Debate 7 Discussion: On the existence of free will: Philosophy Forums

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Debate 7 Discussion: On the existence of free will

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Debate 7 Discussion: On the existence of free will

Unisonus
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Posted 03/29/05 - 11:09 PM:	#11
Paul wrote: Being synthetic a priori, determinism necessarily has no application to the transcendental world. Even granting that Kant's idea of transcendental reality is anything other than an obscure mess - why does being an element of experience prohibit something from partaking in the "transcendental realm"? Surely, I'm not aware of any law of logic that makes this necessary, and I haven't seen Kant-fans come up with any reasons why this should be impossible or even unlikely (since that would require knowledge about noumena). Also, I tend to think the concepts "freedom" and "will" are both distinctly experiential. Positing a transcendental "free will" assumes too much about transcendental reality. Why "free will"? Why not "free wills." Hell, even the plural/singular distinction is experiential. As is the "causal/non-causal" distinction itself.
"...take care that your style and diction run musically, pleasantly, and plainly, with clear, proper, and well-placed words, setting forth your purpose to the best of your power, and putting your ideas intelligibly, without confusion or obscurity." - Miguel de Cervantes

Paul
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Posted 03/29/05 - 11:48 PM:	#12
Unisonus wrote: why does being an element of experience prohibit something from partaking in the "transcendental realm"? It doesn't prohibit it -- it makes it absurd for you to suggest such a thing. You walk up to a painting of some odd scene... does it then occour to you to ask, "But isn't it likely that the actual scene pictured is right behind the painting, and I'll see it when I move the canvas off to the side?" When you have been shown that all the things you've been drawing your ideas from provide no possible support for asserting something, only an idiot would continue to assert it on the basis that no one can prove it doesn't randomly happen to be the case anyway. The experience of the color yellow, for example, is a part of the empircal world. How do we know the trancendental 'cause' of it isn't itself the colored yellow? And how do we know that the transcendental reality of a food that tastes bitter isn't identical to the experience of a bitter taste? We don't, but it's fully justifiable for me to hit someone over the head and deposit them outside the door for suggesting it in a philosophical discussion. Even granting that Kant's idea of transcendental reality is anything other than an obscure mess Yeah, direct realism works so nicely... the reason I see red is because the thing consists of red, the reason it tastes bitter is because it consists of bitterness, et cetera. Very useful. Leaves you with a nice mind-brain problem too, though of course that's solved when you realize the brain consists of mindness. Edited by Paul on 03/29/05 - 11:53 PM

Unisonus
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Posted 03/30/05 - 12:06 AM:	#13
Paul wrote: It doesn't prohibit it -- it makes it absurd for you to suggest such a thing. So it is not necessarily the case that 'determinism has no application to the transcendental world' - it's just absurd to think otherwise. (And whether it is absurd is arguable; there are, in fact, problems concerning the "relationship" between phenomenal representations and objective things that a universal causality would resolve. ow do we know the trancendental 'cause' of it isn't itself the colored yellow? I would answer the question - only I don't believe a that the idea of 'thing being in itself' has any cognitive import anyway.
"...take care that your style and diction run musically, pleasantly, and plainly, with clear, proper, and well-placed words, setting forth your purpose to the best of your power, and putting your ideas intelligibly, without confusion or obscurity." - Miguel de Cervantes

