Debate 4: Is determinism compatibile with freedom?: Philosophy Forums

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Debate 4: Is determinism compatibile with freedom?

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Debate 4: Is determinism compatibile with freedom?

EntropicOrder
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Posted 07/30/04 - 07:25 PM:	#11
It is exciting to think that phenyl and I might be able to reach a consensus after a 6 round debate considering our ability to progress past points of disagreement. As a pragmatist, it’s nice to know that our debate is useful and not just entertainment. Subjectivity & Pragmatics Phenyl points out our different uses of the word “subjective”. Rather than argue the correct usage of the word, I will continue to use it my way since phenyl understands how I do. Now I will show the ultimate subjective nature of pragmatic freedom. Once again, I agree with phenyl in his clarification of objective freedom. He said that if one is constrained by a force, then one is objectively so. There is nothing subjective about that. However, whether or not a person has pragmatic freedom as I’ve defined it may not be dependant upon being constrained by that force. Note that I am differentiating between “having pragmatic freedom” and “being unconstrained by a force.” This is tricky since having objective freedom is not different at all from being unconstrained. Think of it this way, having pragmatic freedom can be discovered by asking, “Can I do something about it?” or “Can I control my own body in order to be a significant cause to affect this situation?” In order to truly evaluate this question as it was meant to be asked, as I have argued, one must define a relevant, temporally proximate context for himself. The question then becomes, “What is relevant?” Objectively, everything “[has] a bearing on or connection with the matter at hand.” (dictionary.com) But subjectively, in our comprehension of being able to affect a situation, we assign values to certain forces as opposed to others. One person may see a particular force as very relevant to the situation, while another may not. I could say, “I don’t have freedom” and you could say, “Yes you do!” because we are calling different forces relevant. The biggest area of subjectivity would be where we draw the cut off line for proximity. One person could say, “I did this because of what happened 6 months ago” while someone else could say, “6 months is too long ago to be relevant to your decision to act.” The question is not “Do I have pragmatic freedom from this particular force?” but simply “Do I have pragmatic freedom in general?” Regardless of a person being constrained by a particular force or not, it is up to the person to decide whether that force is relevant to her pragmatic sense of freedom and ability to be a significant cause. To be sure, an instance of lacking pragmatic freedom would be that a situation I want to change will continue to occur as it does despite any effort I make to change it. The only way I could not have any of this kind of freedom is if there were no situations at all that I could possibly affect (from what they might have been). Furthermore, objectively, we always affect everything, even if in only small ways. But, whether we consider that effect to be significant is a subjective distinction. Responsibility Phenyl clarifies his example by saying that after throwing a punch I am shocked and wish I hadn’t done it. If I am shocked because my punch was a bodily compulsion rather than a decision, then the punch was not truly a result of my will, much like a twitch or puking are bodily compulsions that do not result from the will. However, if I deliberately chose to punch the person, complete with decision making and consequence considering, then this is indistinguishable from pragmatic freedom. The fact I might be shocked and wish I hadn’t done it afterwards should not surprise phenyl at all. Even in an indeterminist universe we can agree that people regret their choices all the time, but that doesn’t make their choices any less deliberate or free. Now I will develop my thesis on moral responsibility in a deterministic universe. Most of the time when we are free we are also morally responsible, on that point I agree. However, I feel phenyl’s examples attempting to show lack of freedom instead point out lack of relationship between freedom and moral responsibility. To indeterminists, the location of moral responsibility is a rarely debated issue. Most would agree that the uncaused cause of an event (the indeterminist’s “free will”) is the location of moral responsibility. However, to determinists this distinction breaks down since there is no uncaused cause (except possibly at the beginning of the universe, but I don’t personally believe that scenario). Also, to indeterminists morality can be much more objective since wills are objectively free, and the metaphysical notion of uncaused causer often coincides nicely with an objective, uncaused rule-giver. However, determinists have a much harder time showing objective morality since not even freedom is objective and since there is no stopping point in the cause and effect chain. I personally believe morality is subjective, relative and dynamic, depending on culture, history, emotions, desires, situation, etc. How a determinist holds himself morally responsible would be much different than how another determinist holds him responsible. How one culture does it would be much different than another. Scientific developments create new conceivable possibilities, etc. So if you say that a person is morally responsible it begs the questions, “According to whom?” and “How do we know that moral judgment is correct?” and “Is there even such thing as a correct moral judgment?” In the situation with Anne and the mad scientist, Anne would be right to hold herself morally responsible even though an observer might hold the scientist responsible. Both judgments are useful, so I would not call either wrong. To me, moral responsibility in a deterministic universe is mainly a tool that can hopefully cause a person to discontinue his/her current set of dispositions. Moral responsibility could even be used to influence a person’s bodily compulsions (which are decidedly not free actions). If you have a twitch I don’t like, I can hold you morally responsible for it, forcing you to make a decision to cut a limb off or else I’ll punish you. This isn’t a “false” use of morality since there is no objective standard (such as an objectively free will). Though you were free to cut off your leg before I pronounced my moral judgment, we wouldn’t have considered it relevant to your freedom of the twitch then. (Just like in normal scenarios we don't consider suicide a relevant option.) Let’s look at another example. Assume a good scientist told Anne2 that her will had been changed and offered to change it back so that she won’t punch someone. Let’s say she declines, not because the evil scientist put a safeguard in her against choosing the change, but because Anne likes her new “punchy” will. Or what if Anne perceived Bob as a threat in addition to his red shirt, giving Anne2 two reasons to punch him? As to who is now morally responsible for Anne’s violence in these different situations is ambiguous, but one thing that holds true throughout them is that it is not against her will to punch Bob, so she is free to do it. Hopefully we don’t argue too much about morality since it would be way outside the scope of this debate. Linguistics The only real disagreement that phenyl and I seem to have is over which terminology is more strategic, incompatibilism or compatibilism. I don’t know which applications of incompatibilism are more and less common, so I will not argue that point. However, we seem to agree on several key beliefs: [list=1] Objectively, there is no freedom, because determinism declares that every thing, will and decision, is bound by some cause, that everything is interrelated. Pragmatically, there is freedom, because we can still act on our sense of being free and change situations from what they might have been. Incompatibility of objective freedom and determinism does not disprove determinism as many libertarians believe. Incompatibility of objective freedom and determinism does not eliminate pragmatic freedom as many hard determinists believe.[/list] As for which “ism” best describes this arrangement of beliefs and the best usage of the word “freedom”, I think is subjective. Personally I feel that compatibilism first agrees with point 1 but then clarifies points 2-4 explicitly, making it most correct. On the other hand, phenyl probably feels that compatibilism disagrees with 1 and that incompatibilism allows for points 2-4, making these beliefs wrong and right respectively. However, my conclusion is that if we can agree on all 4 points, then my compatibilism is compatible with phenyl’s incompatibilism, and that this is a good progression in the form “thesis > antithesis > synthesis”. I don’t think either of our positions cast in their best light are wrong.
My game sites: http://www.entropicorder.net, http://www.plushquest.com My giant stuffed animal store: http://www.mybigplush.com "But the wise man neither rejects life nor fears death. For living does not offend him, nor does he believe not living to be any evil." - Epicurus

phenyl_engine_rods
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Posted 07/31/04 - 06:18 PM:	#12
Before I get to my closing arguments, I want to face up to a mistake I've been making: I've been saying that to choose freely, one must be unconstrained by any external, causally immediate force. This isn't quite right. I should have said, rather, that one must be unconstrained by all such forces to the extent that one is left with at least two possible choices. The Significance of "Subjective" or Pragmatic Freedom My opponent and I agree that in a deterministic universe, no one can be objectively free. We also agree that one always, even in a deterministic universe, can have what Entropic calls "subjective" or pragmatic freedom--that is, it could be wise for one to act as though one has freedom. (Though it sometimes seems that Entropic means instead that to have "subjective" freedom is to act as one wants to act.) But is this what we usually mean when we say "I am free"? And isn't the claim that we have this kind of freedom trivial? The answer to the first question is No. To say "I am free" is not to say "I shall act as though I am free;" nor is it to say "I like the way I am acting," as Entropic suggests it should mean in discussing some of our examples. The willing heroin addict does not choose freely to maintain her addiction: though she is happy to continue taking her drug, she has no choice but to do so, and so in ordinary discourse, we would not say that she is free. As for the second question--it depends. If you are speaking to a fatalist, it naturally makes sense to explain that though we do not choose freely, it profits us to take an interest in our actions' consequences. But if you are speaking to a mere incompatibilist, or even a hard determinist, nothing is won by insisting that we should act as though we were free, or that we seem to be free. To so insist is simply to miss the question at hand: the question is not, Do we seem to be free? or, Should we act as though we are free? but rather, Are we free? This is a question about the objective state of things, and demands an objective answer. And since my opponent and I agree to the answer to this question, finding in favour of incompatibilism, I take this debate to be an incompatibilist victory. This is what I want the reader to come away with. To the question, "Can one be free if determinism is true?" the answer is a resounding No. Having established this, let me finish by tying up some loose ends left in my opponent's last post. [list=A] One might be tempted to point out to EntropicOrder that in some of his comments he has compromised even the claim that we have pragmatic freedom. He writes that if there are no situations one can possibly affect from what they might have been, then one cannot have pragmatic freedom. The temptation here is to point out that in a deterministic universe, there is only one way things might be, and so there could then be no pragmatic freedom. But this, I think, is to miss Entropic's point. Unless I am mistaken, he means to speak of what seems possible to the agent, not what is actually possible. This is in line with his comments on conceivable and actual possibilities earlier in the debate. In my last post, I did not modify the example of the victim of the sneeze-counting device merely by saying he regrets his actions later. Rather, he feels completely disconnected from that action, unable to understand why he would do such a thing, though, of course, clearly remembering the desire he felt to throw the punch. This invites the response from my opponent, now familiar, that the person who throws the punch and the person who remembers it a moment later are both free, but they are not the same person. This change of identity seems to me very counter-intuitive, enough so to invalidate the claim that in this case we would, using the words as we ordinarily do, say the victim of the device was free in throwing that punch.[/list] Finally, I want to thank you, EntropicOrder, for a spirited debate. You've been an excellent sport throughout. Cheers!

