You can change the order they go into the shop if you like. Could any of them have done otherwise than they did?

Part of the point of the OP is to look at the level of abstraction to see if it has any relevance to the free will/determinism debate. Is somebody who likes cakes in general any more free than someone who likes a particular cake only? The generalising person has more options, no?

Is the educated person, who perceives causal societal structures in the world and can more effectively strategise and make choices based on this invisible underlying structure, any more free than someone who doesn't see any of that and only perceives what is happening in their immediate concrete particularised environment? That may be a different kind of question than the one posed in the OP, I'm not sure.

I think "will" consists of just two parameters:

Direction and magnitude.

"Will" is a vector. "Freedom" is not a parameter of a vector.

In your model I see various wills and a variable range of options. Omni Otto steers the vector to a direction according to Otto's desire (by the way, avoiding the worst case in the long run can also a be desire). I think, freedom, in this context, is a metaphor for the range available, and this range doesn't lie in the vector per se; a vector is not a range but an "arrow", so to speak. — Quk

I think I'm pretty much happy with that. Makes sense to me.

Still, Otto's "decision device" is not really free; his desires are caused by something or occur at random. In either case -- causal or random -- it's not Otto's "will" that generates Otto's desire. — Quk

It seems to me that particular desires just are will-vectors, no?

And it occurs to me that desire in general is perhaps a restlessness of the will. Will is such that it tends to pick an object, at random if there is no pre-existing particular desires that already condition it in a relevant way.

Perhaps the freedom of the will is the portion of will that is not committed to an end, not desiring something.

An individual has free will perhaps is a couple of senses: (1) they have uncommitted will 'spare' perhaps (2) there are things that s/he is free from. I passed a copy of 50 Shades of Grey today in a bookshop, and I was free not to buy it, as it has no hold on me, I don't have a will-vector committed to obtaining it. In the scenario, Geraldine is free from having to buy an Iced Finger and one of the Eccles cakes. Not caring, and indifference (which have negative connotations) might describe a kind of psychological freedom in relation to the objects one is indifferent to.

"Will" is neither free nor unfree; "will" is just a force. Can a gravitational force be free? Can a magnetic force be free? No, it can only be forceful. It's something else that can influence a force. The force itself cannot influence itself. — Quk

That's interesting. I'm not sure. What about an unmagnetised bit of iron? There's no overall force - the forces of the crystals average to zero over the whole thing (or something like that - please correct me). That might be analogous to the person who desires/wills many things simultaneously to an equal degree, and therefore is unable to choose any of them (except at random) - the vectors cancel.

I would say there are gradations of will; to be precise: Gradations of the will's direction and the will's magnitude. If we talk about the gradation of options, then it's about options, not about will. — Quk

Yes that sounds reasonable and more precise than my original wording.

If Pete chooses not to buy a cake, he's not Particular Pete any more, he's Absolute Pete.
— bert1

So Pete does not determine his choice, but is determined by it? — unenlightened

Maybe yes. Pete's choice might change his nature perhaps.

Cool, that's very interesting, thanks. I'll come back to it later.

Desire is a projection of memory.

Thus the determinism of the mind is an introjection of the determinism of the world , which is a projection in turn of the need for stability and predictability. — unenlightened

I don't immediately understand this. Could you elaborate a little?

In your story, you are god and always correct. — unenlightened

Sure, but my artificial universe is intended to be a simplified version of this one, and therefore meaningfully critiquable. I'm happy for people to complicate it to make it more realistic.

If that were the case, then that would mean someone WASN'T exercising free will every time they did something they really wanted to do, or avoided doing something they didn't want to do, and thus they deserve no blame or praise for those actions. So if a rapist really wants to rape, and prefers that strongly above all other options, that means they have no free will in that choice? And thus can't be blamed? — flannel jesus

That is indeed the intuition, yes. For the avoidance of doubt, I do think that rapists should be prevented from raping, but perhaps not that they should be punished because they are to blame.

They are all chained by desire, and their freedom is nothing but a conflict of desires. is that right? — unenlightened

Yes and no, it's relative. Geraldine, for example, is chained by her desire for a cake, but is not chained by her indifference to which Eccles cake she prefers.

Thus the determinism of the mind is an introjection of the determinism of the world , which is a projection in turn of the need for stability and predictability. The storyteller is constrained by their need for neatness. — unenlightened

The storyteller is a philosopher who wants to start with a simple OP that is easy to comprehend but serves as a basis for exploring some ideas. :)

Wilful Willy is a significant complication to the universe.

uh no not necessarily. someone can of course have reasons for choosing something that isn't their preference. — flannel jesus

Sure, I'm trying to keep the universe simple to make it easier to think about. But these other reasons, are they anything other than competing preferences? In which case must Pete choose the option that his strongest preference inclines him to?

I've set it up that way I guess! This universe consists of a cake shop, three cakes, and four people. What else is there to do? If Pete chooses not to buy a cake, he's not Particular Pete any more, he's Absolute Pete.

How can we help you?

Also, 100% of marriages are initiated by men, but 70% of divorces are initiated by women. — Brendan Golledge

Therefore, what? Men aren't very good at marriage?

Pre-conventional morality is only concerned with power. People in this stage don't have genuine moral opinions, but only act off of reward and punishment. So, they will do whatever authority tells them to do, no matter how transparently stupid it is. The left must clearly be in this category, because they talk about equality, and then discriminate against white men. They talk about saving the environment, and then burn electric cars. They talk about "justice" and then burn cities and punish good Samaritans. They are for feminism, but refuse to define what a woman is. So, the left has no genuine moral beliefs; all their beliefs are only verbally espoused in order to try to win the approval of other leftists. — Brendan Golledge

The difficulty with your OP is that there's too much in it. This paragraph alone would take weeks to conceptually clarify. There is putative evidence in there somewhere. Also inferences. I don't have the time or inclination to try and explicate it all though. In any case, you haven't told us what you want to talk about. How can we help?

BLM riots dwarfs — Brendan Golledge

Were they all dwarfs?

You fall into the atheist trap of self-contradiction, if you try to deny that God who is defined as the necessary being, is not a being. — Metaphysician Undercover

Why is that different from saying:

"Let 'Fido' mean 'the dog whose existence is necessary,' therefore Fido exists." Have I just created Fido? Or did Fido exist before the definition?

Surely God's necessity should depend on his other characteristics, no? Shouldn't God's necessity be in virtue of, say its timelessness, or infinity or something?

Does your mind cause anything? Are there such things as physical causes?

Can't we monitor people's physiology - brain activity, heart etc - with specialized equipment designed specifically for this purpose, in relation to various stimuli, thereby building a huge database correlating physical processes with experiences? — Pussycat

Yes, but that won't tell you which things are conscious, or will it?

I think it's very helpful. The dictionary definitions of consciousness bring out two usages, one for content and one for the fact of awareness

Anything that helps me clarify my thinking, or even my writing. I don't know if there are ways to prove or disprove various theories of consciousness. But any theory should at least be internally consistent. Pointing out anywhere that I am not is appreciated. — Patterner

The closest I've come to a forceful proof of panpsychism is the argument from the non-vagueness of consciousness. Michael Antony and Philip Goff both make this argument. I talked about it quite a lot on this forum before. It's based on the idea that consciousness does not admit of borderline cases. Combine that fact with the hypothesis that consciousness emerges from structure and function, you generate a massive problem of trying to find a physical event that is sharp enough for consciousness to plausibly emerge in. Take the development of an embryo. When does it start feeling things? How many neurons, what function are they performing, exactly which molecule hitting which receptor is the tipping point? Etc etc. Same with waking up. If we go from unconscious dreamless sleep to dreaming, what micro-event in the brain accomplishes this, and why that one exactly? If this rules out emergence, and if I know that I am conscious, I know that there must be a continuum of consciousness right back to the big bang.

Proto-consciousness is not consciousness, as the "proto" should make clear. Still, what does it mean? — Patterner

That's a good question. I can find no coherent difference. If something experiences anything, however 'proto', it's fully and totally conscious in the phenomenal sense. Differences are always a matter of content, not degree of consciousness.

