What are the arguments for Free Will? What are the arguments

>>2930907
when you lack the willpower to distinguish between yourself and your thoughts then of course this is true, and you are acting only from conditioning and experiance, but when your practice controling your mind and thoughts you give yourself the chose of free will

>>2930907
>con
The Universe is deterministic, humans are part of the Universe, ergo, humans are deterministic.
>pro
Muh magic sky pixie says we have free will

>>2930907

Just ask anyone who believes in free will to define it. No coherent definition = nonsense concept.

>>2930907
There must be free will, because you totally feel it in your bones and intuition is never wrong!

On the other hand, fMRI can reliably predict up to seven seconds what decision you will make before you say you made up your mind.

>>2930935
free will
noun
1.
the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.

>>2930958
But are the deterministic chemical processes in your brain a constraint on free will or not?

>>2930907
Determinism.

Pro: avoidance of personal responsibility.
Con: false mechanism to avoid personal responsibility.

>>2930958
>the power of acting without the constraint of necessity

Can you fly? Can you make fire come out of your eyes? No? Then you can't act "without constraint of necessity" and don't have free will by your own definition.

In order to determine whether free will exists or not you must determine whether the individual to express free will is sentient. Sentience requires consciousness, which allows one to consider himself above and separate from others, which is the basis for free will (freedom to act on my own accord rather than for or on behalf of others). If consciousness allows us to differentiate and recognize ourselves separate from others then free will is inherent.

That's my best shot at the argument

>>2930979
>sentient

You mean sapient.

>>2930920
But controlling your mind is itself an act of the mind.

>>2930907
That's probably right, OP.

The idea of a soul, a non-material presence animating bodies is a practical idea that serves many psychological purposes. I think our species just isn't suited to figuring out it is a machine. What is funny though, is that our reaction to the discovery of determinism is also determined.

>>2930984
I was trying to find a word that defines the ability to be self-aware but sentient was the only thing that came to mind

>>2930907
current scientific model of the universe doesn't support determinism

>>2930998

The word is "sapient". Plants are sentient (they grow towards sunlight).

>>2931000
It does support determinism in the sense it is used in discussions of free will.

Both the randomness of quantum mechanics and the predictability of Newtonian mechanics are incompatible with free will.

If you decided to do something because of some microscopic dice roll or because of Newtonian clockwork, either way YOU had no choice.

>>2931000

What a stupid clown you are. Point me to a theory in modern science that is NOT deterministic.

>>2931023
maybe i did have no choice, it doesn't mean that my brain is determined though.
no free will =/= determinism
>>2931051
quantum mechanics

>>2931062
>quantum mechanics

HAHAHAHAHA

"No". Thanks for outing yourself as a moron with zero knowledge of what you're talking about.

>>2931071
not really an argument
but then i guess you didn't want to make one anyway

>>2930907
Freedom can exist in determinism, so I don't see why our will can't be free considering all that. It depends on what it's supposed to be free from. It can be free from our animal side, impulses, emotion. It can be free from a lot of things. Free from deterministic process? I don't think so.

>>2931084

What more do I need to say? You're wrong, QM is fully deterministic. But since you're too stupid to be able to manage basic English grammar, it doesn't surprise me that you're the kind of moron who makes fact claims about things he doesn't understand. Google "Duning-Kruger".

>>2931084
If you have no control over how your brain works, it does not make a difference if its some microscopic dice-roll in your head, or if its perfectly predictable chemistry. Either way, you had no say in the matter, and so you did not have free will.

We can't even find anyone willing to argue against it.

If there is someone who's sure free will exists, I want them to show me the biological mechanism that allows it to occur. Or even the physical mechanism. I guess we've pretty much covered this already though.

>>2931101
>QM is fully deterministic.
but it's not

>>2931156

Great argument moron. Care to provide some evidence for this?

>>2931131
It's too poorly defined. I mean... we act based upon external stimuli but we have a limited choice. For example I can choose to write pinkpuff instead of glcloyd just because I want to.

