Under the Spell of Words

Meditations on the Tao Te Ching: Chapter 18

When the great Tao is forgotten,
Kindness and morality arise.
When wisdom and intelligence are born,
The great pretense begins.

When there is no peace within the family,
Filial piety and devotion arise.
When the country is confused and in chaos,
Loyal ministers appear.

-Translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English

When something no longer comes to us naturally–when the intellect begins to see itself as independent and begins analyzing everything it once knew away–and as a result there is disorder and conflict, there are attempts to find some concept, ideal or virtue that will help bring things back under control.

Thus, when the country is doing poorly because the people in charge no longer understand how to rule, there arises the theory that the country’s problems can be solved by appointing “loyal ministers”, and when the family is in disunity there arises the theory that its members ought to practice “filial piety” and “devotion.”

These theories attempt to regain what has been lost, but they are bound to fail because they don’t bring one any closer to the source (the Tao), which the intellect “separates” us from.

Meditations on the Tao Te Ching: Chapter 17

When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.

If you don’t trust the people,
you make them untrustworthy.

The Master doesn’t talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, “Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!”

-Translation by Stephen Mitchell

The greatest rulers are those who accomplish what they set out to do exerting the least amount of effort and don’t worry about taking credit for their work. They do their job so well that people don’t even realize that there is a job that needs doing in the first place, like a janitor who keeps everything so spotless that it almost seems like the building cleans itself.

This highest ruler is the Tao. As mentioned in previous chapters, it is the source of everything, yet it is not immediately noticeable.

Trust the Tao to do its work and the Tao will return the favor, then you will find that things seem to work out fine somehow.

A Critique of Gettier’s Problems

Gettier problems are a type of hypothetical situation which aims to present beliefs that could be called knowledge under the “justified true belief” (JTB) definition while also conflicting with our intuitive notions of what should be called knowledge. These problems are used as evidence against the JTB definition of knowledge. They are named after Edward Gettier, who presented two such cases in an article titled “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” However, it is my contention that the two cases presented by Gettier in his original article don’t actually work as Gettier problems, each for its own reasons, and this is what I will be arguing in this post.

I will begin by analyzing the first case, which I will paste here for the sake of convenience:

Suppose that Smith and Jones have applied for a certain job. And suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the following conjunctive proposition: (d) Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket.

Smith’s evidence for (d) might be that the president of the company assured him that Jones would, in the end, be selected and that he, Smith, had counted the coins in Jones’s pocket ten minutes ago. Proposition (d) entails: (e) The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.

Let us suppose that Smith sees the entailment from (d) to (e), and accepts (e) on the grounds of (d), for which he has strong evidence. In this case, Smith is clearly justified in believing that (e) is true.

But imagine, further, that unknown to Smith, he himself, not Jones, will get the job. And, also, unknown to Smith, he himself has ten coins in his pocket. Proposition (e) is true, though proposition (d), from which Smith inferred (e), is false. In our example, then, all of the following are true: (i) (e) is true, (ii) Smith believes that (e) is true, and (iii) Smith is justified in believing that (e) is true. But it is equally clear that Smith does not know that (e) is true; for (e) is true in virtue of the number of coins in Smith’s pocket, while Smith does not know how many coins are in Smith’s pocket, and bases his belief in (e) on a count of the coins in Jones’s pocket, whom he falsely believes to be the man who will get the job.

The problem with this case is that there are two possible meanings to the phrase “the man who will get the job” in proposition (e). In the first place, and as per proposition (d), “The man who will get the job” could simply refer to “Jones”, in which case (e) is just a way of rephrasing what was already mentioned in (d)–that Jones has 10 coins in his pocket. Under this interpretation, (e) is considered knowledge both intuitively and according to JTB.

In the second place, the phrase could mean “The man who will get the job, whoever he may be.” Under this interpretation, (e) is not justified by any of the propositions presented by Gettier. In order for it to be justified, Smith would have to know that all of the possible candidates have ten coins in their pocket. Under this interpretation, (e) wouldn’t be intuitively considered knowledge nor would it be considered knowledge according to JTB.

