Do I have a choice? (determinism vs libertarianism vs compatibilism)

It's an allusion to a folk song (Widdecombe Fair?), where a line of people going to the fair gets longer and longer as more and more people join in. Each round ends with the line '...and Uncle Tom Cobley and all'.

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

You are right - I just looked it up. I'm sorry I don't know the song at all. I really like folk songs; I'm an especial fan of sea-shanties. Living in London I'm lucky enough to have a few odd little clubs that I'm able to attend that play odd little forgotten folk songs.I hope you have a really good holiday.

OK. Back to the fray. Don't misunderstand me. I'm a determinist too. What I'm objecting to is hard determinism.Maybe you'll understand my objection better if I give you a bit of historical context. For the last fifty years or so, academic psychology has been dominated by behaviourism, a theory of human behaviour that attempts to explain behaviour in terms of simple, deterministic stimulus-response mechanisms. It was so dominant, so all-pervading, that it was pretty much impossible for several decades for any respectable psychologist to investigate cognition (because cognition was considered a consequence of deterministic stimulus-response mechanisms, and so was irrelevant to an understanding of the causes of behaviour). Fifteen years ago an article like Velmans would have been inconceivable. The map isn't the landscape (as jar is fond of saying), and it's certainly not the same as me walking through the landscape (if it were, how could I ever get lost?).Consider the following two examples:1. I sometimes make mistakes in multiplication or in spelling, especially when I'm rushed or I'm not paying attention. I have difficulty understanding how this could be the case if my mental processes were as straightforward as you seem to believe. I know how to multiply 7 by 16, how to spell misconceived, so how come one day I'll get them right, and another day I'll make a mistake, when the only difference in those cases is the amount of attention I'm paying to the task? Can you explain this phenomenon with your model of cognition?2. How do you explain the behaviour of someone giving up an addiction? If I'm a smoker, for example, my preference every day is to smoke a cigarette (or several), but if I'm giving up, I fight that preference in order to achieve a long term goal. Not smoking, at least for the first few weeks, is an act of will. In the long term, though, what I'm doing is re-conditioning myself, re-routing the soft-wiring that determines my behaviour ('choos[ing] to change our map' in your terms).The fundamental flaw of hard determinism, as far as I'm concerned, is that it treats cognitive processes as a special case, purely as effects in a chain of cause and effect. In the real physical world, any phenomenon can have causal relations too.I see subjective experience as part of the physical world, having causes as well as well as being caused. To a hard determinist, subjective experience is an isolated bubble, peripheral to the physical world.Edited by JavaMan, : Fisnished off after interruption

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

What universe are you living in?I don't know about you, but time is a one-way street for me. I can't go back into the past, and I can only go forward into the future one step at a time.

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

Oh god... I don't know where my reply has gone so I'm going to have to write it again... grr...Firstly - I've read more of the article now. Its very enjoyable but I fear I'm not understanding the finer points of his argument because I don't have specific enough knowledge. I love it when he lays into people he perceives have misread him though - priceless!I've always accepted that there are very smart people out there who know more about the subject who have opposing views to mine. Its just that I'm still having trouble coming to terms these kinds of attitudes towards decision-making.I don't see a problem with either of your examples that you believe might cause a problem for someone who sees the choice-making system from my perspective.The smoking one doesn't seem problematic to me. You will only consider giving up as a possibility in very certain circumstances. For instance - if you live in a culture that believes tobacco is addictive... and that addiction is bad... etc. If you classify yourself as addicted, and you believe addiction to be bad, or if you can't afford to support your habit any more, then you are developing beliefs that, if they are strong enough, will become sufficiently strong to counter the urge to smoke more. Where do these beliefs come from? I think they are largely external, learned things.I'm a bit unsure how the first one (spelling mistakes) relates to free choice - because mistakes are by definition involuntary. I assume you chose it then more as a means of exploring my model of mind.* The thing is, I'm not sure if the process of cognition is entirely relevant to the question we are addressing. This may sound beyond the pail (pale?) to you, but let me try to explain.Assuming that you are right and there is a cognitive process that allows free choice, I'm speculating that in practice you would be as constrained as someone who was just a behaviourist input and response machine. The learned beliefs that you hold are the scaffolding of your sense of self - your sense of reality. This is what I was trying to talk about when I was talking about the maps. I'm not sure if I was clear enough. Our beliefs are our map of reality. I mean this in a jar-ist way. They merely discribe it - if our beliefs are sufficient to help us see where dangers lie then great. But we don't have any real access to reality.Okay, I'm going off on one. All I mean is, how can you act contrary to your beliefs? Why would you want to? Many of your beliefs keep you alive from hour to hour. All I'm saying is that there isn't an aspect of our lives, our decision-making, which isn't scaffolded and I would argue, determined by these beliefs. Is there?*I'm not sure if this is my model of mind, but just say it is - even then, I don't see a problem in the face of spelling mistakes. I speculate it might work something like this: external pressures (time constraints) make you use a different, less precise way to work out a sum that gives a quicker but less accurate result. Or if it comes to spelling, you use general spelling or syntax rules that are rong in a specific instance, rather than bothering to search your memory for the correct, specific spelling of the particular word.Edited by Tusko, : No reason given.

Your limitations are irrelevant.

You don't understand the difference between hardware and software?

I haven't forgotten about our discussion. I'm mulling things over. I've also just got to the point in Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding where he's discussing free will, so I want to digest his arguments as well.

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

Irrelevant to who?

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

Yes I do. What's your point?

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

I'm really glad that you are still thinking. I've never read Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Perhaps I'd better give it a go myself...In the meantime, I've thought of another way of talking about it while I was walking along Chancery Lane. Maybe I've said this before, but here goes....I consider people rational beings. I don't mean rational in an objective sense (I've done my fair share of really stupid things in my time), but rather rational in a subjective sense. That is to say, that every decision we make might not improve our lot, or the lot of others, but nonetheless it is enacted because some part of us believes, consciously or unconsciously that it is the most appropriate course of action at the time.Some people -- very violent men for instance -- will believe that attacking others is the most appropriate course of action even when, in an objective sense, it is probably more dangerous in the short term and more likely to lead society's application of restrictive measures like prison in the long term.However, they will persist in this behaviour until they die, unless that belief is changed. I can see how change might be precipitated from without - by a kind of societal reprogramming, to put it crudely. But for a person to change independently, I can only see this as possible if there is already a seed of the desire to live a more peacable life planted in them.RIGHT! Sudden flash! I get why Locke's relevant here - Tabula Rasa, right? Aha! Right, I think I'd better get on and read that then, as soon as I can find the time.Anyway. I used the example of a violent man - but I feel like that same kind of thing applies universally.I don't know if that's helped you understand my position at all, but Its helped me. Cheers!

To who?
Don't even know the meaning of 'relevant', eh?

No you don't, or you wouldn't be asking that.

You're a bit rude, aren't you?Do you want to engage in debate, or do you just want to make snide remarks?

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

Maybe you could explain why your analogy with hardware and software is relevant to my argument? Here's the original argument for reference: Edited by JavaMan, : typo

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang