Now here’s my question: If you had to estimate their characters, values and personalities, wouldn’t you be able to attribute more meaning to the Deterministic element, instead of the one left to partial randomness? The partially random element would indeed completely mislead you in regards to Alice’s decision process.
I don’t see how any of that is relevant to FW. Firstly, you are not contrasting deterministic decision making by an individual with stochastic decision making by an individual; the stochastic
decision is supplied by someone else. It is not a roll of one’s personal die, with ones personal
values pasted onto its sides. The selection of choices is arbitrary and unconnected with Alice and Bob’s values.
Secondly, your notion of meaning, or information content is one that hinges on how much information
an external observver csn get out of someone’s else’s choice. That is quite orthogonal to the issue of whether FW makes your choices more meaningful to you.
Perhaps you think determinstic decisions are expressive of an individual’s psychology, because they can be predicted from an individuals psychology. But if you can predict someone’s decisions, why should they believe that have nonetheless made a free choice?
You assign good connotations to “stops there” and bad connotations to “one link in a very long chain”. But when I speak about “meaning”, I don’t mean ‘good meaning’ or ‘bad meaning’, I mean the amount of measurable information we can derive from the choice in question. Meaning as a metric which could theoretically be measurable in bits. And there’s 0 bits of information that can be derived from a truly random element. But from “one link in a very long chains” we can derive bits of information about both the past and the future—what the person may have likely done in the past, what they’re likely to choose in the future.
But if you can predict someone’s decisions, why should they believe that have nonetheless made a free choice?
Someone being free is always understood to mean something roughly equal to “able to act according to one’s own desires”, it doesn’t mean “unpredictable”.
But it is not obvious where the border lies between brainwashing/indoctrination and simply sharing information. If we are discussing a mutual acquaintance (let’s call her Alice) and I tell you that she did some not nice action yesterday, you may have a desire to shun her the next time you two meet. Is that desire “your own”?
One could say that it is because you simply used your knowledge of her past actions to decide for yourself that you should shun her. On the other hand, one could say that I basically am controlling your actions, because me telling you what I said has affected your actions.
You can very easily yourself make lots of other borderline cases like this, and in fact they come up in real life very often. Consider the case where parents “indoctrinates” their kids with their religion. When the kid grows up to follow that religion, was it the kid’s own choice? Again, we find that the distinction is not complete. If the kid had not been raised to that religion, he likely would not be following it. But this is how most people in the world got their religion. I doubt that you go around to everyone and say that deep down they don’t really believe in it… But that is a separate discussion.
Anyway, what I am trying to say, is that for every desire one has originated, their likely was some (external) reason why they have that desire. Like me telling them how nasty Alice had been, or their parents telling them that god exists. (And maybe Alice was nasty, or maybe she wasn’t maybe god doesn’t exist or maybe he does, but that has no relevance.) In any case, that desire was caused by the outside factor, which shows that it is not very meaningful to try to separate out which desires where caused by outside factors. (As they all are to some extent or another.)
But it is not obvious where the border lies between brainwashing/indoctrination and simply sharing information.
Lots of borders aren’t obvious. Why should that present a special problem in this case?
One could say that it is because you simply used your knowledge of her past actions to decide for yourself that you should shun her. On the other hand, one could say that I basically am controlling your actions, because me telling you what I said has affected your actions.
Anyway, what I am trying to say, is that for every desire one has originated, their likely was some (external) reason why they have that desire.
I don’t see why I should regard a desire as being originated when it also has some deterministic external cause.
If, OTOH, if a “reason” is just an influence, or partial cause, then it is compatible with partial origination.
I don’t see why I would have to do either. I need both the internal disposition to shun her, and the information. It is not either/or.
I don’t see how any of that is relevant to FW. Firstly, you are not contrasting deterministic decision making by an individual with stochastic decision making by an individual; the stochastic decision is supplied by someone else. It is not a roll of one’s personal die, with ones personal values pasted onto its sides. The selection of choices is arbitrary and unconnected with Alice and Bob’s values.
Secondly, your notion of meaning, or information content is one that hinges on how much information an external observver csn get out of someone’s else’s choice. That is quite orthogonal to the issue of whether FW makes your choices more meaningful to you.
Perhaps you think determinstic decisions are expressive of an individual’s psychology, because they can be predicted from an individuals psychology. But if you can predict someone’s decisions, why should they believe that have nonetheless made a free choice?
And what’ that got to do with free choice?
Someone being free is always understood to mean something roughly equal to “able to act according to one’s own desires”, it doesn’t mean “unpredictable”.
Act on desires one happens to have, or act on desires one has originated?
Can you try to say what the difference is? At this point I think you are tying yourself up in semantic knots.
An obvious objection to “one is free if one is able to act according to ones desires” is that ones desire mught be implanted, eg brain washing
But it is not obvious where the border lies between brainwashing/indoctrination and simply sharing information. If we are discussing a mutual acquaintance (let’s call her Alice) and I tell you that she did some not nice action yesterday, you may have a desire to shun her the next time you two meet. Is that desire “your own”?
One could say that it is because you simply used your knowledge of her past actions to decide for yourself that you should shun her. On the other hand, one could say that I basically am controlling your actions, because me telling you what I said has affected your actions.
You can very easily yourself make lots of other borderline cases like this, and in fact they come up in real life very often. Consider the case where parents “indoctrinates” their kids with their religion. When the kid grows up to follow that religion, was it the kid’s own choice? Again, we find that the distinction is not complete. If the kid had not been raised to that religion, he likely would not be following it. But this is how most people in the world got their religion. I doubt that you go around to everyone and say that deep down they don’t really believe in it… But that is a separate discussion.
Anyway, what I am trying to say, is that for every desire one has originated, their likely was some (external) reason why they have that desire. Like me telling them how nasty Alice had been, or their parents telling them that god exists. (And maybe Alice was nasty, or maybe she wasn’t maybe god doesn’t exist or maybe he does, but that has no relevance.) In any case, that desire was caused by the outside factor, which shows that it is not very meaningful to try to separate out which desires where caused by outside factors. (As they all are to some extent or another.)
Lots of borders aren’t obvious. Why should that present a special problem in this case?
I don’t see why I should regard a desire as being originated when it also has some deterministic external cause. If, OTOH, if a “reason” is just an influence, or partial cause, then it is compatible with partial origination.
I don’t see why I would have to do either. I need both the internal disposition to shun her, and the information. It is not either/or.