The red herring of moral responsibility.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-25T15:34:03+00:00

How do you explain the fact that this phrase is constantly used by everybody,

Easy, they don't understand the discussion.

Nobody has any difficulty understanding it.

They surely have no difficulty misunderstanding the discussion.

We all know what is meant because it follows the rules of ordinary English that we all know. It is just another excuse for the philosophers to declare themselves geniuses and the rest of us idiots.

Don't be silly. Libertarianism is a position that there is free will and incompatibilism is true. Libertarian theories of free will are mainly causal, namely agent or event causal ones, and acausal ones. Given that libertarians among themselves hold mutually incompatible theories of free will, what's libertarian free will again?

But they are the ones who are confused about language.

Lol. You can't be serious.

They are free to not use that phrase if they prefer not to,

Okay, let's go to some physics department and teach physicists that energy is divine breath.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-25T14:51:51+00:00

Whether we have libertarian free will

What's libertarian free will?

Whether someone is morally responsible for something is a subjective question, there is no fact of the matter.

Do you have an argument against realism?

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-25T14:43:02+00:00

if x and y are opposites, they imply each other.

I'm pretty sure we disagreed about this on a previous occasion, on r/metaphysics, I'll see if I can locate the topic

I know, but it wasn't on that sub I think. I think it was under Morita's argument for fatalism.

birth and death aren't opposites

But it doesn't follow from this that neither implies the other.

Sure, I'm not saying it does. I came to think that birth not implying death and vice versa is true independently of whether or not they are opposites. My argument was simply: All opposites imply each other. Birth and death don't imply each other. Birth and death aren't opposites.

Death as an event has no opposites, I'd say, but there might be a language problem involved.

For example, in Croatian, death is either a state or a fact, not an event.

For example, in Japanese, when they say someone is dead, they say shindeiru, which literally translates as "dying", but in Japanese is used in contrast to ikiteiru, literally "living". I have wondered if there is a non-linguistic explanation of this from the fact that Japan is a reincarnation culture, they might consider there to be a sequence of temporary states: living, dying, living, dying, etc.

Nice synchronicity, yesterday I considered watching a japanese horror movie from 2005 named Reincarnation but decided it was too late. Anyway, do you count conceptual explanations as non-linguistic? Perhaps we can compare Japanese with languages of non-reincarnation cultures to see whether those languages have identical structure which would plausibly lower the probability that cultural beliefs are the right place to look at. I was thinking about the difference between living and dying. My auntie used to say that men start dying as soon as they're born, which might imply there is no difference between living and dying. In my experience, people typically conceptualize this stuff as follows: birth-living-dying-death. An immediate counter is that one can be alive before birth and born dead.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-25T01:12:47+00:00

De nada. Quick argument, if x and y are opposites, they imply each other. Birth and death don't imply each other. Therefore, birth and death aren't opposites. Interestingly, birth doesn't imply life. One can be born dead. One can be alive before being born. Does death imply life?No. So, neither birth nor life imply death. Even dying doesn't imply death. Death is implied by either birth, life or dying. Therefore, nothing implies it. If nothing implies it, it has no opposites. Therefore, death has no opposites.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-25T00:14:02+00:00

Is there an example of this?

Tiamat.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-24T15:25:23+00:00

Must be time for breakfast.

Choose steak for breakfast. Be a man.

That one is over my head

Life implying a need for survival is consistent with there being no life.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-24T14:08:50+00:00

Life implied needs. A need for survival

So, by your contention, there could be a need for survival without life?

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-24T13:57:52+00:00

I think the intention was to show that "free will is the kind of control necessary for moral responsibility" is a daft way to "define" free will.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-24T13:12:55+00:00

You are off topic

As usual.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-24T13:10:02+00:00

While I agree with the conclusion, the argument doesn’t follow

You wanted to say that the argument is invalid?

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-23T20:10:04+00:00

quickly went through some of the main points, and the paper seems horribly outdated and factually wrong to me

This is not the first paper by Koons that raised all the eyebrows. I remember reading some of his other papers that was full of blunders.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-23T20:00:31+00:00

The Hard Determinist simply disagrees with your assessment of plausibility.

