DJP
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There’s this too, which explains why plantation forests are more prone to disease outbreaks.
But seriously, who – apart from someone wanting to attack an aunt-sally – uses “free will” in the way you’ve described it here (as living a life of total caprice)?
Anyway, I’m going to leave this for now.
as opposed to my “free will” cavalierly adopting them free of any motive to do so.
This is a description of caprice, not freedom.
A life where you just acted at random, regardless of your prior values or knowledge, would not be a life of freedom.
Just remembered about this, seems Engels was a ‘compatibilist’ too.
“Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with real knowledge of the subject. Therefore the freer a man’s judgment is in relation to a definite question, with so much the greater necessity is the content of this judgment determined; while the uncertainty, founded on ignorance, which seems to make an arbitrary choke among many different and conflicting possible decisions, shows by: this precisely that it is not free, that it is controlled by the very object it should itself control, Freedom therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature which is founded on knowledge of natural necessity; it is therefore necessarily a product of historical development.”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch09.htmNothing in here about the requirement of an absence of external (or internal) influences.
Some more on Sam Harris here, from the Ben Burgis who wrote the ‘Give Them an Argument: Logic for the Left’ book:
https://benburgis.substack.com/p/sam-harris-has-nothing-useful-to
Actually Hobbes was what in modern parlance a compatibilist
– the universe is deterministic but freedom could still exist since freedom for him is the ability to do what one wants in the absence of impedimentshttps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/#FreeAccoClasComp
This is a summary of PF Strawson’s “Freedom annd Resentment” I put a link to the full article a few posts back.
“Although the central issues involved in the problem of free will and moral responsibility have remained the same since ancient times, the emphasis of the debate has changed greatly. Contemporary compatibilists in the vein of Frankfurt and Strawson tend to argue that moral responsibility has little if anything to do with determinism, since it arises from people’s desires and attitudes rather than from the causal origins of their actions. Humans may not be free to as great an extent as the intuitive notion of free will suggests, but there is no other freedom to be had. Addressing the problem of free will and moral responsibility requires establishing guidelines for holding people accountable, not lunging after some impossible notion of free will.”
https://www.britannica.com/topic/free-will-and-moral-responsibility/CompatibilismI don’t think any magical or religious meanings have to be read into it.
Perhaps you should have spoken to some Calvinists or Lutherans.
Of course no one ever made a choice without being influenced by some external or subconscious factors. I know some people define “free will” that way.
But the plainest common garden use of “free will” just means something like an uncoerced choice made from alternative possibilities.
But I have the feeling we’ve been over this before…
My opinions infuriate you.
I can’t help thinking that this discussion is baren for at least two reasons.
1. If I hit you on the nose because I found your comments annoying, you’re going to feel resentment towards me regardless of how much you think that free will is an illusion and that everything is the result of cause and effect. See P.F Strawson’s 1962 paper “Freedom and Resentment”
https://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/P._F._Strawson_Freedom_&_Resentment.pdf2. People exist at the level of society in a world of agents that have beliefs and intentions, not at the level of atoms or sub-atomic particles. It’s a mistake to think that social explanations can, or should be, reduced to explanations about physics. See this video from Christian List below for example:
I didn’t have a choice about being a socialist. My brain did that.
“It wasn’t me, it was my brain that did it”. Interesting line of argument, and a good example of Poe’s law too.
If “you” are not your brain are “you” any other parts of your body? If not I guess there’s no need to worry about the nuclear apocalypse.
Incidentally, Heinrich was one of the examiners for Soren Mau’s PhD thesis, from which ‘Mute Compulsion’ is derived. It’s freely available here:
Mau’s book isn’t about socialism, or how to achieve it, but about how market relations are necessarily a form of domination or ‘mute compulsion’. Listening to him talking about his book here, I don’t think it’s fair to describe him as an idiot (even if he has no clue about how socialism might come about)
https://pod.link/1544487624/episode/c66ba1020402cecd75dcc8af75d30f8c
Edit: Another reason I thought a review would be good is that it could draw a bit of internet traffic from interested parties.
I guess as I started I may as well continue… Avidor Dro were a popular and influential band during the post-Franco era ‘La Movida Madrileña’. This is a track from one of their albums from 1983.
“We will distribute the means of production
between producers and
urban worker associations.
With science on our side,
the hierarchies will disappear,
the paternal hand of the old state.”Lyrics here:
https://www.letras.com/aviador-dro/806420/Some Argentinian Anarchist Guajira for you. Lyrics, in Spanish, below:
