I've never really understood how libertarian free will could be consistent with a naturalistic view of the world. — Arkady

Naturalistic views of the world haven't had the world as a place with anything like Laplacean determinism for over 100 years now.

I can make them "free" by basing them on nothing else other than internal states I have. — Echarmion

Are you putting "free" in quotation marks there because it's not really ontological freedom?

I like the brevity, at least.

At least you have some insight about that. :razz:

If I said that I'm surprised you didn't answer "Okay, so if we're not talking about literally having another person's perspective, what are we talking about? Any idea?" would you believe me?

I was arguing specifically against the notion that a free will requires "uncaused decisions". I am fine with accepting phenomenally random decisions as a possibility, I just don't think they are more "free" in some sense than phenomenally reasoned decisions. — Echarmion

Sure. I'd just say that some part of the process--somewhere from the deliberation (when that's present) to the decision has to involve some ontological indeterminateness to some extent* otherwise I don't know what "free" would be referring to ontologically (which is kind of another way of saying that I don't agree that compatibilism makes sense).

*"to some extent"=it wouldn't have to be complete, it could just be something like a probability bias.

Issues not addressed by Schopenhauer's epistemology:

#1 How to know that one has found the best possible chestnut praline frappuccino.

Here's the question I'm interested in you thinking about: "Okay, so if we're not talking about literally having another person's perspective, what are we talking about? Any idea?"

(Feel free to respond with a few hundred words that just ignore answering the question, though.)

If we neglect the concept of time as a medium and instead directly define a position in time in terms of the phenomena associated with it, then what are the resulting implications for the interpretation of false memories?

It seems to me that if one accepts this conceptual deflation of time in terms of phenomena, that a false memory would only be false in terms of convention.. For the time referred to by a memory would then be identical to the memory content, say the memory-image. Therefore to say that the memory was 'false' would be equivalent to saying that the position in time previously associated with this memory-image was to be redefined in terms of a different memory-image. — sime

I'm not sure I understand this. Say we define a position in time, say "August 3, 2004, 2:00 p.m. U.S. Eastern Standard Time" in terms of the phenomena associated with it: "I was in Paris with my mistress, Beulah." And say that was defined at the time, when I wrote it down (so we could include the phenomena of writing it down as part of the definition, too, I suppose).

So then re February 21, 2019, 9:30 a.m. U.S. Eastern Standard Time, the phenomena I'm associating with that is "I'm writing this post and thinking about my past." One of the things I think here is "August 3, 2004, 2:00 p.m. U.S. Eastern Standard Time is defined/associated with the phenomena of my trip to Fiji with my wife, Bubbles."

You're saying that that's only false--that I went to Fiji, by convention somehow? (Who else is participating in this?) Why wouldn't the fact that I never went to Fiji not matter?

The outcomes are phenomenally random. Whether or not it makes sense to refer to the operation of the RNG as a "decision" is a different and mostly semantic question. — Echarmion

Why are you mentioning an RNG?

I said "I make a lot of decisions that are phenomenally 'random.'"

That's all I said. Forget the earlier post.

I didn't ask you what I was suggesting, but what is conventionally being referred to.

Okay, so if we're not talking about literally having another person's perspective, what are we talking about? Any idea?

This is why I don't like writing long posts. Sometimes it's clear I shouldn't write more than a sentence or two.

You had written:

"If you make a decision, that decision will be based on who you are."

I said:

"I make a lot of decisions that are phenomenally 'random.'"

So in other words, I make a lot of decisions that are not "based on who I am." They're phenomenally random instead.

Empathy allows you to understand the perspectives of others? — Judaka

Yes or no, do you understand that no one is proposing that you'd literally have the other person's perspective? If you understand that, we can figure out what the idea is instead of that.

I can present a theory of free will that allows for determinism. Causality is a human perception. Free will is a human experience. Neither can be said to be more real than the other. — Echarmion

That's basically just saying "ontologically we don't know what's going on, which one is correct."

At any rate, yeah, physicalism has no implication for free will.

If you make a decision, that decision will be based on who you are — Echarmion

I make a lot of decisions that are phenomenally "random." I do this on purpose. Sometimes I use a "random number generator" instead, but I can do more or less the same thing without a random number generator, too.