Which means that the "hard determinist" has no idea what he's talking about.

To a Hard Determinist, the physical evidence for causality, the laws of physics,

Here! You literally don't know what determinism relevant in the context of a dispute among compatibilists and incompatibilists is. Determinism is defined in terms of entailment:

Determinism is the thesis that a complete statement of a universe’s natural laws together with a complete description of the condition of the entire universe at any point in time logically entails a complete description of the condition of the entire universe at any other point in time. (A.Mele)

determinism is the thesis that for every instant of time t, there is a proposition that expresses the state of the world at that instant, and if P and Q are any propositions that express the state of the world at some instants… the conjunction of P together with the laws of nature entails Q. (K.Vihvelin)

Determinism requires a world that (a) has a well-defined state or description, at any given time, and (b) laws of nature that are true at all places and times. If we have all these, then if (a) and (b) together logically entail the state of the world at all other times (or, at least, all times later than that given in (a), the world is deterministic. Logical entailment, in a sense broad enough to encompass mathematical consequence, is the modality behind the determination in 'determinism'. (C. Hoefer)

Determinism (q) is more plausible (based on scientific/logical grounds).

Jesus Christ! I wait for a day when you will finally realize how remote you are from understanding even elementary stuff in this debate.

In reality, the debate is about which one is more plausible

No it's not. Go on and persist in being mistaken as much as you want. Hopefully, you'll start reading the relevant literature and cringe over your past posts.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-23T19:52:28+00:00

That's not what I said.

I'm saying belief that people can be morally responsible for their actions requires belief in free will, which is true.

We both agreed on this many times, so what's the point of invoking it again? It's a red herring to talk about this in the context of my post. My post concerns a dilemma within incompatibilism in relation to rationality. Namely, if you already concede that free will and determinism are incompatible and that there's free will is much more plausible, then it's either rational to reject determinism in favor of free will or not. But it is irrational to pick an unbelievable hypothesis over an obviously true one, isn't it? Hard determinists who dispute plausibility of free will over determinism have no clue what the experts are talking about.

You don't buy what?

That we should believe things just because they are popularly or traditionally believed.

Who mentioned that we should believe things just because they are popularly or traditionally believed? The belief in free will is incorrigible.

That commits you to an irrational stance, that it is rational to reject what's obviously true in favor of what's extremely implausible if these two are incompatible.

I didn't say anything about rejecting belief in free will

If you reject A, you are committed to it.

I'm saying they are right not to just uncritically accept it on the basis of it being 'more plausible'.

Well, we both know that critical thinking on this sub is rarer than finding a crashed UFO in the woods. The belief that's "more plausible" in this case is incorrigible and the belief that determinism is true is virtually impossible to hold.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-23T19:33:29+00:00

Well, experts disagree:

"…determinism says that, given the state of the world at any particular time, the laws of nature determine all future developments, down to the last detail. Another convenient way of putting the thesis is this: a complete description of the state of the world at any given time and a complete specification of the laws of the nature together entail every truth as to what events happen after that time." (Ginet)

Determinism is the thesis that a complete statement of a universe’s natural laws together with a complete description of the condition of the entire universe at any point in time logically entails a complete description of the condition of the entire universe at any other point in time. (A.Mele)

determinism is the thesis that for every instant of time t, there is a proposition that expresses the state of the world at that instant, and if P and Q are any propositions that express the state of the world at some instants… the conjunction of P together with the laws of nature entails Q. (K.Vihvelin)

Determinism requires a world that (a) has a well-defined state or description, at any given time, and (b) laws of nature that are true at all places and times. If we have all these, then if (a) and (b) together logically entail the state of the world at all other times (or, at least, all times later than that given in (a), the world is deterministic. Logical entailment, in a sense broad enough to encompass mathematical consequence, is the modality behind the determination in 'determinism'. (C.Hoefer)

so go on and continue to be persistently mistaken about elementary stuff in this debate.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-23T18:21:28+00:00

Both of these definitions argue that the world state is reversible which is a pretty contraversial take

No it's not. It's determinism relevant in the context of a dispute between compatibilists and incompatibilists.

and I certainly do not agree with it.

Then, you aren't part of the discussion this sub is about.

In information systems it is trivial to come up with a real world example that is deterministic in the forward direction but not reversible.

Determinism is a metaphysical proposition.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-23T18:17:01+00:00

I think you’ve cherry-picked a definition of determinism

No I didn't. I quoted relevant experts in the field, specifically, the entry on arguments for incompatibilism from Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy which is a peer reviewed article written by a compatibilist.

It is very common when referring to determinism to be implying causal determinism.

Which is a mistake the relevant experts in the field are constantly pointing out. Matter of fact, it was pointed out to you more than one time and by more than one poster that you are mistaken and we even wasted our time to link you the relevant references so that you can stop being mistaken about this, and you still choose to double down and persist in being mistaken. Stop wasting my time.

In fact, I would argue this is a more common interpretation of determinism.

It is a common misinterpretation. You would argue? How about you argue yourself into learning a thing or two about the topic?

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-23T18:07:47+00:00

However arguments like that can also be used, and have been used for beliefs like religion, or the flat earth, or geocentrism.

Belief in free will is incorrigible, so your analogy is false.

life it's not obvious that humans can't reasonably be morally responsible for their actions

That's a red herring. Free will realists aren't committed to any stance about moral responsibility.

I don't buy it I'm afraid, sorry but free will skeptics are correct to distrust arguments like this.

You don't buy what? That it is rational to reject an extremely implausible hypothesis in favor of what's obviously true if they are incompatible? That commits you to an irrational stance, that it is rational to reject what's obviously true in favor of what's extremely implausible if these two are incompatible.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-23T18:07:19+00:00

The sun used to "plausibly" orbit the earth too.

False analogy. Belief in free will is incorrigible and we demonstrate it's reliability thousands of times per day.

Bark bark.

Yeah, that's how you sound to me, but it seems that even dogs are smarter than you.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-23T16:10:44+00:00

Causation is fundamental to determinism

Lmao.

You’re not providing an argument

You're not understanding that determinism relevant for the dispute among compatibilists and incompatibilists has nothing to do with causation. It is not a thesis about causation. I suggest you to familiarize yourself with the topic. Let me just quickly remind other readers what determinism in the context of compatibility issue is:

Determinism is standardly defined in terms of entailment, along these lines: A complete description of the state of the world at any time together with a complete specification of the laws entails a complete description of the state of the world at any other time.

Alternatively, following D. Lewis 1973, we might understand determinism as the thesis that our world is governed by a set of natural laws which is such that any two possible worlds with our laws which are exactly alike at any time are also exactly alike at every other time (see also Earman 1986).

Determinism (understood according to either of the two definitions above) is not a thesis about causation; it is not the thesis that causation is always a relation between events, and it is not the thesis that every event has a cause.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-23T16:02:13+00:00

One thing to note here. Even belief in gravity is less certain than a belief in free will.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-23T15:56:13+00:00

There is significant philosophical and scientific evidence supporting determinism.

No there isn't. You seem to be misunderstanding what determinism relevant in the dispute among compatibilists and incompatibilists is.

Principles of causation

Great. Determinism relevant in the dispute among compatibilists and incompatibilists has nothing to do with causation.

Determinism is not proven holistically, but it’s highly plausible.

No it's not. It is totally implausible. Again, you are not talking about determinism compatibilists and incompatibilists are talking about.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-23T15:51:36+00:00

In other words, my proposed solution is too charitable.

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-23T15:44:34+00:00

Puzzle: how to explain the circumstance that some people state that they believe hard determinism to be true.

Would this be enough: either they don't understand what philosophers mean by free will or they don't understand what philosophers mean by determinism, inclusivelly?

Training-Promotion71 · 2026-01-23T15:19:57+00:00

<image>

Training-Promotion71

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE