Could you give an example of the sort of standard you mean?
I answer whether we have free will or not by looking at the sort of free will that most people believe in. It seems that what most people believe in is that whenever we do something we could have always done something else instead, and not out of pure randomness, but out of choice ... that we are in some way self-causing. And not in a shallow way where we cause our actions with our mind but then our mind itself is ultimately caused by factors beyond our control ... but in an ultimately deep way so that we are somehow to be the cause of ourselves in an ultimate sense that would require one to be Causa sui. But such a kind of self-causation is impossible because it would lead to an infinite regress and we are finite beings. So that's a simple sketch of how it can be shown that the free will that most people believe in is impossible without requiring any sort of scientific evidence at all. It's something that is impossible both under determinism and indeterminism, both under naturalism and supernaturalism and both under physicalism and idealism.My favorite version of the argument against the strong version of free will that most people irrationally believe in that is given by a professional philosopher is the following argument by Galen Strawson:Premise 1: You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.Premise 2: To be ultimately responsible for what you do, you have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are—at least in certain crucial mental respectsPremise 3: But you cannot be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all.Conclusion: So you cannot be ultimately responsible for what you do.
and not better merely in terms of being more effective at achieving your goal .... but better full stop, categorically? Is that what you mean by standards?
Of course, but it complicates matters when they give their reason for their action as "Because I freely chose to do it." .... then such an argument is needed.
they at least believe that they sometimes do. And my point is that they never do and nobody ever does.
But even if your example argument was sufficient, as you seem to believe it is, that would already show that philosophy can give concrete answers
But even if your example argument was sufficient, as you seem to believe it is, that would already show that philosophy can give concrete answers because the point is that this problem of free will doesn't require any scientific evidence and it's a truth that can be discovered truly a priori. Whether free will is real or not is a substantive and concrete question that can be answered through philosophy and without doing any science.
Basically what we agree upon isn't what i consider to be concrete. If it is based on people agreeing with each other then it can simply change with a different group of people. A synonym of concrete would be universal if it wasn't clear on what I mean is concrete.
...but to do so is to simply kid yourself rather than to say anything substantive.
...a thing would still be a thing even if we didn't exist to have empirical evidence of it.
The laws of logic don't require any knowledge of them.
The fundamentals of logic are analytic whereas empiricism is fundamentally synthetic.
Because a rock is still a rock regardless of if humans are around to observe it.
It sounds like you're pursuing APODICTIC TRUTH.And good luck discovering APODICTIC TRUTH without engaging in "philosophy".
I said that the fundamentals of logic are analytic. I didn't say that all logic was analytic.
I gave a tautology, which is a necessarily true statement,
A noumenon has to be a thing for it to be anything at all, as far as I'm concerned. Either there is a such thing as X or there isn't. And "There's no such thing as X" equates to "X doesn't exist". Either the noumenon is a thing or it is nothing at all.
Not possible. Unless you change the definition of universality or have a logic which claims it is universal during or before that you would have to agree with it.
