According to Robert Sapolsky, human free will does not exist

[Jarhyn]

As it was you who brought up radical fatalism, you should explain how it relates to determinism as compatibilists define it to be.

I think everyone defines determinism in pretty much the same way. The problem is in how people define free will.

No, apparently not. Apparently some people really do define determinism not just as a sort of machine process for a machine universe, but as a reduction of that, to say that it is not just determined but pre-determined.

 

[DBT]

As it was you who brought up radical fatalism, you should explain how it relates to determinism as compatibilists define it to be.

I think everyone defines determinism in pretty much the same way. The problem is in how people define free will.

Exactly. Yet it becomes an issue.

 

[DBT]

As it was you who brought up radical fatalism, you should explain how it relates to determinism as compatibilists define it to be.

I think everyone defines determinism in pretty much the same way. The problem is in how people define free will.

No, apparently not. Apparently some people really do define determinism not just as a sort of machine process for a machine universe, but as a reduction of that, to say that it is not just determined but pre-determined.

I think that you defined determinism in much the same way as it is defined.

Jarhyn - ''A deterministic system is a system in which no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system.'' [post-975954]

 

[DBT]

As it was you who brought up radical fatalism, you should explain how it relates to determinism as compatibilists define it to be.

No, you keep discussing radical fatalism.

I was not the one to bring it up. It makes no difference to how compatibilists define determinism and free will, or how sound their argument for free will happens to be.

It fails for the given reasons.

And I have explained this a number of times: radical fatalism is the belief that the notion that "I didn't means that I couldn't", that determination equates to pre-determination, and so on: that you need to be "free of prior cause" to be free in some "true" sense.

And if antecedents determine how the system evolves......?

Determinism as compatibilists define it is that later states evolve from earlier ones, full stop. There is no assumption that some freedom from your own nature is necessary in that ridiculous sense.

Freedom from your own nature was never mentioned by me. Nor was radical fatalism until you invoked it for your own reasons.

I have always stipulated the debate is related to how compatibilists define free will in relation to how they themselves define determinism.

Then, you proceed to play word games, commit a modal fallacy, and then spout some shit about "cannot be otherwise" rather than "is not otherwise" and round and round we go.

We have explained this for years.

I'm not the one playing word games. I didn't invoke 'freedom from your own nature,' that was you.

I didn't invoke 'radical fatalism,' that was you.

I stick to the terms and conditions provided by compatibilists. I'm not sure why that is so upsetting.

 

[Jarhyn]

I was not the one to bring it up. It makes no difference to how compatibilists define determinism and free will, or how sound their argument for free will happens to be.

It fails for the given reasons

See, Bruce? And it always devolves to THIS where he starts making claims about fatalism rather than mathematical determinism and utterly failing to argue about anything compatininilists discuss, and then claims bullshit like this:

I stick to the terms and conditions provided by compatibilists. I'm not sure why that is so upsetting

This is why he needs to be disabused of the belief.

And if antecedents determine how the system evolves......?

Antecedents don't determine how the system evolved at least not in that way. The moment you are in determines the next, not the one before or even after.

You wait your turn and then in your turn you determine part of the future, not as you were, but as you are then.

 

[Jarhyn]

A deterministic system is a system in which no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system.

Which I have explained SO many times, there are TWO concepts of randomness going on here: undecidable but revealed information that does not correlate internally, necessarily, to any calculation obtainable from information within it; and "dice rolls are necessary to determine that landscape just in time".

These are to DISTINCT concepts of randomness and yet again this is something you confuse because you refuse to accept compatibilist definitions, language, and so on as meaningful or accurate, preferring to stick to your fallacious forms.

In one situation, we have a fixed landscape, and the "randomness" comes from the fact that we can only know it from observing it as we do, and as we observe it, for each of those normally undecidable other situations in math, such as when you happen to be on the top of the fun house ride and the ride is teetering at its equilibrium point, that math forces it to be stable in only one way due to the fact that the universe likely has no periodic symmetry and over time will always have some part that sticks out past equilibrium somewhere somehow; that angels cannot balance on the heads of pins because they MUST always fall in some direction eventually.

This is the sort of "randomness" where "something must happen, only one thing will happen there, and you will not be able to know until it does", and the other situation is where that "only" is turned to "many" and "may".

In the other situation we have not merely internally undecidable chaos, but also externally undecidable chaos, but when people do that, they are embracing the universe even then if their own free will and inviting by consent that this is how they make decisions; thus even these fine parts they internalize.

