? Taking apparent subject matter experts as genuine experts as a default is fraught with peril.
You have no evidence that philosophers are frauds. It’s all (uninformed) opinion.
Ok. First of all, no one has said that professional philosophers are “frauds” or anything like that. Not doing your subject well, is not at all the same thing as being a fraud. You may want to reread this discussion subthread- I’ve tried repeatedly to explain that the problem under discussion is not that no one is doing good philosophy, it is that a large fraction of the discipline is not, and that includes focusing on questions that should be already settled. Since I’ve also explained already that many attitudes on LW are mainstream philosophical standpoints, it would be very strange for me to think that philosophers as a whole were frauds.
I’m also puzzled by your choice of reply. It may be that there’s some subtle illusion of transparency issue here, but it looks to me like you took one sentence, repeated and assertion as a reply to that sentence and didn’t grapple with the central point of the paragraph containing that sentence: It is easy to give examples of whole classes of nominal classes of subject matter experts who are just wrong. As I said, any presumption of subject matter experts by itself being worthwhile to pay attention to is difficult at best. Now, do you intend to actually respond to this issue?
That doesn’t respond substantially to the point other than to say “hey, someone disagrees with you”.
If you have put forward the fact that you, uninformed, can’t see how it works as amounting to the fact that it cannot work, then the existence of Kanes work is significant....because, whilst his theory may just .be opinion, so therefore is yours.
It appears you are (ironically enough!) presuming a degree of ignorance on my part which isn’t accurate. I’m familiar with Kane’s work, I summarized already the many problems with it. It might help if you’d actually read that section of my response.
But we know this isn’t how humans make decisions- i
Please expand
You know, I did give a link which does just that. But if you want, I’ll expand on how this is relevant: Two stage notions of free will posit that there are two steps: first, a list of options is compiled, then a mind makes a decision from that list. But we have a host of psychological data demonstrating that that isn’t how humans make decisions. Options which occur early on are given more weight than those which occur later for example.
many in the other field are simply ignoring physics wholesale when discussing these issues.
Please provide examples
Aside from free will proponents, I already gave an example- most versions of A-time are not consistent with the laws of physics.
will. As far as I can tell, most versions of it are either obviously false, or are intuitively appealing but logically incohere.nt
But you made no attempt to steelman the contrary view by surveying the literature to find the best arguments for it. If you had, you would have heard of Kane.
I’m mildly curious what makes you think I hadn’t heard of Kane. Do you really think Kane’s arguments are so strong that anyone who disagrees with them, and doesn’t feel a need to bring them up specifically out of a myriad of different views must not be familiar with them? This is not a helpful approach to things.
I’m going to skip your comparison to creationism other than to note that insulting comparisons really aren’t helpful, and that if you think I’m making any form of argument that amounts to one of personal incredulity you really need to reread what I’ve wrote.
Theism is also backed by some professional philosophers, and that includes a majority of phil religion people. Should I pay attention to theism?
You can’t claim to know theism is false unless you can refute the best arguments for it. Where do you go for those? (Do you think of theists as some sort of Bad people that no one should associate with in case it’s inferiors
Ok. This is exactly what you don’t seem to be getting. There are plenty of people out there who’ve spent massive amounts of time for all sorts of arguments for theism- there’s a strong incentive over literally thousands of years for people to come up with good arguments for it. And the arguments that are thrown around today are the same things thrown around a hundred or two hundred years ago or more, cosmological arguments, design arguments, ontological argument, etc. You have the language dressed up to the point where they try to do things like make the arguments look more sophisticated (like Platinga and others trying to use modal logic in the ontological argument). But at a certain point, after enough study of these arguments, it gets to the point where one can say that if there were a genuinely convincing argument it would have shown up at some point. If someone introduces what looks like a genuinely novel argument and not just ontological argument iteration 552, I’ll take a look. As to your second sentence, it is obnoxious and irrelevant: I’ve made no comment at all about “associating” with theists as being bad, or that they are inferior, and your implications that there is something like that going on is not conducive to a productive conversation.
