Three Philosophical Topics - 1F

===> Intro <=== I stand by my statement that Free Will cannot be denied without denying reason as well, and yes, I intend to support it. Before I begin, I want to clarify: the joke about time travel was clearly an irrelevant jibe. ===> Hard Determinism is Self-Refuting <=== PRO gave no response to this, however, I won't hold it against him should he choose to respond in a later round. It may look daunting at first, but is actually quite simple. All premises are stated and the conclusion cannot be denied without denying one of the premises. I have given a simple, though adequate explanation. Therefore, due to character restraints, I will only expand on this should my opponent choose to make an argument. ===> The Goedelian Argument <=== Premise 5 stems from Premise 1: Under a deterministic system, for any human h there exists at least one (deterministic) logical system L(h) which reliably predicts h's actions in all circumstances. Variable "m" is an example of "h," more specifically, "m" is a mathematical logician. Note that L(m) is purely theoretical. Unpredictability, of course, is not sufficient reason to believe in Free Will: it is the reason WHY L(m) cannot reliably predict m's actions. It is not quantum uncertainty, but Goedelian mathematics. In Lucas' paper, he sets up his argument as a competition between himself and a hypothetical mechanist (the engineer who is building the Turing machine that, using L(m) will predict all of m's actions). Goedel's theorems state that in any consistent system of mathematics, there must always be an unproven axiom. If this unproven axiom is proven, it will be done at the expense of disproving another axiom. The same is true for the newly unsupported axiom ad infinitum. Thus, for any Turing machine set up to model the mind, there will always be statements regarding m's behavior that cannot be proven. M, on the other hand, can always prove the unsupported axiom (and therefore the conclusions drawn from it) true or false by his actions since he exists outside the system. The mechanist could, of course, modify his device, but m will always be able to defy him. Machines, which take input and give a predictable output, are fundamentally different from the human mind. ===> The Source Model <=== In his rebuttal, PRO asks "how can one have control via randomness?" This is my point exactly. Premise 1 of the Source argument states: "Any agent, x, performs an any act, a, of her own free will iff x has control over a." Which he clarifies in the second premise: "x has control over a ONLY IF x is the ultimate source of a." The argument clearly defines "control" as being the originator of an action. What is more, even if a being had a soul, one could still claim that he was not free as his soul was CAUSED by God. The ad absurdum stands. When I stated that Jack has the power of libertarian free will, I was not claiming this as an absolute an attempting to place the burden of disproof on my opponent: I was giving an example of an entity making a decision that came as a consequence of prior events to highlight the overly restrictive definition of Free Will given by PRO and illustrating how it fails to disprove the ability to choose. Finally, contrary to my opponent's claim, I gave a clear outline of what constitutes Free Will in my introduction to R2: - Adequate determinism is true - Chance must not be the direct cause of action - Our will is adequately determined - Our actions are causally determined by our will ===> The Consequence Argument <=== This is one of many modern forms of d'Holbach's original argument, that, assuming all humans are material, and all material things follow immutable physical laws which they have no control over, Free Will does not exist. Again, this confuses several things, first and foremost the meaning of "could" and second the distinction between "will" and "power." The fact that any entity must act within the confines of what is physically possible is a matter of POWER, not WILL. It is clearly absurd to employ as a definition of "freedom" the power of an entity to perform an impossible action, to violate its nature.[1] G.E. Moore argues that Hard determinism is the view that if a person does x, that person never could have done other than x in those circumstances. For hard determinism to be correct, there must be NO meaning of "could" (or "can") according to which a person could/can do other than x when the person actually did x. Since we CAN sometimes do other than x when we actually do x, hard determinism is wrong. Many human actions are simultaneously free and determined by context/circumstances. He gives several examples, two of which I have included. 1. Even when we see that x happened, we know that a second thing, y, could NOT have happened, while a third, z, could have. And this is often true of human behavior. (This ship is going 15 knots but COULD go 20 knots, while this second is going 10 knots because it CANNOT go 15. Since we can distinguish between these two cases, the hard determinist hypothesis is false.) 2. Our futures are often INDETERMINATE. Because we recognize that we cannot know, in advance, that we would NOT choose something, we often make choices NOW to reduce the likelihood of making those choices later.[2] Thus, PRO uses a deeply flawed definition of "could," the consequence of which is clearly outlined in my argument that Hard Determinism is self-refuting (which PRO has not bothered to refute). ===> Arguments from Consciousness and Experience <=== As I promised in my intro, I intend to support my contention that denying Free Will denies our ability to reason. This is not, as PRO seems to think, because I link Free Will and reason as an inextricable duo, but because its negation negates our basic ability to perceive. Would anyone deny the perception of choice? How can so basic a perception be denied? Perception and reason must be taken in tandem: at first glance the earth looks flat, but, through use of both reason and perception, we can see this is not so. Decision making, on the other hand, cannot be so easily discounted. Self-awareness is a basic tenet of humanity. So basic a truth as our own free will is impossible to discount without overwhelming evidence that can account for this inexplicable "illusion" of decision making that we experience every day. Unlike the flat-earth, there is no model explaining this. Indeed, such model is a mathematical IMPOSSIBILITY. In the absence of such proof, we are asked to deny our most basic ability to perceive. I would also like to take the Goedelian argument further: there is empirical evidence that the mind is not a machine.[3] Besides the issue of Goedelian mathematics, the fundamental difference between man and machine is consciousness. A machine responds to input; it is not conscious. Man is. What explanation can there be? As Sartre states, such a thing that responds only to input is not a consciousness but externality. [1] http://mises.org... [2] http://www.mnstate.edu... [3] H.T. Siegelmann, "Computation Beyond the Turing Limit," Science, 238(28), April 1995: 632-637