>>2931131
Free will is the will to act as one wills freely. What someone wills might be affected by all sorts of things but if we're talking about the inside of someones brain, in the end it is still that person's will. Now if God were to intervene and make it so you aren't able to will with whatever process your brain goes through to determine what that will is, in my book that's when free will ceases to exist.

>>2931168
>For example I can choose to write pinkpuff instead of glcloyd just because I want to.
But "wanting to" is a physical process that happens in your brain.

>>2930935
Ask anyone who argues for determinism why they're arguing for determinism.

>>2931191
And it's free to happen!

>>2930935
Really not a difficult task. Free will is the ability to independently choose from among your apparently viable options in a given circumstance.

>>2931163
quantum indeterminacy implies the possibility of no determinism in nature

>>2931192

There's no contradiction there you dense faggot. "I do what I was predetermined to do" is a completely coherent statement.

>>2931198
>independently
Independent from what?

>>2931168
No you can't. That's the point.

>>2931200

No, it doesn't. Like I said you have no clue what you're talking about. Indeterminacy is a measurement problem, it says nothing about reality itself being indeterminable.

>>2931205
Then arguing for it is idiotic, is it not?

Arguing to change someone's mind? About something neither of you have control over?

No, it's just a childish fantasy to avoid personal responsibility. That's all it is.

>>2931210
Perhaps "personally" would have been a better word.

>>2930969
>>2930974
This is a stupid understanding. Life is all about ensuring DNA is carried on. Humans have evolved to a higher understanding of consequences via choices. With these 2 principles in mind, our lives are deterministic as we are bound by our DNA and our inherent nature. However, our understanding of cause and effect has led us to help apply the best choices for ourselves, our community, and people we hold dear to ensure survival. Free will exists but is bound by certain laws beyond our control.

>>2931217

What a truly moronic faggot you are. If you have free will, then YOU'RE the one acting irrationally by trying to convince people who know better to accept your idiotic doctrine.

>childish fantasy to avoid personal responsibility.

Determinism doesn't absolve you of responsibility for your actions, why should it? In my experience it's the retards who support MUH FREE WILL who avoid personal responsibility, because they're typically Christians who hold the vile doctrine of "forgiveness of sin".

>>2931224

Please explain how free will can exist in a deterministic universe.

>>2931163
What is Heisenberg princicple?

>>2931200
indeterminacy is not the same as free will

>>2931168
>>2931173
You guys are missing the point. I know what free will is, but what physical biological mechanism in your brain can allow this to happen? At some point in the decision making process, some group of neurons in your brain has to take external input and return something that is more than just stimulus-response. And it has to do more than that; it can't just return a random result either.

In order for free will to exist, it must be derived from some mechanism acting at the absolute lowest level of functionality. Some individual neuron has to receive a signal, and somehow non-deterministically decide to send it left or right. It's almost an impossibility.

>>2930957
That just suggests that the way we percieve our decision-making mechanism is flawed, not that a decision wasn't made in the first place. In order to definitively prove free will non-existent, you would need to have a statistical machine that is capable of predicting human behavior with 100% accuracy.

>>2931191
>But "wanting to" is a physical process that happens in your brain.
So? Why exactly isn't this physical process free will?

>>2931230
But thats under the assumption that the universe is deterministic?

>>2931224
That is one of the dumbest things i read today

>>2931238

A measurement problem. Try again, mongoloid.

>>2931215
>>2931253
Ok.

>>2931246
Free will tends to mean you are able to make decisions with no forces influencing them.

I'd say that the chemistry of your brain is a force you have no control over, and so is an influencing force.

>>2931250
>assumption

Nope, try "conclusion". Literally everything we have learned from sciences has shown the Universe to be 100% deterministic. If you want to claim that it isn't, you're the one who needs to provide evidence.

>>2931260
>Free will tends to mean you are able to make decisions with no forces influencing them.
No it doesn't. Free will just means making decisions. Plus if you are your mind I still fail to see how the fact a physical process in your mind dictates what decisions you make takes away from it.

>>2931230
I'm >>2931173
You didn't understand the point of what I said otherwise you wouldn't be asking me again for such a mechanism.

It's like you're thinking will is what doesn't exist, not just free will. I think you're too fixated on the meaning of free will as established by religious people.