One doesn’t need to be a neurologist to know that classical libertarianism
What do you mean by classical libertarianism?
Something like the naive versions of free will espouses by most of the general population when they mean free will- it has a mix of interaction dualism and a notion that choices are being made by irreducible ontologica mental entities.
prior discussion
No different in content to the percent discussion
As a guess, I suspect you mean “recent” rather than percent (are you typing with some sort of autocorrect? None of the letters in “recent” are near “p” on a standard QWERTY keyboard). In any event, simply asserting that rather than actually discussing the linked prior discussion is not helpful. I note that you incidentally completely dropped my point to Unger’s work- so let’s be clear here, we’re talking about a professional analytic philosopher who essentially sees the same problems in question.
That 70% of a major discipline consistently get such a basic question wrong and the rest of the philosophers are taking them even remotely seriously as a discipline shows a major part of the problem.
My epistemology is that ideas are true, when they are true for reason, and in offer to find out whether p or not p is true, you look at the best arguments on both sides. Therefore , you need arguments on both sides. Like a trial where the prosecution and defence put forward their best cases, even though one of them must be wrong.
You epistemology seems to be that there is a list of things that are Wrong for no Particular Reason, and that none should argue for thing that are Wrong...and that “knowing” what is right .or wrong is a a matterof reading them of the Lists
It is generally not a sign of a productive conversation where one feels a need to not just insult a strawman of someone’s argument but apparently their entire epistemological approach. Therefore, unless you have something really interesting to say in any reply, this is going to be my last reply in this subthread. (I hope! There are of course, always problems with that).
It may surprise you that our epistemological frameworks are more similar than you think, and that people can disagree with you without having an epistemological framework that is utterly wrong.
The issue you seem to be missing is that there’s a point where the best arguments or best evidence for a position is weak enough that further investigation is not warranted. To use your trial analogy, at a certain point the trial is over- if there’s some sort of substantial new evidence then maybe a new trial will occur, but we don’t need to spend time on every single question. And even you believe that- I suspect for example that you aren’t searching out for the best arguments for flat earthism or hollow earthism (you can find sincere proponents of both on the internet), and in terms of philosophy, I suspect you aren’t spending much time looking for the best arguments for Aristotle’s four causes or Heraclitus’s claim that all is fire. So, the problem is that many philosophers are doing essentially that sort of thing, and it is worth noting that they are doing it the most for things like free will and A-time where there are basic human psychological reasons to want to believe they are true.
Despite my earlier request you haven’t given any expansion at all of what your testable theory of free will is. Are you going to discuss it or not?
You don’t like them. I don’t like them. Professional philosophers don’t like them. So how do they plug into an argument about philosophers getting FW wrong? The philosophers who are libertarians are defending much more sophitisticated theories.
prior discussion,
Been there and they contain nothing that isn’t in this discussion.
Unger
People are always criticising philosophy, and always defending it. Not dispositive.
further investigation is not warranted
You have not established that this is the case about FW.
psychological reasons
I am equally entitled to point out that less wrongs disdain for FW, moral realism, etc, could be interpreted as pattern matching them to religion, and as extending, irrationally, to rejecting naturalized versions.
your testable theory
I have published some extracts which you appear not to have read.
You don’t like them. I don’t like them. Professional philosophers don’t like them. So how do they plug into an argument about philosophers getting FW wrong? The philosophers who are libertarians are defending much more sophitisticated theories.
Context matters here- you may want to reread the conversation above. I gave classical libertarianism as an example of the sort of thing where we both agree that science raises issues with it. I wrote:
On the contrary, philosophers are highly relevant. I’ve already mentioned Putnam and Quine. The best philosophy is done not by scientists, but by philosophers who pay attention to science. One doesn’t need to be a neurologist to know that classical libertarianism fails for example, and one doesn’t need to be a GR subject matter expert to know that it raises serious issues for many versions of A-time. This shouldn’t be surprising- the best work in almost any field is informed by work in other fields. Philosophy is not an exception.
