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Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off
Cogito Ergo Sum
Stercus accidit

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Like any sensible person, I'm a (hard) determinist.

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Kudos.

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Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off
Cogito Ergo Sum
Stercus accidit

Hard determinism is conceptually unintuitive. Why believe something that requires abstraction to conceptually understand?

Post edited at 10:38 pm on July 6, 2009 by Peregrine

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"You've changed." "No, I haven't." "Then why do you look so?"

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Like any sensible person, I'm a (hard) determinist.

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Quote: from Shush at 6:11 pm on July 6, 2009

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Like any sensible person, I'm a (hard) determinist.

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Quantum mechanics throws a nicely placed wrench in hard determinism. As soon as you realize that some events are governed by probability alone rather than hard causality, hard determinism no longer makes any sense.

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But quantum mechanics govern none of the events involved in choice. The uncertainty at the quantum level has an insignificant effect on a choice, free or otherwise.

Furthermore, if we are to use quantum theory in support of freedom of the will, we run into the problem of indeterminism: if choice is a matter of probability (i.e. a matter of mere chance), how free could choice possibly be? In this case, choice appears to happen by chance, per quantum theory (or at least how you might use it to support freedom of the will), and certainly not under the control of any agent (person).

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"You've changed." "No, I haven't." "Then why do you look so?"

The way I see it, the complexity of the human brain is what allows us our "free will". I am a determinist, and I believe that our personalities, our concerns, our feelings toward others, everything is determined by outside causes. I believe that we can reflect on our thoughts and change our minds [i.e. internal causes] but that these actions, too, are the result of external factors.  

However:
1. I am everything I see, do, hear, touch, feel, know, think, experience, etc.

2. Those things are determined by external factors [I cannot choose what I see, what thinks I experience, etc]

3. Thus, "I" am a being created as a result of external factors.

4. When speaking of "will" we necessarily imply a being which will be doing the willing. I.e. "I"

5. Thus, the question of personal free will asks if "I" --a being created qua external factors-- can make decisions of my own volition.  

here is the crux

6. SO. If "I" am every single factor and influence that I have ever experienced, and any decision I make comes directly from those experiences and nothing else [how could it?], then were comes the external forces that would take away free will?

It is true, then, that all decisions made by "I" are completely free of outside forces. "I" will act exactly how "I" will act, and no different. But "I" act freely and of "my" own volition.

Post edited at 8:19 am on July 7, 2009 by Event Horizon

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Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful.It's the transition
that's troublesome.   --Isaac Asimov

Of course I'm also a soft determinist when it comes to the definitions of free will used by compatibilists, but I find those definitions distasteful on moral and aesthetic grounds and generally rather slimy, though I recognise them as a valiant attempt to resolve the logical absurdities inherent in truly free will.

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I am a compatibilist. I think any definition of "Free will" that does not take into account causality is absurd and unusable. Choices must, by their nature, have causes--otherwise they are random. Thus, any definition of free will must account for the causes behind any and all decisions.

The way I see it, the complexity of the human brain is what allows us our "free will". I am a determinist, and I believe that our personalities, our concerns, our feelings toward others, everything is determined by outside causes. I believe that we can reflect on our thoughts and change our minds [i.e. internal causes] but that these actions, too, are the result of external factors.

However:
1. I am everything I see, do, hear, touch, feel, know, think, experience, etc.

2. Those things are determined by external factors [I cannot choose what I see, what thinks I experience, etc]

3. Thus, "I" am a being created as a result of external factors.

4. When speaking of "will" we necessarily imply a being which will be doing the willing. I.e. "I"

5. Thus, the question of personal free will asks if "I" --a being created qua external factors-- can make decisions of my own volition.

here is the crux

6. SO. If "I" am every single factor and influence that I have ever experienced, and any decision I make comes directly from those experiences and nothing else [how could it?], then were comes the external forces that would take away free will?

It is true, then, that all decisions made by "I" are completely free of outside forces. "I" will act exactly how "I" will act, and no different. But "I" act freely and of "my" own volition.

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I don't see where agency arises in the embodied "I." If the "I" is a result of external forces, causally determined right down to the beginning of the universe (given hypothetically that one has the knowledge to trace such a history), how could "I" do otherwise than what has been predicted quite literally in the stars? This to me is no agency at all.

The debate here is not whether outside forces deprive an "I" of free will or somehow snatch it away, the debate centers on whether or not free will can arise given the truth of determinism. If you believes it can't, you're an incompatibilist libertarian who believes free will cannot obtain given determinism and therefore must reject the truth of determinism. The incompatibilists task becomes one of both attempting to show the falsity of determinism and of trying to conceptualize a free will in an undetermined universe. But if you believe that free will can obtain given determinism, you are a compatibilist and your task appears to be to make free will work with determinism. I believe it can if both sides are willing to make concessions. I'll go into this position later.  

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"You've changed." "No, I haven't." "Then why do you look so?"

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I'm definitely a member of the hard-for-determinism club.

Of course I'm also a soft determinist when it comes to the definitions of free will used by compatibilists, but I find those definitions distasteful on moral and aesthetic grounds and generally rather slimy, though I recognise them as a valiant attempt to resolve the logical absurdities inherent in truly free will.

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You find compatibilist definitions morally and aesthetically distasteful over the absurd abstractions of the hard determinist?

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"You've changed." "No, I haven't." "Then why do you look so?"