That's how it works in the US, and it has worked fine.

Your thinking presupposes that the a priori modes of cognition have to mirror the natural laws; and this is simply not true.

Who said that, e.g., mathematics is more than (transcendental) a priori?

Indeterminism is a short-hand for physical indeterminism, I would say; but I get your point.

The government would argue it's not going to be will-nilly. They are only going to do it when they have reasonable suspicion of overpayment.

:lol:

I don't think the article begs the question: I was noting your response did.

Here’s what the article says:

However, since Bob1 and Bob2 have all of the same goals, beliefs, etc., there is nothing different between them to which we can appeal to explain why Bob1 chose to go the bookshelf at time T2 and Bob2 chose to go the kitchen at time T2.  Their individual actions are explainable, but libertarianism cannot explain why one choice is made instead of another.

This has the same problem I already exposed: a libertarian is not per se committed to the idea that if Bob1 and Bob2 have the same exact beliefs, desires, etc. that they each could decide to will something different than each other—this is a straw man.

The libertarian could hold equally that two Bobs in identical universes would reason the same and decide the same while also holding that if merely the physical causality were the same in each world then the Bobs could reason differently.

It’s also worth mentioning that the article sets up a shaky distinction between beliefs and reasons that I don’t think a libertarian has to accept.

The core tenant of libertarianism is that leeway free will exists, which implies that there is free will in the sense that one could have done otherwise: they are not committed per se to the view that one can reason contrary to their beliefs nor that they cannot reason contrary to their beliefs.

This is the crux presupposition in your thought:

Now when we rewind, we're of course rewinding such that all those facts we took note of are all the same

I reject this. When you rewind the clock, you are rewinding the facts which does not itself necessitate that when you start the clock again those facts will re-emerge. You haven't provided any justification for why one should believe that and it just begs the question by presupposing that causal determinism is true.

E.g., if it is a fact that I went for a run today and you rewind the clock to right before I began my run; then ceteris paribus we don't know that I am going to go for a run today. If we believe causal determinism, the loosest sense of the term, is true, then we have reasons to believe I will necessarily go for that run.

The problem is that you are claiming to refute libertarianism by presupposing causal determinism in the first place; and you are doing this by implicitly stipulating that when the facts are rewound those facts are inevitably going to happen again: that's just saying "causal determinism is true" with convoluted steps.

EDIT:

So, you end up needing to prove causal determinism to prove that your OP's argument is true; which defeats the purpose of your argument in the OP in the first place.

So, why should one expect the same outcome if we rewind all the facts?

Moreover, with respect to my original critique, what if we only rewound the physical facts?

I abstain from conversations having free will as the topic, insofar as the very notion of “free will”, as far as I’m concerned, has already confused the issue.

How does it confused the issue?

…is only the case under very restricted conditions, re: pure practical reasoning, in which the subject himself is necessary and sufficient causality for all that which is governed by those principles, sometimes even to the utter subordination of natural instincts

Can’t we subordinate our natural instincts all the time? How is this “very restricted”? Most people don’t have, e.g., brain tumors.

How does the bold part even work. Why would new causality being generated be any advantage at all? Suppose one uses this kind of free will to cross a busy street. Generating new causality seems to be pure randomness, as opposed to actually looking and using the state of the cars as the primary cause of your decision as to when to cross.

That is beyond the scope of my critique: I am merely pointing out to @flannel jesus that it is not a valid rejoinder to libertarianism to stipulate one will will the same (and thusly the change in causality is from some other source if the causality is different at all the second or third time we rewind the clock).

They tend to believe in a soul or immaterial mind and that reality has top-down causality to some extent; which would not be random: e.g., things ordering themselves in correspondence with an idea is not random at all. The idea is that the higher-ontological things have some sway over what exists at the lower-ontological things.

I am not a libertarian, but the way I would think about it is that our brains facilitate our ability to reason and reason governs our actions; so the "top" does have influence over the "bottom" causally to some extent. The memory your brain formulates influences your decisions, which can impact how the brain organizes itself in the future. Our brains are not like mechanical domino-style robots.

In your example we don't, or if we do it is presupposed we will will the same anyways, whereas in mine we do but we could will differently.

My point is not that libertarianism is correct but, rather, that your OP is a straw man of their position: no libertarian worth any salt is going to disagree with the idea that if you will the same then you will will the same. They are going to note that if you rewound their motives and reasons and the physical aspects of their action, then they may have had different motives or reasons and thusly willed differently. For libertarians, willing is a source of causality and not merely a biproduct of physical causality.

Do you think the rational principles of logic and cognition would be the same in a reality that had different underlying natural laws?

The a priori modes by which one cognizes depends on, as the name suggests, how their cognition is pre-structured and not the natural laws which govern those pre-structures: they relate to each other, but aren’t the same.

If, in principle, reason were to manifest in a being which had a wholly different physical constitution, then it’s modes of cognition would be the same as it relates to reasoning even if the natural laws governing (and the natural organs or functions ontologically grounding) that reasoning is wholly different than our own.

Now, what are the kinds of being which have reason but do not have human brains? I don’t know, exactly because we’ve never met one.

Applied ethically, I think educating the people and arming them is the best solution against tyranny and injustice. I am not saying we get rid of the police or the justice system, but I wouldn't rely on it heavily like China does.

CC @flannel jesus

The physical causality could be the exact same and the intent pursued could be the exact same. Each option toward the given intent pursued is of itself, however, a more proximal possible intent toward the here distant intent one aims to actualize.

If the intent is the exact same, then only the means towards that end could be subject to change (in principle); so it would be impossible that one has the leeway freedom to intend differently in your example here (to Flannel’s point). Javra, what you are saying here is that one can intend something differently when they intend the same thing: it’s internally incoherent.

To be honest, I am not sure of the exact threshold; but I do lean towards the people over the government. I do believe, to relate to the OP, that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in, on, or with their private property as long as they, within that private property, create the privacy. So letting the government willy-nilly enter into people's bank accounts is a no-no: that gives them entirely too much power.

Not quite. I was saying that willing, under some forms of libertarianism, generates new causality that originates from the will and the willing may differ even if the physical causality differs (according to this view)(such as if there is a soul or something like that). So if some person performs action, A, with intent, M, and you rewind the physical causality; then:

1. A, which is comprised of intent with physical causality originating therefrom, is only rewound in terms of having the intent and the physical causality it introduced into reality; and

2. If M is from leeway freedom, then it does not originate from the physical causality you rewound; and

3. If #2, then that person could will A for another intent, N, or intent some other action, B, with some other intent.

:up:

CC: @Mww

It is also worth mentioning Kant's transcendental freedom, which does not fit cleanly between compatibilism and incompatibilism; and of which claims that our reasoning is governed by rational principles unrestrained by one's natural instincts.

This kind of view could be incorporated, to wit, into a version of compatibilism different than the OP's (but yet still naturalistic––although Kant wouldn't probably go for it); such that our brains are causally determined but, when functioned properly, facilitate our ability to be regulated in thought through reason's own principles instead of anything about the natural laws which govern the brain which facilitates it.

The key difference here would be that your OP accepts that there is some sort of connection between the causal underpinnings which facilitate reason and reason herself such that reason cannot think according to her own laws. Why should someone accept that?

EDIT:

E.g., when I determine that '1 + 1 = 2' it does not seem to be dependent on the underlying natural laws which facilitated my ability to determine it; but, rather, is governed by rational principles of logic and cognition which have nothing to do with those aforesaid natural laws. So long as my brain is healthy enough to facilitate it, my thinking powers will be able to reason in this way.

I think this is a conflation between physical and motive causality: I would recommend looking into Schopenhauer's "On the Fourfold Foundation of the Principle of Sufficient Reason". In short, a libertarian is not going to grant you that free will requires that one could have done otherwise if their will is the same when time is rewound but, rather, that one could have willed differently if the physical causality were rewound.