You then asked what I meant by classical libertarianism, and that is what lead to the mention of naive free will versions.
Slight tangent: It is worth noting (going back to the original subject) that there’s a serious problem that can arise when one constructs more sophisticated versions of naive ideas. Frequently the sophisticated version is so far removed from the basic intuition that the connection is tenuous. Worse, people then try after establishing some sort of argument for the “sophisticated” version to then reason with the full set of connotations of the naive versions. One sees this not just with free will- for example, look at people who try to define God as a “uncaused cause” or as a “universal moral will” or something similar. It is worth asking whether at a certain point what one is calling free will is accomplishing much by labeling it as such. (In Kane’s case, I think it is, partially because it is one of the less sophisticated (if you will) versions of free will out there, but that’s also part of why it fails.)
prior discussion,
Been there and they contain nothing that isn’t in this discussion.
Are you a sophisticated bot? I ask because the part you are responding to read:
prior discussion
No different in content to the percent discussion
As a guess, I suspect you mean “recent” rather than percent (are you typing with some sort of autocorrect? None of the letters in “recent” are near “p” on a standard QWERTY keyboard). In any event, simply asserting that rather than actually discussing the linked prior discussion is not helpful. I note that you incidentally completely dropped my point to Unger’s work- so let’s be clear here, we’re talking about a professional analytic philosopher who essentially sees the same problems in question.
So, I don’t see how simply repeating your assertion advances the conversation.
Unger
People are always criticising philosophy, and always defending it. Not dispositive.
I’m curious- have you read any of what Unger has to say on this topic?
further investigation is not warranted
You have not established that this is the case about FW.
Great! We’ve now made progress: We’ve now apparently agreed that there is some point where it is no longer useful to spend time looking at a question. So let me ask, what sort of evidence would convince you that that was the case for free will?
psychological reasons
I am equally entitled to point out that less wrongs disdain for FW, moral realism, etc, could be interpreted as pattern matching them to religion, and as extending, irrationally, to rejecting naturalized versions.
I’m not sure what you mean by “entitled” but I’d certainly accept that as a valid reason that LW should worry about its consensus attitudes (although as far as I can tell moral realism in some form or another isn’t that uncommon here). But yes, pattern matching here is a valid concern.
I have published some extracts which you appear not to have read.
It has recently born confirmed.
Great, that sounds potentially quite interesting. Can you point me to them?
We’ve now apparently agreed that there is some point where it is no longer useful to spend time looking at a question.
I have never argued from the premise that all questions should be kept open forever.
That seemed not the case earlier, but I’m happy to conclude that was a misinterpretation on my part. So, are you going to respond to the other issues raised?
It might be interesting to note at this point that the idea of detatchable , Cartesian souls actually has been abandoned in philosophy.
“Abandoned?” Really? What evidence do you have for that? Also how is that relevant to the issue at hand?
I presume that this is in response to my last question (again, actually indicating what you are responding to would be helpful). Giving citations that aren’t popular articles would also be helpful, but if you can explain in useful way how that research backs up a notion of free will I’d appreciate it. Because as far as I can tell from that summary that’s talking about determinism- that some choices are made from noise and very small inputs doesn’t give us any choice about them.
So, are you going to respond to the other issues raised?
What other issues?
abandoned
I can’t see I’ve seen many defences of soul theory lately, The most recent seems to John C Eccles.
that some choices are made from noise and very small inputs doesn’t give us any choice about them.
I can’t see what your objection is.
Thermalnoise is random.
As explained here
Or maybe you want an essential homuncular self that has a final say on everything.
All naturalistic theories can offer you is self that is distributed over a complex system, freedom that comes from physics,and control that comes from cybernetics.