In truth, I'm not even sure that math really handles, in any respect, the second kind of randomness. We cannot with calculations and infinite time express that sense of "randomness", to the point that we might question whether it is a coherent view at all.

In some respects this is caused by the fact that physics works on "any configuration, no matter which you decide; it would work on configurations of the sort that could only be provided as an initial frame, or a frame that was created last Tuesday only with the vague appearance of being rewindable to Monday but not actually rewindable before Tuesday".

It also exposes a few different senses of the word "possible".

For instance, there is a "possible:renderable last Thursday in physics" sort of black hole that is "impossible:not actually rendered by the processes that occurred some 14bya".

This is because in order for a black hole to form, it has to form from something "at least so big", but forming from something at least that big makes a black hole that is significantly bigger than a minimum mass for coherence.

As a result, while a black hole already existing at that mass right at the beginning of the universal sequence would keep on existing, black holes didn't exist at our universe's beginning sequence at that mass, and couldn't form at that mass afterwards.

So while it is "possible under physics" it is not "possible under the nature of events that happened here".

Something does not even need to be possible in terms of ever being seen or seeable in the universe to be possible "under physics".

This is a function of physics, not of the field qualities where it happens to be operating and determining things.

 

[BSilvEsq]

For participant[ants in this thread.

Are you posting

1. Of your own free will?
2. Because you were destined to post here and had no choice?
3. A combination of 1 & 2?
4. I have no idea why I am posting?
5. Other, explain.

4

I do not know whether Free Will exists or is illusory.

I Free Will does exist, then I would be posting of my own Free Will (unless, of course, despite the existence of Free Will, I happen to be acting under some sort of compulsion that is consistent with the existence of Free Will, but of which I am unaware as I post). If Free Will does not exist, I plainly would not be posting of my own Free Will, as that would not be possible.

I do feel as if I am posting of my own Free Will. The fact that I feel that way, however, does not make it so. When I dream, I sometimes feel as though I am truly in the situation of which I dream. Perhaps I am, but I do not believe that to be the case. Either way, unless we live in a universe in which the way we feel equates to reality, the mere fact that I fee a certain way does not make it so.

Despite my feelings, I do not believe in Free Will, just as I do not believe in the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent God. I do not claim to have any proof that Free Will does not exist and more than I claim to have proof that an omniscient and omnipotent God does not exist.

Because humans lack the ability to discern the ultimate nature of the universe for many reasons about which I previously have written, the best we can do is have faith in a given paradigm that works for us unless and until it ceases to do so. Or, we can be agnostic such matters.

In the end, because we lack the ability to know whether we do or do not have Free Will, whether there is or is not an omniscient and omnipotent God, whether there is or is not an objective reality that exists independent of individual perception, whether we are awake or in a vivid dream state (as in the Matrix, for example), it serves little purpose in seeking to establish such ultimate truths and makes more sense to live our mundane lives as best we can and "as if" we have Free Will in an objectively real world in which we are awake (and, possibly, in which there is an omniscient and omnipotent God if that helps to talk a moral path). That is what I seemingly try to do, despite my faith in the fact that it is all a grand illusion.

Within Buddhism (which I respect as a philosophy, but do not practice as a religion), there is a doctrine known (in English) as "Dependent Origination" or "Dependent Arising." In Pali, which is the written language of Theravada Buddhist scripture, the doctrine is known as “Pattica-Samuppada” and/or “Pratītyasamutpāda.”

As explained by Thich Nhat Hahn, the doctrine is best described as "When this is, that is; This arising, that arises; When this is not, that is not; This ceasing, that ceases." Another Buddhist scholar, Peter Harvey, construes Pattica-Samuppada to teach: "That being, this comes to be; from the arising of that, this arises; that being absent, this is not; from the cessation of that, this ceases."

Pattica-Samuppada highlights the Buddhist notions that there is nothing that is permanent, nothing substantial, and no unique individual self in the nature of becoming and existence, because everything is an effect of a cause. Stated somewhat differently, there are no independent objects and/or independent subjects – only a fundamental emptiness in all phenomena and experiences.

Pattica-Samuppada is the root of the Buddhist notions of (i) anattā (Pali) or anātman (Sanskrit), which is commonly translated as No-Self, Not-Self, or Non-Self, and (ii) Suññatā (Pali) or Śūnyatā (Sanskrit), which is commonly translated as Emptiness or Nothingness. These notions are poetically addressed in the Heart Sutra, which includes the following prose:

So, in emptiness, there is no body, no feeling, no thought, no will, no consciousness.

