Steve, dmb, and All --
On Mon. 9/26/11 at 8:27 AM, "Steven Peterson" <[email protected]>
wrote:
Hi dmb,
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 determinist
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.
Indeterminism is just a sophisticated term for "whatever happens, happens,"
which, when you think about it, is really Fatalism. Compatilibilism, on the
other hand, is the idea that without a cause-and-effect universe your
freedom to choose would be meaningless.
I'm running a 2003 interview by Reason magazine's science editor with Daniel
Dennett on my Values Page this week. The interview was a promotion for the
atheist philosopher's book 'Freedom Evolves' which was published that year.
In it, Dennett defends his concept of Compatilibilism with these statements,
culled from the interview . . .
"To have freedom, you need the capacity to make reliable judgments about
what's going to happen next, so you can base your action on it. Imagine
that you've got to cross a field and there's lightning about. If it's
deterministic, then there's some hope of knowing when the lightning's going
to strike. You can get information in advance, and then you can time your
run. That's much better than having to rely on a completely random process.
If it's random, you're at the mercy of it.
"A more telling example is when people worry about genetic determinism,
which they completely don't understand. If the effect of our genes on our
likely history of disease were chaotic, let alone random, that would mean
that there'd be nothing we could do about it. Nothing. It would be like
Russian roulette. You would just sit and wait. But if there are reliable
patterns-if there's a degree of determinism-then we can take steps to
protect ourselves.
[In answer to the interviewer's question: "Would a deterministic world mean
that, say, the assassination of John F. Kennedy was going to happen ever
since the Big Bang?]
"Going to happen" is a very misleading phrase. Say somebody throws a
baseball at your head and you see it. That baseball was "going to" hit you
until you saw it and ducked, and then it didn't hit you, even though it was
"going to." In that sense of "going to," Kennedy's assassination was by no
means going to happen. There were no trajectories which guaranteed that it
was going to happen independently of what people might have done about it.
If he had overslept or if somebody else had done this or that, then it
wouldn't have happened the way it did. People confuse determinism with
fatalism. They're two completely different notions.
"Fatalism is the idea that something's going to happen no matter what you
do. Determinism is the idea that what you do depends. What happens depends
on what you do, what you do depends on what you know, what you know depends
on what you're caused to know, and so forth - but still, what you do
matters. There's a big difference between that and fatalism. Fatalism is
determinism with you left out."
Now, a question for you MoQers who reject the subjective Self:
Is Fatalism DQ's deterministic "movement to betterness" with you left out?
I suggest you consider your answer carefully. Thanks, folks.
In support of Individual Freedom,
Ham
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