>>2930907
I've gone through a development on this.
First I was a Harrisite free will skeptic, then I became a compatibilist, then I was too confused to make my mind up, but then this occurred to me:
The philosophers who think the issue of freedom only concerns freedom of action and not freedom of the will (because it makes no sense to think of the will as free or not free) are wrong.
My will as a human is undeniably much freer than the will of any other animal. I can change my mind in more ways and for more kinds of reasons, evaluate my reasons and motives in more kinds of ways, discipline myself, resist temptation, reorder my priorities, reshape my character, and so on and so on.
This might boil down to some high capacity for self-awareness, rationality, conscience, and intelligence, but in any case it obviously concerns my will, it is obviously a set of freedoms, and it completely outstrips anything that even a chimpanzee or a dolphin could do.
Why should this superior level of freedom that my will enjoys (or that I enjoy in willing) not be sufficient to justify the proposition "I have free will"?
This also implies that more advanced beings, like aliens (or angels or God), could have freer wills than we do, but that doesn't mean we're below the cutoff point for that proposition to be true of us.

>>2931281

The brain is deterministic, explain how it can give rise to a non-deterministic effect. I'll give you a clue: You can't because it can't.

Self awareness makes biological determinism less concrete than with other animals. The fact that we can be conscious of our 'standard' chemical/instinctive response and choose to do otherwise as a conscious choice speaks to that.

Of course if you reduce it all to "but that's also a chemical process!" then yes, all our actions are determined by these chemical processes. Those processes, however, are what give us the consciousness / sapience to make judgements that can contradict a biological imperative.

>>2931261
But its not a conclusion, and we can't predict everything though. We have developed empirical and theoretical equations to help us predict an outcome but its not law. The outcome is something we can never determine.

>>2931261
That's where you're 100% wrong kiddo, All processes are on a small enough scale completely random, most easy to understand and most obvious is radioactive decay, a radioactive particle decays at a random time (not deterministic at all). Also more exotic properties of the universe like particles popping in and out of existance, the spin of electrons, the position of particles on a very small scale etc. Are all non determistic. Tldr: einstein was wrong, god does play dice

>>2931293
>and we can't predict everything though.

On the contrary you wouldn't be able to predict anything if the Universe WEREN'T deterministic.

>>2931291
I didn't say the freedom your brain has is non-deterministic, actually. I just said it has freedom to go through the processes that are needed to determine what its will is.

>>2931296

You have no clue what you're talking about. Stop wasting my time with your stupidity.

quantum mechanics proves free will, superstitious religious people believe in determinism because they want the comfort of believing in fate/destiny etcetera..

Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

Don't listen to either the determinism spergs or the "quantum mechanics proves muh freedom" dudes. Both are autistic assholes and any genuine folk understanding of freedom will show you that freedom and determination are not opposites.

>>2931298
This is kinda what I was trying to say, but QM guy has twisted philosophy and physics together.
>>2931300
Bruh, we can determine a general outcome but can never determine am exact outcome.

>>2931316
Thanks

>>2930907
>Physics and chemistry follows on deterministic processes.
>The human brain controls the human body
the first of these is actually unproven and extremely difficult to argue for
the second is probably just false
it's bad mereology to say that the brain controls the body, just like it's bad mereology to say that your eyes see or your hands throw
you throw with your hands, you see with your eyes, and you control your body using your brain (and your nerves, etc.)
it's not like you yourself are just completely out of control and helplessly at the mercy of the actions of your brain -- that's mereological nonsense; your brain is just a part of you, not a separate thing controlling you

>>2930935
>No coherent definition = nonsense concept.
an incoherent definition is a self-contradictory one
you just mean there is no satisfactory definition, which shouldn't be surprising since definitions are extremely difficult to come by in general
throwing out a concept because it's hard to define is ridiculous and would lead to throwing out most concepts
you need some argument that a definition of free will is impossible to find and an argument why this disqualifies the concept

>>2931215
why are you pretending this is a settled issue in the interpretation of QM?

>>2931227
>Determinism doesn't absolve you of responsibility for your actions, why should it?
how can you be responsible for your actions if you don't have free will?

>>2931297
What is Quality Assurance?

>>2931341
Just like a criminal didn't have the "free will" to not do the crime, everyone else lacks the "free will" to not get upset about it and punish the criminal

Determinism is only incompatible with free will if you define free will in a way that has no bearing in day to day life and is an entirely impossible concept ANYWAYS.

The obvious solution to this is to change how free will is being defined or realize that, as defined, it's absurd and has no value.

>>2931362
I agree and post this to show my support to your idea.

The question of free will is entirely uninteresting.

The information that we do not have free will is entirely useless information, because a being without free will can't use information anyways, only react to stimulus, and even if it were proven that we do not have it beyond a shadow of a doubt, each and every person would continue operating as if they did every single day.

>>2931352
what are you saying responsibility for an action is? just a tendency to be punished for it?

Honestly OP, you have to define what you mean by free will before this discussion can be useful.

If you mean free will as in "The human agent can create uncaused actions and then proceed to do those actions" I agree with you that it's not compatible with a deterministic universe.

However, the moral angle is to me more relevant.

I could for example, claim that every murder committed is a consequence of the brain chemistry of the murderer at the time the murder took place, but even if that is true, does it absolve the murderer of his actions?

Nietzche writes in the Genealogy of Morality that the concept of "free will" was invented entirely because it was useful for enforcing morality. The goal of it is to make people feel guilt and thus control them into doing or not doing certain things. He is not saying the concept is bad, just that it's the best method for controlling society, a certain amount of social control is nessiary for sucess.

The ancient philosophers long ago realized that since everything has a cause than everything is already set in stone. Even the Greek religion, with it's emphasis on fate, aknowledges that the outcome has long been decided.

The reason our society is so attached to the concept of free-will is a side of effect of thousands of years of Jewish/Christian culture. Without free will there can be no concept of sin. For contrast non-moralizing religions did not need their punishments to be 'just' or 'fair'.

>>2931379
>If you mean free will as in "The human agent can create uncaused actions and then proceed to do those actions" I agree with you that it's not compatible with a deterministic universe.
uncaused actions are only incompatible with determinism if the determinism is causal and you add a principle of universal causation
there are three claims involved here:
>(1): At any given moment, all future facts are determined [Minimal determinism aka logical determinism]
>(2): All causes fully determine their effects [Causal determinism]
>(3): Everything has a cause [Principle of universal causation]
2+3 implies 1, but without either 2 or 3, you can have uncaused actions no problem

>>2931367
>because a being without free will can't use information anyways, only react to stimulus
Are you serious? What do you think information is, but stimulus? Maybe it doesn't MATTER, but that doesn't make it uninteresting at all.

>>2931379
Not at all. Killing people is not in the best interest of society, so a person with the capacity to kill like that is a 'bad person' and we'll remove them from society to prevent any more damage.

>>2931396
>>2931432
These are useful posts.

>>2931432
I of course agree with you, what I meant by that statement is whether what you mean by free will is that the conscious agent can be that source of an action without previous causation.

Which I think personally is ridiculous because we are of course material beings subject to the physical laws of the universe just like rocks are.

The question is whether the determinism implicit in the physical laws themselves means that we should not hold people responsible for their actions.

>>2931459
>what I meant by that statement is whether what you mean by free will is that the conscious agent can be that source of an action without previous causation.
well I think the "previous causation" that bothers people here is the idea that either neurophysiological events or mental events like desires and motives are the efficient causes of our actions
but I think you can motivate a naturalist theory where actions do not have efficient causes but Aristotelian final-style or intentionalistic causes
William Charlton has a version of that; he believes in supernatural agents like God but says that natural agents exist (us) and their actions aren't explained by causes (in the modern, Cartesian, narrowly efficient-causal sense)
he points out that pure efficientism (or the idea that all explanation should be physical-causal) is based on two assumptions:
(A) that physical bodies only move (or stop moving) when their parts are acted upon or not acted upon by something else
(B) that all motion is a continuation of past motion
against A he says that if we think bodies have in them a source of acting when their parts are acted upon or not, we can believe also that they have a source of acting independently of being acted upon (e.g. for purposes)
against B he says that the belief that the motion of anything must be explained as a mere continuation of the motion of something else is basically just the ancient religious belief that "there is nothing new under the sun" and not a solid philosophical (much less scientific) axiom; and anyway the idea that any motion could necessitate some further motion falsely presumes that it is a necessary fact that the universe should continue to exist
(this is from page 126 of his "The physical, the natural, and the supernatural" which you can probably find on google books)