There are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind.

There is no seeing, no hearing, no smelling, no tasting, no touching, no imagining.

There is nothing seen, nor heard, nor smelled, nor tasted, nor touched, nor imagined.

Less poetically, Peter Harvey explains: "We live under the illusion that terms such as 'I', self, mountain, tree, etc. denote permanent and stable things. The doctrine teaches this is not so." Harvey also teaches that there is no "first cause" and that Nibbāna (Pali) or Nirvana (Sanskrit) is infinite and timeless. As Harvey sees it, Pattica-Samuppada is an ontological principle that asserts that Nibbbana is all-encompassing and that nothing whatsoever is independent.

Consistent with the Harvey, Deepak Chopra has written:

Your real self is not a person. There is no such thing as a separate self. A person does not really exist. What we call a person is a transient behaviour of the total universe. When you get to the consciousness that is behind your thoughts, you are in touch with the same consciousness that is behind all intelligent activity in the whole universe. Enlightenment is where the individual transcends to the level of existence where the personal self becomes the universal self.

Personally, I very much appreciate and agree that acceptance of No-Self and Emptiness is the end of suffering – even if the acceptance, itself, is an illusion, as there can be no real vision within the blessing and curse of the illusion / delusion of human consciousness.

According to Buddhist scripture: “He who sees the Paṭiccasamuppāda sees the Dhamma; He who sees the Dhamma sees the Paṭiccasamuppāda.”

Namaste

 

[Jarhyn]

An interesting aspect of the discussion about free will is what I commonly and perhaps apocryphally call "the Tinkerbell effect".

The name comes from a scene in Peter Pan where Tinkerbell's life depends on whether people believe in her.

This effect describes what many might consider the "core" of serious occult "magic", and is another point of contention in the discussion of free will specifically, because it concerns things that people can, because of who they are, make selectively true or false.

This happens in some manner generally relating to self fulfilling prophecy: as Crowley described Rights magically ceasing to exist for someone at that person's very insistence they did not exist for someone else.

Other aspects of this include socially decided matters, like the belief that something is worth something generates trade value in a speculative economy, or even when the confidence in the belief you have drives your posture and so on to sell that belief to others, such that without the belief, the thing believed about would not be true.

Given that we learn to conform ourselves to our beliefs about ourselves, beliefs about ourselves combined with models of physics which align well enough to physics combine to create new realities about ourselves.

 

[Elixir]

“A person is a transient behavior of the total universe”

Ripples in a pond. What a great sentence.

 

[BSilvEsq]

I was not the one to bring it up. It makes no difference to how compatibilists define determinism and free will, or how sound their argument for free will happens to be.

It fails for the given reasons

See, Bruce? And it always devolves to THIS where he starts making claims about fatalism rather than mathematical determinism and utterly failing to argue about anything compatininilists discuss, and then claims bullshit like this:

I stick to the terms and conditions provided by compatibilists. I'm not sure why that is so upsetting

This is why he needs to be disabused of the belief.

And if antecedents determine how the system evolves......?

Antecedents don't determine how the system evolved at least not in that way. The moment you are in determines the next, not the one before or even after.

You wait your turn and then in your turn you determine part of the future, not as you were, but as you are then.

The post above disregard the fact that DBT has already concurred with my assessment that he is NOT making any claim about mathematical determinism or about the form of compatibilism to which you ascribe, and which you claim to be the form of compatibilism that is historically described by philosophers. As I wrote yesterday, both DBT and I admit that we are talking about a form of determinism you brand Radical Fatalism, and we also are talking about a form of Compatibilism that advocates that the existence of Libertarian Free Will is compatible with the form of Determinism you brand Radical Fatalism. Here is what I wrote, along with DBT's reply (with emphasis added to the reply):

you would simply acknowledge that the two of you are using these words in different senses

How have I not? I have literally told YOU, right I front of him, that when he says "determinism" he is NOT using the "compatibilist" definition, no matter how he says he is.

I am NOT the one who has a difficulty telling the difference, even insofar as I suggest a whole second set of words to attach to this distinct concept of "pre-determinism", and described the specific difference.

The problem is that he refuses. He absolutely refuses to acknowledge that the sense which I have described over a hundred times, and over a hundred times differentiated does not itself imply pre-determinism/Radical Fatalism.

