A Sense of Free Will: the consciousness quagmire (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, September 18, 2015, 16:45 (3354 days ago) @ romansh

ROMANSH: If cause and effect are true then as you state:
dhw .. the consequences are that we do not have conscious control of our decisions ... 
then you go on:
... when I am conscious of a choice, the way in which I consciously make it ...
So when we are supposedly conscious of a choice/decision it is a historical artifact of the forming events. -I do not accept your “supposedly”. For me, the concept of free will is inseparable from conscious choice/decision. I don't know what you mean by “historical artifact”, unless it's a roundabout way of saying that both the choice and the decision are subject to the chain of cause and effect, in which case I agree.-dhw...is still uniquely mine and nobody else's, and the thoughts that accompany the process are uniquely mine and nobody else's...
ROMANSH: so what? This is not an issue.-You also say that coercion is not relevant, and that my claim that on this level I have conscious control over my decisions is an oxymoron in view of my acceptance of the cause-effect argument. The individuality of the self (regardless of influences) is central to my second approach to the subject, and while I accept the validity of your own, I do not accept that it is the only valid one. You wrote: “I simply use determinism in the sense of cause and effect, no more or less” - and you are a determinist. By excluding other levels, of course you prove your point, just as you do with your definition of free will. You also wrote that the debate is on how our wills are formed. No it isn't. Originally it was on whether we have control over our decisions, and how our wills are formed (cause and effect) was the approach you chose, but now the subject has become whether freedom from cause and effect is the only criterion by which we can make a judgement. You say it is, I say it isn't, because on the second level, despite all influences, I can still say that I have the conscious ability to control my decision-making (my definition of free will). It is the age-old epistemological problem of different premises. -In passing and purely for information: I mentioned libertarianism and origination in this context, and you questioned the reference. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy defines origination as “the creation of new causal chains by free human choices” and it goes on to say that “libertarianism asserts that there are such genuine creations.” But I don't think we need to be sidetracked on definitions of what libertarians do or don't believe, and as we are both agnostics, I suggest we leave religion out of the discussion as well.-ROMANSH: This may help-http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Chapters/2013freewill.htm-I can see why you like her, as she also seems to operate on single levels. In terms of free will itself, the following is quite revealing (I was clearly echoing William James without realizing it!):-“James does not reject the possibility of free will, and his analysis of self is subtle. Yet, one hundred years before Wegner's research, he beautifully exposed the retrospective attributions we routinely give to an imagined self. ‘We' are said to deliberate, ‘we' decide, and those voluntary fiats, reasons and motives are ours. 
Wouldn't it be more honest to accept all these attributions for what they are, drop the notion of the self who decides, and simply let the competing ideas get on with it without interference? Might life even be easier, and making decisions less agonising, if we could? This is what I am suggesting.”-Why drop the notion of the self? (Perhaps she should change her name to Suzen.) The influences that shape the attributes are not the attributes themselves, so why is it more “honest” to regard them as an imagined self than as a self? And does she really think the ideas exist independently of the person that has them? She is welcome to switch off her awareness of her awareness of her awareness (levels again) if it makes her life easier, but that is her decision - or the decision of her competing ideas. I'm afraid that for me it still won't make the cause-and-effect approach any more valid than the identity approach.