You've set out your view well. What do you want us to talk about? Anything in the OP?

'a kitten' exhibits both bodily (such as chasing string, meowing/purring) & mental (such as instincts, playfulness) properties. — 180 Proof

So does a zombie kitten

Yes indeed. I was trying to make clear an argument I have heard a few times which attempts to derive a contradiction from moral relativism or meta-ethical relativism. I can't make it work! As you say, it's just not a contradiction to hold that one thing can be both good and evil depending on the perspective.

An objectivist reductio:

1) Good and evil are relative to a point of view
2) From A's point of view, x is good
3) From B's point of view, x is not-good
4) Therefore, x is both good and not-good (contradiction derived)
5) Therefore, it is not the case that good and evil are relative to a point of view (reductio of 1)

What's wrong with that?

EDIT: there's too much wrong with it to be even remotely plausible. The conclusion doesn't depend on 1. I'll have a rethink...

It's terminological mess, and I'm not overly bothered what term I settle on. I'm a substance monist, and I think there is more than one fundamental property. So the stuff of the universe is both conscious, extended, and/or whatever properties you need to generate a universe. I don't actually know what they are except that I think consciousness has to be one of them. I am definitely not a strong emergentist about consciousness, and probably not about anything else either.

I don't call myself a physicalist because most physicalists are emergentists about consciousness - the view that consciousness is reducible to structure and function seems a central tenet of many physicalists' views. But like physicalists, I don't believe in mental ectoplasm. I think everything we observe is structure and function.

Nor would I call myself an idealist, as that has the same error as physicalism but in the opposite direction. You can't get structure and function from just the property of consciousness. @javra mentions dual-aspect monism, maybe that's me.

I've been listening to a new audio book, a so called "audio documentary" that touches on this. It's called Lights On by Annaka Harris. Perhaps not up your street because she's an unabashed physicalist, but she explores concepts of fundamental consciousness because she's become increasingly convinced that that's more the right approach to talking about experience. — flannel jesus

I've recently become aware of Harris. I'm impressed so far. Quite a few panpsychists call themselves physicalists (most famously Galen Strawson), and I'm very sympathetic to their position. I don't call myself a physicalist because people usually mean 'reducible to structure and function' by 'physical', and consciousness can't be so reduced. But I'm definitely a monist, which is part of what motivates physicalism (and materialism).

Anxiety, neurotic instability, something like that, at a wild guess. A sentient pre-big-bang substance can't cease to exist, but it can act. Not acting I suspect might be absolutely intolerable.

In logic a tautology is a statement that is true by it's logical form, such as (A&B)⊃B. — Banno

Oh fair enough. I'm wondering if I was taught slightly different stuff from others.

That's a tautology, nothing implit is made explicit (i.e. nothing new is learned after "therefore"). — 180 Proof

It's an example of the &-elimination rule, a valid inference in the simple sentential logic I did ages ago.

I don't think it's a tautology, it's not saying exactly the same thing twice. Even if it were it could still be an inference. You can conclude that "Jim is bald" from "Jim is bald". Only a dick philosopher would actually say that of course.

But I agree it's uninformative.

A conclusion does not follow from a single statement — 180 Proof

Not usually but it can do. e.g. "Water is wet and wobbly. Therefore water is wet." Not very interesting admittedly, but it is an inference.

Okay for instance i agree with your thought but lets be real if he was merciful why in the first place would he make us play such game where cruelty is a good option in various cases. If he was merciful shouldn't he have created something where we could be tested without suffering and cruelty. — QuirkyZen

Maybe. It might be that suffering is a necessary consequence of creation that God cannot avoid, if God chooses to create. Or it may be that the suffering is not God's so he's not bothered about it. There's a few possibilities.

The problem of evil is definitely a challenge to those God-mongerers who want to hold to a particular set of assumptions about God. But if one is willing to shed some assumptions, then the God concept can perhaps survive in a modified form. But I guess there's a limit to how much one can modify one's God-concept before it becomes an eccentric use of the word 'God'.