I feel little obligation to tell him that the definition that compatibilists use for determinism does not comport to pre-determinism, when I have told him this so many times.

He needs to hear it from someone who isn't me.

Perfectly reliable causation does not imply radical fatalism.

I begin by stating that it really does not matter what words you are DBT have used. All that matters is what you meant by those words -- as many of the words being used have multiple meanings and even more connotations.

I think we are on the same page when we say that the word "Compatibilism" as used by DBT and me means a belief that what you call Radical Fatalism and Libertarian Free Will are compatible. I believe you have stated your concurrence with this view. [[I also know that Poop idly and illicitly says that even those diametrically opposite concepts can be harmonized, but I dismiss that assertion as emotional vomit.]]

I also think we are on the same page when we say that the word "Compatibilism" as used by you and some others on this board means a belief that Determinism (as you define it within science) and Free Will (also as you define it) are compatible. Accepting your definitions, I have no quarrel with your conclusion that Determinism and Free Will are not necessarily incompatible, and I believe that DBT agrees.

So, what we are left with is the question of whether DBT's factual belief that philosophers (as contrasted with scientists) use the word "Determinism" to mean (i) what you call Radical Fatalism, or (ii) a process in which the future is free to evolve in some ways that are not pre-determined. Based on my own studies of philosophy (which are no means exhaustive), I take philosophers to have described a paradigm called Determinism that has all the characteristics that you ascribe to Radical Fatalism. I believe the best evidence of that historical fact of what philosophers have meant by the word Determinism is articulated by Popper. As far as I can tell, it also seems to me that philosophers historically used the term "Compatibilism" to mean that the form of Determinism that you equate to Radical Fatalism is compatible with the notion of Libertarian Free Will. Perhaps, I am wrong about the use of these terms in history (i.e., before the advent of quantum theory). That is, however, my understanding of the way these terms have been used historically, and I believe that is what DBT is saying. I will, however, welcome DBT to say for himself whether he agrees or disagrees with my assessment.

I think that its a fair summary.

It seems to me that we are in violent agreement that you and DBT are defining key terms differently, and that you are both correct within the definitions you are using. You are speaking different languages that use the same words. DBT appears willing to accept your language for the sake of argument, and even agree that you are right in what you are saying within your language, but you seem to be insisting that DBT must abandon his language and adopt yours as the only language that is correct to use. That is not reasonable.

I accept your truth that you and many others on this board use the terms Determinism, Free Will and Compatibilism in the manner you define them. I disagree, however, that you are using the terms in the manner they have been used in the history of philosophy -- at least the history that predates the establishment of quantum theory, which is math and science and not philosophy. As best I can tell, philosophers historically have used these terms as DBT is using them. Again, however, we all agree that you are correct within your usage of the words, and I cannot understand why you are unable to acknowledge that the same is true of DBT within his stated usage of the words.

 

[bilby]

I think that you defined determinism in much the same way as it is defined.

This sentence is either a rank tautology, or (more worryingly) suggests that there is a single "correct" way in which determinism IS defined, and against which we could test any proposed alternative definition for "correctness".

Might I suggest that what you meant to say was:

I think that you defined determinism in much the same way as it is defined by me.

 

[pood]

“A person is a transient behavior of the total universe”

Ripples in a pond. What a great sentence.

Schopenhauer characterized how lives are waves in the ocean of will that recede after a time, but the ocean of will produces more waves or ripples, or lives.

 

[Jarhyn]

Again, however, we all agree that you are correct within your usage of the words, and I cannot understand why you are unable to acknowledge that the same is true of DBT within his stated usage of the words.

Because his words are fallacious. It would be like asking anyone else doing any other sort of math to accept that someone else is correct under their own axioms when their axioms contain a claim of the truth of the axioms.

I will repeat that if you want to talk to compatibilists, the actual compatibilists that you are ever likely to encounter, the vast majority are "compatibilists" particularly because of how they parse modal language.

You came into this place and encountered a number of compatibilists, and not one of them is this silly thing you expect them to be.

Can you not imagine that this ubiquity of the difference of definitions might possibly stem from the fact that this, and not what you or libertarians imagine, defines the viewpoint?

When you speak of compatibilists, you have no less than THREE right here who all are roughly in the wheelhouse of "compatibilists because that other language doesn't actually make sense the way it's presented."

For the most part it is not merely that we think free will and responsibility are compatible with determinism, but rather that if the laws of physics and our structures as they were did not fix our futures based on the constraints these produce on the context around us, we could not actually be "responsible".