Generally my government policy is to starve it: I'd rather give the people too much control over themselves than the government too much control over the people.

I never claimed time doesn't exist.

This is a joke right?:

Time doesn't exist. Only space and objects exist.

That's the very first sentence of the OP.

Time is a concept.

Time may be real, a [self-reflective] concept, and exist a priori all at once. It is on your OP to demonstrate why it is only a [self-reflective] concept.

You cannot say time is real. It would be like saying water is real. Water is hot or cold, not real or unreal.

Water is definitely real: no one disputes that. To say it is not real, is to say that it does not exist in reality. You deny that water exists in reality???

Concepts are not real or unreal

Concepts exist: they are not real.

You either know a concept or you don't know it.

Whether the concept exists is a separate question than if I know about the concept.

They have been demonstrated, but not scientifically. I don't know why one would expect it to be proven scientifically when it is presupposed for science to work in the first place.

If you really don't believe we know what truth is, then you can't do science properly; because it depends on investigating the truth.

For my point there, any common sense use of the word will do. You cannot claim the time does not exist (or is not real) merely because people can fail to recognize it as such: that's a bad argument, and that is exactly what you are doing when you bring up indigenous people who fail to understand that they age.

Beyond that point of contention, I would say that what is real and what exist are different; because there are things which have being but are not a member of reality (e.g., the feeling of pain, the phenomenal color of orange, a thought, the a priori concept of quantity, etc.). As such, I denote what is a member of reality proper as real and what has being as what exists; and, therefore, everything that is real exists but not everything that exists is real.

Eh, scientism doesn't work nor logical positivism. E.g., you can't scientifically determine the nature of truth, logic, mathematics, knowledge, some a priori modes of cognition, etc.

There is nothing science can say of, e.g., the nature of a proposition.

Likewise, metaphysics which is not derived from science may still be informed by it; and the parts that are not are guided by that application of reason to evidence---not the imagination (if it is done properly).

The idea that one could fail to recognize that time is real does not negate nor suggest that it isn't real.

However, under the Kantian interpretation of time, yes, time is not real but exists. You seem to be conflating self-reflectively knowing time exists with it not existing. By concept of time, I am presuming you are exclusively referring to a concept derived through experience by self-reflective reason.

The process of aging is a temporal process--hence in time. One might say, now, that aging is a representation of causality which is atemporal; but the aging itself is certainly temporal.

That's because time still exists even though they haven't figured it out, Corvus.

That is single-handedly the dumbest bit of sophistry I've ever heard. Growing old is aging in the sense that I obviously meant it; and you just sidestepped the question.

Why would my body have to exist in space, but I can still age without time?

Kant said that, because time is a concept? In Kant, time is definitely internal mental condition (a priori) for human understanding. A priori here means it is innate, and doesn't rely on experience on the empirical world

For Kant, time and space are modes by which our faculties of cognition cognize sensations. You are claiming that there is a space beyond that a priori space but yet that there isn’t a time beyond that a priori time. What is the argument for that?

Any world events, objects or matter can be conceptualised, and time is a typical case of the conceptualisation

It is not a concept: it is a pure intuition of our sensibility; and so is space. A concept is kind of idea comprised of attributes; whereas an intuition is a seeming. An a priori concept, e.g., is quantity; an a priori intuition is space.

:up:

I don't know why space is a requirement for me to be real; and, if it does, then why time wouldn't.

Time doesn't exist. Only space and objects exist.

Hmmm, I think @Mww would agree that objects being real checks out, but why would space be real if you hold time as merely a priori?

:lol:

I am just waiting for you to keep periodically mentioning this lmao.

I guess I don't understand what is entailed by being a mod. Why would you want to step down? Are you just trying to free up your time?

Irregardless, I wish you the best, fdrake. Quality philosophers are quite rare on here. I hope you choose to at least stay as a member on the forum.

You too, my friend! I look forward to our next conversation.

Unfortunately, I don't see any way forward either ):

I think we are going in circles at this point, so I am going to remove my hat from the ring. The last thing I will say is that, again, your arguments depend on conflations---especially between a set and its members and between C and A.

I think it becomes a requirement from believing that there is a simple being and it must have these properties and having to reconcile that contradiction. I think it ends up becoming more cogent than people let on: the properties we assign God are analogical, and not univocal, equivocation and they do seem to reduce to each other by-at-large. Maybe there's some hiccups with intelligence and pure simplicity, but I think it seems to work fine.

I apologize: I was not alerted to your original response because there were no references to me in there (technically).

• Here is a series
• That series has some prime item on which it is based
• And this we call god.
…
And the last step is a puzzle, Aquinas' "And this we all call god"

This seems to be a straw man. My OP goes into detail why it does not suffice to just identify this simple being as a simple being full-stop. I didn’t just say “and let’s just call this God”.

So taking an example from the SEP article, in order to say that ‘Whatever thinks exists’ we already have supposed that there is something that thinks, that the domain of thinking things is not empty

This is a conflation, though. The cogito ergo sum presupposes that something exists and that we can say that the thinker is that being. I don’t buy the argument, but, nevertheless, it is not presupposing that a thinking being exists to prove that a thinking being exists.

The first is that formal logic is just incapable of displaying the structure of such existential arguments.

Do you just mean that we must presuppose something exists to prove something else exists?

The cosmological argument hinges on the premise that there is something rather than nothing, the non-emptiness of the domain of being

True, but wouldn’t the domain of being have to be non-empty since we exist?

There's also the more obvious problem that god is both simple and yet has parts - will, intelligence, and so on. The quick retort is that these are all one, that god's will, intelligence and so on are all the very same. That's quite a stretch, since for the purposes of the argument they are each separated out. Faith is a powerful force. Yet if one begins with a contradiction, anything is provable.

Firstly, I think it is perfectly valid to see it from the outside as a sort of ad hoc rationalization given that there is an absolutely simple being and it has these properties (which are prima facie irreconcilable).

Secondly, I don’t think it is as incoherent as you might think. Omnipotence is just power which is reducible to pure will; pure will implies intelligence (no matter how rudimentary) and is reducible thereto; pure will is reducible to pure actuality; pure actuality is reducible to pure simplicity; pure simplicity (and actuality) imply immutibility; etc.

Apply the label "necessitarianism" to my view if you like

Sorry, I don’t understand what you are saying then. You seem to keep flip-flopping. First you mentioned that everything exists necessarily such that there is no way they could have failed to exist—which simply is necessitarianism—and then you turn around and say that you do believe that there may be ways that some things could fail to exist.

Here’s what I am thinking you are attempting to convey, and correct me if I am wrong: saying that a thing could have failed to exist if its parts did not get so arranged (or did not exist) does not demonstrate that it could have failed to exist because it may be the case that there were no other causal possibilities such that it would not have existed. Is that right?

You apparently believe contingency is the default: if necessity isn't proved (or accounted for), contingency should be assumed. I believe the converse: if contingency can't be proved (or accounted for), then necessity should be the default

No, I am using them in the traditional sense. The modality of possibility is about a thing not contradicting the mode of thought used to conceive it: this is not the same thing as conceivability. There are three modes of possibility (traditionally): metaphysical, physical, and logical.

Metaphysical possibility is such that a thing could exist in a manner that does not violate the nature of things; physical possibility such that a thing could exist in a manner that does not violate Nature (viz., physics); and logical possibility such that a thing could exist in a manner that does not violate laws of logic.

This is not the same as conceivability. E.g., it is physically impossible to jump to the moon but conceivable to jump to the moon; it is metaphysically impossible for H20 not to be water but it is conceivable; it is logically impossible for a != a but it is (to some extent) conceivable.

Moreover, contingency is the dependence of one thing on another for its existence; and necessity is the independence of a thing on any other things for its existence.