Again, that needs some epistemology. If experts disagree, then some if them are wrong. That is the only straightforward case. Otherwise, if you think someone somewhere is wrong about something specific, you need to say why...and how come you know better.
options that occur earlier on are given more weight.
I can’t see how that is any kind of objection to two stage theories. They state that some sort of option generation occurs, that some sort of weighting occurs , and that some sort of selection occurs. These are black boxes, and you are free to fill in the details to match empirical data.
problems with Kane
You have been seeking to argue that the FW is a settled question, the answer to which is that it doesn’t exist. The fact that Kane has his critics does not i.mply that, since everyone has their critics, and since his critics have their critics. FW is a live issue with arguments on both sides.
theology
You know as well as I do that the theological bandwagon will keep rolling for the foreseeable future because there is a sociological demand for it, because there are are individuals and organisations willing to sponsor it.
Likewise, French speaking society demands an endless supply of fashionable obscurantusts...CP isn’t going away any time soon.either.
But......aside from those sideshows, your DO have a form of philosophy that is orientated toward’s rigour, clarity and scientific naturalism.
Again context matters, and it might help if you reread the context of what you are replying to. I gave the homeopaths example as one of a list where expertise is not in general reliable. That can occur for a variety of reasons. That doesn’t say that philosophers are frauds in any way shape or form. For that matter, I’m not even sure I’d label homeopaths frauds to start with- many of them are quite sincere.
Again, that needs some epistemology. If experts disagree, then some if them are wrong. That is the only straightforward case. Otherwise, if you think someone somewhere is wrong about something specific, you need to say why...and how come you know better.
Sure- I and others have outlined reasons for that. That you don’t find them persuasive is something that therefore requires further discussion.
options that occur earlier on are given more weight.
I can’t see how that is any kind of objection to two stage theories. They state that some sort of option generation occurs, that some sort of weighting occurs , and that some sort of selection occurs. These are black boxes, and you are free to fill in the details to match empirical data.
The problem is twofold: if simple physical and temporal factors have a direct impact, and the process of deciding is wound together with the option generation, then it is hard to see there being a distinct two stages. Second, if the more we study a process the more we find it is predictable, that’s evidence in the direction that the process really is predictable.
In this situation, we have no evidence (either psychological, neurological or otherwise) suggesting that there’s anywhere that there are two stages occurring. And yes, you can keep changing what you mean by the two stages so that anything whatsoever fits into your “black box” but it should be clear what that isn’t helpful.
You have been seeking to argue that the FW is a settled question, the answer to which is that it doesn’t exist. The fact that Kane has his critics does not i.mply that, since everyone has their critics, and since his critics have their critics. FW is a live issue with arguments on both sides.
Sure, the mere existence of critics doesn’t imply that. The fact that critics have completely smacked down Kane’s approach is what is relevant here.
theology
You know as well as I do that the theological bandwagon will keep rolling for the foreseeable future because there is a sociological demand for it, because there are are individuals and organisations willing to sponsor it.
The word “theology” doesn’t appear in my post anywhere. It would be helpful for you to clarify what you are talking about, and also be careful about putting things in quotes when they aren’t quotes. Are you talking about the paragraph discussing arguments for the existence of God? If so, then yes, that’s exactly a major reason why that is still the case- and I’d argue that many of the problems with philosophy as practiced today are similar- there are incentives (in this case, deep-seated human intuitions about free will) that keep the subject going, developing more sophisticated versions of the claims, rather than moving on.
The point of the simplistic two stage model is to avoid the false dichotomy of the”it’s either all random or all determined” . Two stage models have the indetrmimism needed for free choice occurring at one place and time, and determinism need to carry out actions occurring another.
That doesn’t get lost in more sophisticated versions.
A simplistic computer programme might perform calculation A, and then serially perform calculation B once A has finished.
You could rewrite that so that A and B run in parallel, with A pipelining it’s results to B.
But A and B would still be performing conceptually distinct roles..and that is the point.
...the more it’s predictable..
You can’t predict that an earlier option will definitely occur, and you also can’t predict which option occurs earliest. At best you have statistical predictability..
Critics have smacked down Kane...
Subjective opinion.
theology/incentives
You’re fee of incentives? It’s not the case that you hate FW because you’re an atheist and it seems theistic?
The point of the simplistic two stage model is to avoid the false dichotomy of the”it’s either all random or all determined” . Two stage models have the indetrmimism needed for free choice occurring at one place and time, and determinism need to carry out actions occurring another.
Yes, that’s the attempted goal. How is it relevant in this context?
You can’t predict that an earlier option will definitely occur, and you also can’t predict which option occurs earliest. At best you have statistical predictability..
So? The point that we are getting more and more ability to predict as we get more data is exactly what determinism suggests.
theology/incentives
You’re fee of incentives? It’s not the case that you hate FW because you’re an atheist and it seems theistic?
It would help a lot if you would not add things in quotes that don’t appear- it is both annoying and it makes it difficult to figure out exactly what you are responding. It is even less helpful when I just asked you clarify last time whether you are talking about a specific paragraph. I tentatively presume from context that you are responding to my final paragraph. I’ll respond under that interpretation: Sure, incentives are always a problem, and we all need to be careful about them. In my own case, I don’t think that I “hate FW” so it seems problematic to ask if “I hate FW because of X” for any X. If you mean something like “Do you discount free will because you’re an atheist and it seems theistic?” then I have to answer that I suspect that isn’t the case. Belief in free will doesn’t strike me as connected to theism much at all except in so far as they are both motivated by human intuitions, which applies to a lot of things (some of which are correct, others not so). I cannot rule out some other motivation at work, but I suspect that that’s not the case here. But it also isn’t that relevant: if I’m easily lead astray by my own motivations (and likely I am in many ways), that doesn’t make it less of a problem that that’s happening for a lot of professional philosophers.
Who’s incentivising Kane and co?
The question to a large extent here is not “who” but “what”- that is one thing they both share a similarity, a need to fill in deep seated intuitions. In this case, the near universal intuition that we have choices about our actions. I strongly share that intuition, and I sometimes think to myself “But I made that choice” even as I’m intellectually sure that the free will argument is extremely weak.
Ok. First of all, no one has said that professional philosophers are “frauds” or anything like that. Not doing your subject well, is not at all the same thing as being a fraud. You may want to reread this discussion subthread- I’ve tried repeatedly to explain that the problem under discussion is not that no one is doing good philosophy, it is that a large fraction of the discipline is not, and that includes focusing on questions that should be already settled. Since I’ve also explained already that many attitudes on LW are mainstream philosophical standpoints, it would be very strange for me to think that philosophers as a whole were frauds.
I’m also puzzled by your choice of reply. It may be that there’s some subtle illusion of transparency issue here, but it looks to me like you took one sentence, repeated and assertion as a reply to that sentence and didn’t grapple with the central point of the paragraph containing that sentence: It is easy to give examples of whole classes of nominal classes of subject matter experts who are just wrong. As I said, any presumption of subject matter experts by itself being worthwhile to pay attention to is difficult at best. Now, do you intend to actually respond to this issue?
It appears you are (ironically enough!) presuming a degree of ignorance on my part which isn’t accurate. I’m familiar with Kane’s work, I summarized already the many problems with it. It might help if you’d actually read that section of my response.
You know, I did give a link which does just that. But if you want, I’ll expand on how this is relevant: Two stage notions of free will posit that there are two steps: first, a list of options is compiled, then a mind makes a decision from that list. But we have a host of psychological data demonstrating that that isn’t how humans make decisions. Options which occur early on are given more weight than those which occur later for example.
Aside from free will proponents, I already gave an example- most versions of A-time are not consistent with the laws of physics.
I’m mildly curious what makes you think I hadn’t heard of Kane. Do you really think Kane’s arguments are so strong that anyone who disagrees with them, and doesn’t feel a need to bring them up specifically out of a myriad of different views must not be familiar with them? This is not a helpful approach to things.
I’m going to skip your comparison to creationism other than to note that insulting comparisons really aren’t helpful, and that if you think I’m making any form of argument that amounts to one of personal incredulity you really need to reread what I’ve wrote.
Ok. This is exactly what you don’t seem to be getting. There are plenty of people out there who’ve spent massive amounts of time for all sorts of arguments for theism- there’s a strong incentive over literally thousands of years for people to come up with good arguments for it. And the arguments that are thrown around today are the same things thrown around a hundred or two hundred years ago or more, cosmological arguments, design arguments, ontological argument, etc. You have the language dressed up to the point where they try to do things like make the arguments look more sophisticated (like Platinga and others trying to use modal logic in the ontological argument). But at a certain point, after enough study of these arguments, it gets to the point where one can say that if there were a genuinely convincing argument it would have shown up at some point. If someone introduces what looks like a genuinely novel argument and not just ontological argument iteration 552, I’ll take a look. As to your second sentence, it is obnoxious and irrelevant: I’ve made no comment at all about “associating” with theists as being bad, or that they are inferior, and your implications that there is something like that going on is not conducive to a productive conversation.
Something like the naive versions of free will espouses by most of the general population when they mean free will- it has a mix of interaction dualism and a notion that choices are being made by irreducible ontologica mental entities.
As a guess, I suspect you mean “recent” rather than percent (are you typing with some sort of autocorrect? None of the letters in “recent” are near “p” on a standard QWERTY keyboard). In any event, simply asserting that rather than actually discussing the linked prior discussion is not helpful. I note that you incidentally completely dropped my point to Unger’s work- so let’s be clear here, we’re talking about a professional analytic philosopher who essentially sees the same problems in question.
It is generally not a sign of a productive conversation where one feels a need to not just insult a strawman of someone’s argument but apparently their entire epistemological approach. Therefore, unless you have something really interesting to say in any reply, this is going to be my last reply in this subthread. (I hope! There are of course, always problems with that).
It may surprise you that our epistemological frameworks are more similar than you think, and that people can disagree with you without having an epistemological framework that is utterly wrong.
The issue you seem to be missing is that there’s a point where the best arguments or best evidence for a position is weak enough that further investigation is not warranted. To use your trial analogy, at a certain point the trial is over- if there’s some sort of substantial new evidence then maybe a new trial will occur, but we don’t need to spend time on every single question. And even you believe that- I suspect for example that you aren’t searching out for the best arguments for flat earthism or hollow earthism (you can find sincere proponents of both on the internet), and in terms of philosophy, I suspect you aren’t spending much time looking for the best arguments for Aristotle’s four causes or Heraclitus’s claim that all is fire. So, the problem is that many philosophers are doing essentially that sort of thing, and it is worth noting that they are doing it the most for things like free will and A-time where there are basic human psychological reasons to want to believe they are true.
Despite my earlier request you haven’t given any expansion at all of what your testable theory of free will is. Are you going to discuss it or not?
You don’t like them. I don’t like them. Professional philosophers don’t like them. So how do they plug into an argument about philosophers getting FW wrong? The philosophers who are libertarians are defending much more sophitisticated theories.
Been there and they contain nothing that isn’t in this discussion.
People are always criticising philosophy, and always defending it. Not dispositive.
You have not established that this is the case about FW.
I am equally entitled to point out that less wrongs disdain for FW, moral realism, etc, could be interpreted as pattern matching them to religion, and as extending, irrationally, to rejecting naturalized versions.
I have published some extracts which you appear not to have read.
It has recently born confirmed.
