[MD] Indeterminism

[david buchanan]

Steve said to dmb:
So when James says," make no mistake, indeterminism means chance!" what he really means isn't randomness but  "free will"???? ...If the options are determinism versus indeterminism, indeterminism if true cannot support free will since it is just chance.


dmb foolishly tries to explain this yet again:
Like I said, James is using the terms "chance" and "indeterminism" to talk about freedom. "Chance" is just another word for freedom. "Chance" is the thing that the determinists cannot admit. You think he is talking about merely random events in the same way that post-quantum mechanics indeterminism does, and that's exactly where you're wrong. You are objecting because you think that James is trying to base his case for freedom and choice on mere randomness. He's not - and neither am I. You are objecting to a claim that nobody made.

What William James ACTUALLY says is, "The stronghold of the determinist argument is the antipathy to the idea of chance...This notion of alternative possibility, this admission that any one of several things may come to pass is, after all, only a roundabout name for CHANCE...What is meant by saying that my CHOICE of which way to walk home after the lecture is ambiguous and matter of chance?...It means that both Divinity Avenue and Oxford Street are called but only one, and that one either one, shall be CHOSEN." (James, The Dilemma of Determinism)


Steve said:
...If the options are determinism versus indeterminism, indeterminism if true cannot support free will since it is just chance. You can call chance a sort of freedom if you want, but chance isn't the sort of freedom anyone wants.


dmb says:
Again, that's just wrong. Chance is the sort of freedom that James wants BECAUSE it precludes determinism. It is James who calls chance a sort of freedom. Dude, I'm talking about the meaning of the evidence - James's essay - that YOU brought to the table. As Bob Doyle puts it in the abstract of his paper, "JAMESIAN FREE WILL, THE TWO-STAGE MODEL OF WILLIAM JAMES", "James was the first to overcome the standard two-part argument against free will, i.e., that the will is either determined or random. James gave it elements of both, to establish freedom but preserve responsibility. ..In view of James’s famous decision to make his first act of freedom a choice to believe that his will is free, it is most fitting to celebrate James’s priority in the free will debates by naming the two-stage model – first chance, then choice -“Jamesian” free will.


Steve said:
We agree that determinism and indeterminism are generally defined in opposition to one another. My point is that saying that indeterminism is true does nothing support free will.


dmb says:
Your point is irrelevant to James's claims and because nobody said that freedom can be predicated on randomness. James's indeterminism simply refutes the assertion that everything is determined. It means, "There are undetermined alternatives FOLLOWED by adequately determined choices." As all three sources pointed out, this is James's "two-stage model for free will" and creativity wherein "the first stage involves chance that generates alternative possibilities" and "the second stage is an adequately determined choice by the will. First chance, then choice. First 'free,' then 'will'." Doyle tells us that  "William James was in 1884 the first of a dozen philosophers and scientists to propose such a two-stage model for free will" and that is how "James was the first to overcome the standard two-part argument against free will, i.e., that the will is either determined or random. James gave it elements of both, to establish freedom but preserve responsibility." We show that James was influenced by Darwin’s model of natural selection, as were most recent thinkers with a two-stage model.In view of James’s famous decision to make his first act of freedom a choice to believe that his will is free, it is most fitting to celebrate James’s priority in the free will debates by naming the two-stage model – first chance, then choice -“Jamesian” free will.