The other reason would be if they’re paid for with a tax, “progressive” politicians are more likely to raise that tax which could raise their pay

Going to save this, thank you

IDK, I think things become clearer when you break the definitions down some and address the nuances more and I think that's what Compatibilism does.

I think it can help to word things without using the actual words we are discussing, thus removing issues around differing definitions. For example, I'll approach this with out using the term "Freewill" or "determinism".

Can I affect the universe in such a way as it would be unpredictable if you had perfect knowledge of the world and the laws of nature? Or, to try to word it another way, if it were possible to "rewind" the universe to the point you made a decision, could you decide another way?

No, I don't think you could. I believe (ignoring quantum effects, which I don't think factor in to this, but I could be wrong) that you would always choose the same way due to causality. If you could rewind the universe, it would always playout the same way.

Can I evaluate all options open to me and choose which I would most like and then execute that option. Yes, barring some external force preventing you. If I have a glass of milk and a glass of water, I can choose which to drink.

I think this is what Compatibilism is trying to say.

Can I choose how I want to choose? Can I will what my will is? No. But that's just the way things work. That's not really a limitation that makes it so you can't exercise the will you do have.

But the question remains about morality. How can I hold you morally responsible? After all, if you didn't choose to have that will, how is it your fault you have that will?

Here again, I think the "trick" of not using the words can help shed light.

Should I separate a person from society due to what they did? Yes, that seems like a proper thing to do. The person is causing an issue and separation can help with that.

I feel I could go on and potentially explain better and more, but that's already a lot, so I'll leave it there.

Yes. He also assumes I do believe in my friend's moral culpability and would blame them, but that just isn't true for me exactly because I don't think free will makes any sense. He's basically making an appeal to "what feels correct". But we know lots of examples of things that feel true that are not true.

I'm not a physicalist.

In what way is someone in control of their actions if they are determined by causes they are not in control of?

The fact that we are humans with certain wants and needs. We're propelled along by are brains and bodies but that doesn't mean we cannot choose.

I still think compatibilism is redundant. Determinism is already compatibilism. It's just biased minds that can't accept biologically predetermined minds have a decision making apparatus, and it's all been accounted for, already, for several billion years. It's once again, philosophers, unable to easily let go the ego and linguistic sphere of their thought process.

Interesting article, I tend to agree with the way Zizek has framed it, but maybe that’s because I don’t intuitively agree with the materialist deterministic frame the author has started with. His point seems to be something like ‘how would we know if our free will were being thwarted without comparing our ability to make decisions to some extrinsic godlike position that cannot by definition be a part of deterministic reality’.

Do you accept a physicalist definition of self? "Self" is the sum of processes in the brain and/or body in some way that isn't fully worked out but isn't fundamentally mysterious?

> I'd like to be convinced, for a long time I thought I was missing something, but I'm now begining to believe I'm not missing anything.

You're not missing anything.

The whole thing is built on incredibly shaky suppositions and wordplay and constant allusions to the "fact" that if you don't "get it" then you're just not savvy enough, you're just not seeing things the right way.

EDIT:

>I don’t think you would accept [determinism] at as a blame-removing (or even blame-reducing) excuse. And I don’t think you’d accept it even if you fully and deeply accepted your friend’s empirical premise.

>The reason I don’t think you’d accept it—no matter how good a job you’d done in convincing yourself that determinism was 100% for sure definitely true—is that determinism vs. indeterminism has all of nothing to do with anything we commonsensically regard as relevant to the kind of control that’s required for moral responsibility.

This argument that "determinism is not an excuse" is both foundational to Brugis's point, and is completely unsupported. Literally no supporting evidence for this other than Burgis "doesn't think so."

Meanwhile, the argument that "determinism is, in fact, an excuse" is much more straightforward - determinism removes choice from the equation, and we don't tend to place moralistic judgement on things that don't have a choice. We don't put volcanoes on trial, regardless of how much damage they cause, we don't think that COVID is a bad moral example for our children, regardless of how many lives it has taken.

Really? What’s the cause of that different choice?

>the kind of moral responsibility that many people think other people have.

People intuitively think you have moral responsibility for actions you were in control of. The article centers their conception of free will around control as well. I think that's a really solid place to center it.

Sure, I think I can get behind a statement that we can redefine free will to be the most useful plausible version. That then wouldn't be the kind of free will many people think they have. I'm also not sure how that version of free will supports the kind of moral responsibility that many people think other people have.

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I guess we have a free will of sorts. The arrticles begins with tasks that we do not challenge or provoke us. I would suggest that the will is present even in the task of walking or any menial task. Our will can be seen in how we walk, how we engage. There is no one style or approach to walking. that is what makes the task of an actor in a play or movie interesting-the life he or she brings to the part. We just do not normally reflect on these parts of ourself.

Jump to bigger decisions such as career or deciding which of the two charities to give to in the essay and we pause. We reflect. Different parts of the brain come to life and are brought into the process or conversation. And this process is neither purely nature nor nurture, but rather a negotiation between our bodies, our brains, and the world, leading ultimately to a complexity that we call consciousness. Again it just having a range of parts or modules of the brain engaged and us reflecting on what is offered by each.

Ultimately, that process is complex and involves a self, a body and brain engaged in the examination of the world and what is desired and what is possible and arriving at how to proceed, how to act. and then you add language and culture to this view, which may perhaps be implicit, it just becomes that much richer. Our Freedom at the social level is truly first based upon our mobility and how we move, and where we move to, but we are not talking of freedom but of free will. I think we can in our embodied minds have both.

No, I don't want to convince you that libertarian free will is coherent. I think it's not, which is part of what drives the compatibilist intuition to recontextualize what is called the "feeling of having free will" - if the Libertarian approach is not only non existent, but not even coherent, that opens us up to the idea that a different approach from the libertarian one might produce something more coherent, more valuable.

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No, I don't see a coherent way of integrating free will with my observations. I believe that free will as commonly understood is likely incompatible with either a deterministic or stochastic universe. I'm open to evidence and argument to the contrary though.

Do you believe the incompatibilists conception of free will is coherent?

After reading his previous article I gave compatibilism a real attempt and read more from other authors. I still think it isn't coherent. This article isn't getting me closer. It feels a lot like he wants moral responsibility, which seems true to him, to be true. He also accepts the possibility that determinism is true. And so he claims they are compatible, but to do so he redefines free will, then claims he hasn't and that was the definition of it we were working with all along. It just isn't convincing to me. I'd like to be convinced, for a long time I thought I was missing something, but I'm now begining to believe I'm not missing anything.

“You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war”

Lol if you want to live then you're not suffering like you said suffering is subjective. That's what I'd say.

Being a part to the moral community doesn’t rely on reasoning ability, but the laws of the moral community would be reason-based. They would have to be justifiable to others. Membership in the community relies on consciousness and free will.

If you read the article I sent, I argue that ascent to the social contract would be based on agreement to principles that are in accordance with higher-order values. Morality asks what principles of conduct would free reasonable people accept. It doesn’t say morality is reserved for the reasonable.

I’m not sure what freedom you’re talking about but if you have a specific question I’m happy to address it.

So a person who is lacking in the ability to reason, such as youth and those with neurological and functional limitations at the highest cognitive level, would be unable to be free persons in your framework? The social force of public reason would constrain and bind them to a group morality based on its implementation of geniocracy?

Such a freedom has zero coherence. As others have mentioned, the disconnect between 1) what is socially prioritized as human needs, and 2) the disconnection individuals can have to those human needs and values would make such freedom conditional and therefore non-binding.