Free choice and personal responsbility?

[Demosthenes]

I've got nothing to apologise to Blagsta for.

you should apologise for having a go at me for no reason.

In as far as I did criticise Blagsta, it was only because his original y to me didn't say much, and didn't make sense.

The criticism was that he he said "Errr too many assumptions there that I disagree with." Rather than actually saying what they were.

As it happens, maybe he gave this short reply because he was busy, -but he gave the impression that it was because I'd made "too many assumptions" - he could have said, "I'm too busy,", but he didn't, until later.

My point was simply, (a) i understand where he's coming from, because you can hardly do a detailed post at speed with a baby on your knee cause you've only got one hand, and (b) he could have just waited till later, if he was going to bother to do a proper reply. or if the truth was he just didn't want to, which is more or less what he said later, - could have said that, instead of making out is was because I made too many assumptions.

 

[Demosthenes]

If I had criticised his parenting, then you could say I should apologise, because obviously his parenting is none of my business.

But I didn't.

 

[Demosthenes]

In any case, I just looked back over this.


between me posting my slightly irritated thing to Blagsta, which you reckon insinuates that he's a bad parent, even though I was doing nothing of the sort, and my next post, - no-one replied.

I recognised that actually the tone of the previous post was a bit off and posted.

"didn't see this when I did the last post.

Fair enough.
Well, sorry if my posts are incomprehensible; What can I say, - they seem to make sense to me.
I actually make some effort to talk in ordinary language and put things in simple terms, - so tis a bit disappointing.
Oh well, - anyway, was trying to answer the question of why moral responsibility is incompatible with materialism.
Can see now that it wasn't exactly what you wanted to talk about when you started the thread.
Sorry to have bothered you."

And then left, and only came back today, to find you'd been talking shit about me, which in my usual stupid way has got me really riled.

But, it doesn't really stack up with your saying, - you haven't even apologised for unwittingly causing offence.

And tbh, I'm sure I'm a lot more upset by what you've said than Blagsta could have been by what I said.
And I don't see any of you apologising.

 

[Blagsta]

You implied your baby wasn't settled

No I didn't.

You can go on ignore.

 

[Jonti]

This sort of offense and misunderstanding can often be resolved by PM.

 

[Blagsta]

But part of our inner world is constituted through our understanding of it. Part of who I am is who I understand myself to be and understanding is often a rational person. I'd resist a model of subjectivity which draws a firm boundry between the emotional inner and the rational outer where the former is oppressed by the latter. There is no inner and outer. The distinction is just an interpretation of subjectivity particularly prevelent within our culture: it's basically the old empiricist idea of the mind being constituted by the twin faculties of reason and desire. The self-understanding which is partly constitutive of subjectivity is not an individual affair. It happens in cultural movement (the romantics vs the enlightenment). The really interesting question (imo) is what higher values move people to affirm these understandings? People's inclination towards them is one of the most profound exemplers of the distinctinctively human: being driven by values and passions that call on us from without. Even though our understanding of ourselves sometimes precludes our explicit recognition of this fact.

By inner, I mean our inner dialogue, our conscious and unconscious mental landscape. Of course there are not strict division, because, as you say, we understand ourselves through our external experience as well as our internal. However, one of the problems I think with Liberalism is that it assumes that people act rationally. Problem is, people don't always act rationally. Often we act according to our emotions (both conscious and unconscious and then rationalise it afterwards. People act stuff out without being consciously aware of it all the time.

 

[Fruitloop]

Does it assume people act rationally? It assumes that they act in their own interest, but I reckon it' s relatively agnostic about whether those interests are rational or not.

 

[nosos]

Well no because it concieves of those ends as being entirely non-cognitive: rationality is a matter of means, desires are simply given and non-rational. Hence the sort of relativism it justifies when you follow it through to its logical conclusions. Who am I to comment on anyone else's ends?

 

[laptop]

Does it assume people act rationally?

It does.

There's a growing body of academic economics on "bounded rationality" - the jargon for "irrational economic choices"

Loyalty, for a start, leads to "irrational" choices as defined by Smith (and, I think, Pareto).

That might be loyalty to family - or to a brand. The whole of modern capitalism is therefore prdicated on behaviour that contradicts its theoretical grounding

 

[nosos]

The whole of modern capitalism is therefore prdicated on behaviour that contradicts its theoretical grounding

Its theoretical grounding is itself contradictory - I was fucking shocked when I first found out that neo-classical economics is built on the presupposition that people's preference-shedules stay fixed over time.

 

[Brainaddict]

Interesting derail here:
Having had to deal with economists lately, I've been struck by the way in which they can always come up with an explanation for why real life deviates from their models. They will even happily admit that deviation is the norm, so to speak, but continue to believe in their models. So you can see those constant deviations as proof that the models are flawed or you can see them as an acceptable outcome of using simplified assumptions - but it strikes me that which one you pick doesn't depend so much on evidence as on what you believe. And as an economist you are taught to believe that your models are right, because those models form a large part of economics, so they must be right, because otherwise all those well-paid economists would be wrong and it would be time to sack them and we can't have that can we?

 

[Dubversion]

Interesting derail here:
Having had to deal with economists lately, I've been struck by the way in which they can always come up with an explanation for why real life deviates from their models. They will even happily admit that deviation is the norm, so to speak, but continue to believe in their models. So you can see those constant deviations as proof that the models are flawed or you can see them as an acceptable outcome of using simplified assumptions - but it strikes me that which one you pick doesn't depend so much on evidence as on what you believe. And as an economist you are taught to believe that your models are right, because those models form a large part of economics, so they must be right, because otherwise all those well-paid economists would be wrong and it would be time to sack them and we can't have that can we?

on a related note (so not quite a derail of a derail) every now and then we do research for financial concerns etc, and they use advanced economic modelling techniques to analyse the data our research throws up.

Almost without fail, if our data doesn't correlate with their modelling, they'll either come back to us to find out 'what went wrong', or reject figures that fall outside certain parameters. Because their models couldn't be wrong - oh no

 

[laptop]

If it turned out that we didn't have free will, would neoclassical economics still work?

I think not - prices would be determined by physics as much as planets' orbits are...

</RERAIL>

 

[nosos]

I think it would - the moral psychology of homo economicus is such that it's questionable about whether they actually have 'free-will' in any meaningful sense. I'd argue any plausible account of free human agency rests on our capacity to draw qualitiative distinctions amongst our ends, to choose and change life-plans, to write and rewrite our self-narrative over time. The rational utility maximiser is none of those things. It's a single-minded unidirectional consumption focused sociopath.

 

[Blagsta]

Its theoretical grounding is itself contradictory - I was fucking shocked when I first found out that neo-classical economics is built on the presupposition that people's preference-shedules stay fixed over time.

What's a preference-schedule?

 

[nosos]

A set of consumption desires.

It's a really really really obviously stupid claim to make.

 

[kyser_soze]

I think we'd be better off sniffing each other's arses like dogs, quite frankly.