GdB - 06 May 2011 10:32 PM

This is a thread about another topic, please do not smudge this thread with imagined fudges. Your version of ‘compatibilism’ I propose to call confusionism (not Confucianism). I won’t discuss with you in this thread, and surely not about this exact same point again and again. Start reading real books about these matters. If you think an academic study is not worth more than googling your way through the internet, then I possibly have nothing to say to you anymore, except maybe as a philosophy teacher.

This is condecending bullshit GdB.

Once you have no argument you suggest I read a book, utter tosh.

It’s simple and no reading will change the fact.

100% determinism is simply obviously necessitarianism.

We are interested in mutually exclusive possibilities, one of which does happen.

Now if one happens how could the other happen??

They can’t both happen,  so it has to be possible for the one that does happen to not happen and for the other to happen instead.

How GdB, How?

You’re just being ridiculous and covering up by saying go do some reading.

Look Kripke was not a determinist, he didn’t have to defend compatibilism.

Given the initial conditions we could not do otherwise

So how could we?

One answer, if they had been appropriately different we would have done.

how could they have been appropriately different?

One answer, indeterminism.

It’s that simple, you’ve become convinced of something simply illogical and probably will remain in denial for the rest of your life.

Fact is you are obviously wrong and I press because it’s important for people not to be fooled.

Stephen

stephen—my view is that “could haves” are conditional—meaning that, under different conditions, different things [“might” or “could”] follow.  So if i had cared more about something, i could’ve done better, or maybe if i’d cared less i could’ve done better.

does that help any?

Chris:  thanks for “getting” and acknowledgin what i was saying. 

I was especially noticing that you said we can mean different things by the word “cause.”  I wonder if you’d be interested in starting a thread specifically dedicated to that?  I’d be interested.  I often think i and others are arguing past eachother, not thinking about the same thing when we say that same word.

Doug: if you’re able and willing, it’s fine by me if you edit out just some posts from this thread and throw them in another.  I don’t want to ignore stephen, because i think he’s genuinely struggling with the same issues that many people struggle with.  I may have limited patience, but i don’t want his posts deleted, i just am getting leery of having them here… (although i’m ok with them here if you’re ok with them here… but not if it leads to the whole thread getting merged)

gdB:  how them “crisps”?  you British?

oh, and stephen:  thanks for the bit about tom clarke.

personally, i don’t think that disbelief in ‘magic’ freewill should have any effect at all on how lenient or punitive punishment should be.  There’s plenty of room to go to either extreme based on more mundane factors.

but some psychological theories of free will agency—particularly as they relate to activity while sleeping, while hallucinating, while losing one’s “sense of self”—are so sophisticated that… it’s just possible that the average juror might be better off with magical beliefs, just as the proponents of those beliefs suggest. 

I hope that isn’t the case, but it might be.

isaac - 07 May 2011 02:52 PM

stephen—my view is that “could haves” are conditional—meaning

Absolutely Issac, I accept the conditional meaning of could is the correct one.

I didn’t used to but do now and it’s something I’m sure of because we can check and see. When we think about what we could have done, we are thinking about slightly altered circumstances.

that, under different conditions, different things [“might” or “could”] follow.

Right.

Now, it’s absurd to think that anything possible could follow from impossible different conditions.

1)You can’t move from impossible to possible like this.

2) We can make true statements that follow from impossible different conditions but the problem is they are all true, all vacuously true.

3) In the case of causal claims we are always interested in contingent if’s in any case.

So how could the conditions have been different Isaac?

100% determinism rules out the possibility.

It’s interesting how the compatibilist “meme” is spreading with this mistake attached, though many compatibilists do bite the bullet and opt for one special indeterministic moment, the first moment.

And David Lewis opted for a “local miracle” in another possible world.

Or perhaps fudging could be actual a little is the way to go?

So if i had cared more about something, i could’ve done better, or maybe if i’d cared less i could’ve done better.

I can see it’s right Issac.

If I’d cared more there was nothing to prevent me from doing X, yep.

In other words, if I’d cared more I would have done X.

Stephen

isaac - 07 May 2011 03:17 PM

I don’t want to ignore stephen, because i think he’s genuinely struggling with the same issues that many people struggle with. 