So was the rule I followed that their number plates added to a prime, or that their ancestry was Slav? — Banno

Are we pretending to be behaviorists for some reason? (So that we're pretending that the person didn't have something in mind?)

Always get rid of the idea of the private object in this way: assume that it constantly changes but you do not notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you


PI p.207e


So how can morality be a private object? — Banno

The same goes for assuming it's public. Assume the object constantly changes, but everyone's memory constantly deceives them.

Both criticisms are of course making the additional, curious, assumption that languages can't obtain if what they refer to constantly changes, where the users of the language aren't aware of this.

In other words when I talk about "feelings" re what we're doing when we make utterances about morality, I'm talking about "thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour." If you think that my usage of "feelings" is saying something different than what I'd be saying with "thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behavior," then you're not understanding how I'm using the terms.

This has nothing to do with shared/not-shared meaning. Meaning is something different than usage and definitions.

What I was addressing was whether a private language is possible or not (and per the manner in which the "private language argument" is usually construed). The way the argument is usually construed, the claim is that a private language isn't possible. I'm challenging that, under some of the common assumptions (under some uncommon views, such as my views about language, meaning, etc., we might say that all language is private in some regards).

the inventor of it would need to translate it into some common language that she was already familiar with. — Janus

The issue there, though, just becomes whether it would be possible to develop some personal cryptographic code that no one could crack. I don't know how we could know whether it's possible "in principle" or not, which is why I said this earlier: "it's not at all clear what 'in principle understandable' versus 'in principle not understandable' would even amount to." How would we know that some cryptographic code is in principle not crackable versus it simply contingently being the case that no one has been able to crack it yet? (And we can ask the same thing a la "How would we know that some cryptographic code is in principle crackable but just no one has been contingently able to crack it yet?" )

It strikes me as one of those things where people are ("subconsciously") like, "Yeah, understandable versus not understandable 'in principle'--that sounds all nice and fancy and philosophical, like we're saying something rigorous and important," but when you ask anyone what the heck the difference amounts to, how we can discern either, all they can do is more or less go, "Duh . . . I dunno <shrug>"

and then based upon that one sentence, which really wasn't relevant to what I said before, — 951Michael

Take it out of the argument if it's not relevant.

There could be no criteria for doing so. — Banno

There can't be private criteria for the private rule because?

Rather, he concluded that one's private use of the word "red" within a language game cannot be given a meaningful a priori definition in terms of one's immediate sensations, due to such a definition being a circular tautology that is superfluous to, and likely unrepresentative of, one's actual private use of "red", as well as saying nothing informative to oneself or others. — sime

This strikes me as nonsensical. One cannot give a "meaningful definition" a priori to an immediate sensation because it would be a tautology (so what?) and unrepresentative (that wouldn't imply that you can't do it) and uninformative (again so what?)

I don't think he ever suggested such a thing. To relate to the private language argument, it would have to be a moral rule that even in principle can't be expressed. — frank

One of the many problems with the private language argument is that it's not at all clear what "in principle understandable" versus "in principle not understandable" would even amount to. (And of course I'd have to pretend that something is going on re understanding that is very different than what I believe is really going on).

I don’t have any problem with the idea I can’t dream except for what resides in consciousness, — Mww

Wait--that's different than whether we can dream things we haven't already experienced. I'd definitely say that dreams are a conscious phenomenon.

Observing that pre-linguistic humans find certain behaviours unacceptable. — creativesoul

Ah, so not agreeing that concepts are (necessarily) linguistic becomes important here.

Are you referring to infants, by the way?

thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. — creativesoul

When I talk about feelings in a moral context the above is what I'm referring to. So it's simply using different terms to refer to the same thing.

What do you think of the proposition we can’t dream anything we haven’t already experienced, either directly or indirectly, — Mww

I don't know why people say things like that. It always seems agenda-oriented to me, almost in the way that people hold on to religious or political beliefs so that they'll bend over backwards to interpret everything to maintin the belief no matter what.

I think we can clearly dream, and imagine while awake, things we haven't already experienced.

Re dreaming (or imagining) impossible things--I've run into people who've claimed to be able to do that, but I can't make any sense of it, and I don't think I can do it. (Keeping in mind that by impossible, I'd be referring to "strict" logical contradictions.)

Agreed.