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Posted 03/30/05 - 03:22 AM:	#14
First, I want to take a moment to express my deepest hatred to all the Firefox developers who worked so hard to make 1.01 crash half the times I try to post something, as well as when I occasionally attempt to view websites. I miss 0.83. Trying again from Opera. Unisonus wrote: So it is not necessarily the case that 'determinism has no application to the transcendental world' - it's just absurd to think otherwise. Transcendental idealists / empirical realists say that experience (the empirical world) is the relationship between the self and the [henceforth designated 'transcendental' for contrast with empirical] world. This requires trying to imagine that something exists beyond your own experience -- far too difficult, so it must be obscure nonsense. But while you retreat from the obscure nonsense, you also throw out the idea that surely the combination of self and world could just randomly happen to be exactly the same as the world on its own. Even if you're drunk and hallucinating, I just might happen to actually be a pink elephant such that your hallucination was accidentally accurate. Even "there may be no logical indication whatsoever that a god exists, but that doesn't mean he can't happen to exist anyway" is a slightly better argument for god than yours is for transcendental determinism. All it does is show how badly you want something to be the case. I would answer the question - only I don't believe a that the idea of 'thing being* in itself' has any cognitive import anyway.* Right, the combination of the self with the world is all there is -- there isn't actually a world at all, only a combination of it with the self. Quite logical, and it has the added bonus of making all the problems of the world go away when you die. (If you were questioning the distinctness of items in the trasnscendental world, that would make sense, though ultimately it's a bit of a non-issue since we could only legitimately talk of relations with regard to the transcendental. But that's not the issue here, we're talking about the world itself.) there are, in fact, problems concerning the "relationship" between phenomenal representations and objective things that a universal causality would resolve. The so-called "problems" are simply that some people (usually as a strawman) like to think of the empirical and transcendental worlds as little balls sitting next to each other on a table, such that causality would make some sort of sense between them. To attempt to bridge the gap between the empirical and transcendental using causality is simply a slight of hand to try to impose the empirical onto the transcendental. This leads to the transcendental being more graspable and creates a sense of accomplishment, but utterly defeats the point and leaves you with no more understanding than you would have by denying that anything other than the empirical exists in the first place. Of course, to attempt to bridge the gap between the empirical and transcendental requires that you misunderstand them in the first place -- if you understood, the idea of a gap being bridged would be recognized as severly out of place. The empirical and transcendental are not really separated in a every sense of the word, since the empirical is simply part of the area of the transcendental which is yourself. The empirical is not floating off in the distance away from the transcendental, it is simply a limited perspective on the transcendental. (This would get complicated if I paused to break it down into the transcendental unity of apperecention which in turn consists of the phenomenal [empirical world] and noumenal, but that's not really important here.) You are a section of the world. Wittgenstein's terminology -- the microcosm within the macrocosm -- expresses this more clearly than Kant's empirical and transcendental. If you were not such a limited perspective, there would be no need to talk in terms of an empirical and transcendental since there would only be one world -- though you would also not exist to talk about it, obviously. And yet you say that the existence of your limited perspective suggests the need to postulate universal causality to account for its relationship to the whole? There is no sense to that. Your brain is a part of the world which, thanks to evolution, has at its disposal electrical impulses which result from sensory organs, which convey the relationships of nearby parts of the world to yourself (or more precisely, to the sensory organs which in turn relay relationships to you). Again thanks to evolution, we have the mind (brain) which is a scheme to deal with this data. It interprets all data according to the rules of this scheme, in order to allow you to interact with the world in ways that prolong your life and lead to more reproduction. That we cannot even discuss the scheme without using it in one way or another ('relationships', 'interprets', 'creates', etc) reinforces the point. And here you are suggesting that the scheme evolution forged for your mind just so randomly happens to be a magical universal. Just as important to me as the absurdity of the suggestion is the senseless complexity of adding universals. Universals are things that "just are," because somebody felt it helpful to assert. They give you no understanding of anything, they're the road blocks which stop the search for understanding by declaring that these special things just are -- though they can be a useful device when you want to move on to something else. To postulate a universal is to give up and declare that the divine power of metaphysics makes it so. Occam's razor should not be treated as a mere suggestion to be ignored whenever it suits you. Edited by Paul on 03/30/05 - 03:37 AM

Unisonus
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Posted 03/30/05 - 04:08 PM:	#15
paul wrote: To attempt to bridge the gap between the empirical and transcendental using causality is simply a slight of hand to try to impose the empirical onto the transcendental. This leads to the transcendental being more graspable and creates a sense of accomplishment, but utterly defeats the point and leaves you with no more understanding than you would have by denying that anything other than the empirical exists in the first place. Of course, to attempt to bridge the gap between the empirical and transcendental requires that you misunderstand them in the first place -- if you understood, the idea of a gap being bridged would be recognized as severly out of place. Causal realism is not an attempt to interpret Kant; it is not a misinterpretation of Kant's "transcendental idealism"; in fact, the idea predates Kantianism by a few millennia. A causal realist rejects "transcendental idealism" on account of the view that for x to explain y, x must stand in causal relation to y. For example, to say that a flu virus explains your fever is to say, essentially, that it causes it. Since the dependance of phenomena on noumena (however that dependance might be characterized) is not causal - noumena do not explain phenomena. Thus, noumena should not be posited - or if they are - they can't be anything other than irrelevant, un-interacting, things-by-themselves; "transcendental idealism" invariably boils down to idealism per se. As a colleague of mine (maeutic) puts it,"Noumna are otiose. There is no theory of explanation, causal or otherwise, that would allow noumena to do any work." The empirical and transcendental are not really separated in a every sense of the word, since the empirical is simply part of the area of the transcendental which is yourself. Using words such as "a part of" and "area" only makes things more confusing; we aren't talking about spatial relations, obviously. It really doesn't matter if they're one or two things-a-siches, next to each other, or part of each other, or whatever - "noumena" and "phenomena" are different conceptions that are supposed to be in some kind of relationship - wherein the latter depends on the former in some fashion, and is, moreover, a "representation" (a troublesome word Kant employs) of the former. How this relationship is possible in a non-spatial/non-causal sort of way is something that needs to be addressed by Kantians, and it must be comprehensible to us lower beings. For the rest of us, it looks like the emperor is naked.
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Posted 04/08/05 - 09:03 AM:	#16
Unisonus wrote: Since the dependance of phenomena on noumena (however that dependance might be characterized) is not causal - noumena do not explain phenomena. The noumenal is the application of internal perception while the phenomenal is the application of external perception. Both are in the self (the trancendental unity of apperception), neither are off floating outside of you. They are related, of course, to the things in themselves which exist outside the self -- the phenomena in a more obvious way but the noumena as well. This can be described by saying the phenomena and noumena "represent" the things, or with Wittgenstein's microcosm/macrocosm that perhaps captures it better but is harder to understand. You seem to be equating noumena with things in themselves, which is a common but wholly inappropriate mistake that my Kant professor fortunately warned us against. When you stop making this mistake, you can either be accept things in themselves or be a solipsist (or absolute idealist to be very charitable). To deny that things in themselves exist is Berkelean nonsense, for it would mean that they could not appear to us and thus all our experiences are delusional, not actually about anything but theirselves. Edited by Paul on 04/08/05 - 09:13 AM

Unisonus
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Posted 04/13/05 - 09:53 PM:	#17
Paul wrote: When you stop making this mistake, you can either be accept things in themselves or be a solipsist (or absolute idealist to be very charitable). To deny that things in themselves exist is Berkelean nonsense, for it would mean that they could not appear to us and thus all our experiences are delusional, not actually about anything but theirselves. No one was arguing on behalf of idealism; actually, I was defending causal realism. Transcendental idealism is not the only alternative to "Berkelean nonsense". In fact, the problem with Kant's thing-in-itself ("noumenon" or not), is precisely that it boils down to idealism simpliciter - for the reasons I provided in my last post. If it's an error on my part to confute noumena and "things-in-themselves", feel free to replace the former term with the latter in the first paragraph of that post; the logic remains sound. Edited by Unisonus on 04/16/05 - 09:56 PM
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Posted 04/18/05 - 02:15 AM:

#18

Unisonus wrote:
No one was arguing on behalf of idealism; actually, I was defending causal realism.

I'm aware that you think you are a realist. What you're actually defending is transcendental realism, which forces you to be an empirical idealist (like Descartes, to use Kant's example). Yet going into that doesn't appear productive and it's more techincal Kant probably best left to someone like Morrandir anyhow, so I'll get back the point of addressing your misconceptions of transcendental idealism a.k.a. empirical realism. I'll attempt to save words by using my lack of artistic skills:

Clear enough? (I drew an illustration of the process of perception a few years ago, if that part is unclear.) Can you agree that there is a self and world, and that these are not one and the same although the self is most certainly within the world? Can you also agree that part of this self consists of a 'representation' (or whatever you want to call it, 'presentation' might be better in some senses but no word is perfect) of the world?