Moreover, this is the dominating view among compatibilists on Reddit and any other discussion platform I might look at.

You are sorely mistaken if you think that for some reason compatibilists have thought different, insofar as it's a very easy objection to the debate to find, and one I see regularly brought up.

If for some reason historical and ancient compatibilists somehow thought differently, some historical and ancient philosopher of some sort was right there arguing my version of compatibilism, most assuredly, because the menu is right there, the alternatives are right there, and the mechanism that is actually determining what one of those present options it's going to move towards is exactly that thing, even if that thing has weird statistical relationships going on.

Marvin Edwards, at least as long as he was active here, presented it in these terms.

And it at least seems that whenever we attempt to address how people are responsible and what they are responsible for, it is exactly these terms and not the ones of the historic philosophical "ivory tower" debate being referenced. In fact, one of my tests to see if my language was correctly reflecting the sense of free will as matters to most people in everyday situations was to see if it had "symmetry" with that sense of usage, and if I could use my framework to get answers that matched all the clear cases and the known corner cases.

The problem here is then to argue with us about whatever, if you wish to argue at all, you would have to argue against what the people seem to actually believe.

If we are in violent agreement that the compatinilist terminology as I have laid it out is sound and makes sense and supports free will as pertains the thing people actually care about (that they have the power to make decisions for their own reasons in their own time, or to change themselves) and the reality of autonomy despite prior causes, and we are not in agreement over whether YOUR terminology makes sense, there might be a good question to ask yourself: does your terminology actually make sense?

Every time, every single time compatibilism says you are responsible for something, it shows you what of your nature you can change to address it, or what of your nature you can ask someone else for help changing. It can present this alongside the list of things people turn a blind eye to the responsibilities of, too.

If that's not the goal of discussing free will, to understand responsibilities and freedoms and how these create statistical dependence of outcomes on structural realities, then what is?

The same language that tells me I'm a machine tells me what magic is and how to perform it, in all sorts of ways, too.

I want you to abandon this language that convinces people all too often that magic is either dead or easy, though, because this "magic" is hard, and people will either never try, or hurt themselves failing badly, from either of those other views.

I have met a large number of folks claiming to be compatibilists across my life and through my journey, I have met not a single one who believed that radical fatalism made sense. It's remarkable to me in fact how consistently they seem to form their views, in discovering and rejecting the modal fallacy.

 

[DBT]

I think that you defined determinism in much the same way as it is defined.

This sentence is either a rank tautology, or (more worryingly) suggests that there is a single "correct" way in which determinism IS defined, and against which we could test any proposed alternative definition for "correctness".

Might I suggest that what you meant to say was:

I think that you defined determinism in much the same way as it is defined by me.

All I meant was that Jarhyn gave a standard definition of determinism.

 

[DBT]

Again, however, we all agree that you are correct within your usage of the words, and I cannot understand why you are unable to acknowledge that the same is true of DBT within his stated usage of the words.

Because his words are fallacious. It would be like asking anyone else doing any other sort of math to accept that someone else is correct under their own axioms when their axioms contain a claim of the truth of the axioms.

I will repeat that if you want to talk to compatibilists, the actual compatibilists that you are ever likely to encounter, the vast majority are "compatibilists" particularly because of how they parse modal language.

You came into this place and encountered a number of compatibilists, and not one of them is this silly thing you expect them to be.

Can you not imagine that this ubiquity of the difference of definitions might possibly stem from the fact that this, and not what you or libertarians imagine, defines the viewpoint?

When you speak of compatibilists, you have no less than THREE right here who all are roughly in the wheelhouse of "compatibilists because that other language doesn't actually make sense the way it's presented."

For the most part it is not merely that we think free will and responsibility are compatible with determinism, but rather that if the laws of physics and our structures as they were did not fix our futures based on the constraints these produce on the context around us, we could not actually be "responsible".

Moreover, this is the dominating view among compatibilists on Reddit and any other discussion platform I might look at.

You are sorely mistaken if you think that for some reason compatibilists have thought different, insofar as it's a very easy objection to the debate to find, and one I see regularly brought up.

If for some reason historical and ancient compatibilists somehow thought differently, some historical and ancient philosopher of some sort was right there arguing my version of compatibilism, most assuredly, because the menu is right there, the alternatives are right there, and the mechanism that is actually determining what one of those present options it's going to move towards is exactly that thing, even if that thing has weird statistical relationships going on.

