this article. It's not about burden of proof, it has next to nothing to do with evidence, this is a debate in metaphysics (a priori). The proposition "every one of us seems to experience free will" imports a concept of free will which may not be coherent.

That makes more sense than what you first said. But i think you are hiding behind vagueness b/c you would have to define terms and get nitty to go down this road.

If you say so

If ever the LOL were more appropriate... someone who has little ability to resolve the problem better than the person he attempts to patronize decides to dodge the matter enirely by throwing out the scientific method in deference to "metaphysics." Has the rift between philosophy and science really grown this wide? Get a clue, the burden of proof is always relevent. These discussions hinge on it.

Come on, just keep it real. It's regrettable that there needed to be some extra zing in my last response, but you were given a handful of neutral responses to your first queries and you continued to be sort of dense and started to opine about irrelevant things. There's such a thing as philosophical burden of proof, but there's no burden of proof in this debate "to prove that free will exists" or doesn't as you stated. The debate is about analyzing the concept of free will and thinking about whether it's compatible with certain metaphysical precepts. Nearly all of the issues in this debate are clearly not empirical, so talking about science makes absolutely no sense.

Is not the entire goal of philosophy to discover truth? Is it not true that the scientific method is our best (only) means of observing and confirming this truth? Its great if everone understands we are arguing in a metaphysical realm in which we can only hope to apply empirical evidence in some future where science has caught up. But how is it "dense" to point out how closely this discussion mirrors some other paradoxical problems such as the two envelopes problem, or even the turtle-achillies paradox.

What do these have in common? Intelligent people look closely at an issue and are stumped when trying to explain the obvious. Comon, are you really telling me it's not obvious I can freely choose to pour myself a drink when I finish here? Are you being so arrogant to claim this can't simply be a paradox caused by framing the problem wrongly (or would that mean you had wasted too much of your life defending your position)?

No

I think you should read the article I linked and reprise your thoughts at a later time.

You're in the minority here, actually. Nearly no philosophers are relativists, and it's FAR from obvious that your view on ethics is correct.

But in either case, you've completely misinterpreted my point. My claim is that without genuine choice, there are no normative concepts (right, wrong, good, bad, beautiful, ugly). But here's what you didn't grasp: I don't even think there's the concept of a DECISION without genuine choice (in the sense I've explicated at length ITT). So you can't say of someone's decision: That was a bad choice, NOT because ethics is relative, but because it makes no sense to make any normative claim without genuine choice (viz. free will). This, I think, is where the hard determinist and libertarians agree on all counts.

It's the compatibilist who disagrees. The HD/Lib merely disagree over whether the determinist thesis is correct; compatibilists are a different story entirely.

This reminds me of a concern I have with the libertarian view, or at least versions of it summed up in this thread: How much of a VICTORY(!!!) is it for "genuine choice" and the "oughtness" and "normative force" it validates when libertarians (implicitly) acknowledge that "free will," if it exists, is very likely severely hemmed in, conditioned, informed, and interpenetrated by unconscious and external and unwilled factors and forces and causes?

Once sociology and psychology and neuroscience and physics have done their work, just how big of a sphere would even an optimistic libertarian claim for "free will" and its autonomous operations?

Below a certain size, if you will, such a sphere would strike me as feeble grounds for erecting libertarian versions of moral responsibility and praising/blaming guidelines.

Seems to me the libertarians have all but conceded the terrain, beyond holding on to vaporous claims like 'underdetermination!' and 'you can't prove free will's complete non-existence even if empirically you can show its operational reach to be infinitesimally minute!'

Check mate, my friends. Or have I fatally overlooked a devastating retort now descending upon me?

Wouldn't it be wiser to wait for them to actually "do their work" before declaring victory?

Edit: and please don't cite only the handful of timing studies which have only begun to shed light on our decision making processes.

This is wrong.

Libertarians don't deny that such factors heavily influence our choices and who we are. In fact, I think that freedom is manifested most clearly in our conscious choices when we fail to be rational. Often, when we instinctively make some sorts of decisions, we can easily approximate game-theoretically optimal decisions, but as soon as we try to consciously choose, we suck. It's ironic that our agency manifests itself in irrationality, but who said it had to be the way we "want" it to look?

Let's not beg the question, please. Physics/neuroscience isn't nearly as far along as you seem to think. Our understanding of the mind (rather than just the brain) is still pretty pathetic. Also, as others have indicated, this is a metaphysical question, not an empirical physical one.

Read the damned thread. I've repeatedly explained why a quantum indeterminacy route doesn't get the Libertarian what they want. I don't think that it's the right approach.

You've GROSSLY misrepresented your opponent. Nice straw man.

Again, the argument isn't so much over whether there is (or isn't) free will: the questions are 1) whether responsibility is compatible with determinism and, 2), are we responsible for our actions?

I think the answer to 2) is 'yes', but I can't give you an argument for it (no one can!). And I think that the answer to 1) is 'no', and I've given lots of arguments for that.

Is there free will? **** if I know...I don't think we can answer that question either a priori or a posteriori...which is why no credible philosopher is working on that question. We see these "neuroscientist proves free will can't exist" and just laugh while we throw the paper in the recycling bin.

That's all you got?

"NO!"

Uhhh...which part and why?

Obviously, this is a conceptual analysis issue but it is pretty silly to say that claims from psychology, neuroscience, etc. should have no bearing at all on how that analysis is done. It doesn't have to be a matter of "lolol neuroscience proves free will doesn't exist." But it's super weird to think that nothing that we learn about how the human mind actually works or what decision making looks like in the brain has anything to do with how we think of free will.

Don't you also think it's ironic to ground moral responsibility in irrationality? What's your take on the insanity defense?

I'm not grounding moral responsibility in irrationality: I'm saying that a salient manifestation of our freedom seems to lie in our ability to act irrationally. Most people think that it's in our rationality that we demonstrate freedom of will: I think that's wrong. We can be pretty darn rational, in SOME contexts, when we're not consciously trying to reason, but we become highly irrational when we consciously try to be rational. I find that interesting.

You'll find that you are also in the minority in being a libertarian. Not sure how that matters as the popularity of a line of thinking doesn't tell you much about whether it is correct. My ideas are a bit more popular with other groups of thinkers in academia.

If you are claiming that there are no absolute, stand-alone normative concepts, you are correct.

However, right and wrong, good and bad, beauty and ugliness exist as human concepts. Freedom is not required. One can be ugly because of a shovel to the face. One can be good because of decent parenting and a well-functioning frontal lobe.

The decision making process still exists though. Determinism is not at all the same thing as knowing what will happen next.

People do make normative claims. These involve things such as character and some maleable behaviors. "That guy is a jerk" is a sensible claim, "stealing is wrong" is a sensible normative claim, and "you should be kind to strangers" is a sensible normative exhortation. None of those require that the jerk, thief or samaritan have ultimate freedom, only that their behavior is generated through internal processes rather than externally coerced.

That their internal clockwork was not self-created doesn't preclude sensible judgement about their value. It is silly to tell me that I should place equal value on a clock that doesn't tell time correctly as one that does.

Where we are in 100% agreement is that (given hard determinism) placing ultimate blame on someone for being ugly, bad or wrong is silly.

I'm not sure whether we agree on the following statements that I find completely consistent with HD: Noting that they are ugly, bad or wrong is not disallowed at all. Making value judgements on their relative beauty, goodness or rightness is as fine as making the same judgement on vegetables that are fresh or rotten. Punishment or praise (in the psychological sense) is also reasonable under many circumstances.

Nah, we disagree over whether the free will thesis is correct.

My claim is that, if determinism is true, it's not a "DECISION." "Decision" implies that there are multiple possible outcomes, which is false under determinism. I've already explained this.

I've also argued that "good" "bad" and all normative concepts require choice and alternate possibilities (ie, the falsity of the determinist thesis).

Disagree all you want, but at least engage with my arguments.

I accept that hard determinism is a possibility, but even if I was certain of its existence I would disagree with the above. Concepts like right, wrong, good, bad, beautiful, ugly are only relevant as they relate to states of human brains. And so such concepts can exist without choice because they arise in human brains whether it be somewhat random or determinism.

And from an ethical standpoint, choices can be "bad" if they bring about less desirable brain states in the human population than "less wrong" or "good" choices. If I choose to shoot heroin tomorrow, this is clearly a sub-optimal choice in terms of the outcomes that are likely to follow (or certain to follow in the case of determinism) in terms of my brain state and the brain states of others.

Whether determinism is true or not, we know that free will doesn't exist. This doesn't mean our brains don't make choices. Our brains constantly make choices. But these choices are a part of a causal chain (with or without some dice being rolled). And the choices our brains make can be truly good or bad with respect to the way they affect brain states of ourselves and others.

If we had, recorded somehow, all the choices Hitler ever made after deliberative thought (the choices that would be considered freely-willed by free will proponents), we could certainly find plenty of choices that were "bad" with respect to to the amount of pain and suffering they would cause.

Those choices would have been bad in a deterministic universe or bad in a non-deterministic one. The only sense in which they aren't "bad" choices is from the standpoint of something other than human values (which relate to brain states) and that standpoint really has nothing to do with anything that could possibly matter to any of us.

So can a brain have any affect on itself? Does our brain have any control over it's actions, whether consciously or unconsciously?