I'm not saying that a just-so-story of how libertarian free will might have evolved proves it. But there are just-so-stories of how "simulated free will" might have evolved in a deterministic world. So if the libertarianism vs. determinism question is beyond empirical proof, determinism might still be the much more plausible explanation: if there is a bad just-so-story of how it might have evolved but no bad just-so-story of how libertarian free will might have evolved. It still doesn't settle the question, but it shifts the probability.

Give me some criteria to determine which between two theories in an empirically underdetermined situation is 'more likely.' Which probability are you speaking of (what interpretation)?

(Hint: this is an issue that's been a problem for philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians for at least a few hundred years)

Not that this is related to probability as a math concept, but Occam's razor goes back more than a few hundred years. (and it is just a heuristic, not a method of determining probability)

I suspect that it has been a problem since people started asking "why?" The other questions are all empirical.

if i stick a gun in your face and say "give me your wallet or i'll shoot", that is a very limited definition of free will.

To try and get the thread going again, if anyone expresses interest, I'd be willing to say some things about what I listed as item (B) above, according to my own views. These views on this issue are largely the result of study of Thomas Aquinas's views.

Yes, let's hear your take on item (B), which you described as "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."

It would help us connect you to earlier portions of this thread if you relate your views on (B) to either the matter of determinism or Strawson's account of the no-freedom argument.

With regards to punishment, which was briefly discussed earlier, I don't understand why you should not punish people for actions if determinism is true. Even if I grant that they are also in no way responsible. A lawn is not responsible for growing out of control with weeds and such but nobody afaik says we must not trim/maintain it because it is determined. Or say there is some electric plug that is a fire hazard, the plug is not responsible for fires because it has no free will but it is still a good idea to prevent these things. So just as unkempt lawns and fire hazards are unpleasant, the same is true of a violent sociopath.

The idea being that although they may not be responsible, one may remove them from the population to prevent them from doing it again.

Remember that, strictly speaking, if you do something you were going to do it anyway so your very question is somewhat meaningless.

Why is his question somewhat meaningless? It sounds to me like he's asking about punishing people for strictly pragmatic reasons. To use a quick example: I cheat on a test, am caught and given a zero, maybe made to feel shame, and I internalize the consequences and am very reluctant to ever cheat again. If on the other hand I'm caught and not punished, just casually told not to do it again, and left alone, then my future behavior and attitude with regards to cheating will conceivably look different.

It's meaningless because it presupposes that there's some choice; that is, that there's some ability "to do otherwise" which is meaningless in a deterministic system. ducy?

I don't really see why. Are you just saying that all actions and scenarios and hypotheticals and so-called consequences that occur in a deterministic universe are in some general and deep way meaningless?

Or are you more specifically saying that there's no meaningful distinction between two possible universes, one in which my cheating is pragmatically punished, thereby curbing any future cheating behavior, and one in which this doesn't happen?

What do you think?

Also, have you read the thread?

A brief summary of what is a complicated issue in St. Thomas's thought will be difficult, but I'll do what I can.

On the view of Thomas, "to will" is a generic term that can signify a number of distinct acts. For our purposes, two of these acts are very important to distinguish: intention and choice. Intention is the act by which one wills something as an end. A choice (or electio in his Latin terminology) is the act by which some means is preferred for the attainment of an intended end. (In this, Thomas is following the view of Aristotle, which is spelled out in the Nicomachean Ethics.) Thomas thus draws a distinction between intending an end and choosing the means through which the end is attained. The distinction between intention and choice thus depends upon the distinction between ends and means.

With regard to end and the intention of ends, St. Thomas asserts that happiness is the general end that human beings necessarily intend whenever we think of it, such that for the most part everything we will is for the sake of happiness. A human being is thus not free to reject happiness. This is a consequence, on his view, of another claim: that the general end of the human will itself is "the good in general." Whatever human beings will, we will because we think that it is good. We never will something simply as evil or for the sake of evil; if we will something that we know is evil, we do so because we think that it is nevertheless good here and now for us.

Human beings necessarily will happiness (at least whenever they think of it): that is, about the willing of happiness, there is no freedom. But of course "happiness" isn't the name of some specific object or act: it's the general name for the fulfillment that we are seeking in the attainment of good things. There is obviously tremendous disagreement among human beings about what happiness actually consists in. We agree that we want happiness, but we disagree about what it actually is. In essence, then, our practical reasoning is ultimately always reasoning about how we are going to attain happiness--the general fulfillment and satisfaction in good things. In general, we order our lives ultimately for the sake of happiness, with various means to happiness taking on the role of proximate ends.

If it is ever the case that we necessarily recognize that some means is necessarily constitutive of or instrumental for happiness, then St. Thomas says that we will necessarily will this means for the sake of happiness. But he denies that this is ever absolutely the case in normal human life: there is nothing absolutely necessary about the reasoning by which we conclude that this or that will conduce to our happiness. This is the foundation of his claim that the act of choice is free, along with the following claim: that the character of human intellectual life is such that we not only make judgments about things, but make judgments about our judgments (and judgments about our judgments about our judgments etc.) with no necessary end to the process of deliberation except when we proceed to make a choice.

A number of posters in this thread have taken for granted that human reasoning proceeds according to deterministic necessity, and then reasonably argued that it would follow that choices must also be necessary. Thomas would agree with the force of the argument but deny the antecedent: the absence of necessity in choices must be grounded in a lack of necessity in our practical reasoning.

There's much, much more to say, but I'll leave it at that for now.

Does plugging a leaking pipe presuppose that the pipe could have done otherwise? And if not, what is the difference?

I think you don't always do a great job of making your arguments, objections, or angles of approach explicit enough and clear to follow, especially in a massive thread that contains a lot of sub-issues. A bit of re-statement and re-contextualization on your part would actually be more efficient than this back and forth. But again, I get that we have lives outside this thread, so whatever ...

lol

punishment is a tool used to enforce power, nothing more or less.

If determinism is true, whether you were going to punish someone or not was already determined as well. If you punish someone, it's not as if you could *NOT* have punished him, and if you did not punish him, it's not as if you *COULD* have punished him. Pragmatism has nothing to do with it.

The question is meaningless because the script has already been written and everyone is just going through the motions.

Thanks Aaron...I was trying to imply that the answer was already really explicit ITT (and more than once).

You are sick with an illness. Either you are predetermined to die or predetermined to live due to this illness.

Should you go to a doctor?

Examining each outcome:

If you are predetermined to die tomorrow, you might as well not go to the doctor - he can't save you.

If you are going to live, you might as well not go to the doctor, since you are going to be fine.

Therefore it is always useless to go to a doctor, since you can extend the same argument for results of pain (Either you will continue to be in pain or you won't), sniffles, etc.

The basic error here is that this is absurd. The basic problems with "it doesn't matter" is that each event, in turn, causes future events.

At first, I felt sorry for him because he missed the point by so much. And then I was frustrated because his attitude so clearly demonstrated he was being stupid. So I pointed out the obvious because it was obvious that the obvious wasn't obvious to him.

My actions were determined, imo.

Edit: I can see that the obvious still isn't obvious...

There's no 'decision' either you'll go to the doctor (and you always were going to) or you won't (and you always weren't going to go).

What's so absurd?

There's no meaningful sense of choice in a determined universe. What's the absurdity? With the implications of determinism or your belief that the world must not be determined?

You have to be much more careful with your langauge and thinking: are you finding my statement absurd or do you find my statement logically consistent but you find the position absurd...or neither and you find both my statement and the position itself logically consistent but it just doesn't sit well with your intutions?

If determinism is true then a lot of the concepts we currently find meaningful lose their meaning: choice, decision, responsibility, etc. etc. IF determinism is true, then it doesn't mean that current events don't cause future events; but it does mean that future events couldn't have been avoided. There's no 'choice' to go to the doctor, or not, since only one option was only ever going to be "chosen." Whether you go to the doctor was determined well before you were even born.

Where's the absurdity?

Are you talking about me, or someone else? Whoever the object of your derision is, please spare us and this thread personal and provoking remarks of this nature. Can't you rise above expressing this kind of purely antagonizing reaction? Watch me not returning the favor.

I was asking durka to clarify his compressed and cryptic response to the 'punishment is pragmatic' claim because I believe there are a number of ways of reacting to it. Evidently you and he do not believe this -- which is fine -- and you at least have spelled out what you deem to be the sole and painfully obvious response to notions of punishment under determinism (namely, they are meaningless.) It puzzles me that anything substantial about this topic is so elementary and self-evident to you after hundreds of posts of vigorous two- or more-sided discussion, but let's move on.

As I've suggested in earlier posts, this entire issue of philosophizing about determinism leads us to a curious position vis-a-vis daily lived human reality. We, most of us, experience the world as though we individually play a partially controlling role in it, as though we can "do otherwise" at various decision points, and as though there are measurable consequences (physical, social, situational) whose origins we can trace back to specific human actions or policies.

On the other hand, as this thread has repeatedly belabored, the philosophical and/or empiricist (and/or anti-dualistic) articulation of determinism (modulo quantum indeterminacy) is a compelling, logically sound, well-premised business. So is the no-freedom pessimistic argument alongside it.

Adherents of libertarian free will in this thread, or some such alternate view, have not really been able to postulate a positive model of how such a thing can be, especially given the nature of causality and/or scientific physicalism. The most they have done is point to the impossibility of ultimately disproving their notion of free will (as ill-defined as it is) and of empirically verifying beyond all question the determinist thesis.

Where does that leave us? My suggestion was that even if, as you say, the philosophical account of determinism sees all of us as 'following a predetermined script and going through the motions,' we don't in reality have access to this script, or access to an experience of ourselves as non-willful, non-choosing, purely marionette-like things being dragged onward deterministically.

The very strong illusion that allows us to experience ourselves living the opposite scenario, of being willful, choosing, and self-directed beings -- an illusion which I am compelled to stipulate when I confront daily human experience with the results of philosophical thinking about freedom and determinism -- this illusion is apparently powerful enough that I can hang a number of provisional concepts on it.

One of these provisional concepts is punishment. It falls under a broader class of concepts, call them 'humanly effectual actions.' This class includes actions that we experience as originating from human will or policy, meaning in part that there is a 'we-could-have-done-otherwise' feel to them, and that we experience as having direct and measurable consequences.

So I am proposing that we can have our determinism or some no-freedom type metaphysics, or lean strongly in that direction -- until a superior philosophical counter-position is developed -- but we can also pragmatically retain a lot of illusory concepts, some of which we might modify or tweak away from transcendental grounding, for the purposes of day-to-day life.

I agree with this statement completely, except for the loss of meaning of "choice," "decision" and at least one of the "etc."

I agree that ultimate responsibility is impossible with hard determinism. I don't see losing a philosophical construction (ultimate responsibility) as much of a loss. As evidence, I submit me. I don't believe in it (obviously), and get by pretty well in life. Lucky me.

It is the idle argument (doctor dilemna) that I used to show the consequences of your line of thinking about determinism that is absurd.

I agree that future events cannot be avoided.

I do not agree that this equals the same thing as "going through the motions" or that it has anything to do that would deny the existence or importance of a choice- or decision-making process (these processes are, of course, complex, but completely determined), consciousness, thought, etc. You seem to be trying to paint "will" (wants, needs and preferences) as the same as "free will." Since I cannot know the future, the processes of choice and decision making are very important. My abilities to imagine consequences, weigh benefits and to say "what if" all exist. That these lead (in combination of other factors) to my choice does not deny their existence or importance.

Chosing purely because of past events is still choosing. I ate a sandwich for lunch. There were definitely reasons why I did. I (because of who I am due to past events) chose ham. That I had definite reasons for choosing takes nothing away from the mental process at all. Free will (chosing, at least in part, for no reason) does not add anything, IMO, other than as a shorthand for my ability to imagine that I could have had turkey if things were different. And, if things were different, I could have had turkey. Perhaps I will have turkey tomorrow. Of course having ham today was a happy coincidence of a number of things, but I am a lucky man.

Had to pull this out of order to have at least some chance to answer in a coherent manner:
That the decision-making process, etc. absent freedom is unimportant is absurd. If you could somehow get rid of it (decision making, etc.), the world would definitely be different, therefore it is important as a determining factor.

Ugh... browser crash just wasted about 10 minutes of typing. So this time it's just going to be short.

I'm talking about you. It was instigated by the following:

I don't think you can claim the high road.

It's not puzzling at all. "Vigor" in a discussion does not imply that both sides have equal footing.

As for the rest, it's a lot of gibberish. If you accept that determinism is true, it makes much of your "philosophizing" pointless. Your desire to live in your illusion was forced on you. That you want to make a "broader class of concepts" and hold "provisional positions" is all the result of things that you can't control.

Indeed, one of the main reasons to reject determinism is that it doesn't correspond to the experience of life. I don't care how nice of a toy model universe it is, if it isn't accurately reflecting the universe, then it's of little value to me.

Metaphysics is one of the most difficult topics in philosophy...I think that people overestimate their ability to understand it.