Hey Dave, DMB said: Yes, Dennett is probably best described as a compatibilist. And I have been saying that freedom and constraint are both real so I agree with you and Dennett on that. But determinism and the causal chains that the idea rests upon would deny any freedom. I mean, causal relations are law-like and the determinist is a determinist precisely because he extends these causal relations into the realm of human action, into the realm of moral reasoning.
Matt: I don't want to debate what an ism really is. As far as I can tell, not many people have agreed on (nor consistently used) a particular definition of any isms in this dialogue. Nor do I think it matters all that much (i.e., we can be upset about conversational clarity, but I'm not going to be at the moment). So: "what is a determinist?" I'm pushing to the side. Where I want to intercede to clarify what I mean further is the idea that the concept of a "causal chain" denies freedom by being "law-like." What I want to say follows along the lines of what I said to Dan yesterday: Dan said: Value implies preference while causation implies certainty, and if we are looking at philosophy as predicated on every day life, nothing is certain. So to use a causal chain of events to explain that philosophy lacks the necessary grounding in what we are seeking to explain, doesn't it? Matt said: Oh. I guess I don't think causation implies certainty. You might say that in my set-up of how stuff works, I incorporate "the uncertainty of life" at a different level. A causal relationship itself doesn't imply certainty, because certainty only comes up for persons attempting to adjudicate questions of causality. "Hey Bob, did Sally cause Steve's death?" "Oh, yeah, I'm certain of it because I saw her do it!" The causal relationship itself doesn't establish certainty, but rather the certainty of a causal relationship is established by something else (e.g., observational evidence). Matt: The idea of a "causal chain," I want to say, does not--by itself--give you certainty (and because you need something else, say observational evidence, that's why it does not by itself imply it). In saying the relation is "law-like," I take that to mean that if P obtains, then if "if P, then Q" is true/obtains, then Q necessarily obtains. It's law-like, or mechanistic in that way. _However_, because I also take the status of "P obtains" and "'if P, then Q' is true/obtains" to be _challengable_ (another way of saying that this is where I place the _adjudication_ of certainty), the law-like nature of a causal relation does not seem to me to deny freedom. All a "causal relation" charts, as I define it, is _responsibility_. And responsibility is a necessary precondition of assigning moral responsibility (so it seems to me), so that's why I said the thing about causal chains being necessary for moral reasoning and also saw what Dennett was awkwardly saying by supposing that moral reasoning requires one to be a determinist (because, I take it, he can't mean what you mean by determinist). Let me also say, though I cannot provide the warrant for this, that I am not willy-nilly defining causality in this way to win an argument (particularly since I don't really take myself to be in an argument) or to just avoid the troubles of a free will debate. Based on a line of reasoning I've learned from mainly Robert Brandom, I think we can actually _do all the work_ we need from the notion of causality if we define it as simply charting responsibility. One's _predictive_ capabilities based on the concept of causal _laws_ is, I take it, a separate issue (that concept being derivative from the general notion of a causal relation). I also didn't use the idea of "determination" in the above. When you say that "Determinism is not compatible with moral responsibility precisely because of our actions are determined by causes," I want to avoid the entire issue embodied in that incompatibility by seeing if I can do without the notion of causes _determining_ our actions, while retaining the notion that our actions have antecedents. I think the skeletal notion of "causal relation" I've tried to articulate helps move in that direction. DMB said: Well, if the relation between events is described as "causal" then the effect is said to follow from the cause in a law-like way. If A causes B, then B is determined by A and B always follows A. In that sense, the phrase "causal responsibility" is contradictory because causality precludes responsibility. Matt: I don't quite see the contradiction here. If we agree that A caus_ed_ B (notice), then A was responsible for B coming about. This is retrospective. I've established the causal chain of how B happened. I'm not sure how I've mangled standard notions here. What I have not gone towards saying with this notion of "causal relation" is that it gives us ironclad abilities of prediction, such that I can now say that "A _will always cause_ B" (a notion of material implicature analogous to logical implicature). To move in that direction would require additional premises and philosophical commitments. I think most people agree that moving in this direction with rocks makes sense, though with human activity, much less so. DMB said: It's not a terrible word [i.e. causality] and I'm sure judges and lawyers use it all the time but in the context of this debate, where determinism rests on the notion of causality, it seems like morality and causality are diametrically opposed. Matt: I think what you are seeing with respect to Steve, Harris, Dennett or I in our various ways is that we agree substantively about morality--as far as I can tell (particularly after your bit about "efficient cause" and motives and intentions) the only thing disagreed on is the best rhetorical strategy for avoiding/defusing/concluding "this debate" of free will vs. determinism. For example, I issued a qualm about Dennett's strategy. The strategy I've kind of deployed is to articulate a notion of causality that doesn't on its face reject freedom. The full-blown strategy would be to interrogate the notion of causality and what we need it for, pare it back to its bare bones before constructing more sophisticated notions that use the stripped-down notion of causality. That's how I see the relationship between a "causal relation" and a "causal law." We need to understand the former first and separately before we can conceptually get to the second. I apologize to everyone, but I'll be gone for two weeks, so don't be surprised when I'm unresponsive. Matt 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