Co-Determinism and the Reality of Free Will

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Quantum Quack, Apr 7, 2019.

  1. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Baldeee
    Determinism to Baldeee does not make it determinism for every one else...
    You have some sort of notion that I have repeatedly stated is non-inclusive of observed empirical evidence.
    You need to expand your notion of determinism perhaps to even come close to being reasonable and realistic.
     
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  3. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    QM is one such function.
     
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  5. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    You brought up his name in support of your link and presumably your perspective.
    He is a contributor to that site, but that does not mean he supports everything on that site.
     
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  7. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    It does not need to be self-determining in the FW sense as much as a self-referential system which is deterministic would be entirely sufficient to produce reality as we know it now.

    Complicated exceptions are not necessary for a self-referential system to be sufficient for a deterministic universe.
     
  8. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    nonsense, by that measure determinism is also a subjective viewpoint...


    There is a huge list of famous philosophers which you can research to discover the current understanding of the term objectivity.
    from Plato to Descartes to Newton to Kant and so on....
     
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    You have accepted from QQ a misleading and largely incorrect meaning of the term "self determination".
    It means that the self determines the self, rather than some outside agency determining the self. The argument is indifferent to that.
    It does not mean, as the argument requires, that there is an entity both nameable (distinct) and named ("self") that determines other things.

    So its use here misleads: a "self" whose behavior is part of the process of the universe's determining other things - such as car behavior - is being overlooked, despite being central to these threads and the key, significant matter involved in naming a "self" in the first place.

    And being significant and all that, posters here have presented lots of argument from evidence that such entities exist, are observed, and are observed determining these other things, just as the universe determined they would - drivers exist who can make cars stop, or go (they have the capability of doing either), for example.

    The deterministic universe has produced, over time, entities of increasing capability and logical levels of capability, entities in which appear the capability of choosing among other, governed, lower level capabilities - and the yet "higher" or governing capability of guiding and choosing that second level capability from others on its second level, in given circumstances. This third level capability has been located with enough precision to place an array of electrodes and identify its employment in a scan of brainwaves and neural firing patterns. It has been observed in action, in other words.

    And it's not, apparently, by observation, the highest level possessed by human decisionmakers. Improvising musicians in fugue state, monks in meditation, audiences an hour or so into a skilled performance of epic poetry, mothers with infants and vice versa, the enchanted and legitimately enthralled in a variety of situations, the focused and completely concentrating in situations of aesthetic "judgment" or "assessment", apparently govern it somehow - have that capability.

    Takehome: as humans have learned to analyze events in the physical world, they have begun to get a handle on just what that means for the degrees of freedom involved in all such analyses, all such description of real world phenomena. One of the apparent discoveries seems to be that - just as the pioneers in this subject often hypothesized (Bateson's levels of learning come to mind) - such capabilities have and can bestow on willful behavior every property and attribute characteristic of freedom of will as it is normally recognized in the real, physical, living, natural world. Every single one - in the natural world, the one determined.

    That would appear to be relevant and interesting in thread devoted to freedom of will from a scientific perspective, no?
     
  10. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    you are close but not quite...

    we have an entity named John (self).

    • John learns to drive a car
    • John drives a car.
    • John determines, in co-operation with deterministic forces acting on car and himself (John), as to what events occur with car.
    • John is co-determining the events that occur with the car to the limits of what he has learned.
    • John applies what he has learned.....to every aspect of his existence. ( with in the limitations of his ongoing learning)
    • His freedom is determined by how much he learns how to co-determine.
    • thus Johns freedom is self determined.
    note: Freedom is a quality and is immaterial.
     
    Last edited: Jun 18, 2019
  11. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    It is amazing that you would forbid the notion of self determination merely because you believe it to be a subjective viewpoint.
    No logic offered, just a subjective opinion based on what exactly?

    What rational are you using to determine that position?
     
  12. Baldeee Valued Senior Member

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    Great, despite your recent protestations to the contrary you have finally agreed that you are assuming the universe to be deterministic.
    So you can no longer honestly dismiss arguments from that assumption on the grounds that it is not what you are assuming.
    Okay?
    And since you have agreed that it is assumed, we can dispense with any need to argue for or against that determinism.
    Okay?
    If you wish to argue that the universe is only deterministic if there is also self-determination then you need to do so from the assumption that the universe is deterministic, and show how that this leads to the necessity of self-determination.
    For the purposes of this thread, where we have assumed that universe to be deterministic, that determinism is objective.
    It is a premise.
    To say that it is subjective is to say that for one person it may not be deterministic but for another it is, in which case there is no assumption that the universe is deterministic.
    How can you be struggling with this?
    If a discussion assumes something then that something is, for the purposes of the discussion, beyond the need of having to be supported, beyond question, and is to be taken as the objective position.
    We have assumed the universe to be deterministic, thus the universe is to be accepted (for purposes of this discussion) as objectively deterministic.
    No requirement to justify it.
    It is assumed.
    The universe IS deterministic (within this discussion).
     
  13. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Nope, I never said it wasn't deterministic...
    I have stated however it is not the "Baldeee" version of determinism.

    OK?

    Your version leads to a circular contradiction.
    Mine doesn't

    OK?
     
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    His "freedom" - we are speaking of the freedom of John's will, not John's freedom in general (a dubious category of existent) - is not determined by how much he - rather than the rest of the universe - determines.

    It depends on how much of what he determined he was capable of determining otherwise - how much of his actions, all of which determine stuff, were chosen from alternatives he possessed.
    It's not safe to underestimate the "material" world.

    Consider, say, how his freedom of will changes if he becomes addicted to drugs, habituated to confined routine, afflicted by an obsessive/compulsive disorder, or the like. Drug addiction is learned, drug addicts are as self-determined as they come - the compulsion is internal, a property or attribute of the self - but they have less freedom of will than those not crippled in their capabilities.

    John is part of the universe. Everything he does is done by his self, most of it is learned behavior one way or another, but only some of it has any significant degree of freedom. If he's obsessive/compulsive, drug addicted, habituated beyond benefit, mentally ill, in serious pain or fear, etc, - less of it.
     
  15. Baldeee Valued Senior Member

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    Such as?
    Observed empirical evidence can seem indeterministic.
    Does this mean that we need to align determinism to mean indeterministic?
    Or you need to alter yours to be aligned with what the word actually means?
    Yes, there are some different notions when you get to the detail, but none will help you.
    To me, at its most basic, it simply means that every state is fully determined by previous states.
    Do you disagree with that understanding?
    What is it not including, do you think?
     
  16. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    As I consider John to be his will therefore his will to be himself it is Johns freedom that is in question.
    And again freedom is an immaterial quality.
    John = will = self = will = John.

    His freedom is only limited by what he learns and how he can apply that to the deterministic forces that surround him.
    This includes limitations he also learns such as drug addiction, etc...that actually impinge on his freedom to co-determine.
     
  17. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Oh I agree that it has been determined that humans evolve the capacity to learn how to determine for them selves in co-operation with the universe that surrounds them.
    'tis called co-determination.
     
  18. Baldeee Valued Senior Member

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    The logic, rationale, explanation, is given in post #422.
    If everything is deterministic (from the assumption that the universe is deterministic) then anything that you are considering "self"-determined was predetermined by prior states in which there was no "self".
    So to say that something was "self"-determined is to ignore that it was determined by states before the "self" existed, and instead the "self" simply becomes a term to relate an action (already predetermined prior to the existence of the "self") to the local phenomenon that is performing the action.
    I.e. Subjective viewpoint.
     
  19. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    and you seriously consider this to be your rational,
    we are talking logic Baldeee not just your personal opinion....
    This is the bit that you get constantly wrong...
    because self determined is about learning to be self determined from those determining forces.
    Your mistake is to assume that humans can not learn how to be a determiner.
    Do you have problem with the word "learn" or "learning"?
    again ( slightly different):
    It has been predetermined by the butterfly that a human learns the capacity to self determine for himself and be his own butterfly...
     
  20. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Baldeee
    Why do you think Humans can not learn to be a determiner in a deterministic universe?
    Humans specialize in observing, noting, and working with Cause and Effect every moment they are conscious.
    Why do you think that they cannot learn from the universe?
    What do you think scientists are doing anyhow?
    Our main ability is mimicry and what better teacher to mimic than the universe?
     
  21. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    we are not talking about first cause here we are talking about a human being born into a deterministic world with the sole purpose of learning to gain power over his environment and even his own body and mind.
    Quoting the proverbial butterfly doesn't aid your argument at all and just demonstrates the lack of scope in your thinking.
     
  22. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    So can we say that apart from loyalty to old thinking there are no logical reasons why a self determiner can not be a part of the deterministic universe?
     
  23. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Last edited: Jun 18, 2019

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