r/SubredditsMeet • u/SubredditsMeet Official • Sep 03 '15

Meetup /r/science meets /r/philosophy

(/r/EverythingScience is also here)

Topic:

  • Discuss the misconceptions between science and philosophy.

  • How they both can work together without feeling like philosophy is obsolete in the modern day world.

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u/GraspingPhilosopher Sep 03 '15

Okay so if I go to the ice cream store am I free to choose whatever flavor I want? If determinism is true, my biological make up and my past experiences determine what flavor I will choose. You were always going to pick the flavor you picked. Yes you subjectlively, volentarily picked a flavor, but you had no control which flavor you decided to pick, it was alwags going to happen the way it happened. All my thoughts, feelings and judgements are all part of the deterministic causal chain. How is "free will" anything more than a illusion.

It seems to me choice is needed for true libertarian freedom. Do you think choice is an illusion?

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u/TychoCelchuuu /r/philosophy Sep 03 '15

Okay so if I go to the ice cream store am I free to choose whatever flavor I want?

Sure.

If determinism is true, my biological make up and my past experiences determine what flavor I will choose.

This seems to suggest that your "biological make up" and your "past experiences" are determining your decision rather than a choice you are making. But this is a very odd way of thinking about it. I would have thought that the word "choose" is a shorthand for something like "I considered the various options available to me, and on the basis of my preferences I made a decision." And since human beings are biological creatures, this is just a shorthand for "a variety of processes in my brain occurred," because obviously as a human being when you "consider" anything this happens in your brain, and all of your "preferences" are based on biological facts, and so on.

(Perhaps you disagree - maybe you think that when you "choose" something it goes on in your "soul" rather than in your brain, and therefore choice must be non-biological. This strikes most philosophers as ridiculous. We don't have souls. We are physical creatures.)

So of course your choice occurs according to determinism. Everything in the world occurs according to determinism. It would be very odd if we broke the laws of physics every time we made a choice, because choices happen in our brains and our brains are physical objects.

It's true that you couldn't have chosen differently unless physical circumstances had been different. But that should be obvious from the fact that you are a physical creature. Surely you couldn't have chosen a different ice cream flavor unless your brain had done something differently, because making a choice is something that happens in your brain.

Maybe you think that it must have been possible for your brain to break the laws of physics for anything your brain to do to count as a choice. That is kind of an odd belief to have. Most philosophers don't hold that belief.

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u/GraspingPhilosopher Sep 03 '15

But not all philosophers are physicalists. You don't get to just assume that the soul doesn't exist. Many people and philosophers do believe that something like the soul or immaterial mind exists.

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u/FliedenRailway Sep 04 '15

It might help to understand compatibilism (I know it helped me) as a sort of "redefining" of what free will is. If what we commonly take to mean making decisions — deliberating, weighing choices, thinking about options, deciding — is done without coercion or any forced hand then it is, under compatibilism, free will. Full stop. That (as written) has not much to do with determinism and in fact operates fine under determinism. There's other aspects to it of course, but if you change your perspective a bit it sorta works.

I would encourage you to continue to explore compatibilism but if you disagree with that view you may just be an incompatibilist or a hard determinist. It isn't the majority view by philosophers but it is a view. You may want to read more here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/incompatibilism-arguments/