GENIUS FORUMS

analog57 wrote:That means even one causal event cannot be precisely defined. Therefore causality itself cannot be defined?

Causality can certainly be defined. A cause is something that is necessary for something else to exist.

How can a thing be caused, if the process of causality itself cannot be explained?

The weather can't be fully explained in detail, but that doesn't mean there is no weather.

When causality cannot be precisely defined, for example, a person throws a rock and a window breaks:

According to your definition of causality, the reason the window was broken, is due to a multitude of many ultimately unspecifiable, yet completely deterministic factors resulting in a person tossing a stone

Yes.

...AND the person is NOT ultimately responsible for their actions in a philosophical sense, because free will does NOT exist.

When the weather is changeable, we sometimes say "The weather hasn't decided what it wants to do." It's just a figure of speech, to indicate that we don't yet know what pattern the weather will settle in. It's the same with our "free will". We have "free will" until such time as Nature has decided what we are to do.

We say that people are "responsible" for their actions because we are trying to modify their behaviour, causally. That is, we are trying to cause their behaviour to be something that better suits us.

According to my "free will" hypothesis, the person reached a crucial point, where a choice needed to be made:

yes or no.

Yes, a person makes a choice, but whichever choice they make is completely determined by predetermining causes. For example, some people have more choices than others, and some people are more intelligent, more confident, more knowlegeable, etc. All these things determine what choice a person will make.

ksolway wrote:

analog57 wrote:That means even one causal event cannot be precisely defined. Therefore causality itself cannot be defined?

Causality can certainly be defined. A cause is something that is necessary for something else to exist.

Then you must realize the problem of the "totality". If it has a cause, what caused it?

ksolway wrote: The weather can't be fully explained in detail, but that doesn't mean there is no weather.

The term "weather" is a label for certain conditions of nature we find ourselves in. It is a label, not a precisely defined system.

Causality is a label for transformative states of existence. To say that "A causes B" is to say that the existence of A necessitates the existence of B.
But what is actually happening is a transformation from state A to state B.

There is a relational invariance FOR the transformation.

ksolway wrote:Yes, a person makes a choice, but whichever choice they make is completely determined by predetermining causes. For example, some people have more choices than others, and some people are more intelligent, more confident, more knowlegeable, etc. All these things determine what choice a person will make.

A person's intelligence is not an outside determining factor. It is an attribute OF the individual in question. Thus the determination is a self determination which is basically the same as free will.

Therefore, according to you free will exists.

analog57 wrote:A person's intelligence is not an outside determining factor. It is an attribute OF the individual in question. Thus the determination is a self determination which is basically the same as free will.

Are you saying people are stupid because they choose to be?

analog57 wrote:

ksolway wrote:

analog57 wrote:That means even one causal event cannot be precisely defined. Therefore causality itself cannot be defined?

Causality can certainly be defined. A cause is something that is necessary for something else to exist.

Then you must realize the problem of the "totality". If it has a cause, what caused it?

There is no problem. Concieving of it caused it. In truth, that's the only way it exists.

You are speaking of the totality as though it were existent in any other way than in its conception. This is, of course, completely impossible.

analog57 wrote:

ksolway wrote: The weather can't be fully explained in detail, but that doesn't mean there is no weather.

The term "weather" is a label for certain conditions of nature we find ourselves in. It is a label, not a precisely defined system.

Causality is a label for transformative states of existence. To say that "A causes B" is to say that the existence of A necessitates the existence of B.
But what is actually happening is a transformation from state A to state B.

There is a relational invariance FOR the transformation.

That's just not true. For example:



If I define the word unicorn in the standard manner, then that definition is caused to have meaning by everything which does not conform the standard definition of unicorn.

Where's the invariance and transformation?



Similarly, if an idea is concieved, it is necessarily caused to exist.

Where's the invariance? Where's the transformation?



That existent idea is caused to be as it is (in part) by the culmination of the conciever's previous experiences and the present circumstances. It couldn't be any other way.

Where's the invariance and transformation?



The experiences of this conciever are caused to be as they are (in part) by their experiences of the experiences of previous concievers. So, for example, your conception of causality is caused (in part) by the previous conceptions of classical scientific determinists.

