Hi dmb,
dmb: > dmb foolishly tries to explain this yet again: Steve: Well, dude, you must enjoy it to some extent since you don't go after Ian, Horse, Arlo, and Dan when they make claims that are equivalent to many of the things you have doggedly gone after me for. dmb: > Like I said, James is using the terms "chance" and "indeterminism" to talk > about freedom. "Chance" is just another word for freedom. Steve: You do understand that this usage would not be contained in the dictionary? I am glad you are willing to try to understand James on his own terms to understand his idiosyncratic or temporal usages, but I wish you would be me open to the nuances of language use with regard to other philosophers including the amateurs on this forum. dmb: "Chance" is the thing that the determinists cannot admit. Steve: As we saw Ian agree, people who identify as determinists today commonly accept probabilistic events under "determinism." If you asked a physicist whether determinism or free will is true, he may say "determinism." If you ask the very same physicist whether determinism or indeterminism is true, he may very well say "indeterminism." If you can't see why that would be I'll be glad to explain. (It's a nuance of language use thing.) dmb: 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. Steve: I could very well be wrong about what James means by "chance," and I appreciate you bringing James scholars into the conversation. But perhaps you can be forgiving and understand why I might have interpreted James to mean chance when he uses the word "chance" and put this usage up against your "proper use of the terms" attacks. dmb: > 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: Again, in light of quantum mechanics, the idea of chance is no longer a stronghold of antipathy for determinists against free will. Even if "chance" simply means unpredictability rather than randomness, unpredictability is just our current lack of ability to make good predictions. How could that INability "provide" us with anything we want let alone something worth touting as freedom of will? > 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. Steve: I'm not arguing about whether James really wants chance. I am saying that chance (unpredictability) is not worth wanting even if James claims to want it as some sort of freedom. James's defense of free will doesn't seem to work to make "the will" the final cause of any act. We can always look for more causes to try to explain _why_ someone did what they did. If there really was no reason whatsoever for why someone did what they did, then it is just a meaningless event indistinguishable from randomness. If there are reasons, then we can point to those reasons as prior causes to the act of willing. Why should that ability to come up with reasons for actions be something to make James or anyone else depressed? How could developing that human power be opposed to human freedom? dmb: 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: Can you please explain in your own words in terms that, with hope, even I can under stand what James's two-stage model of free will is? I can't see how denying determinism in favor of indeterminism is at all helpful in making room for free will. Do you see his two-stage model of free will as related to Pirsig's formulation of freedom? > 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." Steve: So the choices actually ARE determined after all? Is this an issue of choices being determined by one thing that is good rather than another thing that is bad? Internal versus external determination? dmb: 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." Steve: Again, I can't see why saying that the will is part determined and part random can add up to a sort of freedom worth wanting. Why did he think he needed to first deny determinism to assert "determined choice by the will"? How are we to think this will determines choices? If it chooses on some basis, then we have somewhere deeper than the will to look for determining factors. If it chooses on no basis whatsoever, then all we have is meaningless opting that is indistinguishable from randomness. Best, Steve 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