I can smell bacon in life; I cannot smell bacon in dreams. I can dream I am smelling bacon but that is not a sensory experience.

But that doesn’t remove the possibility that life itself is a dream that includes sensory experience. In which case.....so what? — Mww

I don't just mean that there are things that are absent in my dreams. I mean that the phenomenal quality of everything present in my dreams is nothing like the phenomenal quality of the "similar" waking experience.

So for example, "seeing" my wife in my dream is nothing at all like the phenomenal quality of seeing my wife in waking experience.

My dreams are more akin to daydreams, just when I'm asleep. If I daydream or fantasize about seeing my wife, that's nothing like the phenomenal experience of actually seeing her.

Maybe some people dream and daydream so that there's no phenomenal difference. I wouldn't say that no one can do that. How would I know? But I can't relate to it, because it's not at all like that for me.

I am also currently understanding how to be a computer programmer by imagining myself as a computer programmer. I will let you know on the results soon. — Judaka

You mean how to literally be a computer programmer? Because empathy isn't about literally having the other person's perspective.

James Damore and incel culture. What's striking about both is that the proponents are young. — frank

Insofar as that stuff might have increased, I think that developments that people see often see as positive are just as much to blame--namely, social justice activism that heavily focuses on race and gender. Those movements are so obsessed with racial and gender categories and abilities related to the same that they encourage everyone to start parsing things in those terms, and that doesn't always lead to the conclusions that others want. Plus activism that winds up penalizing anyone in some way will always have a backlash.

When I was a kid in public school and at university, people didn't focus on those categories the way they do now. The movement only started picking up traction towards the end of my time at university.

But I think it's also just a factor of the Internet--how it's possible to make a lot of noise online and get attention. That tends to give the impression that various things are more common than they really are.

In my opinion, it's rather a continuum, with varying degrees of control/influence possible. And control/influence can be developed, but that's also on a continuum.

It's not a simple black & white issue a la either you can control emotions period or not control them period.

Is the desire to be moral itself moral? — Brett

I wouldn't say that any desire has anything to do with morality. (In other words, desires themselves aren't what we (should) judge to be moral or not. Actions are what are what we (should) judge to be moral or not.)

I started this thread because I was trying to understand why I'm seeing more overt expressions of sexism than I once did. — frank

What are some examples of that for you?

Depends on your philosophical preference. It is usually considered irrational to claim a truth that is technically merely a possibility.
A.) To say an empirical event will occur implies irreversible factual causality. We have knowledge our sun is a star, stars are known to supernova, therefore......you get the picture.
B.) To say an event will occur implies the negation is impossible. If the negation is possible, the statement is false. The correct simple proposition is, the sun should rise tomorrow. Or, simple with qualifiers, all else being given, the sun will rise tomorrow. — Mww

The certainty fetish. There's therapy for that. :joke:

How does following one's own private rules differ from mere accident? — Banno

In other words, from an observer's perspective, if we pretend we're behaviorists, and necessarily we're talking about parsing behavior that we can't assume amounts to a rule, because it's apparently arbitrary.

But that's only when we stipulate/assume all of those things (and pretend they're all that matter).

The arguments against a private language have a more general form that argues against private rules. A rule that is only understood by one person does not count as a rule. — Banno

You can stipulate that you're going to use the word "rule" so that it necessarily isn't something that pertains to just one person, but that doesn't say much except announce to us how you're going to use a term.

So can a person have private morals? — Banno

You can't have anything other than private morals. Just like you can't have anything other than private meaning. Morals and meaning pick out phenomena that only occur in brains functioning in mental ways (there's zero evidence otherwise), and there's no way to make that phenomena be something other than that.

The private language argument is not correct, by the way.

on the model's premise that life and well-being are valuable for human beings, there is nothing that needs explaining. — Andrew M

Unless we want to know what we're referring to ontologically re something being valuable. That is, we want to know what's going on ontologically to make that the case if it is.

You can proceed where you don't care about it so you're just not going to bother figuring out what's going on ontologically there, but we can be interested in it. That's what I've been focusing on.

I'm more comfortable not calling it a "moral" feeling. More like rudimentary thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. — creativesoul

That's simply terminological whims. The different terms aren't picking out different phenomena. They're simply different terms.

Cool. Hence the utility of empathy.