If someone has a set of options before them and make a decision, would you say that person didn't make a decision at all and just did what was inevitable, since the big bang (or even before it)? I don't think so, I mean, its easy to yell 'fate' after the fact, but if you go back in time, would that person always make the same decision?

Also, we don't really know how consciousness works, different parts of the brain are involved in different things, but we really don't know much more than that. People assume the brain is like a computer and are consciousness is housed on that computer, but if the brain is more like a radio that sends info back and forth from an outside source, then that is actually also a very real possibility, because that's how little we actually know about our consciousnesses.

>and that's just assuming you all are aware too, and its not just me that's alive.
>do I exist?

>>2931286
But there you're just changing the scope of freedom, no being (or their will for that matter) is free from determinism anf what you consider freer is just making a comparation with arbitrary values

are you your brain, or are whatever it is that thinks it has a brain

you're the observer, not the oberved (brain)

>>2931564
it sounds like you're giving two answers to my question
>Why should this superior level of freedom that my will enjoys (or that I enjoy in willing) not be sufficient to justify the proposition "I have free will"?
one is that this level of free will isn't enough to escape determinism, but I would just ask why that should be the standard
the other is that it's only a high level of freedom of the will compared to an arbitrary value, but I don't see why the levels of freedom of will that literally all other creatures we know of have should be called "arbitrary"

>>2931556
>but if you go back in time, would that person always make the same decision?

Yes, that's what people mean by a deterministic universe.

>but if the brain is more like a radio that sends info back and forth from an outside source

We generally assume that's not the case, given the lack of any evidence for it whatsoever.

>>2931564
This. More decisions means more variety, not more freedom.

>>2931541
It sounds like Charlton needs to take a class in physics. Conservation of energy is indeed a solid scientific axiom and the foundation of a good chunk of our physical knowledge. I don't see what the problem is with assuming the universe will continue to exist. Most people assume that's the case.

>>2931637
>Conservation of energy is indeed a solid scientific axiom and the foundation of a good chunk of our physical knowledge.
it's not clear that Charlton's suggestion violates that, since obviously he could just insist that this body that "acts from a source of acting independently of being acted upon" only so acts insofar as it has the energy to
>I don't see what the problem is with assuming the universe will continue to exist. Most people assume that's the case.
but we're talking about causal determinism, which is a necessitarianism
the impossibility of a past motion necessitating its future continuation would contravene that, regardless of how well justified we are in expecting the universe to continue to exist

>We generally assume that's not the case, given the lack of any evidence for it whatsoever.

Well as I said, we don't know how consciousness works, so its hard to find evidence for anything. Other than it relates to the brain.

>>2931632
I think the current argument against free will is not "are we just animals, completely controlled by our environment and hormones vs. having the freedom of choice", it's "is the universe deterministic and proceeding in a perfectly predictable fashion that precludes the possibility of free will"

Comparing us to animals doesn't have anything to do with it.

>>2931684
That's true. I guess I would say that we do not have to think bodies have in them a source of acting in order to believe (A). Why couldn't the source be the other object, influencing the current body through the mechanical, chemical, thermal, gravitational, electromagnetic etc. forces? Because something is capable of movement does not mean we are able to believe it's independently capable.
To the second point, why not just say that an eternal universe is therefore a conclusion of determinism and leave it at that?

>>2931700
Yes, the brain could be magic. To the best of our knowledge however, the brain operates through electrical interactions of neurons. We have no reason to reject the null hypothesis.
You're right that there is no proof for determinism; that's why people are still having this argument. But if the opposing argument is "well we don't know for sure" then that's not very convincing.

>>2931449

Information isn't the keyword there m8, it's USE.

If it doesn't matter, why is it interesting?

