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    The branching roads metaphor fails as an argument for inc... — Carmelics
    Home/Free Will & Foreknowledge
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    The branching roads metaphor fails as an argument for incompatibilism.

    Free Will & Foreknowledge
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Van Inwagen's Consequence Argument shows that unavoidability of the past and laws entails unavoidability of all consequences, independent of any metaphor.
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    • 2.The branching roads metaphor is merely pedagogical illustration of this formal argument, not the argument itself, so its rhetorical failures leave the underlying logic untouched.
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    • 3.Stripping a metaphor of figurative language tests its poetic merit, not the validity of the argument it illustrates.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Frankfurt-style cases, which compatibilists treat as decisive, presuppose that 'could have done otherwise' is the relevant freedom condition—confirming incompatibilists and compatibilists share this analytical starting point.
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    • 2.If both sides accept alternative possibilities as the target concept, then invoking compossibility with the past is not question-begging but is tracking the shared explanandum.
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    • 3.A premise that articulates a jointly accepted necessary condition for the concept under dispute is dialectically legitimate, not circular, per Sider's work on conceptual analysis.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.When the branching roads metaphor is stripped of figurative language, its main premise reduces to the claim that genuine choices between alternative courses of action require that choosing and doing otherwise be compossible with the actual past and the actual laws.
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    • 2.This claim is simply a restatement of the incompatibilist position rather than an independent argument for it.
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    • 3.An argument whose key premise merely restates the conclusion it is meant to support begs the question.
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    Topics

    Free Will & Foreknowledge

    Connections

    2 topics

    Truth & Knowledge2 linkedModality & Possibility1 linked

    Related

    A premise that articulates a jointly accepted necessary condition for the concep...An argument whose key premise merely restates the conclusion it is meant to supp...Frankfurt-style cases, which compatibilists treat as decisive, presuppose that '...If both sides accept alternative possibilities as the target concept, then invok...
    +5 moreShow less
    Stripping a metaphor of figurative language tests its poetic merit, not the vali...The branching roads metaphor is merely pedagogical illustration of this formal a...This claim is simply a restatement of the incompatibilist position rather than a...

    Similar

    When the branching roads metaphor is stripped of figurative language, ...86%The Consequence argument provides a substantive case for incompatibili...75%The Consequence argument has undermined the earlier consensus that inc...73%Responses based on a confused interpretation of determinism do not ref...70%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: incompatibilism-arguments
    View source passageHide passage
    As an argument for incompatibilism, the appeal to the metaphor of the branching roads (“the garden of forking paths”) fails. If we strip away the metaphors, the main premise of the argument turns into the claim that we have genuine choices between alternative course of action only if our choosing and doing otherwise is compossible with the actual past and the actual laws. But this claim is none other than a statement of what the incompatibilist believes and the compatibilist denies.
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Van Inwagen's Consequence Argument shows that unavoidability of the past and law...
    When the branching roads metaphor is stripped of figurative language, its main p...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit