tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post7027582827997474394..comments2023-01-24T10:06:57.212-08:00Comments on (Blog&~Blog): Fatalism, Part I of II (Diet Soap Nit-Pickery)Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06702722560438833244noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-6579322476167996422011-04-15T05:38:24.790-07:002011-04-15T05:38:24.790-07:00But those arguments with causal determinism are ab...But those arguments with causal determinism are about that the future events are completely determined by the laws of nature and the initial (or just current, if the universe is infinitely old) conditions, and that there is some free will intuition that goes: if there is FW, then future events are not completely determined--that there is room for choice.<br /><br />Typically, when one asks for clarification, one will get something about how the laws of nature necessitate future events, and THAT is where various modal fallacies come into it. By the way, this is exactly how SEP explains causal determinism.<br /><br />"Causal determinism is, roughly speaking, the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature. "<br /><br />http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/<br /><br />But there is no more necessitation of future events by laws of nature (a subset of true truth carriers), than there is by true truth carriers in general, which is just logical determinism again.<br /><br />Sorry if this is badly explained. I just went to pick a question for my oral examination and I picked a Hegel question. I fucking hate Hegel. So I started drinking earlier to make the situation more bearable to live. :)Emil O. W. Kirkegaardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06373127088976173644noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-32076264648296740782011-04-15T04:06:41.291-07:002011-04-15T04:06:41.291-07:00Emil,
Sure, I see what you mean about 'easy.&...Emil,<br /><br />Sure, I see what you mean about 'easy.' Let me re-phrase:<br /><br />I can see how you can argue that fatalist/"logical determinist" objections to free will come down to modal fallacies. Many people do argue that that's the kind of thing that's going on those arguments. But I'm totally mystified about how one could argue that objections to free will based on *causal* determinism comes down to modal fallacies. At the very least there's a vast literature on compatibilism, pro- and con, that seems to all rest on the assumption that it's a difficult conceptual issue, not a result of mistakes about where to put the boxes and the diamonds when we symbolize our arguments.Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06702722560438833244noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-66244585485255107602011-04-15T02:25:17.728-07:002011-04-15T02:25:17.728-07:00If you think that is easy, then yes. Swartz spent ...If you think that is easy, then yes. Swartz spent an entire book about getting modal fallacies our of the confused common-sense notion of "natural law". ("The Concept of Physical Law")<br /><br />But even logical determinism/fatalism seems to be impossible to remove from some people. I once spent over a month trying to explain it to a person. Never got anywhere. And with another person I spent weeks, same for a third person. <br /><br />With some people, it is like they lack the mental strength to grasp the problem, or that they cannot get out of some previous way of thinking about it. Now a days, I just direct people to Swartz page and answer questions if they are sensible. If they are not, I give up and discuss with other people.Emil O. W. Kirkegaardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06373127088976173644noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-61306586434437805922011-04-14T19:38:23.374-07:002011-04-14T19:38:23.374-07:00"oh, another point, the claim that my grandch..."oh, another point, the claim that my grandchildren will live in the kind of anarchist-socialist society I advocate might be true while the claim no anarchist-socialist society will ever exist is also true. That is, I may advocate for something that I call anarchist-socialism but be in error."<br /><br />Why wouldn't that just make the first claim *false*?Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06702722560438833244noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-47259641407398219432011-04-14T19:35:42.080-07:002011-04-14T19:35:42.080-07:00"Recall that from a phenomenological perspect..."Recall that from a phenomenological perspective for any fact to be it has to be perceived."<br /><br />Only if, by "phenomenology", you basically mean Berkeleyan idealism. I know that Husserl, for example, definitely didn't have that view--he "methodologically bracketted off" the question of whether mind-independent reality existed in his earlier stuff about phenomenology, and in his later years when he did start calling himself an "idealist" of some kind, he insisted that he didn't mean anything like what Berkeley or other idealists had meant. (It's actually a bit confusing what he did mean--I wrote a paper about this once for a Husserl class, and I'm still not very confident that I got it right. But in any case, early, pre-idealist Husserl was definitely a phenomenologist who didn't claim that there are no unperceived facts. I know less about, e.g. Sartre, but my hunch is that he would have rejected that view too. And, if you think about it, it really is a *radically* counter-intuitive view. If we throw empty beer bottles into the basement, and no one's gone down there to count them, does that really means that there isn't a definite, objective number of bottles down there and that, if I guessed without checking to see if I was right, my guess would be either true--if I'd stumbled onto the right number--or false if I hadn't?)<br /><br />"That is, the perception of something is not separate from its existence according to phenomenology."<br /><br />....is a very different claim from "there are no unperceived facts." As I understand what, for example, Husserl was up to, the point is that when, for example, I look at a beer bottle, there aren't three things--the beer bottle, the experience of the beer bottle, and my peception--but just two things, the beer bottle and my perception. I'm experiencing the bottle, not some sort of mental snapshot of it. That point is good and important and well-taken--the idea of "sense data" in between me and the object of perception has led to all kinds of confusion in the history of philosophy, and we're well rid of it--but it's *completely* compatible with the existence of unperceived facts. Of which, intuitively, there would seem to be a great many, even about the present, much less the at-least-15-billion-year-old past, much less the (longer) future!Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06702722560438833244noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-12226995319212059642011-04-14T19:27:41.947-07:002011-04-14T19:27:41.947-07:00"And while propositions about the future must..."And while propositions about the future must be be embodied somewhere in the present or past in order to exist, propositions about the past have already existed and are not in need of a material/perceptible foundation or embodiment."