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> If there’s no free will, every solution must be a top-down one. If people aren’t free to choose, then “people don’t change”—they can’t change. Neither of the

by lapcat 4y ago

> If there’s no free will, every solution must be a top-down one. If people aren’t free to choose, then “people don’t change”—they can’t change. Neither of these claims is justified or even explained by the author.

htag 4y ago
The loss of societies's expectations to support a claim with an argument is dangerous. Constructing an argument to defend this statement is left as an exercise for the reader.
simonh 4y ago
I came to comment on the same core claim. Clearly people do change, we see it happen in our own lives. People undergo religious conversion, change their political views, decide to become vegetarian, give up a life of crime. Giving up a belief in philosophical free will doesn’t negate any of that. The physicalist view is that we are physical systems, and obviously such systems are entirely mutable. Determinism means I as a physical being choose my actions based on my knowledge, experience, preferences and other mental attributes. It means there is a direct causal link between my state and my choice. That’s responsibility. However it also implies that I am not entirely responsible for who I am. There are influences such as my genetics, hormonal balance, childhood environment, etc that affect my choices which are beyond my control. For me, what this implies is a humanistic approach to responsibility. It means humans are mutable, in practically applicable ways. In terms of justice it has lead me to a much more rehabilitative rather that retributional view on the role of incarceration. If people are fixable, if they can be helped, we should help them. The article is almost wilfully, deliberately obtuse on these issues. It’s basically the same argument as the old sore that without a belief in gods moral authority, there would be nothing to stop us from attacking, raping and stealing from each other. It’s literally only fear of god stopping us from falling into anarchy. In this case it’s only a belief in philosophical free will stopping us from, I don’t know, all acting like mindless zombies or something. It’s absurd.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > It’s basically the same argument as the old sore that without a belief in gods moral authority, there would be nothing to stop us from attacking, raping and stealing from each other. Yep. The good news is that many people are not actually free to do these things things, restrained by an innate sense of humanity. Society has a lot of problems, but it would completely fall apart, becoming a Hobbesian war of all against all, if we depended on everyone deliberately choosing to be good rather than simply being good.
Brian_K_White 4y ago
Neither of those statements are claims that need to be explained or justified. They are proposed lines of reasoning that themseves explain and justify other arguments. You might still challenge them, but the challenge would just be your own counter statement. For instance, are you claiming that: If people aren't free to choose, they can still change just fine?
- lapcat 4y ago
  > Neither of those statements are claims that need to be explained or justified. Heh, this claim itself needs to be explained and justified. > They are proposed lines of reasoning that themseves explain and justify other arguments. I would call them unexamined assumptions. > You might still challenge them, but the challenge would just be your own counter statement. The burden of proof is on the author to support the conclusions of the article and convince the readers of those conclusions. I remain completely unconvinced. > For instance, are you claiming that: If people aren't free to choose, they can still change just fine? I am claiming that people obviously do change, as an empirical matter. This is not magically an argument for metaphysical free will. It would be such a trivial argument. If anything, perhaps people have no freedom to not change. After all, we're changing every moment, if only by aging. I wish I could avoid aging! You could liken the human body to the Ship of Theseus, constantly adding new parts and removing old parts, until hardly anything is the same years later. Moreover, we're constantly being affected by external stimuli. Or to put it in another way, we learn! How could we not change in reaction to that?
  - Brian_K_White 4y ago
    Neither of those statements were statements. They were pure algebra with placeholder suppositions not declared values. There is nothing in them to contest except the definitions of the terms. Unless you are claiming they used the word "if" wrong or something there is nothing to prove or disprove. If you want to claim the algebra is wrong, the "if this then that" is broken, then say what you think is wrong with it.

by lapcat 4y ago

htag 4y ago

The loss of societies's expectations to support a claim with an argument is dangerous. Constructing an argument to defend this statement is left as an exercise for the reader.

simonh 4y ago

I came to comment on the same core claim. Clearly people do change, we see it happen in our own lives. People undergo religious conversion, change their political views, decide to become vegetarian, give up a life of crime. Giving up a belief in philosophical free will doesn’t negate any of that. The physicalist view is that we are physical systems, and obviously such systems are entirely mutable. Determinism means I as a physical being choose my actions based on my knowledge, experience, preferences and other mental attributes. It means there is a direct causal link between my state and my choice. That’s responsibility. However it also implies that I am not entirely responsible for who I am. There are influences such as my genetics, hormonal balance, childhood environment, etc that affect my choices which are beyond my control. For me, what this implies is a humanistic approach to responsibility. It means humans are mutable, in practically applicable ways. In terms of justice it has lead me to a much more rehabilitative rather that retributional view on the role of incarceration. If people are fixable, if they can be helped, we should help them. The article is almost wilfully, deliberately obtuse on these issues. It’s basically the same argument as the old sore that without a belief in gods moral authority, there would be nothing to stop us from attacking, raping and stealing from each other. It’s literally only fear of god stopping us from falling into anarchy. In this case it’s only a belief in philosophical free will stopping us from, I don’t know, all acting like mindless zombies or something. It’s absurd.

lapcat 4y ago
> It’s basically the same argument as the old sore that without a belief in gods moral authority, there would be nothing to stop us from attacking, raping and stealing from each other. Yep. The good news is that many people are not actually free to do these things things, restrained by an innate sense of humanity. Society has a lot of problems, but it would completely fall apart, becoming a Hobbesian war of all against all, if we depended on everyone deliberately choosing to be good rather than simply being good.

Brian_K_White 4y ago

Neither of those statements are claims that need to be explained or justified. They are proposed lines of reasoning that themseves explain and justify other arguments. You might still challenge them, but the challenge would just be your own counter statement. For instance, are you claiming that: If people aren't free to choose, they can still change just fine?

lapcat 4y ago
> Neither of those statements are claims that need to be explained or justified. Heh, this claim itself needs to be explained and justified. > They are proposed lines of reasoning that themseves explain and justify other arguments. I would call them unexamined assumptions. > You might still challenge them, but the challenge would just be your own counter statement. The burden of proof is on the author to support the conclusions of the article and convince the readers of those conclusions. I remain completely unconvinced. > For instance, are you claiming that: If people aren't free to choose, they can still change just fine? I am claiming that people obviously do change, as an empirical matter. This is not magically an argument for metaphysical free will. It would be such a trivial argument. If anything, perhaps people have no freedom to not change. After all, we're changing every moment, if only by aging. I wish I could avoid aging! You could liken the human body to the Ship of Theseus, constantly adding new parts and removing old parts, until hardly anything is the same years later. Moreover, we're constantly being affected by external stimuli. Or to put it in another way, we learn! How could we not change in reaction to that?
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  Neither of those statements were statements. They were pure algebra with placeholder suppositions not declared values. There is nothing in them to contest except the definitions of the terms. Unless you are claiming they used the word "if" wrong or something there is nothing to prove or disprove. If you want to claim the algebra is wrong, the "if this then that" is broken, then say what you think is wrong with it.