Philosophy... need sand

[alkatran]

Hey guys, how about burning the hell out of this argument so I can catch any logic errors?



Thoughts on Frankfurt’s Free Will
and Free Will in General

Frankfurt does not define free will in the traditional sense that if the same agent met the same situation twice, it could act differently. Frankfurt defines free will as the control of our desires through secondary volitions. He says this is an excellent definition of free will because it excludes animals and explains why we are unhappy when we feel like we don’t have free will, secondary desires aren’t being satisfied.

This argument is interesting, but there a few points about it which need to be addressed. For instance, why second order desires? Why not choose the third order desires which effect the second order desires? It seems as if the choice of ‘secondary’ was only to include humans while excluding animals. Perhaps there is an alien up in his spaceship now with his tenth order desires, watching us debate over these second order desires, and laughing at our foolishness.

Another good example is that first order desires affect second order desires. This means that some first order desires qualify us for Frankfurt’s free will. Consider the following situation: You have an agent who has a first order desire to be like the people around him and desire to not do drugs. This is a common desire among the species on our planet, so it must be a first order desire since they have no free will and no second or higher order desires. Now we place this agent with a group of people who like to do drugs. The agent doesn’t want to do drugs but wants to drugs to be like his peers. His desire to be like the others causes him to not want his desire to stay away drugs. His first order desires are dictating his second order desires, making them second order desires. All animals have free will if we base it on secondary desires.

Frankfurt says his argument explains why we feel dissatisfied when we feel NFDANFIOD
But this could easily be that we can’t fulfil all of our desires and our happiness depends on how many of our total desires we fulfil. If you offer a child two candies and say he/she can only take one, the child won’t be as happy as if you had given both. If you take the candies away after, the child will begin to cry.

So if Frankfurt’s arguments aren’t enough for free will, what is? Why do we believe we have free will? Perhaps it is because we don’t have all the available information and can’t predict the future with enough certainty to quell the debate. Our perceived reality does not include all of the exact variables and so we attribute things that we cannot explain to the supernatural (eg: a creator, free will, fate, astrology). In the actual reality, the reality that we cannot experience directly, only through our perceptions, there is no free will. The universe follows a set of rules, and we are part of the universe and as such, subject to the rules.

Some people would say that they should stay in bed if their entire life is preset. This argument is clearly flawed; they don’t know what’s going to happen, the universe does. None of the surprise or liveliness of life is removed since you have no way of knowing what is going to happen.

Bu what about responsibility for actions and morals? We often attribute ‘moral’ to what is considered right. A moral act is one which is right. But what is right? It is obvious that what is right is what is most beneficial. An agent will always choose to do what it considers most beneficial, but when the agent disagrees on what is most beneficial (eg: shooting everyone) it has to be stopped. It does not even matter if the agent is responsible for its acts, all that matters if it is likely to repeat them (why lock away a killer if he will never hurt again?). But this is off the subject of free will so we will not discuss it. All that matters is you understand that agents can still be considered responsible in a deterministic system.

[alkatran]

It occurs to me that I'll have to delete this off the internet before I submit it or the anti-copy thing will catch it and I'm out of university.

[alkatran]

Craig
B00417159

There, now they know it's me and I have proof.

[dsheller]

No it wasn't it was me posting under your name!