Originally posted by bbarrI think that the part of your original post which is causing me problems is the statement "willing is also an event." Willing is not an event. Events are things that happen. Right now I am willing all sorts of things, and none of them are happening.
if you were right that there was something within you sufficient to bring about an exertion of your will without cuasing it, you would in fact be claiming that there was something within you that both causes and does not cause the exertion of your will.
And I am not saying that there is "something within you sufficient to bring about an exertion of your will without cuasing it." I am saying that there is something within you sufficient to permit a specific exertion of your will, but that this something is not sufficient to exclude all other possibilities. To use your cigarette analogy, the fact that you have a lighter and cigarettes in your pocket is not sufficient to bring about the event of you smoking a cigarette. That event also requires your willing it to happen for it to come about.
Originally posted by richjohnsonRich, If you are willing all sorts of things right now, then a willing is happening. If events are just things that happen, then your willing is itself an event. I'm not claiming that what you will to happen has to be an event. I've got all sorts of wills that, alas, will never come to be. But my willing happens nonetheless, they are just unsuccessful. So willing happen, they are events, and so subject to the argument.
I think that the part of your original post which is causing me problems is the statement "willing is also an event." Willing is not an event. Events are things that happen. Right now I am willing all sorts of things, and none of them are happening.
And I am not saying that there is "something within you sufficient to bring about an exertion ...[text shortened]... u smoking a cigarette. That event also requires your willing it to happen for it to come about.
You claim "that there is something within you sufficient to permit a specific exertion of your will" This misses the point, the question is not what allows you will, but whether something brings it about or not. The barrel of a gun permits the passage of a bullet, but the barrel has nothing to do with the cause of the bullet's firing. I'm asking whether the esertion of your will is ITSELF caused.
Originally posted by bbarrUnlock the prisons.
Rich, If you are willing all sorts of things right now, then a willing is happening. If events are just things that happen, then your willing is itself an event. I'm not claiming that what you will to happen has to be an event. I've got all sorts of wills that, alas, will never come to be. But my willing happens nonetheless, they are just unsuccessful. S ...[text shortened]... cause of the bullet's firing. I'm asking whether the esertion of your will is ITSELF caused.
I don't need to do Jury service now.
Lnda
I enjoyed reading this thread and even though I am out of my league here I wanted to throw this out to you guys.
1. Your actions are events.
2. Every event is caused.
3. Every cause is either deliberate or accidental.
4. Thus, your actions are either deliberate or accidental.
5. If your actions are deliberate, then your will is free.
6. If your actions are accidental, then your will is unaffected.
7. Thus, your will is free.
Uncaused events do not exist. To say events are random AND uncaused simply because we cannot find a cause is a scientific cop-out. How about this: Uncaused events are the result of a series of caused events whose relation to the event in question is undetermined.
🙄 Heheheh.....
Originally posted by bbarrI do not agree that willing is an event. If the state of the world is exactly the same before and after something, I would argue that that something is NOT an event.
Rich, If you are willing all sorts of things right now, then a willing is happening. If events are just things that happen, then your willing is itself an event. I'm not claiming that what you will to happen has to be an event. I've got all sorts of wills that, alas, will never come to be. But my willing happens nonetheless, they are just unsuccessful. S ...[text shortened]... cause of the bullet's firing. I'm asking whether the esertion of your will is ITSELF caused.
I'm also having some trouble digesting the following:
"verifiabilty is irrelevant in this context. Here we are dealing with the implications of our concepts, not with contingent facts about the world. You cannot verify logical truths either...logical truths would be presupposed by any attempt at their verification."
Doesn't a statement or belief only derive truth (or falsehood) from its relation to the rest of the world?
Originally posted by richjohnson"Willing" changes the chemical state of the brain of the willer, and as such, changes the state of the world.
I do not agree that willing is an event. If the state of the world is exactly the same before and after something, I would argue that that something is NOT an event.
1. Your actions are events.It seems to me that, if free will exists, there are some events that do not just happen, but that we instead purposefully determine. That is, these events are caused by us, and that's where the buck stops--with us as the one's who cause those events. And no prior event makes us choose them: we freely do it. If you state that the buck cannot stop with us, because all events either have to have a prior cause or have to be random, you are merely assuming what you have set out to debate.
2. Every event is either caused or uncaused.
3. If an event is uncaused, it is random.
4. Thus, your actions are either caused or random.
5. If your actions are caused, then your will is not free.
6. If your actions are random, then your will is not free.
7. Thus, your will is not free.
Now, I don't know if we have free will: I'm agnostic but hopeful. One consideration that makes me hopeful is Kantian: that causality is just one of the mental categories we use to understand reality, and that reality is likely to have far more to it that what we can understand, so maybe our perceptions that the world is caught up in a web of causes do not automatically imply that, at some deeper metaphysical level, we are necessarily unfree.
At any rate, I am DETERMINED to be free...
Aiden
Originally posted by PawnokeyholeThere's a difference between assuming what you've set out to debate and asumming premises that entail what you set out to debate. On your construal of what constitutes an argument, every argument is quetion-begging. But this is just to misunderstand the relation of premises to their conclusion. Regardless, what you're saying is our will cause our actions and I see no reason to argue that point. But what I want to know is whether the event of your willing an action is itself caused by, or brought about, by some prior event or if no other event brings it about. If no other events brings it about, then your willing an action is itself a random event. Random events are beyond your control, because to control an event is to esert some causal influence on that event. So you need to explain how you can bring about an istance of your willing an action without causing that willing and without the willing being random. Talk of begging the question does nothing. For that matter, talk of Kant's distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal world does nothing. Recall that the noumenal world (an sich reality), is the world as it is in itself, independent of the manner we experinece it. You make the skeptical claim that my talk of causes need not be taken seriously because the causal structure of the noumenal world is beyond my understanding; we are all caught behind a 'veil of perception' and are only acquainted with the manner in which things appear to us. If that's the case then your claim that our will is free need not be taken seriously, and for the same reasons. You are also behind the veil of perception, and have no understanding of what the will is like, in and of itself. So you are only justified in claiming that the will appears free, it's just a function of the manner in which our experiences are organized. Fine, I never claimed that we didn't appear to have free will, only that we can't make any sense of how it could be. You can't invoke Kantian skepticism about causes without having it also apply to the other concepts we employ, free will being one of those concepts. So in the end your claim reduces to the claim that our will is free at some deep metaphysical level we can't understand. Alright, that's a safe position at least, you can't argue for it, and it can't be argued against. Cold comfort if you ask me. Especially since if we can't understand free will in that sense (by definition) there's no reason to think it bears any similarity to the type of free will we seem to want.
It seems to me that, if free will exists, there are some events that do not just happen, but that we instead purposefully determine. That is, these events are caused by us, and that's where the buck stops--with us as the one's who cause those events. And no prior event makes us choose them: we freely do it. If you state that the buck cannot stop with ...[text shortened]... ysical level, we are necessarily unfree.
At any rate, I am DETERMINED to be free...
Aiden
Hi BBarr,
You said:
[what I want to know is whether the event of your willing an action is itself caused by, or brought about, by some prior event or if no other event brings it about. If no other events brings it about, then your willing an action is itself a random event.]
Do you semantically equate "random" here with "uncaused by any prior event"? I grant you that, on this definition, and under a libertarian interpretation of free will, an act of will must indeed be random. However, "uncaused by any prior event"--random in this sense--would not imply "uncaused by any person", for it is the person who would do the causing, in the case of libertarian free will, rather than any prior events. However, if a person does the causing, it would seem to be inappropriate to use the word "random", because clearly there would be a world of difference between an act of will that a person consciously and mindfully causes, and some probabilistic quantum fluctuation in the void. A free act would be one that is deliberately directed by an agent, the very antithesis of a haphazard, reasonless occurrence. So I wonder whether the paradox you are grappling with is not the product of a subtle equivocation on the meaning of the "random", where "uncaused by prior causes" is taken to imply "uncaused by any person" and then by extension "haphazard and reasonless".
Regarding using transcendental idealism to defend the possibility of free will: I think you can argue generally and persuasively enough for the view that one source of our manifold philosophical perplexities is that reality defies our mind's capacity to coherently cognize it. In other words, our notions of space, time, causality, and identity are not intrinsic features of reality, but intrinsic features of the way our mind makes sense of reality, and they furnish us with only a limited understanding of how things really are. If you think this general view is correct, as I suspect it is, then if someone were to argue that free will must be an illusion because we are ostensibly caught up in a web of psychophysical causality, then someone else could counterargue that, given causality is a feature of our understanding not the world as such, there are grounds for believing that free will need not be an illusion. It's a modest plea for circumspection. It is not designed as a positive argument for free will, but rather as a check on zeal for determinism.
Having said that, a lot of recent social psychological research has show that there are specifiable determinants of the feeling that we authors of our actions, and that we can think that we are authors when we are not, and think we are not when we are. Although such findings have only been established in cases where actions are peripheral ambiguous, as opposed to clearly intended, such research tends to chip away at our intuition of being free agents. I'll talk about this some other time: this message is getting too long! One final comment though: I've been thinking a lot about your parallel world example, and I think a defender of libertarian has a very hard time dealing with it. Let me collect my thoughts further 🙂
Aiden