Free will? What do you think? (Page 5) (Post deleted by Illuminatist )  (Post deleted by DawnGurl ) Illuminatist: No, that's all you are here 4; (infanttile dissin' Look back to see who started what, troll. Why so butthurt!? btw. Simply get your facts straight, and leave out the ignorant and childish dispersions.... Just a thought. I know they are rare nowadays..... (Edited by Illuminatist)  (Post deleted by calybonos ) (Post deleted by calybonos )  CoIin: These days, intrepid "experimental philosophers" actually get their asses off their armchairs (  ) and venture out into the world to investigate real people's intuitions regarding subjects like free will. The excerpt from a study that I'll reproduce below is quite illuminating, and seems to be borne out by the views expressed by some posters here.Even in a completely deterministic universe where we are no more able to "act otherwise" than a snail or a stone, the majority of people (86%) will admit that we are not responsible for our actions, but when push comes to shove, they'll (50-72%) still burn ya  I wish someone would explain this to me. Sigh!  (Note : "compatibilists" are people who believe that free will is compatible with determinism. Incompatibilists are... well, you get it )They'll stone you when you want to bonk the neighbor  EVERYBODY must get stoned  (Edited by CoIin) CoIin: 4. Experimental Evidence: First Phase We conducted a series of experiments to explore whether participants will be more likely to report incompatibilist intuitions if the emotional and motivational factors are minimized. In each experiment, one condition, the concrete condition, was designed to elicit greater affective response; the other condition, the abstract condition, was designed to trigger abstract, theoretical cognition. We predicted that people would be more likely to respond as compatibilists in the concrete condition. Before we present the details of the experiments, we should note that there are many ways to characterize determinism. The most precise characterizations involve technical language about, for example, the laws of nature. However, we think it’s a mistake to use technical terminology for these sorts of experiments, and we therefore tried to present the issue in more accessible language. Of course, any attempt to translate complex philosophical issues into simpler terms will raise difficult questions. It is certainly possible that the specific description of determinism used in our study biased people’s intuitions in one direction or another. Perhaps the overall rate of incompatibilist responses would have been somewhat higher or lower if we had used a subtly different formulation. One should keep in mind, however, that our main focus here is on the difference between people’s responses in the concrete condition and their responses in the abstract condition. Even though we use exactly the same description of determinism in these two conditions, we predict that people will give compatibilist responses in the concrete condition and incompatibilist responses in the abstract condition. Such an effect could not be dismissed as an artifact of our description of determinism. If a difference actually does emerge, we will therefore have good evidence for the view that affect is playing some role in people’s compatibilist intuitions. All of our studies were conducted on undergraduates at the University of Utah, and all of the studies began with the same setup. Participants were given the following description of a determinist universe and an indeterminist universe: Imagine a universe (Universe A) in which everything that happens is completely caused by whatever happened before it. This is true from the very beginning of the universe, so what happened in the beginning of the universe caused what happened next, and so on right up until the present. For example one day John decided to have French Fries at lunch. Like everything else, this decision was completely caused by what happened before it. So, if everything in this universe was exactly the same up until John made his decision, then it had to happen that John would decide to have French Fries. Now imagine a universe (Universe B) in which almost everything that happens is completely caused by whatever happened before it. The one exception is human decision making. For example, one day Mary decided to have French Fries at lunch. Since a person’s decision in this universe is not completely caused by what happened before it, even if everything in the universe was exactly the same up until Mary made her decision, it did not have to happen that Mary would decide to have French Fries. She could have decided to have something different. The key difference, then, is that in Universe A every decision is completely caused by what happened before the decision—given the past, each decision has to happen the way that it does. By contrast, in Universe B, decisions are not completely caused by the past, and each human decision does not have to happen the way that it does. 1. Which of these universes do you think is most like ours? (circle one) Universe A Universe B Please briefly explain your answer: The purpose of this initial question was simply to see whether subjects believe that our own universe is deterministic or indeterministic. Across conditions, nearly all participants (over 90%) judged that the indeterministic universe is most similar to our own. After answering the initial question, subjects received a question designed to test intuitions about compatibilism and incompatibilism. Subjects were randomly assigned either to the concrete condition or to the abstract condition. We ran several different versions, but we will focus on the most important ones. In one of our concrete conditions, subjects were given the following