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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3249 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Well, determinism's not incompatible with Christianity.

It's certainly incompatible with my Christianity. But the comment above doesn't reference Christianity at all, only science. From a strictly materialistic viewpoint, Determinism started out making strong predictions, had those predictions falsified, then made weak predictions, had those predictions falsified, and now makes no testable predictions at all. Its supporters claim that it obviously must be true even though all observed evidence contradicts it, and that supporting evidence will be available "someday soon", in the indeterminate future. Well, Christians can claim that every knee will bow and every tongue confess when Jesus returns in his glory "someday soon", and they can say it with an equally rational basis.

Evidence in the future is not evidence at all. Belief based on inference is not the same as belief based on observation.

I don't anticipate evidence for determinism. I think it's the case mainly for theological (and scriptural) reasons, and to a lesser extent some philosophical concerns. I agree that quantum mechanics is evidence against determinism, but not conclusively; there are deterministic interpretations, and there's always the "God decides how it collapses" option.

I don't anticipate evidence for determinism.

Then my whole argument doesn't apply. I'm arguing against Materialistic determinism, where they started with "we can prove it right now" and worked their way down to "we'll totally be able to prove it at some indeterminate point in the future", all the while continuing to insist that it's not only obviously true, but thinking anything else is evidence of irrationality.

I've been arguing that there are very clear discontinuities in the evidence for materialism, with materialistic Determinism being one of the big ones. We seem to experience free will, making choices that can't be predicted or controlled by others, but can be predicted and controlled by our selves. I think it's entirely possible that this free will is an illusion. What I don't think is possible is that we have direct empirical evidence confirming or even suggesting its illusory nature. All the direct evidence we have appears to confirm the bog-standard descriptions of free will.

Perhaps I've just never heard a coherent enough definition of free will, but if our choices can be predicted and controlled by ourselves, and if we are part of the world (and so our own state is part of its state), wouldn't our choices being a product of us then mean that determinism is correct with respect to our choices?

That is, if determinism is saying, in essence, "when stuff happens, it's based on prior stuff, and adequately explained by it," (that is, sufficient causes exist) and you are saying, "when choices happen, they're based on their agents (including their nature, will, current emotions, etc.), and adequately explained by them," isn't that saying that choices happen in a deterministic-ish way?

I myself would prefer to just say, yeah, we choose stuff (obviously), and we do that because of a combination of our own character and current situations, and that's fine, and perfectly compatible with determinism.

So, I suppose, then, what exactly is free will?

Found the Calvinist.

Of course.

(Well, that isn't necessary to be a Christian who thinks determinism is correct—Thomists and Lutherans, for example, can as well, I believe—but you're right.)

Yes it is. You can't have a model of the world in which people are automata and have no actual agency, and then apply a religion which says people will suffer eternal consequences due to their choices. In the determinism view, people don't have choices so you can't really hold them accountable.

I do think that people make meaningful choices. I don't think that conflicts with determinism being true.

Maybe I misunderstood what determinism is, but as I understand it the very premise is that we do not actually have the ability to make choices. That everything is a vastly complex clockwork mechanism, which is fully determined by the start conditions. If that is true, then Christianity would be morally abhorrent (cue Richard Dawkins saying "it already is"), because people would be held responsible for something which could not have happened and other way.

I'm sure there's equivocation on "choice" here—people who believe in libertarian free will usually have a theory of choice which I find bizarre and often incoherent. I'm not certain to what extent it's clockwork-like vs. is determined by continuous divine input, but I'll allow it for now. I don't think something clockwork-like, as you put it, is incompatible with choices. When you decide to do something, you think it through, and make decisions, with such factors influencing it as your own character and whatever circumstances are happening at the moment. You are clearly deliberating in such a way that your actions are a product of who you are, and it being deterministic doesn't change that—none of this requires things happening beyond ordinary causality. When someone is being judged, I don't think it's a problem that there's some sense in which it couldn't have happened in any other way—they still made wrong decisions and acted wickedly. Judgment was earned. Just because their decisions were part of a divine plan does not mean that they couldn't be evil in themselves. To quote Joseph, in Genesis 50:20, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today."

It seems like we're at an impasse, because to me freedom of choice is a hard requirement for moral culpability. This is a moral axiom as far as I'm concerned, so we probably simply have to agree to disagree.

What, exactly, is freedom of choice?

Moral culpability in a deterministic setting seems reasonable enough to me—choices are outflows from who I am and my character, so it's not at all surprising that we should consider me culpable and guilty for doing bad acts. They're an expression of my own bad self. I don't see why any nondeterminism would be involved there—insofar as it is, my choices would then be less reflective of who I am, and so would seem to be less tied to me and I should be less culpable for them. So determinism seems more naturally to fit with moral responsability to me.

In any case, as I started this comment, what is freedom of choice?

You spoke earlier of incoherence, but this seems to me to be completely incoherent. How on earth can there be moral culpability for something which you did not have any say in? If indeed the choices you made were set in stone from the moment of your birth (by your genes, by the environment you were raised in, and so on) - there can be no possible moral culpability. You have not, in that event, done anything to be culpable for! The very idea of deterministic outcomes, but with moral culpability for your choices (which they really weren't, but simply the inevitable result of prior circumstance) is incoherent in my opinion.

In any case, as I started this comment, what is freedom of choice?

I quite honestly have no idea what you are driving at nor how to answer your question. The matter is self-evident, it requires no explanation (nor could I provide one without going in circles, because it is so fundamental).

But you do have a say in it. You have moral culpability precisely because you have a say in it. I don't understand why the fact that you are shaped by influences would have any effect on the fact that your choices are very much the product of you, as you, whether deliberately or impulsively, took action by your own will.

Okay, if you can't define it, I'll just have to ask questions until it's clearer. Do you believe choices are based on things? That is, are they arbitrary, not based on anything, or are they based on your own state? (Or is there some tertium quid which you can describe?)

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