>>2931227
I do have free will, and urge people not to fall for the inane trap of determinism, which is a hopeless, nihilistic fantasy designed to avoid personal responsibility.

>>2931227
So if you set an alarm clock to go off at 6:00 a.m., and it went off at 6:00 a.m., you would beat it to death?

You're an idiot dude.

>>2931700

We do know how consciousness works, it's just the answer isn't one that philosophers accept. Consciousness is an illusion, your brain is mostly governed by unconscious processes and what you think of as "you" "deciding" something is in fact the part of your brain that governs your narrative memories telling itself a confabulated story to explain what your unconscious brain has decided to do.

But even if we assume we don't know what we do, the evidence against the "radio" theory of the brain is absolutely overwhelming. For example: If you suffer brain damage, you lose brain function. So far this is compatible with the radio theory, BUT, if you lose brain functions early in life, your brain will recover and regain the lost ability. What it WON'T regain is the lost memories, which makes no sense according to the radio theory but is easily explained by the "consciousness is what brains do" theory.

>>2931757
>Yes, the brain could be magic.
The brain is magic.

>>2918959

>>2931781
>We do know how consciousness works, it's just the answer isn't one that philosophers accept. Consciousness is an illusion

Way to contradict yourself in one easy line.

>>2931632
Yeah I shouldn't have called it arbitrary but I do think that you're using the word free to describe two different things, in the determinist sense you use free to say that something or someone is capable of behaving a certian way without being restricted by the laws of the universe (without taking into account its desires), we both agree that this kind of freedom doesn't exist but when you start making the freer distinctions you're focusing in something that makes the will more able of archieving what it wants, there I would change the word free with capable but if I had to agree with your choice of words I would have to say that free will is determined.

>>2931768
You haven't even the slightest bit of curiosity?

>>2931775
That's one way to avoid thinking about it.

>>2931779
I didn't set the alarm clock. If it goes off at 6:00 a.m. on my day off then I and other alarm clocks will destroy it as a warning and deterrent to alarm clocks everywhere.

>>2931781
"confabulated" always sounds like a made-up word to me.

>>2931784
Weird. I guess I don't really know how to factor in this information without knowing what an electroencephalogram is.

>>2931815
Before you respond to the alarm clock analogy, consider that I know how alarm clocks think, and there is a very clear correlation between seeing a fellow alarm clock torn to pieces before your eyes and realizing that it is not in your self-interest to go off at 6 a.m.

>>2931786

Try reading to the end of the line next time, it MIGHT make you seem less of a fool (but I doubt it).

>>2931781
>Consciousness is an illusion, your brain is mostly governed by unconscious processes and what you think of as "you" "deciding" something is in fact the part of your brain that governs your narrative memories telling itself a confabulated story to explain what your unconscious brain has decided to do.
But the question is why would that even be necessary? Why aren't we just zombies doing if x then y no matter how compex x is? Why is it we have to narrate our memories to function with complex x circumstances?
Or perhaps that's the illusion, we don't and consciousness is just a byproduct of being a sufficiently advanced zombie doing complex if/then decisions.

>>2931362
Kind of this.

>>2931757
>Yes, the brain could be magic.

I didn't say it was magic. Not anymore than TVs are magic or radio broadcasts are magic.

>To the best of our knowledge however, the brain operates through electrical interactions of neurons.

Well duh, the brain has to function somehow. But just because computers exist it doesn't mean telephones are magic.

>>2931757
>I think the current argument against free will is ... "is the universe deterministic and proceeding in a perfectly predictable fashion that precludes the possibility of free will"
maybe what my animal-comparison argument does is put the question to the hard determinist: why should the universe proceeding in a deterministic/predictable fashion mean that "We have free will" is false, when it is true that we have wills that are extremely free compared to all creatures we have to compare with? why is this extreme level of comparative freedom of the will not enough for free will simpliciter just because of determinism?

