It is impossible for anyone to force anyone to do anything: you can adjust their incentives, but it’s always open to someone to just refuse. And this is metaphysical because it’s true no matter how the world is constituted: imperious curses wouldn’t make this possible either.
But points of metaphysics are mostly (if not always) misunderstandings of some kind. What am I misunderstanding?
On Monday, it’s impossible for anyone to force anyone to do anything. On Tuesday, it’s not. What’s the difference between Monday and Tuesday? What do you expect to see on Monday that you don’t expect to see on Tuesday or vice versa?
Oh. I don’t think it will work with this. My whole problem is that I’ve arrived at a conclusion that can’t be false under any circumstances, and this seems to me like a likely misunderstanding.
Alternatively, your conclusion is trivial—that is, it doesn’t actually say much of anything. This seems to be the case here; you’re evaluating the denotative meaning of the sentence (what it literally means). It -seems- non-trivial because then you’re sneaking in the connotative meaning of the sentence—what it implies.
I assume you argue the imperious curse doesn’t force somebody to do something because they’re not really doing it (likewise with grabbing their hand and hitting them with it, provided you’re sufficiently stronger to do so). Likewise, any kind of mechanism of forcing somebody to decide to do something still leaves them open to refuse. This is the denotative meaning.
The connotative meaning is pretty subjective, but could be that we’re subverting somebody else’s will. If you kidnap somebody’s child and ransom them, sure they still, strictly speaking, have a choice in the matter, but in any realistic sense they don’t.
Can you force your computer to do anything? Can the computer refuse to do what you want? Of course the computer can crash. Does that count as refusing to obey your commands?
If you don’t think the computer has the free will to refuse your commands, why do you think you do? Because your brain runs on neurons and the computer runs on silicon?
There are many ways to influence other people that don’t have something to do with adjusting incentives. Just look into the psychology literature.
The ability to refuse needs the knowledge that someone tries to influence you. On example: Andrew Berwick put a lot of effort into people trying to read his book. He studied the way ideas spread on the internet. Conspiracy theorists do a lot to spread certain idea. Andrew knew that conspiracy theorist like to talk about Freemasons.
Andrew then went to four freemasons meetings and put Freemason images on his facebook account. As a result all of the conspiracy theory people had their Freemason story when Andrew committed his terrorist act.
No one of the conspiracy folks got the idea that those images were specifically crafted to play them because the conspiracy folks don’t think that someone would treat them in that way.
The couldn’t refuse in a meaningful sense because they were ignorant.
A point of metaphysics:
It is impossible for anyone to force anyone to do anything: you can adjust their incentives, but it’s always open to someone to just refuse. And this is metaphysical because it’s true no matter how the world is constituted: imperious curses wouldn’t make this possible either.
But points of metaphysics are mostly (if not always) misunderstandings of some kind. What am I misunderstanding?
On Monday, it’s impossible for anyone to force anyone to do anything. On Tuesday, it’s not. What’s the difference between Monday and Tuesday? What do you expect to see on Monday that you don’t expect to see on Tuesday or vice versa?
Is this a riddle...Hmm, why would Tuesday be different?
It’s not a riddle, it’s a heuristic for encouraging specificity.
Oh. I don’t think it will work with this. My whole problem is that I’ve arrived at a conclusion that can’t be false under any circumstances, and this seems to me like a likely misunderstanding.
Alternatively, your conclusion is trivial—that is, it doesn’t actually say much of anything. This seems to be the case here; you’re evaluating the denotative meaning of the sentence (what it literally means). It -seems- non-trivial because then you’re sneaking in the connotative meaning of the sentence—what it implies.
Could you explain this in specifics? What denotation and what connotation?
I assume you argue the imperious curse doesn’t force somebody to do something because they’re not really doing it (likewise with grabbing their hand and hitting them with it, provided you’re sufficiently stronger to do so). Likewise, any kind of mechanism of forcing somebody to decide to do something still leaves them open to refuse. This is the denotative meaning.
The connotative meaning is pretty subjective, but could be that we’re subverting somebody else’s will. If you kidnap somebody’s child and ransom them, sure they still, strictly speaking, have a choice in the matter, but in any realistic sense they don’t.
Hm, that sounds like a good answer to me.
Can you force your computer to do anything? Can the computer refuse to do what you want? Of course the computer can crash. Does that count as refusing to obey your commands?
If you don’t think the computer has the free will to refuse your commands, why do you think you do? Because your brain runs on neurons and the computer runs on silicon?
There are many ways to influence other people that don’t have something to do with adjusting incentives. Just look into the psychology literature.
The ability to refuse needs the knowledge that someone tries to influence you. On example: Andrew Berwick put a lot of effort into people trying to read his book. He studied the way ideas spread on the internet. Conspiracy theorists do a lot to spread certain idea. Andrew knew that conspiracy theorist like to talk about Freemasons.
Andrew then went to four freemasons meetings and put Freemason images on his facebook account. As a result all of the conspiracy theory people had their Freemason story when Andrew committed his terrorist act.
No one of the conspiracy folks got the idea that those images were specifically crafted to play them because the conspiracy folks don’t think that someone would treat them in that way.
The couldn’t refuse in a meaningful sense because they were ignorant.
That’s a good point; trickery does seem like a kind of force.