EntropicOrder
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Posted 08/02/04 - 05:53 AM:	#13
Two Camps Often whenever an old concept becomes understood differently because of scientific discovery, philosophical thought, or the like, two camps are created. The first camp believes that the new understanding is so fundamentally different from the original concept that it is no longer the same concept. This camp asks for a new word for the new understanding and declares that the original concept is not nor ever was true. The second camp believes that the new understanding is close enough that it can still be considered the same concept. In essence the dividing point is regarding what the core identity of the concept was, is, and should be. Hopefully we can all recognize that this is not an argument about objective existence, but rather an argument about semantics and the most effective way to use our language. This is exactly what happens considering the hypothetical realization that determinism is true. The concept under examination is freedom. We once thought that freedom was both having an objectively unbound will as well as being able to affect the future from how we imagine it could have turned out if we hadn’t intervened. (I want to thank phenyl for his understanding in the latter regard.) Neither of us has been quite right when characterizing the regular notion of freedom as either objective or pragmatic because it is really both. However, determinism makes us realize that nothing is objectively unbound. This separates freedom into two different things, objective freedom and pragmatic freedom, the former not existing and the latter existing. The question of “Are we still free?” is not the same as “Are we objectively free?” as phenyl claims, but rather “What should we still consider freedom to be?” Depending on your camp, you may or may not see pragmatic freedom essential enough to encompass the core identity and carry on the good name of “freedom.” Camp1 says that freedom doesn’t exist and never existed, while camp2 says that freedom does and always has existed. While these camps appear to be expressing different beliefs about reality, they are not. Relevance If compatibilism was really just a question about whether there exist multiple possibilities objectively, or if the will is objectively unbound by anything (which phenyl has retracted), then I would think that compatibilism was just a gross misunderstanding of determinism. Similarly, phenyl agrees that if incompatibilism was really just a question about whether we can or should act as if we were free then it would be a rather pointless position to hold. For these reasons, I am convinced that the argument here is not about objective actuality, but simply about what the core identity of “freedom” is, was, and should be. This also trickles into an argument about what incompatibilism and compatibilism really claim. So the question becomes, “Which version of freedom is most relevant to our discussion?” Once again, this depends on the person. If we are merely arguing for “academic purposes”, then it is possible to see objective freedom as most relevant. However, as a pragmatist, I see the purpose and goal of philosophy to improve the quality of day to day living, not just to remain stagnant on a bookshelf somewhere. (“Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering.” - Epicurus) Making choices, considering conceivable possibilities, and harnessing our ability to influence the world happen every moment throughout our entire lives, while considering whether our will was caused is only reserved for philosophical inquiry. (I assume early humans had the intuition of freedom long before considering the causal nature of the will.) If philosophy is a means to an end as I believe it to be, then pragmatic freedom is many times more relevant. (Although I cannot claim a victory for compatibilism on these grounds since I am not here to defend pragmatism.) So I suppose rather than just a different choice of words, our disagreement might really be what we consider the relevance of philosophy to be. Final Thought If this debate is a victory for incompatibilism because I’ve agreed that there is no objective freedom, then this is equally a victory for compatibilism because phenyl has agreed that there is pragmatic freedom. However, I don’t see this as a victory for either side, but rather a simple recognition that phenyl and I (and possibly other incompatibilists and compatibilists) have different linguistic preferences and/or views on the relevance of usefulness. Farewell to you too, phenyl_engine_rods. Until we debate again.
My game sites: http://www.entropicorder.net, http://www.plushquest.com My giant stuffed animal store: http://www.mybigplush.com "But the wise man neither rejects life nor fears death. For living does not offend him, nor does he believe not living to be any evil." - Epicurus

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Posted 08/02/04 - 12:04 PM:	#14
The debate is now concluded. Thank you both. It has been an excellent debate. Discussion and voting on the victor of this debate can be done in the Debate 4 discussion thread. Thanks, everyone.

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