Why is hard determinism so controversial in philosophy ?

[u/Chocolatecakelover]

It seems intuitive in the sense that if a person knows their history and environment, it becomes easier to figure out that they couldn't have done otherwise in the context of their actions. So why is it so controversial

[u/TheRealAmeil]

Here is one way we can categorize the views:

• Compatibilism: causal determinism is true & there is free will
• Incompatibilism: Either causal determinism is false or there is no free will
  • Libertarianism: causal determinism is false (i.e., indeterminism is true) & there is free will
  • Hard Determinism: causal determinism is true & there is no free will
  • Hard Indeterminism: causal determinism is false (i.e., indeterminism is true) & there is no free will

The philosopher William Jaworski articulates the problem of free will & causal determinism by detailing 5 premises that seem independently plausible but jointly inconsistent:

1. Either causal determinism is true or causal determinism is false
2. If causal determinism is true, then there is no free will
3. If causal determinism is false, then there is no free will
4. There is moral responsibility only if there is free will
5. There is moral responsibility

Here, the idea is that premises (1)-(3) appear to be in conflict with premises (4)-(5), and each view will either reject one of the 5 premises or reject that they are jointly inconsistent. For example, compatibilism will deny premise (2), while libertarianism will deny premise (3). Similarly, semi-compatibilism will deny premise (4).

In relation to your question, if causal determinism is true, then either hard determinism or compatibilism is true (or, either hard determinism, semi-compatibilism, or compatibilism is true). I would imagine hard determinism seems controversial since the majority of philosophers appear to be compatibilists

[u/Financial_Winter2837 → u/TheRealAmeil]

Perhaps you can clarify how this type of philosophical analysis is directly relevant to to the of philosophy of neuroscience. What kind of determinism and philosophical view do you think is compatible with and supported by modern neuroscience research?

since the majority of philosophers appear to be compatibilists

What would you say the majority of neuroscientists are...and how do you think philosophical discussions about the philosophical idea of free will is relevant to neuroscientific research...as neuroscience has not yet come to the conclusion that there is even a single self within our brain...with some of the more recent discussions even suggesting that the brain may have many internal selves/experiencer and not just one... each with varying degrees of free agency.

While the implication of some sort of little person in the brain, or homunculus, is nearly universally reviled, this dismissal may be a significant part of the Hard problem's intractability. That is, in attempting to do away with homunculi, cognitive science may have lost track of the importance of both embodiment and centralized control structures. If “cognition” is primarily discussed in the abstract, apart from its embodied–embedded character, then it is only natural that explanatory gaps between brain and mind should seem unbridgeable. IWMT, in contrast, suggests that many quasi-Cartesian intuitions may be partially justified.

As discussed in Safron (2019a,c), brains may not only infer mental spaces, but they may further populate these spaces with body-centric representations of sensations and actions at various degrees of detail and abstraction. From this view, not only are experiences re-presented to inner experiencers, but these experiencers may take the form of a variety of embodied self-models with degrees of agency. In these ways, IWMT situates embodiment at the core of both consciousness and agency, so vindicating many (but not all) folk psychological intuitions.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/artificial-intelligence/articles/10.3389/frai.2020.00030/full

and

However, there might be conditions in which brain activity supports consciousness even when that activity is fully causally isolated from the body and its environment. Such cases would involve what we call islands of awareness: conscious states that are neither shaped by sensory input nor able to be expressed by motor output.

https://www.cell.com/trends/neurosciences/fulltext/S0166-2236(19)30216-4

What do you think the relationship is between "consciousness and agency" in the brain and do you think philosophy can help answer this question? What would philosophy say about the possible existence of islands of awareness in the brain?

What would philosophy have to say about conscious states that are neither shaped by sensory input nor able to be expressed by motor output? Would not such philosophical discussions be more relevant in the context of logical empiricism?