[MD] Compatiblism

[david buchanan]

Ian said to Steve:
Yes Steve, but when people say "compatibilism is the position that free will and determinism are compatible rather than mutually exclusive positions." They are not (cannot be) using the SEP definition of determinism you cite in (2). They are using a less greedy definition - a la Dennett (who you also cite). You go on to say, "presumably, the reason dmb hasn't yet responded is because he now finally understands this and is very embarrassed. He has to deal with the fact that he has been berating me for months for asserting logically contradictory notions and not using terms properly, when his own beloved SEP contradicts his usage of the term 'compatiblism'." I say, stop being a dick and stick to the point. I actually believe there is something you're trying to say - I just don't understand what it is yet.


dmb says:

Obviously, Ian is only taking my side because of the way I constantly flatter him and encourage him. ;-)

But seriously, thanks Ian. I think you put your finger on the main point. For anyone to maintain a compatibilist position, one has to use a softer definition of "determinism", a version soft enough to allow for the freedom it is supposedly compatible with. And, obviously, one has to use a softer version precisely because it's logically impossible to say that freedom is compatible with a total lack of freedom. That's the kind of nonsense I've been complaining about throughout this debate. 

What's worse is that Steve is willing to make this charge even though I made this point already. Just yesterday, in fact, I said to Steve, "You're describing compatibilism as a position that maintains two mutually exclusive ideas at the same time. That is nonsense. By analogy, a thing can be warm but it cannot be rightly described as hot and cold at the same time because one rules out the other. It [compatibilism] says there are determining factors but not to the exclusion of all freedom. It simply doesn't make any sense to say we are 100% determined and also say that we are free. To be a compatibilist, you cannot embrace determinism too. To be a compatibilist, you cannot deny freedom but that's exactly what the determinist does."

 Ron said to Steve:
Really Steve, all Daves post have been about nothing else but a compatabilist stance against your persistant insistance that free will is not a possibility in a MoQ. That choices and values are not free at all.


dmb says:

Obviously, Ron is only taking my side on this because of the way I always agree with his reading of the ancients. ;-)

But seriously, thanks Ron.

Isn't it rather simple? Since the MOQ says we are controlled to some extent and free to some extent, then the MOQ is obviously a form of compatibilism. And since the MOQ is also a form of pragmatism and radical empiricism, the control and freedom it posits is empirical and practical, not metaphysical. It admits there are controlling factors without reducing everything to causes and effects and it admits freedom without saying it is the property of a autonomous Cartesian self. In short, there are no metaphysical posits that denigrate and de-realize what's actually experienced. Scientific or philosophical descriptions of the universe are not supposed trump empirical reality as it's felt and lived through. Pragmatism says that's backwards, says that is a form of vicious intellectualism. Causal determinism is very vicious in that sense. It says that values and morals and meaningfulness are just things we invented to comfort ourselves but they have nothing to do with reality. The MOQ says approximately the opposite. It says man is the measure of all thing, a participant in the creation of all things. It says that experience and reality amount to same thing. And that's where we find both freedom and constraint. To the extent that they are experienced, they are empirical realities.