h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm not much of a Kantian, ethics wise; I also think his idea of free will as a property of the noumenal self is at odds with the rest of his metaphysics.

Noggin

Ah, good old freewill! I think I've posted here b4 on that. I'm a Lockean compatiblist with my own added spin.

Ah! I know Locke and his compatibilist theories...woohoo!

Ok, it's silly to make a slip-up as saying 'all-encompassing' on a philosophy thread

OK, it's a good book, good enough as humanly possible...

...is that better Nog

Great . Do you have any problem with Locke's view or any suggested improvement? I can no longer remember exactly what he said - only what I concluded. I just use the oldies but goodies as fodder for my own thinking, not as stuff to remember. I was never into history!

I'll get it from an essay I wrote to refresh people's memories...just gotta find it!

OK...I've found two

Here's the first: "John Locke aptly highlights the main problems with the correlation between mind and body with his analogy of the cobbler and the prince. The cobbler woke up one morning in the palace, and tried to explain to the guards that he hadn’t broken in. The prince on the other hand, woke up next to the cobbler’s wife, claiming kidnap and demanding to be taken back to the palace. It has become obvious that both had the appearance of the other. Yet are they the same people they were before?
This situation begs many questions to be answered. What exactly makes a person, the body or the memory? The body suggests verification, all being unique and having continuity through space and time. However, is the body the essence of a person? Is the mind the only reality? If this is true, where does this leave the body?
"

The second: "John Locke gave the analogy of the locked room to illustrate man’s lack of moral choice. Supposing a sleeping man is in a locked room, and when he awakes, he decides to remain where he is, not knowing that the room is already locked. Even though he has made the real decision to remain where he is, in reality he has no choice at all because if he went through the same process but decided to leave, he would find that there is no way to do so. It is only his ignorance that of his condition that makes him think otherwise. It is the same for our moral decisions, or lack of. "

Which one did you mean?

FwT

Hi FwT. The first one is about personal identity, the second, about moral decisions, raises the question of freewill without offering an answer.

I hope you won't take it amiss if I correct your usage here. As so many people do (far too often on Radio 4!), you use the phrase 'begs the question' wrongly. You used it to mean 'raises the question'. To beg the question is to answer it as you ask it. 'Have you stopped beating your wife?' begs the question of whether you have ever beaten her.

Back to free will (never quite know whether it's one word or two!); are we really free to choose, or do our genes, upbringing and the electro-mechanical nature of our brains mean that we must do as we do inevitably - like any other machine?

Hi FwT. The first one is about personal identity, the second, about moral decisions, raises the question of freewill without offering an answer.

I hope you won't take it amiss if I correct your usage here. As so many people do (far too often on Radio 4!), you use the phrase 'begs the question' wrongly. You used it to mean 'raises the question'. To beg the question is to answer it as you ask it. 'Have you stopped beating your wife?' begs the question of whether you have ever beaten her.

Back to free will (never quite know whether it's one word or two!); are we really free to choose, or do our genes, upbringing and the electro-mechanical nature of our brains mean that we must do as we do inevitably - like any other machine? I must confess that I'm more interested in your thoughts on this than in Locke's.

I wasnt meaning for it to be an answer: just as an clarification to make sure we were talking about the same thing.

Dont worry about correcting me: it's a good job that I didnt submit this essay overall

Personally, I believe we are free agents: a libertarian. Compatibilism is incorrect, and materialism scares me if I'm honest!

My view is that we don't have freewill but we act freely. My will, choice, decision is made as a result of my genes, environmental influences, brain activity etc. I act accordingly. But those very things (genes etc) are what make up what I call 'me'. So the action is my action after all, in that sense. In fact, I can think of no other sense in which an action could be my freely chosen action.

My view is that we don't have freewill but we act freely. My will, choice, decision is made as a result of my genes, environmental influences, brain activity etc. I act accordingly. But those very things (genes etc) are what make up what I call 'me'. So the action is my action after all, in that sense. In fact, I can think of no other sense in which an action could be my freely chosen action.

So you're saying that you are free to act within what your nature dictates?

I guess I'm free to be coerced too, but broadly speaking - yes.

I dont know how that is different to libertarianism?

Well, let's call it a tension between libertarianism and determinism. I agree with the determinist at every point, call the thing he describes 'me' and continue to be a libertarian. That makes me a compatibilist libertarian or 'compatibilist' for short. I believe that freedom of action is compatible with a determinist causal story about how that action is decided. It is still my free action. Can someone explain to me how it could be otherwise? Or am I right!

I know what compatibilism is...I just don't believe in it: it leads back to determinism [and don't say that's why it's called soft determinism ]

But how do we know things are determined: how do we know that the universe is organised into cause and effect? It could be our rational brains trying to rationalise and organise a random universe? Also, what about at Quantum level: if things are random at such a fundamental level, then how do you know that it doesnt follow all the way up?

For me, determinism amounts to 'determined by me'. Sure, we impose some of our own organisation on things. But there is enough regularity in what-follows-what to allow us to do it. There is a huge amount of non-randomness or we just wouldn't be able to function. Life itself would never have started.

The quantum argument throws just about the only bit of seemingly 'real' randomness into the equation. The human brain is so multiply redundant that a little randomness doesn't really matter. Break a hologram in two, and you still see the image in each half. The brain is kinda like that.

Youve not convinced me im afraid

If you are 'determined by you', then you can be said to be 'self-determined': which is a direct argument for libertarianism.

We do more than impose our own organisation on things: we attempt to impose order on everything we experience: that's why you see things in clouds and shadows: it's your brain attempting to give order to stimulus/li by association.

How do you know that this little randomness doesn't stem up to more fundamental things: rules in science are more commonly been seen as things that have yet to be disproven: you can have a law for 200 yrs assumed to be true, and all you need is one piece of evidence to disprove it and it's gone!

An alternative answer: compatibilism doesn't so much lead to determinism as follow from it AND from libertarianism. Good ole Hegel envisaged a process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. D&L are the first two and compatibilism is the synthesis (according to me!).

Fine, if you're gonna fight dirty and bring philosophers into it I will too

William James called it a 'quagmire of evasion' and Kant called it a 'miserable subterfuge'

on that decisive(!) note, I think I'll retire for the night

G'Night Toxxin