Discuss

Most people aren't libertarians; they're compatiblists so you're arguing against a small population.

>>682019

How would free will work with a soul exactly?

Do you get to choose your soul?

Free will doesn't exist and you're a slave to the aforementioned forces. That wasn't hard.

>>682133
Your soul is magical ghost that possesses your body. This is freedom somehow.

Causality doesn't exist.

Actually, I'm not all that committed to that position, I just figured I'd get it out there because I know it will come up. Our will being directed by causal forces doesn't make it not our will; we still reason and make judgements, they're just not spontaneous.

I think you guys misunderstand. I do not think there is a soul or Free will.

>>682019
if we dont have free will, why would we evolve to think that we do?

>>682203
It could either be an advantage or a neutral consequence.

A lot of evolution are things that are neither beneficial or detrimental to the organism.

>>682213
i suppose, but it seems pretty widespread. id wager all humans (baring the mentally ill) feel that they have free will, even if they dont believe in it,

>>682203

If Napoleon was a good general why is he dead?

>>682231
The appendix is widespread too, doesn't mean we need it.

Also, just because we perceive something to be true doesn't make it so.

>>682194
It can be our will, but it is a purely biological will, which we have no control of. Therefore, it's not our free will.

>>682199

Well, if you were going to make the claim, even from a Devil's Advocate point of view, at least you could try and defend it.

I don't see how free will could exist even with a soul and you tricked me into this thread. Now my feelings are hurt.

>>682203

That isn't really how evolution works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1a1Ek-HD0

>>682334
It's as free as anything in this world can be. Even the notion of freewill is itself a deterministic factor that drives people. Free will is also not something that's ever been sufficiently defined, and the question only actually matters if you're religious.

>>682368
With a soul free will exists because the soul is free to act without a corporeal presence. The body isn't free but the soul is.

Being a slave to what the mechanics of a soul would make me want to do is just as bad as being a slave to what the mechanics of a brain would make me want to do.

You've moved the problem one step back, and into a place where we can't even imagine a way to investigate it. We can at least look at a brain and compare it's state to the reports given by the subject, and find out more about the question that way.


Oh, you're saying that free will PROVES the soul?

>>683274
Yes, only if you are inclined to believe in free will. I do not, however, think free will exists.

So my postulation is to show you all, I assume, mostly, who do not agree there is a soul that free will doesn't exist.

>>683288

I don't see any connection between the two at all.

Either the mechanics of a soul are supposed to be driving me, depriving me of true free will; or it's the mechanics of a brain that is supposed to be driving, depriving me of true free will.

Free will is what self-aware systems are, it's what they do. You imagine futures and decide which is preferable, you try to predict your own behavior. That's free will.

>>682019
Agreed. Animals have no souls, and operate "in the now" on instinct.

>>683299
The soul is the essence of you and the physical manifestation of your self is just a tool for your soul.

>>682213
Or maybe your worldview is completely inadequate to deal with reality.

>>683299
But you trying to predict the future and behavior is manifested completely by your brain which you have absolutely no control over. Your brain is independently deciding your choices for you. That's why the soul is necessary to influence your brain.

>>683326
No u

>>683322

Prove it.

>>683334

So then you believe my soul is making my choices for me?

>>683349
Your soul is the true you. It's controlling the mechanical representation of yourself.

You must understand that I don't believe in a soul or free will. I'm saying that the soul is necessary for free will.

>>683373

>the true you

You're saying the true you would have free will, but only a soul could be the true you, and souls don't exist?

The brain is the true you, so that is the part with free will.

>>683392
I'm not saying only a soul can be the true you. I'm saying that if there was a soul it would be the true you.

>>683403

What would be special about a soul that would allow it to have free will where a brain cannot?

>>683413
The soul would be an entity that is in an ethereal realm uninfluenced by anything and would have always existed. A brain is strictly biochemical and therefore influenced by a myriad of things that might be intrinsic to your corporeal essence but it does not behave intentionally, but rather, spontaneously.

>>683431

So it would be magic, and free will is impossible without magic?

Intentional action is impossible without magic?

>>683448
Metaphysics and magic are not one in the same.

>>683413

Soul can act as prime mover, originating new ideas. It isn't just a cog.

>>682019
>>682194
you can't control your will.
what you will controls what you do.
therefore, you can't control what you do.

end of discussion.

>>683453

Then describe how an intentional act might be taken, and how that is not free will.

>>683455

Because you've defined it as the part that isn't a cog.

How do you know the soul isn't full of cogs?

How do you know it isn't cogs all the way down?

And if it was, why would that mean there is no free will?

>>683477
I think intentional acts exist only superficially just like free will.

>>683496

....

So they aren't magic, they're to do with metaphysics, and they don't exist?

>>683499
Yes, my earlier retort was just clarifying semantics.

>>683516

Then humans do not act with intention, we don't predict futures, we don't choose futures, we don't predict our own behavior?

>>683545
We do but not intentionally. They might intend to predict the future, but they didn't intend to begin speculating the future.

>>682019
There is nothing to discuss, scientifically speaking there is no evidence to suggest souls exist, many studies have been done in order to provide evidence for but at this time non exist or the very studies themselves provide counter-evidence. Therefore this discussion is pointless until you can debunk the biology and experience argument with objectionable evidence

>>683591
Yes, I'm the op and that's my stance.

>>683577

How can it be without intention when deciding on a future is intention? We never intended to create ourselves as beings of intention, but we have intentions know that we exist.

And we can go further with intention than that, humans can even decide to what to want, beyond deciding how to get what they want. And we can decide what to want to want to want. And so on. That is the mysterious part of free will for me, the point where I can no longer follow it.

>>683599
op y u no notice the truth i here give you? >>683462

>>683659
Yes, I agree with you to. You can't will your will.

>>683659
>>683748

Some people /won't/ will your will, but many will. People can will their will. That's the thing, we can want to want what we want to want. We can decide what is better to want.

It's not like it's as easy as picking a random card from a deck, but it's not impossible.

>>683340

No u no backsies.

Maybe you're not an evolutionary accident; maybe "from goo to you" is wrong.

Free will only exists from our perspective.

Even probabilistic events- what we might be able to call the Universe's "free will," are only probabilistic from a four-dimensional perspective. Go one dimension higher and those events become set in metaphorical stone.

That's actually sort of a bad way to say it, edging into pseudoscience. Instead, consider the nature of matter and the behavior of massless particles. Massless particles, because they "travel" at the speed of light, travel no distance and experience no time. They are, from a light-speed perspective, instantaneous transfers of energy between massive particles. However, even massive particles are, at the most elementary level, composed of the interactions of massless particles. It then follows that the entirety of the Universe, from a light-speed perspective, experiences no time and occupies no space. The whole history and future of the Universe "happens" at once, and all those events are part of the unchanging internal causal structure of a point of energy.

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It is very weak assumption. You can argues against it at least from three reasons.
1. Why it needs to be a soul and not say for example inherit randomness of the world?
2. Why soul is suddenly not a subject for some spiritual laws and their circumstances?
3. If your decisions aren't based on who are you, on your biology and your circumstances then something else decides everything for you. You need to be slave to yourself to not be slave for others.