Rudolf Carnap on Determinism & Choice (1962)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 พ.ย. 2023
- Some rare clips of Rudolf Carnap discussing causal determinism and its relation to free will at a 1962 conference in Minnesota on the nature of causality and probability. More details will be added later.
#philosophy #determinism #freewill
On the point brought forward by the interlocutor with regards to legal practice not recognizing individual suffering from psychiatric conditions as imputable for their actions (thus, presumably, not recognizing them as free action), despite Carnap's actual answer in the recording, I feel his position as presented in the first half of the audio provides the resources for a better account of what happens in such cases. The interlocutor tries to argue that insofar as the actions from a man suffering from a psychosis are in line with his character (which is a psychotic one), Carnap's position would imply his actions to be free. However, as Carnap also points out in the beginning, free action demands (probabilistic) knowledge of outcomes, which are needed if the individual is to be able to consider whether what follows from a given action is in accordance with his character/preferences. That individuals suffering from psychosis aren't criminally imputable for their actions can be seen as a recognition by the jurisprudence that, in general, their condition doesn't allow for attributing them the needed knowledge.
As a man who has been diagnosed with psychotic episodes, can confirm that even as i was acting weird, i wasnt being controlled by someone else. I ve been under hematocontrol and hypnotized also, so i belive that i can speak with firsthand experience.
@@FroggyTheGroggy I'm not sure if I correctly understood your comment, but just in case I did, I'd like to point out that when one does not act freely, it need not be the case they are acting under the control of someone else. That is the point of the comparison I suggested between the cases of the psychotic episode and the child. The child is not being compelled by someone or something else to act, but since they cannot be attributed to knowing awareness of the consequences of their action, they are not acting freely. Mutatis mutandis, the same could be said of the case of the psychotic episode: in the eyes of the law, one who is undergoing such an episode cannot be attributed full awareness of the situation.
I always feel an eerie kinship with Carnap whenever I read/listen to him, despite his contemporary unpopularity in elite circles. I always found myself lilting towards compatibilism for the same reasons he did: I found that objects' constituents had virtually no impact on their freedoms, at least in the negative sense. I felt the same way about positive freedoms too, but you have to explicitly deny their synonymy with capacities.
> I always feel an eerie kinship with Carnap whenever I read/listen to him, despite his contemporary unpopularity in elite circles.
Fortunately enough, the reevaluations of Carnap, and the Vienna Circle in general, that started some 30 to 40 years ago in specialized circles have begun to spread beyond historians of contemporary philosophy and we are now seeing more people engaging with this thinking.
There is only one "thing" which embodies the Humian notion of "necessary connection": math.
Math is "determined" and "compelled". 2+2 =4 is not an empirical "regularity", it is a logical compulsion. It is necessarily so.
Similarly the angles of any triangle "must" add up to 180 degrees. Except a triangle drawn on a non-flat surface, in which case you "must" use Riemannian geometry.
Thus is math the "language" of causation? Or is causation derived from math?
ability to feel logical "compulsion" is the empirical result of a lifelong habit of being threatened disciplined punished by authorities and significant others
@@MrLcowles mathematical talent may be innate but still needs supervision and correction by the herd for the brain to develop the right vs wrong compulsion dont you think
I agree it's not an empirical regularity but the normativity of logical concepts doesn't fall from the skies but has to be produced intersubjectively. the criterion is that anyone who's got it right would judge the same way
@@lavauru9986 Is concensus truth then? Should we all be Christians, Atheists?
Skepticism wasn't just made for philosophy it was also made for religion and science. Hume correctly perceived that scientific causation such as gravity, conservation of momentum and energy, all had nothing behind their statements than the "observations" of "constant conjunctions". There was consistent empirical regularity. He correctly surmised that there was no "necessary connection" (causation) in scientific statements about reality. It was only the fact of mathematical formulations of these observable regularities that lent science the "rigor" to suppose causal "necessity". The math came second.
Paul Dirac, however, proposed the existence of antimatter given just mathematical theory. The fact that antimatter was later "discovered", lends credence to the idea of mathematics and causation being similar if not identical.
The world must be deterministic… cus there ain’t no way Carnap is choosing to have that hair 💀🪦