Where's the invariance and transformation?


This illustrates one of the many aspects of causality you are ignoring if you look at it only in terms of scientific determinism.

If causality is a label for anything, it is a label for experience. Only part of this causality can be illustrated by these classically delineated, 'billiard ball' transformative processes. And that's all they are descriptions, illustrations, maps - not the territory.

If you look at the above examples, they may at first seem different to a description of a ball rolling down a hill (or even just sitting quite still on top of a hill) but in principle they're no different. They're both just arbitrary deliniations which exist as transformation only in the conception of their explanation.

That's really the only way these 'transformations' exist.

analog57 wrote:

ksolway wrote:Yes, a person makes a choice, but whichever choice they make is completely determined by predetermining causes. For example, some people have more choices than others, and some people are more intelligent, more confident, more knowlegeable, etc. All these things determine what choice a person will make.

A person's intelligence is not an outside determining factor. It is an attribute OF the individual in question. Thus the determination is a self determination which is basically the same as free will.

Therefore, according to you free will exists.

This is a joke, right?

Or have you just thrown rationality out of the window in the quest for victory at all costs?

A person's intelligence is not an outside determining factor. It is an attribute OF the individual in question.

Ok. But we can still agree that it was caused to be what it is, right? So in part, that person's intelligence was caused to be what it is by their genetic make up, their environment and their experiences.

Thus the determination is a self determination

Yes, and this 'self determination' is arrived at using the intelligence in question, which is completely caused. In fact the self (of which this intelligence is a part) and the determination themselves are also completely causal.

which is basically the same as free will.

It's not just the same, that is free will. It's just not the free will you're thinking of.


Give it up guy.

In case you didn't notice, here it is for you again:

ksolway wrote:

Philosophaster wrote:I don't think that the determinism / indeterminism issue really matters (in regard to free will) at all. Neither one makes the concept of "free will" any more coherent or possible.

Yes, since if our will is caused, it is not free, and if our will is uncaused, it is random, and thus no will at all.

Refute it, or get used to what free will is, and isn't.

DHodges wrote:

analog57 wrote:A person's intelligence is not an outside determining factor. It is an attribute OF the individual in question. Thus the determination is a self determination which is basically the same as free will.

Are you saying people are stupid because they choose to be?

A stupid person has the self determination to choose, just as a not-so-stupid person does.

Dave Toast wrote: If I define the word unicorn in the standard manner, then that definition is caused to have meaning by everything which does not conform the standard definition of unicorn.

Where's the invariance and transformation?

Hello Toast


Unicorn_____Not-Unicorn____Unicorn or Not-Unicorn

True_________False______________True

False_________True_______________True


The linguistic tautology A or not-A is always true, hence the invariance.

Dave Toast wrote:

ksolway wrote:

Philosophaster wrote:I don't think that the determinism / indeterminism issue really matters (in regard to free will) at all. Neither one makes the concept of "free will" any more coherent or possible.

Yes, since if our will is caused, it is not free, and if our will is uncaused, it is random, and thus no will at all.

Refute it, or get used to what free will is, and isn't.

If intelligence is a property of total existence[i.e. the universe, where the universe itself is an intelligent mind], then self awareness and "self will" on the individual level is simply a type of self similarity replicated throughout the "totality". Reality "chooses" to exist. Individual minds are making choices with free will, just as the universe is a mind with its own free will.

analog57 wrote:. . . just as the universe is a mind with its own free will.

Free compared to what?

Analog! how can you make such an error?

A or not A is not a linguistic tautology. A to the power of two divided by A might be, however.

analog57 wrote:

DHodges wrote:

analog57 wrote:A person's intelligence is not an outside determining factor. It is an attribute OF the individual in question. Thus the determination is a self determination which is basically the same as free will.

Are you saying people are stupid because they choose to be?

A stupid person has the self determination to choose, just as a not-so-stupid person does.

I'm not sure what you mean by self-determination. Do you mean a stupid person chooses to be stupid, or do you mean he has determined about himself that he is stupid, based on the evidence?

I agree that intelligence is not an "outside" factor, in that it is an attribute of the individual. However, I see intelligence as (mostly) an innate capacity that you are born with.