<br /><br />A "proposition" is usually thought of as a claim about something--as the thing being expressed in a statement, as in when people say that "snow is white" and "schnee ist weiss" express the same proposition. If you believe in propositions at all, above and beyond the sentences that express them, you either think (a) they exist Platonically whether or not anyone says anything that expresses them, or (b) they only exist if a sentence expressing them exists. If you think (a), then all the propositions about the future could exist without God existing or anyone knowing them, just as all the ones about the past could. If you think (b), then many propositions that *would* accurately describe the past don't exist, just as many propositions about the future don't exist.<br /><br />It sounds to me, though, like what you're really talking about isn't propositions at all, but the states of the world that would be *described* by propositions. And this just gets back to my point--the real issue about fatalism isn't whether there are propositions describing how the universe is, much less whether God or anyone else exists to know those propositions, but about whether there are facts about how the future will be. The view that your expressing is that there are presently existing facts about the past, even if no one is aware of them, and even if there are no statements about it, whereas there are no presently existing facts about how the future will be. Why not just say that? As a philosophical claim, its worth debating and thinking about, but it seems to me that it has less than nothing to do with propositions, sets of propositions, or the existence or non-existence of God.Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06702722560438833244noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-6985441514689105442011-04-14T19:19:25.013-07:002011-04-14T19:19:25.013-07:00Doug,
"The very easy refutation of your poin...Doug,<br /><br />"The very easy refutation of your point about the past is this: No infinite set of propositions about the past need be posited, but only a finite set."<br /><br />Not so easy!<br /><br />Note that (1) whether the past had a finite or infinite duration is an open empirical question depending on all kinds of questions about physical cosmology (whether our Big Bang was the first bang, or part of an infinite series of bangs and crunchs, or whether you go with some kind of 'soup of bubble universes' sort of cosmology, or...) which even many physicists and others far better-informed than I am about this stuff are loathe to make overly confident pronouncements about, but that in any case (2) even if the past had a finite duration, it does not by any means follow that it can be completely described with a finite set of statements, especially if space-time is ultimately composed of infinitely small spatio-temporal 'points' or instants (as I--very roughly--understand it, quantum and relativistic results point in different directions on this stuff, so who the hell knows), but, most importantly, even ignoring both of those qualifications:<br /><br />(3) Even if the past can be described with a finite set of statements, only a very God-like being would be able to grasp them all!<br /><br />And (3) is, as I see it, the main problem here. Even if our Big Bang was the first and only, no bubble universes, no complications of any kind, no human being, or any other creatures anywhere near as limited as any possible human being, could ever have access to every single statement accurately describing every single thing that's happened in the 15 billion years of that finite past. So the "finite" vs. "infinite" thing is just irrelevant. We'd sitll need something like God.Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06702722560438833244noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-19173137328344161472011-04-14T18:09:12.916-07:002011-04-14T18:09:12.916-07:00oh, another point, the claim that my grandchildren...oh, another point, the claim that my grandchildren will live in the kind of anarchist-socialist society I advocate might be true while the claim no anarchist-socialist society will ever exist is also true. That is, I may advocate for something that I call anarchist-socialism but be in error. In order to figure out the truth value of such claims we have to pile on more claims, until, finally, we make a cut and just decide, okay no more-this is what this means. <br />Noting this we leave the realm of phenomenology behind, I think, or the realm of Deleuzian thinking behind. Because at this point we no longer have phenomena, even the past, that are complete, solid, etc... There is an arbitrary nature to what we say about and experience of the world. <br /><br />http://www.lacan.com/zizrealac.htmDouglas Lainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14570730501327022914noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-67352965403910462982011-04-14T16:35:36.795-07:002011-04-14T16:35:36.795-07:00The very easy refutation of your point about the p...The very easy refutation of your point about the past is this: No infinite set of propositions about the past need be posited, but only a finite set. And while propositions about the future must be be embodied somewhere in the present or past in order to exist, propositions about the past have already existed and are not in need of a material/perceptible foundation or embodiment. <br /><br />The idea of a set of linguistic representations of all past events isn't problematic because those representations were clearly already embodied in or by the participants. Recall that from a phenomenological perspective for any fact to be it has to be perceived. That is, the perception of something is not separate from its existence according to phenomenology. <br /><br />Now, having said all that I'm not convinced that I've really done much in the way of making a case for something like free will here. Instead what I think I have done is shown the assumptions underpinning Taylor's fatalism. I don't think the argument for his version of fatalism can function without God. <br /><br />-DougDouglas Lainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14570730501327022914noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-85867521239948479472011-04-14T05:13:27.315-07:002011-04-14T05:13:27.315-07:00Emil,
"...causal determinism...."
You ...Emil,<br /><br />"...causal determinism...."<br /><br />You really think that arguing for compatibilism about free will and causal determinism is as easy as weeding out modal fallacies?Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06702722560438833244noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-560006627003902212011-04-14T04:48:44.575-07:002011-04-14T04:48:44.575-07:00I agree with everything you wrote, altho I prefer ...I agree with everything you wrote, altho I prefer not to take that route to debunk fatalism. I prefer the direct route of disputing the validity of arguments that people use to establish that there is no free will. I have never come upon an argument from fatalism, logical determinism, causal determinism or similar that did not commit some kind of modal fallacy.<br /><br />And about that, this page is a god-send. :)<br /><br />http://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/freewill1.htmEmil O. W. Kirkegaardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06373127088976173644noreply@blogger.com