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Determinism and Free Will (False Dichotemy)

WorldIsMine

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I propose that determinism and free will are false dichotomies. I present this from an essentially Aristotelian perspective.
1. All objects are defined by their properties.
2. All objects must behave in accordance with their properties, which is why those objects properties are properties. A thing which did not behave in accordance with a given property does not possess that property.
3. Human beings are objects capable of rationally analyzing and evaluating their world according to non-rational (given) properties.
4. All rational evaluation and decision making is both existing and deterministic. IE, you do exist, in perspective and decision making, but those decisions are deterministic according to your own evaluative procedures.
 
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The Nihilist

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I think the argument is essentially that we can rationally make decisions; that rational decisions are basically determined; and therefore, the argument is moot because we are in a position to make free choices that appear deterministic.

This seems to ignore the fact that people sometimes (usually) make irrational choices.
 
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Aerika

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Parents can heavily infleuence our lives which directly and indirectly effects our decisions. From our religion to the quality of education. As adults other outside influences like friends, employers, significant others, and college start to shape and reshape our beliefs, decisions, and life.


There aren't many Muslim Children in Christian homes and vice versa, in fact most children have an extremely difficult time leaving the religion of their parents. While some do, it typically is a long painful journey. In some cases, families have been known to alienate members of the family for leaving their religion.

Everything can, in principle, be explained, or that everything that is, has a sufficient reason for being and being as it is, and not otherwise

//plato dot stanford dot edu/entries/determinism-casual

I lean towards determinism or our environment heavily influences our decisions though we can "make irrational choices". A brief moment of free-will if you will. Although even those 'choices" may have a deterministic basis behind them.
 
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WorldIsMine

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I'm not convinced that you have a working definition of "property" sufficient to base a deduction upon.
I use the Aristotelean concept, wherein it is important to remember that within Neo-Aristotelean logic metaphysical facts of logic, consistency and existence are facts of reality, inherent to reality and not things separate or merely conceived of. An object which is red (by some measurement) has the property of redness in that sense. Red is something which belongs to the object. Now to take it to formal, axiomatic reasoning a property of is something belonging to a concept, and it is simply a feature or a thing that makes up that concept. To put it more classically, it is 'in the nature' of the object.

As a note, I am such a hard-core anti-Platonist it's kind of funny. People tend to be surprised when I launch a tirade against him if the subject is brought up. Wonderful, writer, though..

I think the argument is essentially that we can rationally make decisions; that rational decisions are basically determined; and therefore, the argument is moot because we are in a position to make free choices that appear deterministic.
This is not my argument. My argument is that, to use a standard model, your brain is a machine made of electrons and following certain processes which may not be predictable but are deterministic according to the way those things are made up. But your brain does in fact rely on a feedback mechanism of sensory, automatic as well as rational, conscious appraisal. That fact is what we experience and feel, and we do indeed make choices. To talk about 'free will' for making 'choices' outside of the reality of what decision making is (the physiology of our minds behaving in a systematic way and resulting in awareness) is to make a categorical error, like talking about the favourite song of nobody. The existence of our brains is what making choices is, and yes it is deterministic, but that does not make it not intentional or willfull. What we intended was inevitable, but it was rational and volitional.

This seems to ignore the fact that people sometimes (usually) make irrational choices.
No, they do not. No act can be irrational, nor can any desire be irrational, these are casual facts. 'Irrationality' can only occur within an idea, wherein our premises, arguments or conclusions are erroneous and thus not in accord with reason. As we do not perfectly and with infinite speed calculate things we are quite capable of holding an opinion that is 'without reason', but even if we adopt this opinion on consciously or unconsciously emotivistic anti-rational reasons our fundamental purpose of the decision is the belief that we will somehow be 'better' or avoid something we don't want to confront by making psychological or thoughtless commitments. Such behavior and choices may be inappropriate for achieving what we desire, but they are not irrational, anymore than a man is 'irrational' for making a mistake on what size of wrench to use.
 
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The Nihilist

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I think that when it is said that someone is acting irrationally (unless he is insane or sick), it is understood that he is following his passions rather than his reason. Otherwise, I'm inclined to agree with you. Not out of certainty, mind you, but because I can't think of a situation when someone is in her good sense that she doesn't behave in the way you describe.
I'm not 100% on this, but I think you've shifted your argument. Your original argument only makes reference to our ability to reason, and not to our cognitive mechanism for understanding and making decisions.
I think for better understanding, we must divide the brain into a couple of pieces. For this discussion, we've got the sensory part. This includes the senses and the part of the mind that interprets them, and breaks them down into facts. This is the part that tells me that the sky is blue or that there's a naked girl in my bed. This part is entirely determined.
The other part is the decision making part. This part determined what we should do about the information we have, whether we should plow that field or not. This decision making part may be determined and it may not. I happen to think it is, but your argument doesn't bear this out. You don't mention it in your first argument, and your second argument just kind of defines you into determinism. Your argument, I think, is invalid.

