Steve said to dmb:
So when James says," make no mistake, indeterminism means chance!" what he
really means isn't randomness but "free will"???? ...If the options are
determinism versus indeterminism, indeterminism if true cannot support free
will since it is just chance.
dmb foolishly tries to explain this yet again:
Like I said, James is using the terms "chance" and "indeterminism" to talk
about freedom. "Chance" is just another word for freedom. "Chance" is the thing
that the determinists cannot admit. You think he is talking about merely random
events in the same way that post-quantum mechanics indeterminism does, and
that's exactly where you're wrong. You are objecting because you think that
James is trying to base his case for freedom and choice on mere randomness.
He's not - and neither am I. You are objecting to a claim that nobody made.
What William James ACTUALLY says is, "The stronghold of the determinist
argument is the antipathy to the idea of chance...This notion of alternative
possibility, this admission that any one of several things may come to pass is,
after all, only a roundabout name for CHANCE...What is meant by saying that my
CHOICE of which way to walk home after the lecture is ambiguous and matter of
chance?...It means that both Divinity Avenue and Oxford Street are called but
only one, and that one either one, shall be CHOSEN." (James, The Dilemma of
Determinism)
Steve said:
...If the options are determinism versus indeterminism, indeterminism if true
cannot support free will since it is just chance. You can call chance a sort of
freedom if you want, but chance isn't the sort of freedom anyone wants.
dmb says:
Again, that's just wrong. Chance is the sort of freedom that James wants
BECAUSE it precludes determinism. It is James who calls chance a sort of
freedom. Dude, I'm talking about the meaning of the evidence - James's essay -
that YOU brought to the table. As Bob Doyle puts it in the abstract of his
paper, "JAMESIAN FREE WILL, THE TWO-STAGE MODEL OF WILLIAM JAMES", "James was
the first to overcome the standard two-part argument against free will, i.e.,
that the will is either determined or random. James gave it elements of both,
to establish freedom but preserve responsibility. ..In view of James’s famous
decision to make his first act of freedom a choice to believe that his will is
free, it is most fitting to celebrate James’s priority in the free will debates
by naming the two-stage model – first chance, then choice -“Jamesian” free will.
Steve said:
We agree that determinism and indeterminism are generally defined in opposition
to one another. My point is that saying that indeterminism is true does nothing
support free will.
dmb says:
Your point is irrelevant to James's claims and because nobody said that freedom
can be predicated on randomness. James's indeterminism simply refutes the
assertion that everything is determined. It means, "There are undetermined
alternatives FOLLOWED by adequately determined choices." As all three sources
pointed out, this is James's "two-stage model for free will" and creativity
wherein "the first stage involves chance that generates alternative
possibilities" and "the second stage is an adequately determined choice by the
will. First chance, then choice. First 'free,' then 'will'." Doyle tells us
that "William James was in 1884 the first of a dozen philosophers and
scientists to propose such a two-stage model for free will" and that is how
"James was the first to overcome the standard two-part argument against free
will, i.e., that the will is either determined or random. James gave it
elements of both, to establish freedom but preserve responsibility." We show
that James was influenced by Darwin’s model of natural selection, as were most
recent thinkers with a two-stage model.In view of James’s famous decision to
make his first act of freedom a choice to believe that his will is free, it is
most fitting to celebrate James’s priority in the free will debates by naming
the two-stage model – first chance, then choice -“Jamesian” free will.
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