Marvin Edwards, at least as long as he was active here, presented it in these terms.

And it at least seems that whenever we attempt to address how people are responsible and what they are responsible for, it is exactly these terms and not the ones of the historic philosophical "ivory tower" debate being referenced. In fact, one of my tests to see if my language was correctly reflecting the sense of free will as matters to most people in everyday situations was to see if it had "symmetry" with that sense of usage, and if I could use my framework to get answers that matched all the clear cases and the known corner cases.

The problem here is then to argue with us about whatever, if you wish to argue at all, you would have to argue against what the people seem to actually believe.

If we are in violent agreement that the compatinilist terminology as I have laid it out is sound and makes sense and supports free will as pertains the thing people actually care about (that they have the power to make decisions for their own reasons in their own time, or to change themselves) and the reality of autonomy despite prior causes, and we are not in agreement over whether YOUR terminology makes sense, there might be a good question to ask yourself: does your terminology actually make sense?

Every time, every single time compatibilism says you are responsible for something, it shows you what of your nature you can change to address it, or what of your nature you can ask someone else for help changing. It can present this alongside the list of things people turn a blind eye to the responsibilities of, too.

If that's not the goal of discussing free will, to understand responsibilities and freedoms and how these create statistical dependence of outcomes on structural realities, then what is?

The same language that tells me I'm a machine tells me what magic is and how to perform it, in all sorts of ways, too.

I want you to abandon this language that convinces people all too often that magic is either dead or easy, though, because this "magic" is hard, and people will either never try, or hurt themselves failing badly, from either of those other views.

I have met a large number of folks claiming to be compatibilists across my life and through my journey, I have met not a single one who believed that radical fatalism made sense. It's remarkable to me in fact how consistently they seem to form their views, in discovering and rejecting the modal fallacy.

My words are fallacious?

That's a false accusation. Utter Crock in fact.

I simply refer to how compatibilists define determinism ( much the same as what you gave) and their definition of free in relation to their definition of determinism.

What you see as fallacious is your own interpretation of what is being said, where I say one thing, stipulating the terms, but the response I get has no apparent relationship to what I said.

Nor does compatibilism claim that you can act independently of the evolution of the system, or that you can alter its course of events through an act of will.

Will is subject to the very same process as anything that is a part of the system.

 

[BSilvEsq]

What you see as fallacious is your own interpretation of what is being said, where I say one thing, stipulating the terms, but the response I get has no apparent relationship to what I said.

Well, according to William James, that seems to sum up the compatibilist mindset perfectly.

It boggles my mind that folks here are unwilling to accept the logical fallacy of a belief that they, themselves, reject as fallacious. That may be taking compatibilism to a new level -- a fallacy is not a fallacy.

You came into this place and encountered a number of compatibilists, and not one of them is this silly thing you expect them to be.

At this point, I am prepared to say that the folks I encounter here who claim to be compatibilists are actually Free Will fanatics, who refuse to so much as consider the possibility that they lack a quality that is utterly unprovable. I could go into a mental institution and find many folks who have a shared understanding of language that is different than mine and people in history who developed the language and explained its meaning. Even if every single one of those folks had a shared meaning that is different from the meaning in the history books would not make their shared meaning consistent with the shared meaning outside the nut house. By saying that, I do not mean to suggest that the folks here are nuts. I am just using an extreme example to show the flaw in the logic that the fact that a handful of people on an internet chat board having a shared understanding of something means that their shared understanding is representative of the meaning of billions of other people outside that chat group.

I also don't expect any compatibilist (even as I understand the term to be defined in text books) to be a "silly thing." I do know, however, that they have a logically flawed belief. But that does not make them silly or even stupid. I have been accused (wrongly I contend) of engaging in a modal fallacy (based on the accusers' refusal to accept what I say and insistence on changing the meaning of the words used even after they have been defined -- as DBT notes). I doubt, however, that those saying I have engaged in fallacious reasoning equate that to my being silly or stupid -- especially when many great philosophers of the past have expressed the same view that I express (whether or not it is logically sound).

I have tried to bring harmony to the different languages being spoken by the folks who claim to be compatibilists based on their explained meaning of the words they use to formulate and substantiate their view and other folks who deride compatibilists based on a clearly stated different meaning of the same words. One would think that rational actors would be content to recognize the difference in what they are saying using the same words that have different meanings, and call it a day. Yet, is a Trumpian way, some folks seem to insist that their language is the only language that can possibly make sense and refuse to acknowledge the validity of what is being said in another language after it has been painstakingly translated for them.