The reason why the case appears sound is because Gettier equivocates between the two meanings. When he says that (d) entails (e), he is using the first interpretation of (e). When he says that that (e) is true because Smith, the person who got the job, has 10 coins in his pocket, he is using the second interpretation. Since neither of the two interpretations produces a conflict between our intuitions about knowledge and the JTB definition, this case can’t be taken as evidence against the JTB definition.

Now, here is Gettier’s second case:

Let us suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the following proposition:

(f) Jones owns a Ford.

Smith’s evidence might be that Jones has at all times in the past within Smith’s memory owned a car, and always a Ford, and that Jones has just offered Smith a ride while driving a Ford. Let us imagine, now, that Smith has another friend, Brown, of whose whereabouts he is totally ignorant. Smith selects three place names quite at random and constructs the following three propositions:

(g) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Boston.

(h) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona.

(i) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Brest-Litovsk.

Each of these propositions is entailed by (f). Imagine that Smith realizes the entailment of each of these propositions he has constructed by (f), and proceeds to accept (g), (h), and (i) on the basis of (f). Smith has correctly inferred (g), (h), and (i) from a proposition for which he has strong evidence. Smith is therefore completely justified in believing each of these three propositions. Smith, of course, has no idea where Brown is.

But imagine now that two further conditions hold. First, Jones does not own a Ford, but is at present driving a rented car. And secondly, by the sheerest coincidence, and entirely unknown to Smith, the place mentioned in proposition (h) happens really to be the place where Brown is. If these two conditions hold, then Smith does not KNOW that (h) is true, even though (i) (h) is true, (ii) Smith does believe that (h) is true, and (iii) Smith is justified in believing that (h) is true.

This is better than the first case in that it doesn’t use ambiguous language or equivocate between meanings. However, I remain unconvinced that the belief presented here qualifies as a JTB. My objection here is to the idea that (g), (h) and (i), which were the result of applying a disjunction introduction to proposition (f), represent beliefs distinct from (f).

A disjunction introduction is a rule for logical inference which says that if a proposition P is true, then the proposition “P or Q”, wherein Q is any proposition at all, must also be true; for instance, since I’m a man, the proposition ”I’m a man or there are penguins on Mars” is true, as is “I’m a man or it rains mud on wednesdays”. While these are obviously not the same proposition as “I am a man,” I don’t think they actually represent different beliefs. All they do is reiterate the belief that I’m a man, and I think the following two scenarios might show that this is so:

Suppose a programmer writes a piece of code that basically says “If X or Y are true, do Z.” If the programmer already knows that X will always be true, then the conditional “If X or Y are true” is completely pointless and adds absolutely nothing to the program. Its presence in the code conveys no new information because no matter what the value of Y is, the program will always behave in exactly the same way. In this same way, I believe that by using disjunction introduction to create a new proposition based on a proposition you already believe to be true, all you’re doing is expressing the same belief in a different manner.

To use a mode mundane scenario, suppose I said something like “Either Bill is lying or my name’s Shirley.” What this statement expresses isn’t a belief that one of the two possibilities must logically be true. Rather, the statement is just a way of reiterating my belief that Bill is lying while implying that I’m as certain of it as I’m certain of the fact that my name isn’t Shirley. Similarly, by using disjunction introduction with proposition (f) to produce (g), (h) and (i), Smith is just reiterating his belief in (f), not expressing any new beliefs.

If my interpretation is valid, then the fact that proposition (h) is true while (f) is false does not mean that (h) represents a case of justified true belief, because what Smith believes is actually (f), not (h). Since Smith’s belief is neither intuitively true nor true according to JTB, this case also doesn’t work as a true Gettier problem.

Meditations on the Tao Te Ching: Chapter 15

The ancient masters were subtle, mysterious, profound, responsive.
The depth of their knowledge is unfathomable.
Because it is unfathomable,
All we can do is describe their appearance.
Watchful, like men crossing a winter stream.
Alert, like men aware of danger.
Courteous, like visiting guests.
Yielding like ice about to melt.
Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood.
Hollow, like caves.
Opaque, like muddy pools.

Who can wait quietly while the mud settles?
Who can remain still until the moment of action?
Observers of the Tao do not seek fulfillment.
Not seeking fulfillment, they are not swayed by desire for change.

-Translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English

From what I gather, “Opaque, like muddy pools” refers to their thoughts being unfathomable, as the second line says. Waiting for the mud to settle is a metaphor for meditation, or abiding in stillness. By remaining still, without thinking thoughts, you allow your mind to settle down and can catch a glimpse of some of the deeper, mystical forms of consciousness.

As a side note for the 1 or 2 people following this series, I feel I have less and less new things to say about the TTC as I keep going, so instead of forcing myself to have something to say about each and every chapter, from now on I’ll only comment on a chapter if I feel I have something substantial to say about it.

How Determinism Agrees with Indra’s Net

“Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out indefinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel at the net’s every node, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that the process of reflection is infinite.”

Indra’s net is a metaphor used in Hinduism to illustrate the idea of the interconnectedness of all things–that everything in the universe reflects and is reflected in everything else. In this post, I will provide an argument for this ieda based on the assumption of determinism.

Determinism holds that any specific event will only ever result in a specific effect or set of effects. For instance, if I hit a billiard ball with a pool cue at a specific angle and with a specific amount of force, the result can only be that the ball will start moving in a specific trajectory at a specific speed; this same action will never have any other result.

To explore the implications of this and how they lead to the conclusion of Indra’s net, let’s start with a simple causal chain:

A>B>C>D>E>F>G

As most people will be able to tell you, under determinism, a change in any of the events in this chain would produce changes in all subsequent events. If “d” were to happen instead of “D”, for instance, the events following “D” would change as well.

A>B>C>d>e>f>g

What some people may not realize is that this also works the other way around. Since the only possible result of event “C” is “D”, it’s not possible for “C” to happen without being followed by “D”. Since “D” didn’t happen, that must mean “C” didn’t happen either, so “c” must have happened instead, but that is only possible if “b” had happened instead of “B”, which is only possible if “a” had happened instead of “A”, and so by changing “D” to “d” we would actually end up with the following causal chain:

a>b>c>d>e>f>g

Because every event in a causal chain could only have occurred if it was preceded by a specific set of events and can only result in a different specific set of events, the causal chain as a whole is implicit in each and every event that forms part of the chain.

Of course, in real life causality isn’t as simple and linear as the causal chain given above as an example. Every event is the result, not of just one preceding event as in the above simplification, but of a myriad factors coming together to produce this one effect. To return to the example of the billiard ball, the impact of the pool cue with the ball does not by itself determine that the ball will then begin to move at a specific speed and trajectory. If the pool table had been curved differently or been covered with sand instead of cloth, if the wind had been blowing differently, if the ball had been glued to the table, or if there had been another ball right behind it, the ball would have moved at a different speed and trajectory, or would not have moved at all. Thus, the movement of the ball after the impact implies that all these factors, not just the impact itself, were precisely as they were. In the same way, the movement of the ball doesn’t result in just one effect, but in a myriad of subsequent effects, a fact easily observed in the first shot of a game of pool, when the cue ball hits the formation of balls all racked together and sets all of them in motion.

If we take each cause and each effect of any given event, then take the causes and effects of these other events, and keep doing this indefinitely, we end up with something like a cosmic causal web that takes everything that will ever happen and binds it all together, so that every event implies and is implicit in every other event, just as every jewel in Indra’s net reflects and is reflected in all others.

Free Will: Incompatibilist «Freedom»

This post is my attempt to put into words those realizations which some 3 years ago led me to my current position on the existence and nature of free will.

Though I have written much on free will in online forums since arriving at my current beliefs, I’ve said little regarding these core realizations that underlie my philosophy, in part because giving a thorough explanation of why I believe what I do would require far more space than is really suitable for those forums, and in part because I had a lot of trouble stringing together the sometimes-disjointed ideas that led me to my current worldview in such a way as to make them coherent and convincing.

A great deal of thought and effort has gone into this post–more than for the three previous posts in this series combined, at any rate–and it is my sincere hope that what is written here will help at least one person gain a new perspective on the matter.

