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

by dhw, Monday, September 28, 2015, 19:12 (3344 days ago) @ romansh
edited by dhw, Thursday, October 01, 2015, 11:10

Dhw: If freedom from cause and effect must be part of the definition, so must the compatibilist freedom from coercion by other individuals, social conventions and institutions. Both of you would then be demanding a definition that supports your view, and nobody can say that either of these criteria is correct. The argument is only circular because you keep coming back to the cause and effect criterion, ignoring the “coercion” alternative and dismissing individual identity on the vague grounds that the self is not what it seems although it is real (see my post of 21 September at 19.40).
ROMANSH: Coercion is not the issue ... Compatibilists can redefine free will however they will. In fact that is all they can do. The central issue around cause and effect does not go away regardless. There are consequences to everything but everything being a result of cause and effect. -Who says coercion is not the issue? And why “redefine”? Since when and by whom has free will been definitively defined as the ability to make choices independently of the universe? That is YOUR definition, which makes nonsense of the whole concept. If the universe wasn't here, we wouldn't be here, so we wouldn't have any choices. Do you really think anyone will disagree with that? But the fact that the cause and effect argument is irrefutable does not make your definition of free will the only valid definition. And that is the issue here.
 
ROMANSH: There are consequences for us if we truly believe everything we do is a result of cause and effect. -Of course there are. There are also consequences for us if we truly believe that we have the ability to make our own conscious choices regardless of all the influences that have gone to make up the self that takes the decisions. You persist in hammering home the consequences of your definition of free will, and refuse to acknowledge that it can be defined another way.
 
Dhw: You do not seem to have grasped the fact that any issue on which there is no general consensus will offer contradictory arguments according to the subjectivity of the viewpoint. Human nature is good/bad because...Life is comic/tragic because...Religion is beneficial/harmful because...Science is/is not our most reliable means of access to truth because...We have/we do not have the ability to make conscious choices because...Of course it all depends on your point of view. But you prefer to ignore the opposing arguments and merely quote the opposing conclusions as if somehow the contradiction invalidated the arguments (or at least those you don't like).-ROMANSH: This argument is post modernism gone raving mad. Reality depends on my point of view. Really? This is nonsense. Reality is independent of consensus. I might have incomplete access to that reality and the access I do have might be skewed.-I did not say reality depended on our point of view. We do not know reality. In response to your post on the illusion of self, I summed it up as follows: “The fact that my fluid self may not be what it seems applies to the whole of reality. None of us can know the objective truth.” It is not reality but our interpretation of reality that depends on our subjective point of view, though where there is consensus (e.g. in some tested scientific matters), our interpretation becomes intersubjective. I view all the opposing arguments listed above as valid, in accordance with whichever subjective viewpoint I adopt, and I would be surprised if you did not share at least some of these contradictory conclusions. Yes, I view your one-sided definition of free will as a skewed approach to reality. It is the incompleteness of our access that makes it impossible to claim that one view is right and the other wrong.
 
ROMANSH: I ignore opposing arguments? I certainly don't go down every rabbit hole that is presented. -It appears that all arguments other than cause and effect are rabbit holes you are not prepared to go down. WHY do you reject the compatibilist definition of free will as conscious choices made without coercion from other individuals, social conventions and institutions? WHY do you not accept that our identity is ours alone regardless of the influences (causes and effects) that have helped to form it? What authority do you have for insisting that cause and effect are the only criterion by which one can judge whether free will exists or not? -ROMANSH: I have asked you a number of times to describe what are the consequences of everything being a result of cause and effect. As far as I can tell you avoided answering this question. So it would behoove you not to accuse others of such activities.-If everything is the result of cause and effect, it can be argued that according to one interpretation of free will, we do not have it, and therefore we have no moral responsibility for our decisions. What else do you want me to say? It can also be argued that our individual identity, regardless of all the influences that have helped to shape it, participates in the chain of cause and effect and also has the power to influence it through conscious decisions which are ours alone and are not made for us by any outside forces. Whether we think we have what is known as “free will” therefore depends on how we define the term.