randyhelzerman (February 29, 2008 at 8:09 pm)

Hi bitbutter, yes, thanks once again for drawing a useful connection here: I can import most of the arguments used by Dennett and other compatiblists here to address concerns about personal accountability.

randyhelzerman (February 29, 2008 at 7:57 pm)

(cont, to Everett) are all statistical. Contrast this train of failures with the simple inferences we do every day (like my much-beloved pie example) which explicitly posit that we have free will, and work very well to keep people happy and keep society together. At what point do we re-evaluate, and say that perhaps the heuristic is the real theory; it was our assumptions that it _was_ a heuristic which is preventing further progress?

randyhelzerman (February 29, 2008 at 7:54 pm)

(cont, to Everett) The problem was, the evidence kept piling up that the atomistic theory worked better than any others, so by the end of his carreer he had to admit that the "heuristic" was really the real deal. I'm saying the same for folk psychology. Lets face it, since the 60's (even earlier really) the AI types have been trying to propose alternate, reductivistic, deterministic, theories for human interaction. These have gotten nowhere. The theories which work the best (cont)

randyhelzerman (February 29, 2008 at 7:51 pm)

Ok, I pick an interesting and productive conversation :-) Honestly, I'm not trying to be derogatory to anybody. Let me ask you a question: what is the difference between (A) a non-heuristic theory of X, and (B) a heuristic theory of X which in fact works better than any other theory ever given for X? Compare with the case of Ernst Mach. Mach started his scientific carreer thinking that the theory of atoms was just a useful heuristic, which helped predict a few chemical reactions. (cont)

EverettsVLOG (February 29, 2008 at 7:25 pm)

hmm, i still see two claims, no evidence for either. you are relying on a heuristic which, as far as i am concerned, is not well-accepted and there is no reason for it to be well-accepted. you keep tryin to phrase my position in a derogatory way. i could rephase your position to be absurd so you can see this is a language game, or i coudl ask you to explicate the heuristic to show you that it is in fact not a generally accepted rule when considering the truth of a proposition. u pick.

EverettsVLOG (February 29, 2008 at 7:25 pm)

hmm, i still see two claims, no evidence for either. you are relying on a heuristic which, as far as i am concerned, is not well-accepted and there is no reason for it to be well-accepted. you keep tryin to phrase my position in a derogatory way. i could rephase your position to be absurd so you can see this is a language game, or i coudl ask you to explicate the heuristic to show you that it is in fact not a generally accepted rule when considering the truth of a proposition. u pick.

randyhelzerman (February 29, 2008 at 3:23 pm)

"as usual" LOL

bitbutter (February 29, 2008 at 12:11 pm)

"that randy's definition of free will does not entail personal accountability,"I don't think randy's definition of free will has this problem for the same reason as a straight deterministic rejection of free will doesn't have it. Paradoxically it's only libertarian free will (who's advocates imagine that it's the only way to have accountability) that makes accountability unintelligible. I think dennett's idea of non-libertarian 'freedom' being the only kind of freedom worth wanting is helpful.

touchingstoves (February 29, 2008 at 7:35 am)

The Lincoln example was good. I guess my point of interest (at least, at the moment, as I'm a bit *bleugh* about metaphysics), would be to dig for more examples of how people have used these views in history.

touchingstoves (February 29, 2008 at 7:02 am)

so, we're not actually free, because the universe lets us? sorry, perhaps you could elaborate a bit more.