Now, without further ado: I said in my previous post that I would be talking here, in this fourth and final post on free will, about what I consider to be the real meat and bones behind all disagreements on whether or not free will exists; about the most convincing argument for determinism being incompatible with free will. See, even if an incompatibilist were to accept, as I previously argued, that determinism doesn’t mean our choices are determined for us by the brain or chemical reactions or whatever, they could still put forth something like the following argument in favor of incompatibilism:

“Under determinism, even if our choices may be determined by us, we ourselves are in turn determined by factors outside of our control, like our DNA, our parents, and the society we grow up in; therefore, it is these factors, and not us, which are truly responsible for our choices.”

I will not argue with the premise that, under determinism, we’re determined by things external to us, because I mostly agree with it, but I will challenge the conclusion the argument arrives at, because I do not believe that our being determined by other things means that we don’t have free will.

Back in the first post in this series I said I believed that at the core of just about every use of “free will” lies the idea of a particular freedom, that being what I called the “freedom from external necessity”, meaning the freedom to make our own decisions or the freedom from having others force decisions onto us. Even if it’s true that our nature is determined by external factors in ways we can’t control, it would still be the case that we have free will if it can be said that these externals don’t make decisions for us, which is a position I will be arguing for.

However, I realize that I have thus far given no reason for others to accept my own definition of free will over theirs, and that without giving such a reason my argument won’t be changing the mind of anyone who believes that free will is incompatible with determinism, so I will also be arguing that the freedom from the deterministic influences of externals can’t possibly be the sort of freedom necessary for free will, because having such a “freedom” wouldn’t actually make our choices or actions any freer.

To begin with, I have to grant that the idea that our genes, our upbringing, and other factors which influence our nature are ultimately responsible for our choices is a valid interpretation of the facts. However, it remains no more than an interpretation; the concept of ultimate responsibility is a human invention, not a fact of nature, and there are other interpretations in which ultimate responsibility lies with us. Take for instance the view that everything in the universe reflects and is reflected in everything else, as in the metaphor of Indra’s net, and so nothing is truly separate from anything else. Under this worldview (which I believe is perfectly consistent with determinism, as I will be arguing in a future post), my upbringing, my society and my genes are not something separate from me, because nothing is separate from anything else; thus saying that they are ultimately responsible for my decisions is the same as saying that I am responsible for my decisions.

Of course, under this interpretation, the existence of free will is only trivially true, since even were I being mind-controlled into making certain decisions it could still be said that my decisions are coming from me, since everything in the universe is “me”. However, my point in bringing up this alternative worldview was not to argue that this interpretation is the correct one, but rather to show that whether or not you see free will in the world depends on how you look at the world.

If you see the world as a bunch of causal chains stretching from the beginning to the end of time, free will doesn’t exist, and if you see everything as a manifestation of a single universal consciousness, free will exists but only trivially so. Similarly, if you look at the world on the level we humans experience every day, cows definitely exist, but if you look at it on a molecular level, you’ll never find any cows.

Of course, just because you’ve seen the world on a molecular level and failed to find any cows that doesn’t mean you can conclude that cows don’t exist. If you want to figure out whether or not cows exist, you’ve got to look for them on the level where cows are supposed to exist. In that same manner, if you want to figure out whether or not free will exists you can’t just pick any random worldview and say “well, looking at it through these lens I can’t spot any free will, so I guess that means free will definitely doesn’t exist”; you have to look at the world using the perspective from which free will is supposed to exist.

What perspective might that be? Why, it’s the same perspective from which cows can be said to exist, of course; the mundane human perspective we use all the time as we go about our daily lives. Seen from any other angle, “free will” as a concept simply loses any and all meaning.

(As an aside, it seems to me that a great deal of free will denial, along with several other philosophical positions, has its roots in the rejection of this perspective in favor of seeking some “higher”, “objective” perspective, and this is a topic I will talk about in the future.)

From the mundane human perspective, the decision to sit here and write this post which is now well over a thousand words long wasn’t made billions of years ago when the big bang occurred and set in motion everything that ever has or will happen in this universe, nor was it made decades ago when my father’s sperm and my mother’s ovum fused to form the zygote from which every cell in my body would spring, nor was it made back in elementary school when I started learning the skills that would eventually allow me to go carrying out this project. That decision is made here and now, as are all others, and in the here and now there is absolutely nothing outside myself forcing me to make that decision; thus, it was made completely out of my own free will.

Now, moving on to the second issue–the validity of the freedom from external influence as a potential definition of free will. In order to evaluate if the absence of external influence might be what “free will” refers to, let us try to figure out whether or not this absence would actually make our choices any freer. To begin with, I’ll describe the two basic ways in which these influences can affect us, then try to deduce what difference it would make in our decisions if we weren’t influenced in these ways.

In the first place, external factors influence the nature we are born with: our genetic code, the foods and drugs our mother uses while she is pregnant with us, and any diseases she might have at that time all help determine what our nature is at the moment of our birth. What would someone who was uninfluenced by such factors look like? Well, such a person would need to have come into existence as an uncaused event, completely at random–as a human baby, an adult, a fish, or a tree; in the depths of the ocean, in the void of space, going 600 miles an hour, or at the big bang.

Regardless of how exactly the began existing, though, they would have had no more say in the matter than they would have if their existence had been the deterministic result of prior events, nor would there be any real difference in how they would then go on to make their choices, so being uninfluenced in this way would give us no more freedom than we would have otherwise.

In the second place, after our birth, external factors continue to influence us, producing changes in our nature: I become able to read after my parents teach me how, I become scared of dogs after one attacks me, I suffer personality changes after severe head trauma. How would a person not influenced in this way go about making the choices we make every day, like choosing what to order at a restaurant? Simply put, they wouldn’t.

See, a decision is the result of the interplay between two factors: the decision-making agent, who contributes a set of personal preferences and some capacity to evaluate different options and judge which of them best fits their preferences; and the situation that the agent is presented with, which contributes a set of possible options and consequences that the agent can judge and choose from. As a result of this interplay, both the agent and the situation are changed. By making the decision-making agent completely independent of its surroundings, the interplay between these factors is erased and the agent can’t make any decisions regarding its surroundings–can’t even become aware of their existence, in fact, and so is doomed to spend their lives stuck inside their own minds, completely alone.

So, since being uninfluenced by external factors doesn’t make our choices any freer, but rather removes our ability to make choices, the freedom from external influence can’t be a valid definition of free will. Indeed, I would say that it’s not really a freedom at all, just an idea born from taking the notion of freedom to such an extreme that it becomes contradictory; the idea of a freedom so free that it’s even free from those qualities that make it freedom in the first place, meaning it ceases to be freedom.

This idea that things are only free if they’re even free from being themselves is what seems to me to be the core assumption behind the incompatibilist position, but this is incoherent because it’s not a freedom anyone can actually have; to be free from being yourself is to cease to be yourself, so that there is no longer a you to be free. Real freedom is not the freedom to be not-yourself, it’s the freedom to be yourself, by yourself, for yourself, and though this may not be the one some people want, it’s the one we have, and it’s a very real and very meaningful one nonetheless.

Other posts in this series:
Part 1 — On “Free Will”
Part 2 — Free will: on Physical Determinism
Part 3 — Free Will: «Could Have Done Otherwise»

Meditations on the Tao Te Ching: Chapter 14

Look! It cannot be seen;
It’s called the obscure.
Listen! It cannot be heard;
It’s called the soundless.
Feel it! It cannot be grasped:
It’s called the bodiless.
These three defy scrutiny.
Intermingled, they blend into one.

Above it is not bright.
Below it is not dark.
Continuous,
Unceasing,
Unnamable,
Reverting to nothingness.

It’s an occurrence of no occurrence.
It is a form that takes no form.
Elusive like a shadow.
Intangible like haze.
Confront it! It has no face.
Follow it! It has no back.

If you grasp the ancient Tao
You can rule the realm of today.
If you know the ancient beginnings
You know the essence of Tao.

-Translation by Agnieszka Solska

So this is another one of those chapters that’s heavy on the descriptions of mystical experiences that are difficult to relate to anything in the mundane world without any hands-on experience with the modes of consciousness in question, which I don’t have, so I’ll just do my best to describe what it seems to be saying.