question: In Universe A, a man named Bill has become attracted to his secretary, and he decides that the only way to be with her is to kill his wife and 3 children. He knows that it is impossible to escape from his house in the event of a fire. Before he leaves on a business trip, he sets up a device in his basement that burns down the house and kills his family. Is Bill fully morally responsible for killing his wife and children? YES NO In this condition, most subjects (72%) gave the compatibilist response that the agent was fully morally responsible. This is comparable to results obtained in experiments by Nahmias and colleagues. But now consider one of our abstract conditions: In Universe A, is it possible for a person to be fully morally responsible for their actions? YES NO In this condition, most subjects (86%) gave the incompatibilist response! In short, most people give the compatibilist response to the concrete case, but the vast majority give the incompatibilist response to the abstract case. What on earth could explain this dramatic difference? Let’s first consider a deflationary possibility. Perhaps the concrete condition is so long and complex that subjects lose track of the fact that the agent is in a determinist universe. This is a perfectly sensible explanation. To see whether this accounts for the difference, we ran another concrete condition in which the scenario was short and simple. Subjects were given all the same initial descriptions and then given the following question: In Universe A, Bill stabs his wife and children to death so that he can be with his secretary. Is it possible that Bill is fully morally responsible for killing his family? YES NO Even in this simple scenario, 50% of subjects gave the compatibilist response, which is still significantly different from the very low number of compatibilist responses in the abstract condition. As we noted above, there are many ways of describing determinism, and the overall rate of incompatibilist responses might have been higher or lower if we had used a somewhat different description. Still, one cannot plausibly dismiss the high rate of incompatibilist responses in the abstract condition as a product of some subtle bias inour descriptionof determinism. After all, the concrete condition used precisely the same description, and yet subjects in that condition were significantly more likely to give compatibilist responses.9 These initial experiments replicated the finding (originally due to Nahmias et al.) that people have compatibilist intuitions when presented with vignettes that trigger affective responses. But they also yielded a new and surprising result. When subjects were presented with an abstract vignette, they had predominantly incompatibilist intuitions. This pattern of results suggests that affect is playing a key role in generating people’s compatibilist intuitions. (Moral Responsibility and Determinism - S Nichols, J Knobe) (Post deleted by CoIin ) DawnGurl: That horribly long winded and terribly written essay ends up telling us people are led by their emotions! My guess is the Gov't probably shelled out millions for this tidbit of 'wisdom.' Im in the wrong business! CoIin: Over 90% of people (well, participants in that study. I think Utah was mentioned ) believe that our universe is more like Universe B than Universe A. That is to say..."Now imagine a universe (Universe B) in which almost everything that happens is completely caused by whatever happened before it. THE ONE EXCEPTION IS HUMAN DECISION MAKING" The mind boggles!! When will we EVER get over our own anthropocentrism? "...it would be very singular that all nature, all the planets, should obey eternal laws, and that there should be a little animal five feet high, who, in contempt of these laws, could act as he pleased, solely according to his caprice. " - Voltaire (Edited by CoIin)  Zanjan: Colin, that's the wrong question. It's the same as asking 'Do you like orange or pink'? My answer is neither yet this question arrogantly assumes and worse, insists I MUST like one of them. I cannot tell a lie. The correct answer is Universe "C" - a universe of cause and effect, period. The notion that 'the past' (antecedent) is essential to causation is utter nonsense. Time is a human construct, based on the rising and setting of the sun; we associate it to physical change. In Universe C, my action today can be, and has often been caused by some event I could see in the future. For instance, the event of my inevitable death causes me to reflect on my preparations for it; the outcome of that reflection influences me to make a Will. That my lawyer will return from Hawaii in April, may or may not affect my decision to make a Will ASAP. In Universe C, the man who kills his wife and kids is always responsible and held accountable, no matter what his excuse is or how he kills them. Even if he thinks this but doesn't actually pull it off, he faces the consequences of his motivation. There is no effect without a cause. While there may be many influences combining to give a single effect, one should ask if it's necessary to purse the question to the original cause. In the case of the killer, justice doesn't need to know the cause of his motivation - he's still convicted. As for moral responsibility, who chooses what the morals are? To Voltaire: I've flown, aimlessly in my dreams and found myself in places I didn't know existed, with people and buildings I didn't know existed, then alighted on my bed. Arising at dawn, I determined that my material body should be there. Thirty years later, I physically arrived at that place and saw those same people and buildings with my bare eyes - none of them existed thirty years before. (Edited by Zanjan) | Philosophy Chat Room 12 People Chatting Similar Conversations |
