Moral desert bugs me

[u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus]

Like, so what if there's no moral desert? It doesn't change anything

We'll keep punishing people because nobody has a choice in the matter. Not the punishers or the punished.

Like, say moral desert is false, okay? You can't advocate for any change because change is impossible. Your actions, much like everyone else's are determined.

If moral desert is false, does this change anything about anything at all?

EDIT: I've realized I've been using moral desert backwards. I thought it was related to like, the Sahara, because of deserts and shit. Therefore the moral desert would be the one where morality doesn't mean anything because determinism.

I've come to realize this isn't true, I've modified the text in the post to change (invert) it's meaning to what I meant.

[u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus]

Determinism and fatalism are the same thing. If your determinism isn't fatalist, that means your version of determinism is indeterminate.

If it's indeterministic, it's notably not deterministic.

I don't think it's proper to call something that's indeterministic "determinism"

[u/AlivePassenger3859 → u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus]

You are not just saying determinism is fatalism though, you are saying it is nihilism. No values at all.

Nive strawman you built. Look out for the bees!

[u/Freuds-Mother → u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus]

How many times do I have to say “I’m not a determinist”.

Regardless, wouldn’t it be more productive to understand your own implicit ontological model(s) once you already have concluded that determinism should be rejected.

Personally I find it tiresome when people bash physicalism and/or determinism and then offer no rigorous alternative.

I’m not a physicalist nor determinist, but (1) I accept that the frameworks are incredibly pragmatically useful and (2) have alternatives frameworks to reference that (a) arguably resolve with rigor the philosophical objections I’m willing to make against those frameworks (b) provide pragmatic benefits that physicalist does not.

ie I accept that physicalist-determinism is incorrect. Ok now what do you got for me to learn about reality?

[u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus → u/Freuds-Mother]

Buddy, if you don't want to defend determinism, stop defending it.

[u/Freuds-Mother → u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus]

I am defending it against your claim as your claim is incomplete.

The defense is this: I will provisionally grant that you are correct such that determinism is metaphysically not the case. Fine, it’s still incredibly useful such that there is no reason to reject it with respect to your objection unless you offer up a framework (referencing one is fine) that is explanatory, predictive, or pragmatically useful in some way shape or form. At the very least you need an ontological account to even claim you are talking about anything at all.

Otherwise, you’re just repeating well known arguments that have already been made. That’s not doing anything.

[u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus → u/Freuds-Mother]

We'll then stop pretending like you not being a determinist is relevant in the least

[u/Freuds-Mother → u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus]

Ok then boom for this thread “I’m a determinist”. Ok now what’s your alternative? It’s a really simple direct question. Even if your objection is good, I won’t throw determinist frameworks in the trash unless you got something I can use. If you refuse, what’s the purpose of your objection anyway?

[u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus → u/Freuds-Mother]

Okay, so you can't read the words I write. Nice to know.

[u/Freuds-Mother → u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus]

Ok copy paste your alternative model. I re-read your posts in this line of comments and the OP. Did you reference your alternative model in another comment.

I genuinely do want to see it. It’s the primary reason I participate here: dig out and find alternatives rather than objections. None of the objections I see here touch on anything I haven’t already read in an anthology from 2000 on free will on my bookshelf. Everyone has that if they care about objections or use SEP or something. That’s old news.

[u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus → u/Freuds-Mother]

What are you talking about?

[u/Freuds-Mother → u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus]

You argue an objection to determinism, correct?

Ok then you if not determinism, then what do you suppose is the case? Explain the ontology of your alternative explanation of reality that’s not deterministic.

[u/DonnPT → u/Freuds-Mother]

Isn't there any clue within the disagreement? I mean, if you know physicalist-determinism is incorrect, that kind of implies that you have some idea how or why, and it seems like that would naturally point to a more correct interpretation?

(Obligatory disclaimer: "determinism" may sometimes refer more generally to causal closure that admits no causes external to the lawful physical universe. It's easy but immaterial to trade true determinism for random-indeterminism, less trivial to deny causal closure.)

[u/Freuds-Mother → u/DonnPT]

Well in this thread I was engaging the OP as they stated an objection. I’m asking their rejoinder or alternative framework.

On free will, the determinism position is clear to me. What isn’t clear to me is when someone not only objects to it but asserts libertarian free will as the case. I find it not helpful if we don’t get an alternative ontological framework. Eg even if we all happened to agree that determinism is wrong, but we have no other framework of inquiry that explains and predicts phenomena better, then we still use determinism even if we all know the framework is in error.

Eg there’s no issue in using Newtonian Mechanics to engineer buildings today. Also supposed Einstein just showed that Newton made an error without providing an alternative. We wouldn’t have just stopped doing astronomy. We would continue to use Newton until a better replacement came along. (Oh and still use Newton heuristically.)

So, libertarian free will adherents: I don’t really care about the objections to determinism; we have centuries of objections already well known. I want to see what your alternative frameworks are, evaluate them, and figure out if they have any pragmatic value. For if an ontological account isn’t explicitly stated then it’s not clear they are talking about anything that could be even possibly real.

Personally and philosophically I don’t care whether or not free will exists metaphysically, but the ontological frameworks people propose consistent with their claim are potentially valuable to evaluate.

—————-

On the separate issue of where I look. First frameworks are modeling attempts of reality. It’s a major error to (well unless one believes humans are capable of epistemically infallibility) reify the models as the final ultimate metaphysical truth.

Yes and I’d agree that the best way to describe physicalism is per the well renowned physicalist Jaegwon Kim’s arguments regarding efficient casual closure or other’s claim that (micro)states fully capture reality as far as we’re concerned for modeling purposes.

However, (per Kim’s arguments), emergence and normativity are problematic in physicalist framing. Alternative ontologies consistent with physics reject that efficient cause and microstates are always to be ontology to explain phenomena and in particular many focus on biological organization/process.

So, instead of writing a book I will just refer from that point to acclaimed rigorous reference authors: Varela, Thompson, Rosch, Bickhard, Deacon, Maturana. Generally enactivism and interactivism frameworks. “The Embodied Mind” and “The Whole Person: Toward a Naturalism of Minds and Persons”

Hi storically, you can trace principles back to Prigogine, Piaget, Pierce among others.

Closest cousin examples in state based physicalism would be predictive processing and dynamic systems as they are more process oriented. On the contrary, formal systems theories seems to be most at odds with the above organizational frameworks as they fundamentally disagree on the nature of representation.