I don't know if you're familiar with Kant, but he makes what I think is actually not a bad argument in favor of free will, at least in the scheme of his metaphysics and epistemology. I know cantata is a fan, maybe she'll get in on this
 
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The Nihilist

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Excuse me, I seem to have misunderstood your initial argument. I had assumed you meant nonrational properties along the lines of the law of contradiction (being the aristotelian that you are), though I'm not convinced this has any great effect on my position.
I don't think that the way you describe our decision making part of our brain is in line with the way a proponent of free will would. Therefore, you've essentially defined yourself into your position, and your argument is invalid.
What you have to show is that our given properties entirely determine our decisions.
 
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cantata

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How are you defining free will, exactly? Definitions tend to include something like "The ability to do otherwise than one actually does." I don't see that your argument manages to conclude that this version of free will exists. What you seem to be saying is that decision-making is possible, despite the outcome being inevitable, but I'm not sure how the important part - the free will part - of decision-making can work without the potential to do otherwise than one does.

What is true is that we each have different evaluative measures which we put to use when making decisions. But that doesn't help free will along very much.

P.S. RP, I don't think Kant ever makes an argument for free will. He does sort of say it's the highest goal of humanity to be free, and he says we have to believe we are free if we're to get anywhere at all, but he never actually presents the argument that we must be (able to be) free. He more takes it as a given because he thinks that without freedom, life is pretty pointless.
 
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The Nihilist

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I'm going to be honest, it's been a long time since I've read any Kant. I think, though, that (maybe in response to Hume) Kant's position is that any act for almost any reason is determined, and that only by following the categorical imperative is this not the case. This is because nothing could lead you to follow the categorical imperative, and so doing so is necessarily a free act. Please do not ask me to cite my sources.
 
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Übermensch1

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The notion of 'free will' exists only in relation to its opposite, that is, the idea of the predetermined will. That one can postulate a situation in which the will would not be free already puts to the lie the concept that one's will is 'always' free, or that one is always 'responsible' for the choices that one is presumed to make.

However, the idea is quite a bit more irksome than that. If one has free will, then there must be an entity that chooses. Insofar as this requires a positing of an individual 'thing' as the axis about which the wheel of consciousness rotates, it can be existentially falsified through the disproving of this rationalistic subject. We would do well to rethink the basic assumptions of Western metaphysics if we want to rid ourselves of these mythological concepts.
 
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cantata

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Well, sort of, yes. He thinks that if you follow the categorical imperative, you are abiding by your will (which exists in the noumenal world, where free will is possible) rather than your desire (which exists in the phenomenal world, where determinism is inescapable).

The noumenal world is the world in which things are as they really are. We know for sure that there's no free will in the phenomenal world, because logic tells us so; and because we can't really know what the noumenal world is like, we can at least say that there's a chance that if free will exists at all, it exists there. So the only way you can possibly be free is to act in accordance with the part of yourself that lives there - that is, your will - and the only way to act according to your will as opposed to your desire is to follow the categorical imperative.

This in itself, however, is not an argument that free will actually exists.
 
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WorldIsMine

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Your original argument only makes reference to our ability to reason, and not to our cognitive mechanism for understanding and making decisions.
Conscious, intentional action by reason is the only meaningful definition of 'will'. My model is certainly deterministic (as any logical theory must implicitly assume). The notion of a 'free' will which is outside of the actual mechanism of will is nonsense. Of course, supernaturalism is popular on a Christian forum, but for myself I reject it as patently impossible and ridiculous to speak about.
 
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Maxwell511

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4. All rational evaluation and decision making is both existing and deterministic. IE, you do exist, in perspective and decision making, but those decisions are deterministic according to your own evaluative procedures.

You are assuming that the brain's evaluative procedures have no random component to them.

Neuroscience seems to suggest there is and it is completely logical to believe that it does. Evolution's answer to Buridan's ass.

Of course it cannot all be random. Essentially decisions such as what house to buy may be deterministic, however decisions such as where to sit on an empty train might not be. Of course that is just speculations on my part, all decisions being random is perfectly possible within current scientific knowledge, and that determinism comes in when the brain rationalizes the decision.

This is a study showing decision making to be unconscious: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision

Also just an interesting article on how the brain general works:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394-1,00.html

From it:

"ANOTHER STARTLING CONCLUSION FROM the science of consciousness is that the intuitive feeling we have that there's an executive "I" that sits in a control room of our brain, scanning the screens of the senses and pushing the buttons of the muscles, is an illusion. Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along."

This is basically where the randomness comes in. The unconscious brain doesn't make decisions like we think it does. Ideas compete and there becomes a potential random winner. The conscious brain rationalizes the decision, gives reasons why it was the eventual decision which probably have nothing to do with why the decision was made.

Random decision making doesn't suggest free will, but it does suggest not determinism.
 
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WorldIsMine

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You are assuming that the brain's evaluative procedures have no random component to them.
No, I don't. I am not talking about the way in which one arrives at one's various valuations and perceptions as to means-ends. The fact is that in action one is rational, and this rational, volitional action is one's will. There is nothing more to will than one's physical existence and perspective.
 
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Maxwell511

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No, I don't. I am not talking about the way in which one arrives at one's various valuations and perceptions as to means-ends.

Well then you are using the wrong word when you say determinism. If choices are random, they are not deterministic.

The fact is that in action one is rational

I think you missed the point of my post. People are rational I will agree, however it cannot be said for certain whether they are rational pre- or post-decision. Basically it cannot be said whether they act rationally or rationalise their actions after the fact.

So it is not necessarily true "that in action one is rational".
 
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