>I guess I would say that we do not have to think bodies have in them a source of acting in order to believe (A).
Charlton would agree, but I think his point is that given that we accept the sources of acting given in A, what reason do we have to reject a source of acting independently of being acted upon? we need an argument to that effect and can't just presume it
>why not just say that an eternal universe is therefore a conclusion of determinism and leave it at that?
that would be a pretty momentous conclusion, which would leave the justification of determinism up to the contingency of the output of physical cosmology
if the physicists came out and said that the best theory implies the universe will end, determinism would then be refuted
also, I think it's just plausible for independent reasons that the universe does not necessarily have to continue to exist
just because certain things are happening in the universe right now, that doesn't mean the whole thing couldn't just end--those small particular processes are not the masters of the whole enormous system
this would be especially clear for simulationists or theists, since obviously God or the simulators could end our universe at will

Acts of spontaneity.

You could hate something your whole life, then one day decide that you don't hate it anymore and you now like it.

Determinism usually argues that it is incredibly unlikely to happen.

Even in an indeterminate universe there's limits to the randomness, it's not true random; for instance you might hate sushi, but one day eat sushi, but you're not going to jump into your garden and start slurping up slugs.

>>2930907
You (and I assume most of the people this thread, which I haven't read) are just another person in the teeming mass suffering from monist fallacies.

>>2931843
Get fucked, cunt.
There's lot of foods I enjoyed that suddenly one day I didn't despite still wanting to enjoy that food.
What does this say about free will when something you believe falls under my free will completely defies my free will?

>>2931004
>Plants are sentient (they grow towards sunlight)
That seems to be a bit of a stretch if you're suggesting they therefore are capable of perception.

>>2931062
>>2931071
>>2931084
Quantum mechanics is non-deterministic, but the fact that we can't control it means it provides little hope for metaphysical libertarianism

>>2931789
I think you're making two incompatible arguments
one says that the "freedom" I'm talking about isn't really freedom but only capability
the other grants that the "freedom" I'm talking about is freedom but says it isn't freedom in the sense that determinism addresses
I think the first argument is mistaken: those capabilities I'm talking about are clearly freedoms; you could phrase them all correctly in terms of freedom, saying that I have the freedom to reconstitute my priorities or my character, etc.--this is a completely normal sense of "freedom"
against the second argument I should just ask, if there is indeed a second sense of "freedom" which is the one determinism refutes, why is that the sense that matters? the question is whether we are justified in asserting "We have free will"; your argument says that this assertion is ambiguous, and that determinism refutes one sense of it, but why isn't it enough for it to be true in the other sense (which seems to be the normal sense)?

>>2931853

If anything you just made a stronger argument for indeterminism, because your taste can change either way. You are consciously making a choice not to eat the food, which technically isn't a violation of your free will.

>>2931856
That hasn't been established yet. There are myriad interpretations in which the reduction of the wave packet is not a stochastic process and there are realistic interpretations in which the wave function itself doesn't even represent an irreducible random process in the universe.

>>2931880
>You're making a conscious choice to not eat the food because of the involuntary physiological reactions when you consume the food despite enjoying the food otherwise
Fuck you

>>2931888
Whilst what you say is true, I personally lean towards stochastic interpretations and either way I don't know of any interpretation which provides hope for proponents of free will.

>>2931892

So the act of getting sick is violating your free will? Any time things aren't perfect in your life you argue for fatalism? That sounds retarded.

>>2931556
>>2931556

If you can rewind time and get a different result with all the same input, then things would have to be based on chance, wouldn't they?

>>2931898
do you know Bob Doyle's theory?
he assumes an indeterminist interpretation of QM and argues that (1) this formally contradicts the settledness of the future, and (2) quantum randomness is nevertheless not the direct cause of action; so (3) action is neither settled nor random

>>2931915

Probability is not "lol random". If you replayed history a zillion times, you would find that there is a "most likely" outcome, even tho no two re-runs may appear the same.

>>2931781

Well in one sentence you say that memory is just your brain telling a story about what it thinks happened in the past, which is true because memories =/= consciousness. There have been people who have lost the ability to make memories, every moment is like the first moment they have ever had since the accident or whatever that has damaged the part of the brain that works with creating new memories.

You can talk to them and everything, though they wont remember you in a few seconds, they are still aware of the now. So far you are still correct, but it begs the question, what is the point in being conscious and aware of the now when being aware of whats around you and being able to remember details is all you need to function as if you were 'awake'? What's the point of the 'illusion' as you called it? Because it serves no evolutionary purpose if there is no free will.