Hi Isaac,

True, Stephen is genuinely struggling, and that is why I spent so much time on him in both long free will threads. But if he sticks in his intellectual stubbornness, even when learned philosophers here (Doug, faithlessgod and me) show him where he does not understand his conceptual knots, I cannot help it. But at some moment I have no patience anymore. And when I saw this sentence:

Compatibilism turns out to mean compatible with determinism with a little bit of indeterminism some place, some time in this world or at least in another possible world.

I really got upset. More than 50 of pages of explaining, and he still does not get it.

isaac - 07 May 2011 03:17 PM

gdB:  how them “crisps”?  you British?

No, worse, I am Dutch. But I live in Switzerland (even worse?). But no kidding, I love the ‘Celtic mountains’: I’ve been hiking through Wales, Scotland and Ireland several times, and then even lived one year in Galway, Ireland with my wife and (then) small kids. I loved the many variations of crisps. In the Netherlands and in Switzerland, usually the only variations were ‘natural’ and ‘paprika’. But since a few years the situation is improving: ‘salt and vinager’, ‘cheese and onion’, and also Mediterranean and far East tastes are sold now here.

PS Oh, by the way. Don’t ever think Stephen gives a correct representation of what I really think.

GdB - 07 May 2011 11:57 PM

True, Stephen is genuinely struggling, and that is why I spent so much time on him in both long free will threads. But if he sticks in his intellectual stubbornness, even when learned philosophers here (Doug, faithlessgod and me) show him where he does not understand his conceptual knots, I cannot help it.

1) You’re way too arrogant, calling yourself a learned philosopher.

2) Please stop suggesting Doug takes your view over possible worlds and how they could be actual.

You are an objective necessitarian, Doug is not, he believes in ontological possible worlds.

I really got upset. More than 50 of pages of explaining, and he still does not get it.

GdB, you really have not explained anything much and it’s clear after all this time that is because you do not understand what you are talking about.

To explain you’d need to answer:

1) What does could be actual mean?

2) Get influencing the future to make sense using your concept.

Stephen

Sigh… We better talk about crisps. Isaac made an interesting point there…

Ask Doug.

StephenLawrence - 08 May 2011 12:05 AM

1) You’re way too arrogant, calling yourself a learned philosopher.

Is it arrogant to say that I studied philosophy, 6 years long? That I have a degree (Drs. in Dutch, lic. phil. in Switzerland) in philosophy?

GdB - 08 May 2011 12:14 AM

StephenLawrence - 08 May 2011 12:05 AM

1) You’re way too arrogant, calling yourself a learned philosopher.

Is it arrogant to say that I studied philosophy, 6 years long? That I have a degree (Drs. in Dutch, lic. phil. in Switzerland) in philosophy?

No, just to say you are a learned philosopher GdB, that is arrogant and pretentious.

Edit: Oh and most importantly, irrelevant, let’s just stick to the arguments and definitions.

Stephen

GdB - 08 May 2011 12:09 AM

Ask Doug.

I did GdB, he takes the same view as I’m taking.

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/quotereply/101084/

Well, this becomes a matter of semantics on which you’re not going to find any converts except yourself. Determinism is the view that all of the events in the universe are determined by the laws of nature, except the initial condition, assuming that the world had a beginning.

Stephen

Stephen,

See my reaction here.

GdB - 08 May 2011 03:22 AM

Stephen,

See my reaction here.

I’ve seen it and for the record on this thread it is this

I did never deny that

As that is obviously equivalent to what I was saying, yes, you were denying that and have now chosen to lie, having seen it from someone you consider to be an authority and learned.

Stephen

StephenLawrence - 07 May 2011 11:26 PM

100% determinism rules out the possibility.

It’s interesting how the compatibilist “meme” is spreading with this mistake attached, though many compatibilists do bite the bullet and opt for one special indeterministic moment, the first moment.

Complete bollocks. Compatiblism is free will AND determinsim, by definition. No miniscule indeterminsim, none at all. There is no “meme” with a mistake attached, unless it is Stephen’s failed “meme” to spread his mistake.