There is a conceptual connection between pain and avoidance intentionality

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9ZuXmpod0Q

 

I agree with Philip Goff that you can't say that there's a conceptual connection between pain and avoidance behavior and yet have exceptions where pain and avoidance behavior come apart. Like Goff says, that's like saying there are no married bachelors except sometimes there are. The reason why there are no married bachelors is because there can't be any, because by definition to be a bachelor is to not be married. So there are no exceptions. Likewise, if there is a similar conceptual connection between pain and avoidance behavior, then there won't be any exceptions where pain and affective behavior are found together.

 

In my model, pain is a combination of A + B where A refers to non-bad first-person properties that distinguish one pain from another and B refers to the first-person property of intrinsic badness that unites all pains as pains.

 

B properties can also distinguish one pain from another by intensity. A more intensely bad pain is distinguishable from a less intensely bad pain. And by quality: the dull, warbling pain of wasp venom is distinct from the hot, constant pain of a burn.

 

If it's true that there is intrinsic badness, then it's true that there is something worth avoiding because of its essence; pain is worth avoiding because of what it is. I don't avoid pain for some further reason; I avoid pain because pain is worth avoiding for its own sake. 

 

So if something is intrinsically bad, it is intrinsically worth avoiding. But if someone experiences an instance of intrinsic badness, then that just is to experience an instance of that which is intrinsically worth avoiding. Such an experience will produce avoidance intentionality in the mind of the person who experiences the pain. It is, therefore, impossible to experience pain and to not, at the same time, experience avoidance intentionality.

 

But there are cases where it seems like humans throw themselves head-first into pain. We see this with the pains involved in self-improvement such as dieting and exercise, or undergoing difficult education or training. We often risk experiences that we know could be very painful, such as adventuring outdoors or trying exotic foods. We willingly watch scary movies, push ourselves to extremes to break records, eat foods we know will be too spicy, and undergo medical procedures we know will be painful. Perhaps in these cases we are hoping for our adventures to be pain-free, but affective behavior and pain do go together.

 

And yet it's always the case that we are running away from pains. Running towards the pain of a medical procedure? That's just because the procedure is necessary to avoid greater pains, or because the procedure is necessary for survival and to enjoy pleasures that will, we bet, outweigh the pains of the procedure. Dieting and exercise is painful, but being unhealthy and overweight is painful too. And so on. I predict that in every one of these cases where you have pain plus affective behavior, there is a greater pain (per the judgment of the individual) being avoided. No one runs into pain for pain. Even someone who is a masochist is not after pain, but after the pleasure that comes with it (credit to Sharon Rawlette for this point).

 

Brian Cutter claimed in an interview that when we have painful dreams, our bodies remain motionless, and so this shows that pain does not necessitate avoidance behavior. But that's irrelevant. Pains in my dreams do necessitate avoidance intentionality; I intend to wake myself up from the nightmare, or to run away from the threat, or to destroy the threat. My dream behavior is one of avoidance.

 

It is exactly because of avoidance intentionality that we find affective behavior being paired with pain. The affective behavior + pain always implies avoidance intentionality + other, greater pain.

 

What complicates things is that you need to endure pains to get to pleasures. This is why pain does not necessitate avoidance behavior despite necessitating avoidance intentionality. Pleasures, as the opposite of pains, are intrinsically motivating.

 

So if something is intrinsically good, it is intrinsically worth pursuing. But if someone experiences an instance of intrinsic goodness, then that just is to experience an instance of that which is intrinsically worth pursuing. Such an experience will produce affective intentionality in the mind of the person who experiences the pleasure. It is, therefore, impossible to experience pleasure and to not, at the same time, experience affective intentionality.

 

So affective intentionality and avoidance intentionality clashes. We make a judgment as to which one wins out. When the pain of being overweight outweighs the pain of being hungry, the individual loses weight. When a person goes hungry for the sake of losing weight, it would be silly to think that the pain of the hunger is not intrinsically bad just because the individual chooses not to avoid the pain. Of course the pain of going hungry is intrinsically bad, hence the struggle, the calculating, the tolerating, and the display of strength and discipline.

 

So psychophysical disharmony where someone experiences pain and yet does not experience avoidance intentionality is as impossible as someone being a bachelor and yet married.

Free Will: Still Not Real (reacting to Emerson Green)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBl0I7kTXo8 

"Dennett of course doesn't mean that one can be the author of their thoughts or desires in the maximalist sense, but so what?"

So what is that your actions don't say anything about you in that case, only about what you have. You can describe someone in terms of their non-essential properties, whether they are virtuous or vicious in this or that way. That's obviously important as it lets you know what to expect of their behavior, whether to stay away from them or whether they are safe (or whether they would make for a good interlocutor in a conversation or just resort to name-calling).

But descriptions of non-essential properties are not descriptions of essential properties... obviously. If my essential property is my subjectivity, then everything else about me is non-essential, something I have but not am. (And this is why trying to solve free will without first solving personal identity will never work, I think. How can I make sense of what it means for me to be blamed if I don't know what 'me' is?)

"If I'm not the source of my actions because I didn't self-generate my own nature ex nihilo, then the hose isn't a source of water . . . I think to say that it's false that the hose is a true source of water has some pretty absurd implications if you follow it through . . ."

I'm happy to say that the hose is a source of water, because it's not a source in any sense that gives me reason to be dissuaded from my free will skepticism.

In tort & criminal law you have the "but-for" test to determine factual causation. Ex. But for the fact that I acted (or failed to act) as I did, the injury would not have happened. So my action (or failure to act) is the factual cause of injury. (That's not enough to determine legal responsibility, as my conduct has to be a proximate cause, or I have to have a duty to act, etc. But I digress.)

So the hose is a source of water in the sense that it passes the but-for test; but for the hose, I would not have access to water (or, I would have one fewer access points to water).

Likewise, our conduct can pass the but-for test. But that doesn't mean we're free; it doesn't mean that my actions say anything about me even if my actions say something about what I have. And what I have is perfectly morally relevant when it comes to blame, praise, responsibility, punishment, and so on. Like Robert Sapolsky says, if a car has no brakes, you don't let it out onto the roads and risk hurting someone. Likewise, it makes perfect sense to lock up people for the safety of others (and, hopefully, for improving the quality of the incarcerated person so that they can re-integrate into society. But we know that the US prison system couldn't care less about that part). We "praise" (recognize the quality of) cars that function well and "blame" (recognize the poor quality of) them when they don't. We can explain our recourse to praise and blame this way, as a recognition of quality rather than as an accusation of ultimate sourcehood. Indeed, it is by someone's proximate sourcehood that we come to recognize the quality of their kindness, moral reasoning, emotional stability, etc.—qualities they inherited from circumstances.

I'm convinced (any reason why I shouldn't be?) that free will skepticism can make perfect sense of common sense notions of responsibility, blame, praise, punishment, everything, whether in law or moral dilemmas. (Obviously, with the exception of retributive punishment specifically. That doesn't make any sense.)

What explains these dispositions? Where do they come from? Do we choose our dispositions, or are they products of factors beyond our control? It seems to me that compatibilism always kicks the can down the road. Whichever criterion of freedom they cite as the Real Freedom, whether that be acting on desire, or acting on your second-order desires, or acting on self-endorsed values, or acting according to your own sensitivity to reasons, or acting on your own dispositions—for any freedom criterion N, the further question can be asked of what caused N, and we can imagine Pereboom-style scenarios where someone has N and yet intuitively does not have free will, because N was caused by circumstances beyond their control, and the most core intuition we have (certainly, that I have) when it comes to free will is that it's not fair to blame someone for something beyond their control. Put another way, it's not fair to attribute non-essential properties to someone as if they are essential properties.

"We've got the free will we think we have . . ."

I don't think I have any free will. I hear this kind of talk – "We all act as if we're free..." Speak for yourself, I don't! "Given the illusion of free will, we have no choice but to act as if we are free." What illusion? I have no such illusion. My intuitions point me completely and totally toward free will skepticism. I'm happy to admit that I have freedom, which is probably what folks are referring to. Freedom in this sense refers to having options to choose from and the sense of choice that accompanies selecting one option over others. Sure, absolutely, I have that. But while freedom concerns the choices you have available to you, free will concerns the nature of the choice made—does your choice reveal something about you per se or merely about what you have, about your circumstances?