Now, you owe me an explanation of how you can rationally deny the world (things in themselves) without being a solipsist. If you're just going to say you'd place the labels elsewhere, don't bother, because we're talking about what transcendental idealism is rather than what you wish it were. (And hey, if you want to imagine that trans. idealism is something else, I can hereby declare this a new theory called Paulism and we are now talking about Paulism.)

You could rationally argue that the world of things beyond the self is somehow 'similar' to the empirical world / phenomena. I would then debate that by pointing out that the way the senses and brain function makes it impossible for them to convey anything but abstract relationships, and you may dissect someone to prove it. You could irrationally bring back the "it could magically happen to be the case by accident despite my not having any possible evidence" theory, or you could I hope instead choose to rationally argue that there's no reason to say that the world of things beyond the self consists of anything but contentless relations.* Relations are captured by the senses, thus we're not missing out on something hidden behind a barrier. I would then agree with that, since I'm suspect of suggesting anything that there is no possible way to detect and there's no possible way to establish anything beyond relations. But while to say that the empirical world gives us an accurate recreation of the transcendental world is correct in a sense, it ignores the clear fact that the empirical world gives us quite a lot of glitter and highlighting and various sensations that we are convinced matter more than relations. To ignore that is to cut off your own knowledge. Kant of course was most interested in how in the phenomenal realm we've imposed space, time and -- returning at last to the subject of the debate -- causality onto the bare relations. ** We are convinced that event B coming after event A is critically important. We don't consider the existence of a relationship of the four dimensional coordinates enough, we want to take a marker to the graph to show what's important -- calling one thing future and another past does not seem to us a mere arbitrary decision of graph construction. We rely heavily on aspects of phenomena that cannot have been given us by our senses, and this causes philosophical confusion not to mention roadblocks slowing the progress of scientific theories.

You, as a so-called "causal realist," are of course trying to argue that causality -- and presumably space and time as well, since those are tied a bit to causality -- somehow is captured from the transcendental in addition to relations (and again, this is what makes you a transcendental realist / empirical idealist). I can only guess that this grand metaphysical furnature is brought in because you see that causality applies to both noumena and phenomena and then you habitually confuse the phenomena with the transcendental so that you fail to see that the causality is your thought process. The fact of the matter is that it would be impossible to think non-causally regardless of the random existence or lack thereof of a transcendental causality, and this is why it's senseless to suggest it.

There is absolutely no use for the sort of absolute time causality necessitates... if you deny this, it's rather odd that after a century you're still not interested in accepting relativity. There is no use for anything but relations in the transcendental world, and where there is no use for a piece of metaphysics no one rational should posit it.

* We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the self is a part of the world, so actually it is important to point out that the immediate experience of the self (the transcendental unity of apperception) is a sense in which the "stuff" the relations are made of is apparent for the area of the world we label 'self'. But I would agrue that everything which we might cling to there as being the 'stuff' of the relations of our minds can't be expressed except as relations. At any rate, even if there were meaning to the suggestion it wouldn't be possible to describe the 'consciousness besides content' so there'd be no sense in talking about it.

** It is of course interesting to note our inability to imagine a relation which is merely a relation and not a relation of "things" which we imagine as being more than mere relations, and to note that this inability is the very reason why we can feel justified in saying we know the relations of the world [things in themselves]. And yes, I know Kant would say that things in themselves are unknowable, but if you understand it I'm only making a minor quibble or change in wording.

On related subjects, this thread with Jason, Josh and myself from 2002 is a good one: http://forums.philosophyforums.com/comments.php?id=72 (though I haven't re-checked the whole thing to be sure I agree with myself on everything)