The chapter talks about some qualities of the tao, beginning in the first paragraph with the quality of it being “beyond” the mundane senses. It is beyond dualities, beyond normal language; attempts to describe it require the use of seemingly-paradoxical statements.

It is the source of everything, including yourself, ever-present, ever-moving.

Meditations on the Tao Te Ching: Chapter 13

Favor and disgrace make one fearful
The greatest misfortune is the self
What does “favor and disgrace make one fearful” mean?
Favor is high, disgrace is low
Having it makes one fearful
Losing it makes one fearful
This is “favor and disgrace make one fearful”
What does “the greatest misfortune is the self” mean?
The reason I have great misfortune
Is that I have the self
If I have no self
What misfortune do I have?
So one who values the self as the world
Can be given the world
One who loves the self as the world
Can be entrusted with the world

-Translation by Derek Lin

Being concerned with status, we worry that we may lose what status we have and are saddened when we do lose it.

Being concerned with the self–with a self that is conceived of as being separate from the world–we worry about the self’s happiness.

We can be rid of such worries only if we conclude that self and world are inseparable; then we can accept both world and self for what they are, and not seek to change one to conform with the other.

Meditations on the Tao Te Ching: Chapter 12

The five colors blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavors dull the taste.
Racing and hunting madden the mind.
Precious things lead one astray.

Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees.
He lets go of that and chooses this.

-Translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English

Hinging one’s happiness on material pleasures is counterproductive. Chasing after these things for their own sake will desensitize one to them so that one needs more and more to appease their hunger, just as a drug addict becomes desensitized to his drug and must consume ever higher doses to get the same affect. Our peace is destroyed and we are left dissatisfied.

The sage, then, distances himself from the pursuit of such pleasures, focusing in stead on the essentials.

Free Will: «Could Have Done Otherwise»

In my previous post on this topic, I analyzed a common argument for incompatibilism and found it to not be logically valid, as it was based on contradictory assumptions. In this post, I want to say a few words about a widespread notion about free will that gets brought up by incompatibilists, by which I mean the idea that free will implies we “could have done otherwise”.

Incompatibilists argue that, since having free will necessitates that we could have done otherwise, and since determinism implies that nothing could have happened in any other way, free will can’t exist if determinism is correct. The problem with this argument is that the word “could” can be used in quite a few different ways, at least one of which makes the idea of “could have done otherwise” compatible with determinism.

Let us suppose that we are standing in a room with some number of closed doors and we have to make the decision to go through one of those doors, so we go through the one on our right. In one sense of the word “could,” it is true that we “could have chosen otherwise” as long as there was more than one door that we could have gone through had we so desired it. In another sense of the word “could”–the sense used when arguing for incompatibilism–it is only true that we “could have chosen otherwise” if the exact same person put in the exact same situation over and over again would sometimes choose to go through one door and other times choose a different one.

At first glance, both definitions of “could have done otherwise” might seem valid, but looking closely at them, it becomes apparent that only the first one–the compatibilist one–actually fits the way we use “could” in ordinary language; in the second, incompatibilist, definition, “could” is given the exact same meaning as “would”. This becomes apparent when you see that only the first definition actually makes use of the word “could”, while the second one only uses “would”.

“more than one door that we could have gone through”

“over and over again would sometimes choose”

In other words, the incompatibilist, in saying that free will implies we “could” have chosen otherwise, is actually saying that free will implies that our decisions are made, not by us judging our options and choosing the one we think aligns best with our preferences given the current circumstances, but because a metaphysical coin-flip happened to land on heads rather than tails. In other words, under this notion of “free will” we would actually have less responsibility over our choices than we would have under determinism–it is completely nonsensical.

The only “freedom” this sort of free will would give us is the “freedom” from ourselves–that is to say, it would rob us of our capacity for self-determination. The idea that this is any sort of freedom is what lies at the heart of the modern free will debate, and it’s what I’ll be addressing in my next and, for now, final post on this topic.

Other posts in this series:
Part 1 — On “Free Will”
Part 2 — Free will: on Physical Determinism
Part 4 — Free Will: Incompatibilist «Freedom»