I think, for you, contingency is the possibility of non-existence for an existent thing (whether it be in the past, present, or future); and necessity is the impossibility of non-existence for an existent thing (ditto). Is that right?

In my sense of the term, a table is contingent upon its parts; and, if causal determinism or necessitarianism is true, could not have failed to existence.

My point is that the OP depends on my kind of contingency in terms of what the word refers to in its underlying meaning; and you cannot wipe this away by engaging in a semantic dispute about how to define contingency.

That depends on the metaphysical system you're using to account for it

Causality is traditionally and widely accepted as explanations of why a thing is the way it is. What you are probably thinking of is physical or material causality.

My impression is that yours depends on a form of essentialism that considers an object's identify to be associated with an essence, to which "accidental" (contingent) properties may attach

That is a fair assessment of the OP, but I don’t think this is true for the subsequent short-hand arguments I gave. It depends solely on the idea that this being depends on its parts to exist even if it could not have failed to exist; no different than how, e.g., platonic forms depend on each other atemporally.

Even if you don’t think there’s an essence to a, e.g., chair; I think you can agree that that particular chair would not exist if its legs, the wood it is made out of, etc. did not exist and you can also simultaneously agree that the chair, under your view, could not have failed to exist.

Without contingent properties, your argument from composition fails. That's because an object's constituents are an identity to the object itself.

No. The chair still depends on its parts to exist even if it could not have failed to exist. The chair does not exist as a brute existence.

No, spatialized language is the notion of the space metaphor to talk about time

I don’t think time can be described through space, but I am open to hearing why you think this.

It's a common thing to do, in language, to talk about people having abstractions as if they are themselves substances. Such as, "You have so much love!" Love is an abstract concept here that is treated as a thing that can we have so and so much of.

This is good. Here’s a couple things to note:

1. This is only a reification fallacy if anti-realism with respect to the topic is true. E.g., the number 2 is not real IFF mathematical anti-realism is true; and same with love.

2. Assuming things like, e.g., love are not real but exist as emergent-phenomenal processes of our organism, these still have parts. E.g., love is a feeling of strong intimacy, attraction, etc. for another and is composed, at a minimum, of a strong connection between a donor and recipient and all which is subject to time (viz., loving through time).

3. When I was talking about space and time as substances, I meant it in the realist sense; so that is not a reification fallacy. I was speaking of what it would look like if one believes they are substances.

Why the heck does it matter what necessitarianism would entail?

Your view is a form of necessitarianism, as exemplified by your example from “A Case for Necessitarianism”. The ideas you quoted are only compatible with necessitarianism.

Let’s back track a bit, because we are not making progress. Let me ask you this: do you believe that a table is dependent upon its parts to exist?

I previously called you out for what appeared to be, your conflating conceivability with metaphysical possibility

I was charitably interpreting your idea of a “non-actual possibility”: like I stated before, possibility is coherence of a thing with a mode of thought (e.g., metaphysics, physics, logic, etc.).

I explained why I'm convinced the past is finite

How is that relevant to the OP?

As an aside, I arrived at my view that the past is finite after spending a good bit of time examining the Kalam Cosmological Argument

Yes, I could tell: the Kalam argument is not neo-Aristotelian. It depends on an argument from efficient causes—which is a per accidens kind of causal series—whereas Aristotelian arguments stem from per se kinds of causal series. For Aristotle, in fact, matter is eternal and yet still requires a first cause; and even if it were finite then it would still need a first cause (according to him).

The OP’s argument is from per se causality.

My only point here is to demonstrate that I don't simply go into denial when seeing an argument I disagree with

I am not engaging in your argument for a finite past because it is a red herring: it does not matter if there is an infinite past of causal events or not for the argument of composition to work. If you think it does, then I would need to here why before spending the time engaging in your argument.

Composition and cause are two different things

Yes, but composition is a kind of causality—I’ve maintained this the entire discussion. Again, composition is a kind of per se causality whereas, e.g., begetting children is a kind of per accidens causality.