By the way you said "God might be still immoral" but brother realistically god cannot be immoral because if there is a god then morality comes from him so he realistically cant be immoral thus if we see somewhere that god is being immoral than can only mean two things. — QuirkyZen

The truth of this depends on your general standpoint in moral philosophy. I think I'm probably a metaethical moral relativist, meaning that moral truths depend on a point of view, so what is right for one person may not be right for another. So what is good for God isn't necessarily what is good for me, so I can judge what God wants (or allows) as immoral, from my point of view, without contradiction.

You have to be the one causing the suffering to show mercy, no? So it is the cruel and hateful who are in a position to show mercy. God might still be immoral for not intervening, but the intervention wouldn't be correctly called 'mercy'. I'm nitpicking I suppose.

Thanks, I didn't know most of that.

Yeah, but practically speaking such a discussion is not going to scare men off from the forum. It's not particularly toxic. It could become toxic if it escalated I guess. I didn't see the thread.

I edited the prior, but will get back to you Sir. — DifferentiatingEgg

:up:

How does that affect the argument? Could you join the dots?

Well, see, there's your problem you think people can own land, and empty land at that. What stops someone from settling empty land? The state. — DifferentiatingEgg

Yes, the state enforces legal rights in land, which rights it has created itself. And as @BC said, states enforce their own rights in land, which they themselves created. Nevertheless, democratic states are a necessary evil because the alternatives are worse. If you remove the state you just get powerful individuals or powerful groups which seize what they want and then legitimise that power and control by saying they have a right to it. They write the right down and it's alright because verily it is written, perhaps by God in some cases. Might becomes right. Democratic states are a little better than this, and some are a lot better. And it seems to me that it is hostile private interests that are keeping democratic states from improving.

If we had an infinite plane of green and pleasant land, maybe we could ditch a state. Everyone starts off at a point with a wheelbarrow, pick, shovel, axe, sword and hoe, like Minecraft. We all head off in different directions until we find a bit with enough space to make a go of it. Where two people want the same bit and start waving their swords, it's OK, because one can go and find somewhere else further out. No one ever needs to fight because there is an infinity of resources. There's still a problem though. Early settlers will soon be hemmed in on all sides, making their area finite. This might be fine until they have children and start running low on resources. So then it's time to fight. So lets modify this experiment in statelessness (or anarcho-capitalism I suppose) such that the plane itself is expanding, so that even the bounded parts of it are getting bigger. A bit like dark energy. So there we go - we can get rid of states if we have an infinitely expanding space of resources. Otherwise, I'm a Hobbesian.

As a panpsychist I'm just now wondering if dark energy might not be the will of matter to increase its sphere of influence. I'll write to the Nobel Prize people tomorrow and see what they think.

We are little more than domesticated tools for its disposal. States monopolize power away from its constituents. — DifferentiatingEgg

Well, maybe, but that also applies to private individuals, no? The rich and wealthy set up their own principalities which exert power and control over others. And those guys don't ask permission once every four or five years.

Don’t you see that you and your frienss could go to some untamed bit of land and make something of it of your own determination. Even with people at odds on this Forum, we could all just decide to get up and move somewhere... but States have us by the balls. — DifferentiatingEgg

There's not enough room! All the bits are taken aren't they? States don't own most of it though, it's privately owned. I'm not sure why you blame the state more than you blame private interests. Also dictatorship-states are rather similar to private sort of 'barons' I suppose.

Have you managed to find a free bit of land somewhere and set up your own sphere of influence there?

Well my man, that's what happen when a state steals everything from the people. — DifferentiatingEgg

What's what happens?

the people look to the state to do everything... to solve their problems... — DifferentiatingEgg

I certainly do, some of those problems that I can't solve on my own anyway. What kind of problems are you thinking of?

Mighty big contribution of you towards the end you desire — DifferentiatingEgg

Oh, I see. I think that's sarcasm! Sure, of course one vote is very little. As Churchill said, democracies are the worst system except for all the others. I do a little bit towards the bigger problems, but not much I admit. I'd like a different electoral system, first past the post is really bad.

Power relegated to voting and fiat money — DifferentiatingEgg

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by those two. What other kinds of power do you have in mind?