Steve said to dmb:
So when James says," make no mistake, indeterminism means chance!" what he
really means isn't randomness but "free will"???? I think that would
constitute "improper use." ...If the options are determinism versus
indeterminism, indeterminism if true cannot support free will since it is just
chance.
dmb says:
Again, you have totally mischaracterized James's essay AND you have totally
ignored the James scholars I've quoted on this topic, scholars who are NOT
relying on a single early essay which was written long before his pragmatism
and radical empiricism were developed. Look, I fully expect you to miss the
point no matter how many times I make it but AGAIN James's is using the terms
"chance" and "indeterminism" to talk about freedom. He is refusing to use the
word "freedom" because people like you have ruined that word with your confused
evasions. But that is what he's talking about. "Chance" is just another word
for freedom. He is absolutely NOT talking about merely random events, nor
quantum mechanics.
"I thus disclaim openly on the threshold all pretension to prove to you that
the FREEDOM of the WILL is true. The most I hope is to induce some of you to
follow my own example in assuming it TRUE, and acting as if it were TRUE. If it
be TRUE, it seems to me that this is involved in the STRICT LOGIC of the case.
Its truth ought not to be forced willy-nilly down our indifferent throats. It
ought to be freely espoused by men who can equally well turn their backs upon
it. In other words, our first act of FREEDOM, if we are FREE, ought in all
inward propriety to be to affirm that we are FREE. This should exclude, it
seems to me, from the freewill side of the question all hope of a coercive
demonstrations,-- a demonstration which I, for one, am perfectly contented to
go without." (James, The Dilemma of Determinism)
"...But there are two words which usually encumber these classical arguments,
and which we must immediately dispose of if we are to make any progress. One is
the eulogistic word FREEDOM, and the other is the opprobrious word CHANCE. The
word "chance" I wish to keep, but I wish to get rid of the word "freedom." Its
eulogistic associations have so far overshadowed all the rest of its meaning
that both parties claim the sole right to use it, and determinists today insist
that they alone are freedom's champions. Old-fashioned determinism was what we
may call hard determinism. It did not shrink from such words as fatality,
bondage of the will, necessitation, and the like. Nowadays, we have a soft
determinism which abhors harsh words, and, repudiating fatality, necessity, and
even predetermination, says that its real name is freedom; for FREEDOM is only
NECESSITY understood, and BONDAGE to the highest is identical with true
freedom. Even a writer as little used to making capital ou
t of soft words as Mr. Hodgson hesitates not to call himself a "free-will
determinist."
Now, all this is a QUAGMIRE OF EVASION under which the real issue of FACT has
been entirely SMOTHERED. Freedom in all these senses presents simply NO PROBLEM
at all. No matter what the soft determinist MEANS by it,--whether he means the
acting without external constraint; whether he means the acting rightly, or
whether he means the acquiescing in the law of the whole,--who cannot answer
him that sometimes we ARE FREE and sometimes we ARE NOT? But there is a
problem, an issue of FACT and not of words, an issue of the most momentous
importance, which is often decided without discussion in one sentence,--nay, in
one clause of a sentence,--by those very writers who spin out whole chapters in
their efforts to show what "true" freedom is; and that is the question of
DETERMINISM, about which we are to talk tonight.
Fortunately, NO AMBIGUITIES hang about this word [DETERMINISM] or about its
OPPOSITE, indeterminism. Both designate an outward way in which things may
happen, and their cold and mathematical sound has no sentimental associations
that can bribe our partiality either way in advance. Now, evidence of an
external kind to decide between determinism and indeterminism is, as I
intimated a while back, strictly impossible to find. Let us look at the
difference between them and see for ourselves. What does determinism profess?
It professes that those parts of the universe already laid down ABSOLUTELY
appoint and decree what the other parts shall be. The future has NO AMBIGUOUS
POSSIBILITIES bidden in its womb; the part we call the present is compatible
with only one totality. Any other future complement than the one FIXED FROM
ETERNITY is impossible. The whole is in each and every part, and WELDS IT with
the rest into an ABSOLUTE unity, an IRON BLOCK, in which there can be NO
EQUIVOCATION or shadow of turning.
Indeterminism, on the CONTRARY, says that the parts have a certain amount of
loose play on one another, so that the laying down of one of them does not
necessarily determine what the others shall be. It admits that POSSIBILITIES
may be in excess of actualities, and that things not yet revealed to our
knowledge may really in themselves be ambiguous. Of two alternative futures
which we conceive, both may now be really POSSIBLE; and the one becomes
impossible only at the very moment when the other excludes it by becoming real
itself. Indeterminism thus DENIES the world to be one unbending unit of fact.
It says there is a certain ultimate pluralism in it; and, so saying, it
corroborates our ordinary unsophisticated view of things. To that view,
actualities seem to float in a wider sea of POSSIBILITIES from out of which
they are CHOSEN; and, SOMEWHERE, indeterminism says, such possibilities exist,
and form a part of truth.
Determinism, on the CONTRARY, says they exist NOWHERE, and that necessity on
the one hand and impossibility on the other are the sole categories of the
real. Possibilities that fail to get realized are, for determinism, PURE
ILLUSIONS: they never were possibilities at all. There is nothing inchoate, it
says, about this universe of ours, all that was or is or shall be actual in it
having been from eternity virtually there. The cloud of alternatives our minds
escort this mass of actuality withal is a cloud of SHEER DECEPTIONS, to which
"impossibilities" is the only name that rightfully belongs.
The issue, it will be seen, is a PERFECTLY SHARP one, which no eulogistic
terminology can smear over or wipe out. The TRUTH must lie with ONE side OR the
other, and its LYING WITH ONE SIDE MAKES THE OTHER FALSE."
dmb says:
Clearly, James is saying that determinism and indeterminism are unambiguous
terms and the are unambiguously opposed to each other. The former says there is
no possibility to choose because the universe is fixed for eternity and the
latter that's not true. James is saying that they can't both be true, that
taking one position entails a denial of the other. The difference is "perfectly
sharp", as sharp as the difference between "nowhere" and "somewhere". If you
disagree, then I think you're just a very bad reader. James is clear, precise
and beautifully convincing too. Peterson, on the other hand, is muddy, sloppy
and grossly distorting.
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