What's your stance on intuition in the context of epistemology?
Heh, funny you should ask - I'm actually in the process of writing a paper on that very thing.
The baseline is this: Regardless of whether it's epistemically valuable or not, intuition plays a HUGE role in epistemology. I think that, in the absence of defeaters, intuitive beliefs may serve a key role in developing foundational claims which we can then use to infer or justify other claims.
I'm hoping to develop this claim in a way that is palatable to internalist and externalist accounts of justification. Of course, there are always problems with an endeavor like this. My two big ones are 1) showing that intuition is a reliable truth tracking form of belief (to appeal to externalists) and 2) developing an account of justification for internalism about intuitions that isn't merely arbitrary.
That's all I can really say at this point on my thoughts, at least until I have a better idea of where I'm going. Probably after the paper is published. But in this case, I really do think the intuition that we have free will is evidence that that is the case.
I daresay this would only happen if one fell prey to that fatalistic trap of believing that if determinism then there is nothing worth feeling and all action is somehow meaningless. Even with a deterministic outlook, the experiences of inquisitiveness and joy of discovery and invention would still be meaningful, we'd still praise it all the same :P
Yeah, I'm definitely with you. I mean, it's a live option, but it's also a slippery slope. And whoever I was talking with before also made a good point that humans are naturally inquisitive, even in the absence of free will.
I'm fine with giving up this latter claim. It was something that crossed my mind while I was typing and decided to put it out there for consideration. I think the ethical considerations alone are enough to make us seriously think about whether or not to reject the notion of free will.
I take the position that free will and determinism are not mutually exclusive. The idea of everything being 100% predictable just has no bearing on my particular nebulous and screwy idea of free will.
From your first sentence, it seems clear that the kind of free will you're talking about isn't the kind that philosophers talk about. The two aren't just mutually exclusive, they're logically incompatible.
Let's go back to subject S. In situation Y, S has options A and B. Subject S chooses A. Will subject S choose A in all instances of Y*? Well I should hope so. What alternative is there? Madness?
You pointed out later on that there can't be multiple instances of Y, and I think you're right. But putting this worry aside (which we can totally do in thought experiments) can we think of an event such that S could conceivably do something other than A? I think so.
What about a contestant on a game show who has to choose between door A and door B? We can stipulate here that there are no external factors at that moment leading S in one particular direction. Will S always choose door A? If you say "yes" then it would seem you're committed to saying that something about S's past or biology or whatever contributed to S's decision. But doesn't it seem intuitively wrong to say that S would always choose door A in this situation?
If you don't like this example, I can give a template for generating other examples. All you need is a decision S must make that involves either a guess or an instant decision.
He has the ability to choose G, but, exercising his decision making abilities, he chooses E every time. He has free will, he is bad, he chooses bad because he's bad.
I think your worry that this scenario isn't satisfactory is because it's somewhat contradictory. Not outright or anything, but notice that you're bringing in the notion of choice - of free will - in considering a scenario that's determined by someone's biology (or perhaps in this case, their very nature).
Xzeno, I'd really like to you to think about and post what you consider free will to be - even if it's not the "
hilosophically correct" definition. Your thoughts here seem to be compatible with what a lot of people feel about the situation, but can't seem to put into words. I'm in the same boat as you, I think. I want there to be free will, but I also realize how good at predicting certain things we have gotten.
Maybe free will is similar to a roulette spin. You can, in principle, predict it, but the determining factors are so many and so complex that, on a practical level, it's impossible. Even this outcome is problematic, though. I'm going to shut up now.
