Maybe the discussion should turn to the choice about why (or how) a particular 'value-judgement' was employed, rather than (as is often usual) an existing conflicting one?   :)

     After all, all value-judgements have alternative competing ones, though only one gets...somehow...used.

You don't "make up" your motivations; your motivations are the result of your value judgments.

Bill, you say necessity and compulsion are different. Compulsion overrides someone's will. Are you simply saying that a person doesn't have a will, and so it can't be overridden?

Now one problem with responding line by line is that you missed the point of an entire paragraph because you broke it up and answered outside the context. You present an example of a person who has absolutely convinced himself that there is only one reasonable choice, feels it strongly, and has no other possible motivation to choose anything else. I pointed out that the example is worthless and proves nothing.

What it proves is that he can still be said to make a "choice" even though it was clearly necessitated by his value judgments.

We're wasting time here. You brought up this example of the stars aligning because you admitted that you can't define a person's values until after they chose, and were looking for an example that is so overwhelming[ly] in favor of a particular alternative that it would define their values accurately.

What example of "the stars aligning"? I didn't use that metaphor, so I'm not sure what you're referring to? In any case, a person's choices are a reflection of his values. As Rand puts it, "A value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep." Or as Nathaniel Branden says, "A value is an object of an action."

I reject this method because it avoids defining "value" by having every conceivable motivation for acting be aimed at a single alternative. Instead of more rigorously defining your term, you've created the kind of situation where your term doesn't need a definition.

Why do you say that?

And where value determinism should be able to make predictions, the only cases you can hope to safely predict is one [sic] where the person has every motivation to act one way, and no motivation to act another, including acting on whim or just to prove he has free will.

And no, I'm not taking back my position that if your actions are necessitated by your values, there is not choice. Notice I say your action is necessitated, not your choice. There is no choice in determinism. It's a stolen concept. There are alternatives that are physically possible, but the action is an automatic response to X. In your case, X is your values, whatever those are.

I think you can be motivated to do more than one thing, and choose which you will act on. Are you suggesting that in your value determinism scheme, there is no mixed motivations? That when the calculation of which you prefer completes, you are 100% emotionally wedded to that action and feel no urge to do the other? I'm thinking about a hard decision. Which car should I buy? A or B. Both are nice. I choose A, but I clearly feel a desire to buy B instead. I am motivated to buy B. But I will myself to go with A instead.

This is entirely wrong. Again, you posit that the alternatives are determinism, which is an automatic and passive response to stimuli...

I wouldn't call the response "automatic" or "passive," which suggests a response that is unintentional and purposeless.

...and non-identity or indeterminism, where your "choices" are not based on your will but are seeming[ly] random. As long as you insist on this false alternative, of course determinism will seem like the only possible alternative. But the alternative is not between being a slave to your values and not having any at all.

I don't understand how you view your own choices. If I'm trying to figure out whether to post or go to bed, it's an active process. First, I'm aware that there is a choice to make, and what the alternatives are. I put some focus into each choice to understand what the possible trade-offs are.

Exactly! And after evaluating the trade-offs, you choose the action that you judge to be the most valuable.

I also am aware that I have certain emotional or physical needs. My emotions tell me that I want to make you understand. My body is telling me that I'm sleepy. I find it emotionally frustrating that you are so convinced of your position when it contradicts experience and is so poorly defined. As I consider the alternative, my mind starts to wander. I am sleepy after all. I focus more sharply. My moral values tell me that I'd appreciate posting more if we didn't have this big disagreement. I value clarity. I value making progress. I value getting to the heart of the issue. There are countless reasons for and against. I disvalue wasting my time, as I feel this topic usually is. I disvalue arguing about something I don't think I'll change my mind about. I disvalue the effort it takes to make myself as clear as possible on ideas that I consider simple. Short term, the costs are high. Long term, the benefits vary. If I convince you, we can have more intelligent discussions, and others may also learn and contribute. But that seems unlikely. Another possibility is that by formulating a response, I'll better identify the ideas, learn to communicate them, and benefit in the long term. Again, this whole thing requires focus. It requires looking at all of these competing alternatives. There is no magical values that I've decided on in the past that make my decision for me.

Of course not, and that's not what I'm saying. Your values in this case involve trying to figure out what further choices are worth making, but that very process is something you value and is necessitated by that value.

The process is long and focused. I run the calculations. I look deep at the alternatives. I make a choice, knowing that the other alternative has benefits as well and I'll need to continue to evaluate as I go.

This is what I mean by an active process. As opposed to "here are my alternatives, and my values tell me I must do X".

And this is the important part. This active process, this awareness that I focus on the various alternatives, and form the will to act, is the critical issue. It means that I could have chosen either thing.

Yes, "could have" chosen either thing, IF you had considered it worth choosing.

That this experience of making a choice is not an illusion. That there is no magic "value" that necessitated it, and that suggesting so is not simply a gross simplification, but actually removes from the equation this active effort of focusing awareness.

