On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 1:18 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > [Steve] >> you can demonstrate your agency with >> whatever example you want so long as it demonstrates that you can will >> yourself to believe something that you don't think is true.
Craig: > Of all the arguments against free will, this is the weakest. > Your self-contradictory criterion of free will is to "will yourself > to believe something that you don't think is true". Since no one > else thinks this is what's meant by 'free will', it is irrelevant > to that issue. > All that is required for free will is a case of deciding what to believe. Steve: Such cases abound, but what matters here is HOW someone decides what to believe. Is that belief compelled or is it freely chosen? > [Steve] >> You have no choice but to believe what you deem to be better justified Craig: > Exactly. But "deeming to be better justified" can itself be making > a choice & so is an example of free will without any infinite regress. Steve: So this value judgment is made by a subject about an object rather than the value itself being primary and being that from which we derive notions of subjects and objects? That's fine if you want to go there, but I had we could base this discussion on the MOQ rather than SOM. In the MOQ, where a human being is a collection of inorganic, biological, social, and intellectual patterns with the capacity for dynamic change, there is no extra something possessed by man called free will which is neither a pattern of one of these types nor DQ. This is not to say that the MOQ doesn't have anything interesting to say about freedom. But it does not have a place for the traditional notion of free will as an extra added ingredient that humans have and animals don't. What humans have and animals don't are social and intellectual patterns. Ok, anyway, so this "deeming to be better justified." How is it different from being compelled by your pre-existing habits of mind and the evidence under consideration to believe one thing or another? If you can't believe just whatever you want but rather only that which appeals to your sensibilities based on the available evidence as probably true, and since you didn't choose these sensibilities or the evidence, then what sort of freedom is this? How is this different from the "freedom" to fall when pushed out of an airplane? > [Craig, previously] >>You could simply ask me to raise either my right or left arm & >> I would choose which to raise. > > [Steve] >> Or would you be compelled in some way? How could we ever tell the >> difference? How could that count as a demonstration that is relevant >> here? > > Now you're back on track. > We need to look at a range of cases: > 1) There's something on a high shelf that I want, so I raise my arm > to reach it. > 2) I see something coming toward me out of the corner of my eye & > raise my arm in protection. > 3) An electric charge is sent into my brain & my arm kicks up. > 4) Someone holds a knife at my throat, orders me to raise my arm & > I do so. > 5) A hypnotist plants a suggestion that I raise my arm when I > hear the word 'chicken'; I hear the word 'chicken' & I raise my arm. > I would characterize them thus: > 1) free will > 2) reflex (no free will) > 3) compulsion (no free will) > 4) free will & coercion > 5) compulsion (no free will) > In 1) I don't see any reason to think I'm "compelled in some way". > What way would that be? We can tell the difference between 1) vs. > 3) or 5). Steve: 1) may also be understood merely as the human capacity to imagine an alternative reality where you did not raise your arm. The difference between 1) and the "freedom" to fall out of an airplane when pushed is a matter of your ability to imagine a plausible reality where you did not fall but rather just hung there in the sky in much the same way as bricks don't. The difference is just that humans can do things like lift their arms, while bricks can't. It isn't a matter of force of a special human capacity called "will" but of lack of having arms and desires for things on high shelves. The question with regard to free will in 1) is what compels the arm to be raised? Is it your biological make-up, your social context and history and other contextual aspects of the situation such as the desire for whatever is on the high shelf (a desire which you didn't choose to desire any more than you can by force of will choose not to desire the things you desire) that is responsible, or an extra-added ingredient to all that called "free will"? Occam's Razor should lead you to believe that the the extra-added ingredient is unnecessary to explain what happened and provides no additional explanatory value for why you raised your arm. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
