Pick one.Jim B. wrote:What do you find unconvincing about them?
I have no idea what this is about.Is it at least possible that Mary learns something new?
When I read this I had no idea what you were talking about, however, your last paragraph sheds some light.Yes. My position is that there's probably an irreducible aspect to reality that experiences are about, what they're composed of. There's only one reality but it seems to have two aspects or modes of presentation. I'm not arguing that there's some spooky 'other' realm that consciousness comes from.
Okay, that was not how I was using the word (I was thinking that several causes could combine to have an effect), but let us go with that.But a cause necessitates its effect.
You decision to give money had a single cause, and that necessitated that particular effect, but that single cause was the "sum" of numerous contributions, including your belief and the observation that the man was there.
Your volitional self was the cause, or rather the exact state that your volitional self was in at that point. That state was due to any number of factors, such as the prior belief, and the man being there. The particular combination of seeing the homeless guy and your beliefs and desires regarding him all contribute to your decision that did indeed necessitate you giving the money. Hence, you gave the money!To the extent that causes necessitate effects in my body, then they override me, my conscious volitional self. If my 'self' is the cause of effects in my body, then my mental states and other factors are contributing influences on me. So my seeing the homeless guy and my beliefs and desires regarding him all contribute to my decision but they don't necessitate it.
You think you had a choice, and that therefore it was not certain that you would act that way. The reality is that you had a choice, and you made the decision you did because of your mental state at that point - there was a reason why you acted as you did - and so you were bound to act that way.
So how does this moral responsibility play out? Does karma come and get you? As far as I can tell, moral responsibility is a social construct. That is, it is something that factors into your decision making, and it does so because society tells you to do, and society does that because mankind has found society works better that way.Imagine that you're standing on a bridge that's about 10 feet off the ground. In one case, you see someone you don't like directly below you. You decide to jump off hte bridge so as to land on him and injure him. In the second case, the bridge collapses causing you to fall on top of that same person. In the first case, you jumped so that your body becomes an instrument of you and your decision. In the second, your body is not an instrument of you or your conscious will and intent. It's just a falling object. In this case, your body was caused by factors that overrode you. In the first, you were not overridden. Moral responsibilty tracks this distinction between being 'caused' ie necessitated and not being necessitated. If you had as little control over your prior mental and psychological sttates in the first case as you had over the integrity of the bridge in the second, why would you be held responsible in the one case and not in the other?
Okay.I was trying to distinguish between psychological history and justification. There was a time when I first learned that 2+2=4 but I justified it not because I learned it at that time. The two are different. My justification is about somethimg that's not historical. Causes, as in efficient causes, are historical.
I was using cause in a sense where something could have several cause, which you are not.That's a counterfactual, a list of which is infinitely long. If my parents hadn't met, if the singularity hadn't happened...etc. What we're talking about includes sufficient conditions.
However, your belief is not like your parents meeting. The latter is a condition, as you say. However, your belief was also a part of the decision process; it contributed to the decision that was the cause.
Tell me about it!That was awkwardly worded. But as an aside, I do think that desires and beliefs do inform each other all the time. Ever try to convince someone of something they're deeply invested in not believing?
Why?Right, but this conceptual differnce doesn't seem to depend upon scale. Scale and complexity may cause or contribute to the emergence of consciousness and agency but the latter two would not be explainable solely through complexity and scale. other explanatory prinsciples would have to be used.
But that is not what Aristotle meant by final causation.My original point was that to explain human actions, that real final causation, the fact that "I" can be influenced by states that do not and may never actually exist and by non-physical, ideal entities, must be invoked. Physical, efficient, biliard ball-type causation has trouble accounting for this.
You are the billard table. The table is not just a plain green surface, it is highly complex, and it changes in response to the action of the balls, whilst also modifying their motion. This is your mental state.And where do "I" come in? Am I just a 'user illusion' that the system self-generates? Somehow all of these players and balls and events of balls hitting other balls results in some averaging or tallying up efect that is my decision?
It is not a perfect analogy!
Do you think the brain of a spider has causal powers? I think so. I think a spider's brain can process events around it, and then cause the spider to act in an appropriate way. I do not see this as radical as you seem to.Radical as in having its own or capable of having its own causal powers? Consciousness may not emerge radically but already be part of the fabric of reality, as I alluded to above.