But the effort is itself something you value and consider worth making.

All determinism does this. It makes the "choices" simply automatic responses to some hidden values, or secret understanding, or outside influences, or emotional reactions, or whatever.

If I choose poorly, I can be blamed for not focusing enough.

Yes, you can, because to blame someone for a bad action simply means that he chose the action with full knowledge of what he was doing. The fact that he valued the action and didn't think it was bad does not absolve him from blame.

It's not something I can blame on outside influences, or inside influences. It can be understood that I may be even strongly influenced one way or another, but that the choice is still ultimately a product of my own focused awareness. My own reasoning mind. I don't remove myself from the decision making. I'm at the center of it. The buck stops here.

Determinism removes this active process from the equation. It makes the "choices" into straightforward mathematical products of input stimuli. The stimulus forces the choice. It necessitates it. The active process that I claim is the real decision making is removed. No longer is your mind the source of the actions. And so moral responsibility is taken with it. You can't be blamed. Your values can be blamed, but you're not even responsible for those. They arose from previous values, which arose from....who knows. But choice is an illusion.

And I mean that. Where we experience this process of choosing, requiring effort and focus, and ultimately deciding for whatever reasons (including whims or defiance), none of that would be real in the determinism framework. We may think we are focusing on the problem, but it is in fact these magical values (or other external stimuli) that are compelling our brain to function in a way that we merely experience as choosing. This long process I described earlier would be simply a rationalization. It would be an illusion created by our brains to make us feel like we're in control, while in fact the values colliding or mixing without our participation, making the choice for us.

1.)  You were trying to prove that values necessitate actions.  I questioned your use of the term value.  The "that which you act to gain or keep" is an after the fact description of your choice, it doesn't make any sense to say that that value "determined" your choice.  It was the effect.  How can it also be the cause?

2.)  You also used a different version of "value" when you talked about the Bidinotto example.  You talked about moral values.  Those, presumably, are abstract values that guide your decision making process.  Those would be better for arguing that values necessitate choices since they are there before the choice is made, but I pointed out that your actual choice could be based on emotions, whims, etc.  So this also fails.

You offered ... that "In some cases, there isn't, because it's not always possible to know someone's real values. Even the actor himself may not always know them, until he or she makes a choice. ..."

The computer is neither conscious, goal-directed nor value-oriented. Unlike a human being's, a computer's action is passive, mechanistic and automatic.

My first take is that final causation may be necessary for the act of choice but it is not sufficient ...

A dog is conscious and goal-directed ...

1.) You were trying to prove that values necessitate actions. I questioned your use of the term value. The "that which you act to gain or keep" is an after the fact description of your choice, it doesn't make any sense to say that that value "determined" your choice. It was the effect. How can it also be the cause?

2.) You also used a different version of "value" when you talked about the Bidinotto example. You talked about moral values. Those, presumably, are abstract values that guide your decision making process. Those would be better for arguing that values necessitate choices since they are there before the choice is made, but I pointed out that your actual choice could be based on emotions, whims, etc. So this also fails.

3.) That leaves you arguing that values necessitate actions or choices (although I claim a necessitated choice is not a choice), without any definition of what these mysterious "values" are.

I've given you a definition of "value." What more do you want?

And before you dissect this line by line, notice I've already rejected your definition "A value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep." See 1. above.

4.) Back in post 6, I pointed out that if these "values" which you can't define really necessitated the action, then we should expect that we can predict outcomes based on these. You offered, in post 7, that "In some cases, there isn't, because it's not always possible to know someone's real values. Even the actor himself may not always know them, until he or she makes a choice. But there are many circumstances in which such knowledge does exist and in which the action is clearly predictable." And you gave Bidinotto for President as an example. Instead of showing a case where the values are well defined and the outcome is necessitated, you gave a case where every possible motivation aims at the same alternative, and no other motivations are possible. This doesn't clarify in any way what you mean by values. It only appears to do the trick because you ruled out any possible motivation for doing anything else, including emotions, whims, etc. I don't know how often I have to repeat this.

5.) Conclusion so far is that your value determinism is based on a floating abstraction called "value", which you periodically try to define as the product of the decision making, instead of the criteria of the decision making.

6.) Back to the cars. I can be motivated to buy the SUV over the Sports car because it's cheaper and roomier. I can be motivated to buy the Sports car over the SUV because it's faster and the chicks dig it. Motivation is not preference. Preference is after the evaluation and decision making. Motivation comes before it. And the motivations can conflict.

7.) I'm not saying you didn't choose Bidinotto for president. I, as an advocate of free will, say that's exactly what happened. I'm saying if your action was "necessitated", than it wasn't a choice. Choice is not compatible with determinism, except as a stolen concept or broken metaphor.

To be sure, you can be conflicted over which one you value more, which I think is what you're getting at. In other words, you may have difficult deciding which one is the more valuable. But once you decide, you will be motivated to buy that one and not motivated to buy the one you consider less valuable.