Hi Ian, Ian: > For example Steve, > > You said here > 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. > > I however, can't see any other kind.
Steve: What I am asking is what is gained as freedom by saying that the will is part random? What is gained by positing that our will by its very nature is unpredictable even to ourselves? Why would you see that as a good thing? I can see freedom in increasing our power to predict so we can make better and more meaningful choices. Why would _unpredictablity_ be something in which to take comfort? Ian: > It would be nice (but scary) if I was omnipotent, but a pretty unrealistic > expectation - It would be equally depressing if chance determined > everything, despite my will. > > ie I'm not particularly agreeing with you and disagreeing with dmb, I simply > can't see the point of your (your as in you) disagreement. Steve: The point in this thread I think is to discuss James's essay on indeterminism. My point is that I don't think his argument gets us anywhere. Personally, if the terms free will and determinism are worth keeping at all, then I would think of them as compatible intellectual patterns. I explained my position to Jan Anders recently. Unfortunely. I get the impression that you'll read it and then say "yeah, but what is your POINT?" But here it is anyway... I see determinism and free will as terms that have strong association with theories about the way things really are and are attempts to distinguish certain experiences as either real or illusory. In the MOQ experience is reality, so we ought not be worried about such questions as do people REALLY make choices or do they only SEEM to? If we drop the appearance/reality metaphysical baggage from both free will and determinism, we are left with free will as the fact that we make choices and an entirely compatible notion of determinism which just says that everything "depends." We can always look deeper and deeper for more and more patterns of dependency between actions, but whatever we learn about such relationships between experiences is no threat to the fact that choices are made all the time. That's "compatiblism." It is not the idea that we have SOME free will but we are also SOMEWHAT controlled. Compatiblism says that free will and determinism are both true. It says that the serpent of causation is thus over everything. By this I mean that if you go looking for explanations in terms of causes, there is no necessary point at which we must stop and say "this is or that, say, 'the will,' is the _final_ cause"). But at the same time, though everything can be thought of as having a cause, "everything" is a collection of value choices. (Notice that I did _not_ say that everything only ever pought to be thought of in terms of causes. This is analogous to the Matt K pragmatic version of materialism as "everything _can_ have a material description," as opposed to the metaphysical version, "everything only ever ought to be described in material terms because those are the terms the universe demands we use to talk about it.") Choices are part of experience, and so are intellectual explanations for choices in terms of causation (understood in the MOQ as patterns of preferences). Explaining a choice is not to explain it away. It is still a choice even if we can give reasons for it. In fact, if we can't give reasons for our choices, or even go so far as to say that there _are_ no reasons for them--if _that_ is what we mean by free will--then those choices would be just random. That wouldn't be the sort of freedom that anyone would want anyway. 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
