Re: Beyond Freedom and Dignity: A Philosophical Review

Allan C Cybulskie wrote:
On May 29, 9:28 am, Wolf <ElLoboVi...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Neil W Rickert wrote:
Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_cybuls...@xxxxxxxx> writes:
(review not quoted)
Good review. You hit on the problem with most (maybe all) arguments
against free will. Namely, when the conclusion is applied to the
arguer it implies that the arguer has no ability to reach that
conclusion.
My experience is that people who argue against free will attempt to
just brush off this objection. They don't answer it. They simply
deny that it has merit.
There is no logical connection between free will and the ability to
reach conclusions. Neither implies the other, therefore denying either
doesn't deny the other.

And of course my objection denies merit to the position you espouse. Any
criticism of the logic of am argument denies merit to that argument.

Well, that's debatable. I mean, don't I have to accept a conclusion?

No.

Do I never have to make a choice of any kind in reaching a
conclusion?

What do you mean by choice? What logical connection do you see between "choice" and "free will". (IMO, you are begging the question by implicating free will in choice.)

Don't we ever reject -- or fail to believe -- arguments
on the basis of what we call "intuition"?

That's one among many grounds or reasons or motivations for rejecting arguments/conclusions. You seem to have overlooked that all argument starts _after_ some point has been made. All argument is more or less obvious rationalisation. You know how it goes: "I prove, you justify, he rationalises."

Is it not certainly the
case that the arguer only accepts, rejects, or even makes that
argument because of their past contingencies, and therefore only
accepts it because they have to, not because the argument is itself
actually or provably true?

A person's ability to reason is a learned behaviour. Of course. So is the use of argument in support of one's position/etc. No one is forced to accept an argument/conclusion. There are other contingencies at work besides the ones that result in producing a conclusion.

Anyhow, as you know, no argument is provably true. An argument is a chain of reasoning. Whether the conclusion is true or not depends on both the argument's validity and the truth of the premises. Unfortunately, the truth of a premise cannot be inferred from the truth or falsehood of the conclusion. Nor for that matter can we infer the validity of an argument from the truth or falsehood of the conclusion. Strictly speaking, a valid argument shows only that the conclusion is consistent with the premises. (This is what upsets Zick about logic, and drove him to assert that he has found an unarguably true premise on which he can base the truth of all conclusions. Sadly, only he understands what that premise is, and he has been unable to derive even one unarguably true conclusion about the world from it. IMO, your concern whether an argument "provably true" is a symptom of Zickism.)

Basically, if they couldn't help but be convinced of that argument --
whether or not it was true -- then there's no real benefit or warrant
added by them advancing the argument.

Well, I don't know what it means to be convinced by an argument. In my experience, no one is convinced by an argument. Not even philosophers. ;-) The best I can do to parse that phrase is "report that the argument's conclusion agrees with one's prejudices." (That sounds like one of Ambrose Bierce's sayings.)

But even if you are right, Skinner's view still has a specific problem
that I've outlined in the first post and hinted at twice now, so I
won't hint at it again [grin].

If you intend "free will" as issue, I don't think Skinner's view has a specific problem, unless you assume that "free will" is some aspect of "mind" that doesn't obey any known laws of the natural universe.

If you think the issue has to do with controllers and controlled, Skinner did point out more than once that the pigeon feeder's behaviour is contingent on the pigeon's behaviour, just as the pigeon's behaviour is contingent on the feeder's behaviour. About a year ago I argued that when we say we control the car we are ignoring that the car controls us. That is, our behaviour while driving a car is constrained in all manner of ways -- and had better be, if we want to avoid death. I used the car-driver _system_ as an exemplum of the concept that control is a bi-lateral relationship. IOW, the standard grammar/usage rules for "control" mislead us.

It seems to me that underlying your stance is the assumption that the notion of "determined behaviour" cannot be reconciled with "free will." IMO, you are somehow conflating the concepts of "predictable" and "determined." Theologically, that's the problem of predestination.

IIRC it was St Augustine who said that even God doesn't predict your behaviour - God just knows what it will be. Augustine observed that prediction is not the same as foreknowledge: we predict what we do not yet know will happen, and our prediction is neither true nor false until the predicted event has/not happened. (Sort of like the superposition of quantum states suffered by Schroedinger's unfortunate cat.) Since God does not exist time but outside of it, he does not predict. God knows. We don't. God describes. We predict.

HTH

--


Wolf

"Don't believe everything you think." (Maxine)
.

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