Quote:
Originally Posted by durkadurka33
There are broadly 4 positions on free will:
Hard Determinism
Soft Determinism
Compatibilism
Libertarianism . . . .
Semi-grunching: I read 2 pages, skimmed the 3rd and 4th after it became clear there (not surprisingly) hasn't been very much progress. If I missed something important, I trust someone will let me know.
durkadurka33, your accurate and informed first post represents precisely what I have always found maddening about contemporary analytic philosophy: the assumption that the best way to begin addressing any given question (regardless of how difficult or complex the question is) is just to lay out a supposed range of possible positions and then dive right into arguments for and against positions.
I know that a conversation you would have with other analytic philosophers would occur at a higher level and with greater clarity about the meaning of terms, but I take it that there's no fundamental difference between the way you have approached the issue here and how you would do so with a more informed set of interlocutors. (And I mean no offense to participants in the thread. Madnak in particular has been articulate and as clear about his position as the character of a forum-based conversation will allow.)
In my view, we can distinguish between conversation about (A) the general intuition that a person may or may not have that he is "free" (i.e., that in given circumstances he really could have chosen differently, that one's choices are not absolutely determined by anything not itself within one's ultimate control, or that while deliberating it's up to him to end his deliberations and settle on a choice, etc.), (B) the complex philosophical and psychological account of exactly what free choice is, what it is about the structure of intentional human acts that allows for freedom, etc., and (C) the philosophical question of whether moral responsibility is compatible with the denial of freedom.
As I read things here, it seems that madnak and Jib have focused on (A) and (C), with nods at (B) whenever they reached intractable disputes about whether people generally experience (A). durkadurka33 has set aside (A) as irrelevant and wanted to focus almost exclusively on (C). Aaron W. has asked for clarifications that would push the conversation in the direction of (B), but not much progress has occurred. Does this seem like a fair overview?
With regard to (A), madnak is absolutely correct that this general intuition of freedom has not been expressed in any obvious or articulate way by the vast majority of ancient cultures. Despite his suggestion earlier in the thread, however, this is not unique to the notion of freedom: "person," "self," "self-consciousness," "self-confidence," and "niceness" are all terms very familiar to us for which there are not any universally attested obvious correlates in ancient writings. There are those who have made exactly the same argument about "self" that madnak is making about "libertarian free will" here: that it's just a Western construct. Given that madnak's own definition of choice involves reference to oneself as the proximate (but determined) cause of chosen actions, I assume he wouldn't agree with such an argument about "self."
In any event, my response to madnak's argument about (A) is this: the vast majority of people, in the ancient world and today, live pre-philosophical (or non-philosophical) lives in which the language they use rarely expresses anything newly insightful about the human condition. I include myself to a certain degree in this: I study philosophy, but I know I'm not particularly original or insightful. One of the basic difference between pre-philosophical experience and philosophy is that philosophy tries to express the things most taken for granted by non-philosophers. That those with philosophically-disposed minds employ novel terms does not mean that they are inventing the notion from nothing. For this reason, the absence of historical usage of terms for "free will" doesn't necessarily mean very much about whether or not human beings are actually free or even whether the average person has some intuition about freedom.
As for (A) itself, I would agree that most people live their lives in such a way that they have no intuitive sense about the truth or falsity of determinism with regard to their own choices. People for the most part live unreflective lives in which they don't articulate for themselves anything about these sorts of difficult issues.
That being said, I think the average reasonably educated person in America is such that, in a conversation about these issues, they will have an intuition in favor of what has been articulated by durkadurka33 as libertarianism and against determinism and compatibilism. That is, I think most people will usually think that "the ability to do / have done otherwise" is necessary for moral responsibility. With durkadurka33, I share this intuition. EDIT: I'm aware of the limited character of my claim (today and in America) and I'm not presenting this as evidence by itself in favor of libertarian free will. Just making an observation.
Last edited by BTirish; 05-29-2010 at 12:34 PM.