Hi dmb,
> Steve said: > If we are [dropping the metaphysical baggage], then we don't have to worry > about whether choices or causes are what is really real. Explaining behavior > in terms of human will doesn't mean that causes are illusory when we don't > have an interest in the appearance-reality game. Causal explanations don't > make choices illusory. > > dmb says: > What's real is experience. Freedom and restraint are names for what's > actually experienced. Causality, as Hume famously pointed out, is not known > in experience. Steve: Once you start putting names on things to talk about "freedom and restraint" or causality, determinism, or free will or anything else, these are intellectual constructions used to talk about experience. If you start asserting that free will is real while determinism is merely illusion, you are playing the old Platonic appearance-reality game that a pragmatist ought not want to play since we want to drop all the metaphysical baggage. A pragmaticized version of free will is simply to say that we make choices, and a pragmaticized version of determinism is just "it depends." Then compatiblism is just the position that "choices depend." If you jump all over that claim with your usual claim that that means that we aren't really in control, you are trying to pull me back into an SOM appearance-reality conundrum about what in this picture is REALLY real--whether causality makes choice a mere illusion. That's a game we pragmatists aren't playing. dmb: The resistences felt in experience are the real thing and causality - not to mention substance- is a metaphysical posit that is supposed to explain that empirical fact. And it's not that causal explanations make our choices illusory. That idea works if you're talking about billiard balls or rocket science. The problem is using causality to deny human freedom, which is exactly what the causal determinists does. And it's no accident that both our favorite pragmatists - James, Dewey and Pirsig - all reject this idea because, pragmatically speaking, that is one of the worst ideas in the history of ideas. Steve: The SOM determinist proposes causality as what is REALLY real while human choice is illusory. Of course pragmatists reject that idea, but they also reject the notion that human free choice is what is REALLY real while causality is mere illusion and for the same reason. It isn't out of agreement or disagreement with either sentiment but is rather because they don't want to play the "what is REALLY real?" game. We pragmatists have stopped looking for that God's-Eye-View final say on reality. dmb: Morally speaking, it's a total disaster of an idea. It produces a hopeless nihilism. It's an idea so bad that James wanted to kill himself because he was afraid that it might be true. It's an idea that says morality and freedom are meaningless illusions that have nothing to do with the way things really are. If you think this "can be admired and appreciated on their own merits like paintings in a gallery," then you are the worst art critic of all time. dmb previously: If determinism is true, then we are simply wrong to regret the holocaust and all those pedophile priests and we have no basis on which to hold anyone accountable for anything. We also have no reason to praise or congratulate anyone for anything. That's enough to make any sane person put a shotgun in their mouth and pull the trigger. Steve: The sort of metaphysical anxiety and even hysteria you describe above is just not what any pragmatist ought to be capable of. How could someone who has stopped playing the appearance-reality game get all suicidal over the idea that perhaps the deep truth underneath it all is that "morality and freedom are meaningless illusions"? For one who does not reify freedom of the will as either the precious possession of nor the illusory belief of a Cartesian "I" and for one who doesn't see the unearthing of causal laws as the discovery of the language within which the universe itself demands to be spoken about--for one for whom intellectual description is not a matter of capturing the true essence of "THE WAY THINGS REALLY ARE"---how could the notion of determinism cause any anxiety? If you've completed the work of extricating yourself from SOM, how could you be this hysterical over determinism? It seems to me that either you say "mu" to the whole thing as predicated on SOM--a premise you are unwilling to accept--or you reformulate it in non-metaphysical terms as the hope of finding useful explanations for events in terms of dependence on other events. In those terms, how could increasing your power to predict and control your environment be any sort of threat to freedom? In fact, the more of _that_ sort of determinism we have, the more _freedom_ we have to influence outcomes according to our desires. 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