Context matters here- you may want to reread the conversation above. I gave classical libertarianism as an example of the sort of thing where we both agree that science raises issues with it. I wrote:
You then asked what I meant by classical libertarianism, and that is what lead to the mention of naive free will versions.
Slight tangent: It is worth noting (going back to the original subject) that there’s a serious problem that can arise when one constructs more sophisticated versions of naive ideas. Frequently the sophisticated version is so far removed from the basic intuition that the connection is tenuous. Worse, people then try after establishing some sort of argument for the “sophisticated” version to then reason with the full set of connotations of the naive versions. One sees this not just with free will- for example, look at people who try to define God as a “uncaused cause” or as a “universal moral will” or something similar. It is worth asking whether at a certain point what one is calling free will is accomplishing much by labeling it as such. (In Kane’s case, I think it is, partially because it is one of the less sophisticated (if you will) versions of free will out there, but that’s also part of why it fails.)
Are you a sophisticated bot? I ask because the part you are responding to read:
So, I don’t see how simply repeating your assertion advances the conversation.
I’m curious- have you read any of what Unger has to say on this topic?
Great! We’ve now made progress: We’ve now apparently agreed that there is some point where it is no longer useful to spend time looking at a question. So let me ask, what sort of evidence would convince you that that was the case for free will?
I’m not sure what you mean by “entitled” but I’d certainly accept that as a valid reason that LW should worry about its consensus attitudes (although as far as I can tell moral realism in some form or another isn’t that uncommon here). But yes, pattern matching here is a valid concern.
Great, that sounds potentially quite interesting. Can you point me to them?
I have never argued from the premise that all questions should be kept open forever.
It might be interesting to note at this point that the idea of detatchable , Cartesian souls actually has been abandoned in philosophy.
Free will could be noise in the brain
That seemed not the case earlier, but I’m happy to conclude that was a misinterpretation on my part. So, are you going to respond to the other issues raised?
“Abandoned?” Really? What evidence do you have for that? Also how is that relevant to the issue at hand?
I presume that this is in response to my last question (again, actually indicating what you are responding to would be helpful). Giving citations that aren’t popular articles would also be helpful, but if you can explain in useful way how that research backs up a notion of free will I’d appreciate it. Because as far as I can tell from that summary that’s talking about determinism- that some choices are made from noise and very small inputs doesn’t give us any choice about them.
What other issues?
I can’t see I’ve seen many defences of soul theory lately, The most recent seems to John C Eccles.
I can’t see what your objection is. Thermalnoise is random. As explained here
Or maybe you want an essential homuncular self that has a final say on everything.
All naturalistic theories can offer you is self that is distributed over a complex system, freedom that comes from physics,and control that comes from cybernetics.
Homeopaths?
How do you know?
Again, that needs some epistemology. If experts disagree, then some if them are wrong. That is the only straightforward case. Otherwise, if you think someone somewhere is wrong about something specific, you need to say why...and how come you know better.
I can’t see how that is any kind of objection to two stage theories. They state that some sort of option generation occurs, that some sort of weighting occurs , and that some sort of selection occurs. These are black boxes, and you are free to fill in the details to match empirical data.
You have been seeking to argue that the FW is a settled question, the answer to which is that it doesn’t exist. The fact that Kane has his critics does not i.mply that, since everyone has their critics, and since his critics have their critics. FW is a live issue with arguments on both sides.
You know as well as I do that the theological bandwagon will keep rolling for the foreseeable future because there is a sociological demand for it, because there are are individuals and organisations willing to sponsor it.
Likewise, French speaking society demands an endless supply of fashionable obscurantusts...CP isn’t going away any time soon.either.
But......aside from those sideshows, your DO have a form of philosophy that is orientated toward’s rigour, clarity and scientific naturalism.
So maybe the glass is half full.