Edited by Paul on 04/18/05 - 02:52 AM

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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 04/21/05 - 10:46 PM:	#19
OK, I have several things to add/ask: Paul, you said that objects/organsims we interpret to be incapable of free will are such because of a lack of rationality; they cannot choose because they do not have the capacity or knowledge of possiblity or reason for one choice or the other. What would make you assume that humans have the capacity either? Although through our perception it would appear that we are intellectually advanced compared to an insect, we too lack the capacity to analyze a situation rationaly. It is foolish to base your argument for the existence of our free will over the free will of others simply because we interpret ourselves to have a larger piece of the totality of knowledge. In order for total rationality to existence in a choice, we would have to have complete knowledge of all being/existence etc. If you refute this by saying that we have sufficient knowledge to make rational choices, then it follows that rationality is relative, that insects have rationality, and thus have free will. Turning to the idea of the selection of pizza over healthy food, it would appear that when we look back at that choice we "could" have made the other choice. It seems at the time of choosing that we are undergoing some internal argument of whether or not we should eat it. But still, the past is the past is the past--we CANNOT know that we had the ability to make the other selection. We only exist (as far as I have observed) in this single possiblity. How can you know that you had the choice. You have your one experience, the perception that you made decisions that led you there, and yet no reason or proof that you could have made it any other way. Finally, I would like to pose a biological question. We all know that our bodies/minds are run by many firing impulses, nerves, etc etc. But in order to have free will, we have to be able to control these impulses. For example, when I "choose" to lift my arm, I am sending signals, triggering chemical changes and muscle contractions, and eventually causing my arm to move. However, how did this impulse start? How did I consciously decide to start that impulse? Surely I did not create this electrical energy from nothing (but if I did.. Cool ). It would appear that all my actions are simply reactions to triggers in life, coupled with genetic and environmental programming that determines my personality, desires, motives, etc, and eventually determines how I will react to stimulae. Of course, the brain is still a relatively unknown area of biology, and there could be much more than I, or perhaps anyone, know is causing these things. Risking the invokation of Paul's rath, I have voted against him and, while I'm still not entirely sure where I stand on the issue (I would certainly like to have free will--but we cannot base our beliefs on desires, can we?) I felt that Socrastein made the better argument (though both were very well done).
-"Far too many live, and far too long hang they on their branches. Would that a storm came and shook all this rottenness and worm-eatenness from the tree!" -Nietzsche I was just thinking … that here we sit, all of us, eating and drinking to preserve our precious existence and really there is nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing. -Sartre, "Nausea"

Paul
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Posted 04/22/05 - 01:42 AM:

#20

Nobody wrote:
Paul, you said that objects/organsims we interpret to be incapable of free will are such because of a lack of rationality; they cannot choose because they do not have the capacity or knowledge of possibility or reason for one choice or the other. What would make you assume that humans have the capacity either?

It's not an assumption, it's an observation. Any hard-core determinist, except perhaps ancient behaviorists who didn't have the benefit of decent science, admits that people have thought processes go through their mind to lead to some actions. When I see a piece of meat dangling from the end of a stick, my mind goes through a decision making process. I consider the fact that I'm hungry, consider the fact that I see a net and other signs that the meat is a trap, and make the decision to not try to get the meat. This is obviously a different process from when, say, a ball rolls down a hill. The ball is not composed of anything resembling a brain so it is incapable of selecting which direction of roll will give it the softest landing.

This is not mere philosophical speculation, it's scientific fact. Do a careful brain scan of a person while they're making a decision, and you can prove that their brain (and the cognative functions of it) is in fact involved. From a quick google, I see that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is apparently involved in making rational choices (though I gather it's not the only part of the brain involved). You think the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is some sort of an illusion, a fairy tale invented to perpetuate the myth of rationality?

But in order to have free will, we have to be able to control these impulses.

You make an indefensible assertion, and give it no defense at all -- which is appropriate, because the only way it can be accepted is by taking it on faith. You're just begging the question by appealing to your intuition.

When it comes to rational processes, you are the impulses. The whole reason I have been talking about rationality, of course, is that rationality is a conscious process -- and it is thus impossible for the brain patterns which compose rationality to ever fail to be you. And it is of course senseless to suggest that you need to reach down from some fictional other realm to grasp and 'control' the choice you consist of in order for it to be yours.

But still, the past is the past is the past--we CANNOT know that we had the ability to make the other selection.

It could not matter less, which is why I so specifically addressed that in the debate, apparently to no avail. As long as you made the choice (and once again, the process of making a choice is known as rationality and is scientifically observable), it is your choice.

Although it will likely just confuse you, it is important to note once again that the whole setup you're presenting of trying to figure out whether the past could've gone differently is illogical, and that's the root of the incompatibalist mistake. Memory gives the illusion of a flowing linear time you could theoretically jump around in and repeat, such that it would be coherent to suggest there's a failure to change anything on the repetition. Science since 1908 has clearly established that this is not objectively coherent, no moment in time has any sort of priority over any other and there is no 'progress' but only a set of four dimensional relations. Objectively, it makes exactly as much sense to talk about one event forcing another as it does to talk about Mars [in the current time slice] causing Earth [in the current time slice]. None of the four dimensions is unique from any of the others, and none of them is as we experience them, they are only the math which constructs the relations. The universe is interconnected, you can always find a relationship between things, but the causal status you give to the time dimension has no objective meaning. That you keep falling back to this "we can't know the past couldn't have gone differently" intuition should show you how critically flawed your position is. Incompatibilism is a quagmire of misapplied intuitions... and yet in respose, you're just going to re-reference those intuitions without questioning them simply because they're comfortable intuitions which help you feel you've got a good grasp on things.

Explaining time really takes a lot more space than I want to take here, so please see Modeling Time in the articles section of the site for detailed arguments against the presentism you've implicity accepted.

It would appear that all my actions are simply reactions to triggers in life

As explained again above, without you to interpret them as such there would be no such thing as a reaction, only relations. Nonetheless it's worth looking at it from the empirical non-objective perspective as well since that's what we're familiar with and can draw up a picture of. The key point is whether you make the choice. Illustration:

(I don't think I need to point out that by any standard definition "unfree choice" is nonsense, as Socratein admited, so I'm keeping it simple by discussing just choice.)

It does not matter that [from the empirical perspective] there is a chain of causes outside you that trigger the chain within you -- and note again that you have given no reason at all why it would matter, only appealed to intuitions that are necessarily flawed in view of the last century of science. You are a part of the world, not something from a magical other realm reaching into it -- though your intuition misleads you (via empirical dualism) into the illusion that you are something outside the world being imposed on by the world. If what you are consists of a certain choice, then it is utterly illogical to assert that it is somehow not your choice.

Put a person under a brain scan, and hit their knee. Then ask them what they'd like to have for dinner. This sort of thing has actually been done many times, and it gives you the irrefutable data of how how the actions differ. Completely different areas of the brain are activated in very different (and suffice it to say more complex) patterns for rational decisions compared to simple reactions. This is what we mean when we say somebody makes a choice -- we mean that the process known as rationality is involved in the action -- not whatever metaphysical nonsense you're trying to portray it as so that you can pull the rug from under the strawman.

we too lack the capacity to analyze a situation rationally.

It can be scientifically proven that humans (and other animals) have devices called brains which analyze situations. Such analysis is defined in the English language as rationality. You're blatantly ignoring a mountain of scientific proof.

I would certainly like to have free will

And that may be part of the problem. You imagine free will would be something you'd be lucky to have, and lack of it would be something you'd be unlucky to have. But free will is simply what you are. It's related to the anthropic principle, you could say, in that it is not a matter of luck.

It is my contention that brains serve a purpose, as complex mechanisms (somewhat analogous to computers you could say but they work quite differently in fundamental ways) which take input and put it through a complicated self-referencing analysis process defined as rationality which creates what is defined as choice as an output. It seems to be your contention that brains are hunks of meat that evolved by accident and serve no purpose at all, and that "rationality" and "choice" are magic words sent down by god by that have never been used correctly in the history of mankind.

I've presented a scientifically testable criteria for choice that yields the result of calling the things 'choice' and 'non-choice' that people actually do label with those terms in real life. You (especially Socratein but various others in this thread as well) stand here telling me 'choice' is actually a nonsense word. Unless you can defend your divine command theory of language which makes it possible for the meaning of a word to be unrelated to how it is used, I have already demonstrated conclusively that you are wrong. And while at it, though rejection of discomfort isn't required for something to be true, I've taken the time to show why the intuitions which cause your discomfort with my criteria are baseless and misleading.

Edited by Paul on 04/22/05 - 02:34 AM

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