I can't choose to run a mile in three minutes. I could choose to work hard at it, just as I could choose to work hard at being intelligent or wise or whatever. But there are certain limits that I can not go beyond.

But lets say I do choose to do something, and then go do it. What causes that choice?

Say I choose to work hard at becoming a great chess player. Mustn't that choice must come out of my prior experience - probably experience related to playing chess, and experiences related to being good or bad at something?

Where does free will come in? What does it explain?

The only meaningful definition of free will I've ever seen is that we have free will if no other conscious beings physically restrain us or "weight" our choices in such a way that not taking a certain path would be extremely stupid (such as if a criminal held a gun to one's head). Some people say that randomness or quantum unpredictability provides for another kind of free will, but I don't think that they know what they're talking about.

Philosophaster wrote:The only meaningful definition of free will I've ever seen is that we have free will if no other conscious beings physically restrain us or "weight" our choices in such a way that not taking a certain path would be extremely stupid

Going by that definition our sex drive would be our free will. It's not my free will.

Leyla Shen wrote:Analog! how can you make such an error?

A or not A is not a linguistic tautology. A to the power of two divided by A might be, however.

Logic is a language.

http://www.cs.odu.edu/~toida/nerzic/con ... logic.html

Logic is a language for reasoning.

DHodges wrote: I'm not sure what you mean by self-determination. Do you mean a stupid person chooses to be stupid, or do you mean he has determined about himself that he is stupid, based on the evidence?

Free will has necessary limitations, yet it still exists due to the fact that the mind is continually faced with choices, even when the brain is unconscious.

You walk up to the table. On the table is a plate of cookies. You are faced with a choice:

To eat a cookie

To not eat a cookie

Even if you choose not to choose, you still have made a choice.

Hence free will exists, even though one cannot choose not to have a genetic predisposition for obesity.

analog57 wrote:Hence free will exists, even though one cannot choose not to have a genetic predisposition for obesity.

It seems to me that whatever Nature causes you to do (or "choose") you are calling "free".

ksolway wrote:

analog57 wrote:Hence free will exists, even though one cannot choose not to have a genetic predisposition for obesity.

It seems to me that whatever Nature causes you to do (or "choose") you are calling "free".

Causality is a constraint and freedom is in complementary juxtaposition with constraint. Are you saying that freedom does not exist?

analog57 wrote:Free will has necessary limitations, yet it still exists due to the fact that the mind is continually faced with choices, even when the brain is unconscious.

So, by free will, do you mean anything other than "the ability to make choices" ?

Logic is a language.

Diabolical.

Did you feel a rush of blood to the head?

It (A and not A) is, at best, a logical tautology.

Logic (A) is not the same as Language (B). Hence, A and not A. A does not equal B, in other words.

I reckon, for the astute observer, any language betrays its brand of logic like a treasure map that leads to the spot marked X but reveals A – even if A was expected (in the form of X) to be B.

analog57 wrote:Causality is a constraint and freedom is in complementary juxtaposition with constraint. Are you saying that freedom does not exist?

When one person is "freer" than another, it only means that Nature enables more possibilities for that person.

It's like one computer with very slow CPU and another computer with a very fast one. The fast computer is enabled to do a lot more than the slow one. So we could say that the second one is more free.

Leyla Shen wrote:

Logic is a language.

Diabolical.

Logic is a language and any language needs to be logical in order to make sense.

[INSERT SMILEY]

ksolway wrote:

analog57 wrote:Causality is a constraint and freedom is in complementary juxtaposition with constraint. Are you saying that freedom does not exist?

When one person is "freer" than another, it only means that Nature enables more possibilities for that person.

It's like one computer with very slow CPU and another computer with a very fast one. The fast computer is enabled to do a lot more than the slow one. So we could say that the second one is more free.

That seems to be a working definition:

Freedom = more possibilites

Constraint = less possibilities

DHodges wrote:

analog57 wrote:Free will has necessary limitations, yet it still exists due to the fact that the mind is continually faced with choices, even when the brain is unconscious.

So, by free will, do you mean anything other than "the ability to make choices" ?

Free will means that all is not "predestination"