Again context matters, and it might help if you reread the context of what you are replying to. I gave the homeopaths example as one of a list where expertise is not in general reliable. That can occur for a variety of reasons. That doesn’t say that philosophers are frauds in any way shape or form. For that matter, I’m not even sure I’d label homeopaths frauds to start with- many of them are quite sincere.
Sure- I and others have outlined reasons for that. That you don’t find them persuasive is something that therefore requires further discussion.
The problem is twofold: if simple physical and temporal factors have a direct impact, and the process of deciding is wound together with the option generation, then it is hard to see there being a distinct two stages. Second, if the more we study a process the more we find it is predictable, that’s evidence in the direction that the process really is predictable.
In this situation, we have no evidence (either psychological, neurological or otherwise) suggesting that there’s anywhere that there are two stages occurring. And yes, you can keep changing what you mean by the two stages so that anything whatsoever fits into your “black box” but it should be clear what that isn’t helpful.
Sure, the mere existence of critics doesn’t imply that. The fact that critics have completely smacked down Kane’s approach is what is relevant here.
The word “theology” doesn’t appear in my post anywhere. It would be helpful for you to clarify what you are talking about, and also be careful about putting things in quotes when they aren’t quotes. Are you talking about the paragraph discussing arguments for the existence of God? If so, then yes, that’s exactly a major reason why that is still the case- and I’d argue that many of the problems with philosophy as practiced today are similar- there are incentives (in this case, deep-seated human intuitions about free will) that keep the subject going, developing more sophisticated versions of the claims, rather than moving on.
The point of the simplistic two stage model is to avoid the false dichotomy of the”it’s either all random or all determined” . Two stage models have the indetrmimism needed for free choice occurring at one place and time, and determinism need to carry out actions occurring another.
That doesn’t get lost in more sophisticated versions.
A simplistic computer programme might perform calculation A, and then serially perform calculation B once A has finished.
You could rewrite that so that A and B run in parallel, with A pipelining it’s results to B.
But A and B would still be performing conceptually distinct roles..and that is the point.
You can’t predict that an earlier option will definitely occur, and you also can’t predict which option occurs earliest. At best you have statistical predictability..
Subjective opinion.
You’re fee of incentives? It’s not the case that you hate FW because you’re an atheist and it seems theistic?
Who’s incentivising Kane and co?
Yes, that’s the attempted goal. How is it relevant in this context?
So? The point that we are getting more and more ability to predict as we get more data is exactly what determinism suggests.
It would help a lot if you would not add things in quotes that don’t appear- it is both annoying and it makes it difficult to figure out exactly what you are responding. It is even less helpful when I just asked you clarify last time whether you are talking about a specific paragraph. I tentatively presume from context that you are responding to my final paragraph. I’ll respond under that interpretation: Sure, incentives are always a problem, and we all need to be careful about them. In my own case, I don’t think that I “hate FW” so it seems problematic to ask if “I hate FW because of X” for any X. If you mean something like “Do you discount free will because you’re an atheist and it seems theistic?” then I have to answer that I suspect that isn’t the case. Belief in free will doesn’t strike me as connected to theism much at all except in so far as they are both motivated by human intuitions, which applies to a lot of things (some of which are correct, others not so). I cannot rule out some other motivation at work, but I suspect that that’s not the case here. But it also isn’t that relevant: if I’m easily lead astray by my own motivations (and likely I am in many ways), that doesn’t make it less of a problem that that’s happening for a lot of professional philosophers.
The question to a large extent here is not “who” but “what”- that is one thing they both share a similarity, a need to fill in deep seated intuitions. In this case, the near universal intuition that we have choices about our actions. I strongly share that intuition, and I sometimes think to myself “But I made that choice” even as I’m intellectually sure that the free will argument is extremely weak.
If what you are predicting X from is indeterministic, X is indeterministic. Cf the thermal noise result.
It is matter of fact that chairs in theology are funded the way they are. It’s your opinion that people have the motivations you think.
In any case, if you can explain common intuitions, why reject them?