At that point, efforts at discussion become meaningless and an utter waste of time.

 

[BSilvEsq]

As it was you who brought up radical fatalism, you should explain how it relates to determinism as compatibilists define it to be.

I think everyone defines determinism in pretty much the same way. The problem is in how people define free will.

It is quite apparent that there are no less than two very different versions of Determinism being discussed in this thread. Indeed, and as I have posted previously on this board, there are at least two different definitions at play of the terms determinism, free will, and compatibilism.

Unquestionably, DBT (among others) is employing the Laplacian meaning of determinism in which the future is perfectly knowable with perfect knowledge of the past and the present, and where it makes no difference if one says that a future act is determined, pre-determined, or fated, as they all mean the same thing -- i.e., the future is the inexorable consequence of the present and has but one path it can travel. This is also the definition that was plainly staked out by Popper -- who disagreed that the universe operates in that fashion, but unambiguously defined the term in the manner set forth in this paragraph.

Equally unquestionably, Jarhyn and Poop are employing a quantum physics influenced version of determinism in which cause and effect is significant but does not compel a certain future that is predetermined by past activity. That is not what philosophers have historically meant by determinism, but it a legitimate use of the term based on modern science.

Within physics, great minds debate which of these two paradigms is representative of reality (or, at least, more representative). Here, however, some people seem to be unable to get past accepting that there are two different paradigms to consider. Rather, they insist that the historical paradigm is non-sensical and, therefore, a fallacious use of language -- which is a misnomer, as language, itself, cannot be fallacious. Nor can a premise be fallacious. Yet, that seems to be the assertion of some folks on this board.

 

[BSilvEsq]

Again, however, we all agree that you are correct within your usage of the words, and I cannot understand why you are unable to acknowledge that the same is true of DBT within his stated usage of the words.

Because his words are fallacious. It would be like asking anyone else doing any other sort of math to accept that someone else is correct under their own axioms when their axioms contain a claim of the truth of the axioms.

To begin, words cannot be fallacious.

Beyond that, I don't know how many times is has to be said that neither DBT nor I are making any assertion of truth about Determinism as we define it. You claim that our defined term is the same as Radical Fatalism. We say, OK, call it that if you want. We don't care what you call it. For purposes of discussion, it is simply Proposition 1. You say that we insist that Proposition 1 is true. We say no such thing. We say, OK, let's assume it is factually false, but let's still consider the logical ramifications that would follow if it were true. You then say that is fallacious. But, a premise (especially one that is proffered solely to engage in a thought experiment) cannot be fallacious any more than a word can be fallacious.

I agree that the term Determinism, as DBT and I (and numerous philosophers in history) have used it could fairly be called Radical Fatalism (even though I don't know what the use of the term Radical does to add to the discussion). I also do not contend that the universe is, in fact, Radically Fatalistic -- though I do recognize the possibility that is the case. I also acknowledge that your use of the term Determinism is different from mine, and that your usage of the term absolutely precludes a fatalistically pre-determined future. As I have said before, we are in violent agreement.

The same is true of Free Will and Compatibilism -- we are using the terms in different ways, and with different meanings.

DBT and I concede that your logic, using your definitions, is impeccable. Determinism (as you define it) does not necessarily preclude the existence of Free Will (as you define it), and thereby logically validates the notion of Compatibilism (as you define it).

I submit that Determinism (as DBT and I define it -- and as you understand to be Radical Fatalism) necessarily precludes the existence of Free Will (as DBT and I define it -- i.e., Libertarian Free Will in which human cognition is not so constrained by antecedent activity as to be pre-determined) -- thereby rendering logically coherent Compatibilism (again, as we define it to mean a belief in our version of Determinism can be harmonized with the existence of our version of Free Will). It defies logic for you to disagree with the validity of that assertion.

If I were sufficiently adept at breaking down our respective views into symbolic logic, I am confident that it would show both views to be tautological -- which, by necessity, is a valid proposition.

As I have said before, the real question -- which neither DBT nor I are attempting to answer is whether the version of Determinism either of us has posited correlates to reality. Neither DBT nor I have asserted an answer to that question. You have -- apparently believing that you have some form of omniscient understanding of true nature of the universe that escapes mere mortals. Bully for you. Neither DBT nor I profess to have that sort of knowledge.

DBT and I also have said that the definition of Determinism, Free Will, and Compatibilism that we are using are based on historical philosophical texts, which is an empirical matter that is capable of being tested. To that end, I have provided a quote from an authoritative historical philosopher of science, along with an explanation by a philosopher who is widely credited as being one of the founders of psychology, which substantiate our historical assertion. I also have identified Laplace as another example. What do you provide in reply? Apparently, it is the fact that you and some others on this board have a different opinion, which you claim to be shared by innumerable unidentified other people in the world. But that is not an assertion of empirical evidence of prior usage of the terms. Rather, it is a coopting of the terms to fit your preferred meaning without regard to what the words have meant in the past.

Apparently, you are so wedded to your definition of seemingly sacred words that you are unable to countenance any other definition and unwilling to accept that others in the past have routinely used a different definition. That pretty much precludes a rationale dialogue.

 

[Jarhyn]

It boggles my mind that folks here are unwilling to accept the logical fallacy of a belief that they, themselves, reject as fallacious

We point out the logical fallacy that is shared between radical fatalism and libertarianism.

We do not accept that this invalidates the majority of useful and functional language used by either of them, it merely questions the axioms on which the two discuss what it is that they perceive.

People do have an experience. Somewhere inside them is a heuristic that says whether the behavior is being classified, at least by that heuristic, as internally or externally derived.

The biggest problem I see ends up being any such claim that the fixtures and language libertarians use around free will in application is sound, even if the argumentation and philosophical grounding they put under it is rotten and soft.

I might argue as much about Christianity as a religion: that atheists and believers in the original gospels of Jesus, between them, both among them have a representation of mostly correct views. As do Buddhists as do many others. But the devil is always in the details.

While most of these are mostly right about most of what their original writers wrote about, including even aspects of rebirth and reincarnation and some stuff vaguely shaped like the wheel of Dharma, much of it ends up being set on a completely rotten foundation of belief and religiosity free of academic frameworks.

The bigger question to always ask is "do these people believe the right things but for soft reasons that make them unable to reach certain useful conclusions?"

We as humans went through an intellectual phase that I assert still continues which what one of my philosophy professors ~20 years ago dominated by "masters of suspicion". Numerous scientific fields had been dominated by professors of nonsense. Geology in academia had everyone thinking land masses just went up and down like elevators rather than sliding around. Psychology had people thinking about liquids and humors and head bumps. Before Darwin's time people were often in heavy debate about where life came from.

Then along came these people, one after another, recommending whole new sets of language, and questioning whether we really understood any of it at all.

I would assert, especially for classic subjects such as free will, where such quizzical arguments break out as are never resolved, "we have the perception of having freedoms and responsibilities; but how can this be when the world evolves perfectly in each moment from an earlier state?"... That this might be one where new language is needed to replace the old.

We observe the motion of the planets the same way, but it makes more sense when we think that the earth is orbiting the sun.

And the answer is that perfect evolution from a state never invalidates the responsibilities because the responsibilities you detected were always momentary and relative and there regardless of what reference frame you pick, regardless of whether you observed them for yourself or not.

To begin, words cannot be fallacious.

This is a rather obtuse interpretation of what I said. Are you going to play games where you stand obtusely on language?

His words as formed are fallacious. This would be the interpretation of saying someone's "words are fallacious", specifically their use thereof, just as yours are, whenever you say "he lacks the ability to do otherwise". It's a syntax error.

That syntax error is exactly what leads me to assemble my logic rather than care in the least about the finer details of either radical fatalism or libertarianism's claims, especially the ones that rotate on their claimed source or lack thereof.

I submit that Determinism (as DBT and I define it -- and as you understand to be Radical Fatalism) necessarily precludes the existence of Free Will (as DBT and I define it -- i.e., Libertarian Free Will in which human cognition is not so constrained by antecedent activity as to be pre-determined)

And I maintain that in your very definition, you have a syntax error, and so your attempt to define anything at all failed.

 

[Elixir]

I disagree with the fatalist implication too.
The universe is big, we are small. The total determinist calculation for the entire universe would probably have to be bigger than the universe. We’re just agents, little focii of information so small that FAPP we might as well be operating in an unbounded universe featuring futures that bend to everyone’s will. The deterministic universe is so vastly complex that it easily accommodates subjective experiences that contradict objective observation. IOW, there is no real contradiction between deterministic and non-deterministic constructs of our understanding of the universe. The “two views” would eventually converge if our understanding was exponentially more vast.