>>2931815

Honestly I have no curiosity about this. Free will, the kind that's invalidated by a deterministic universe, is a logical impossibility. And it's undesirable. A creature could only have that kind of free will if they had no nature driving them to make choices, which would mean they would have no reason to have desires, which would most likely lead to them making no choices at all. That's a horribly boring concept, and I can't think of how else it would work.

If it's impossible and it's undesirable, and knowledge of it would change nothing, I find it hard to care about it.

As far as punishment, punishment as it's applied is all applied fot a practical purpose, not to balance some cosmic scale.

>>2931867
I said that free will is detemined to give you my perspective within your own idea.
The problem with calling freedom to what I refer to as capability (at least in the discussion of free will) is that while its correct it carries different implications, the first comes with moral and existential baggage and the second is more of a rank system that in the end is still chained by the first one, if you say that we do have free will (with the second definition) you should specify what you mean by that to avoid bringing the values of the deterministic one with your assertion.

>>2931916
I hadn't before but I just scanned through a couple of articles about it. I'm assuming the articles give a reasonable representation.

First impressions are that it seems interesting, but the "quantum noise" aspect seems a little bit magic dusty. Also, given that in his theory we can't necessarily control the environmental factors which determine our character (which he seems to say our choice from multiple possibilities depends on), I'm not sure he's escaped just shifting the determinism a few links further down the chain.

For the record I am a metaphysical libertarian, just not entirely sold on this.

>>2931959
>is a logical impossibility
It is only a logical impossibility if you have a very narrow conception of logic and adhere to a hard monism.

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>>2930907
Free will
>scientifically incorrect
>extremely useful for societal function

Determinism
>scientifically correct
>useless for society

>>2931976
Don't you have a father to rescue, Jordan?

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>>2931984
Don't tell anyone you saw me here bucko.

Oh and if you see Sam Harris in these parts tell him there's more types of truth than material ones.

>>2931976
The whole way you formulate that point only makes sense if we have free will. You're saying that as if to convince people to act as if there's free will, suggesting they have a choice to make, and the existence of choice presupposes free will in order to make sense.

This means the only people you could sway with your argument would be those who already accept free will, who are precisely the people you don't need to convert. Thus, your post is pointless.

>>2931955

A result can be random without having equal chances between the possibilities

>>2931972

Elaborate

>>2931997
A being that has the illusion of free will probably be more productive than one that does not. After all, where can determinism lead but nihilism?

>>2932042

No matter what they say, no one truly acts as if thy don't have free will. Our minds just aren't set up to work that way.

So why is free will rejected out-rite in our reality when we live in reality that either came from nothing, somehow. Or existed forever in some capacity, somehow? Don't give me cop-outs like "Quantum fluctuations", that just creates the 'why does that exist?' followup question.

Clearly, in a deterministic world where things exist, is a world that doesn't exist according to its own nature. So I can only assume that OP is wrong because its not possible that he is correct.

>>2932161
Because you are a sum of your parts,and your parts dont give you free will, they give you instructions.

>>2932170

I instruct myself to have free will.

>>2932172
You(and your ego) think you do

>>2932180

It was a cheeky comment. Because you ignored what I typed.

>>2931835
True. I thought you were implying that the brain was somehow communicating with an external soul through radio or something, but I see how that was presumptuous. The brain is actually quite a mystery and I wish neuroscientists would get it figured out already.

>>2931836
>it is true that we have wills that are extremely free compared to all creatures we have to compare with?
Definitely. I reacted as if it weren't good enough because generally when people say we have free will they are directly opposing determinism, so that was what I assumed. There's no doubt that we as humans enjoy an immense amount of freedom compared to animals, and it is significant in that sense. Really, it's more significant to our lives than anything else. Just because our lives are already determined doesn't mean that they're easy, and we still have to make the hard choices to make them better. Even this conversation could be the trigger to improving my life. There's no point in imagining yourself as subject to the forces of the universe. It could be that my fate is to fucking graduate college and actually make something of myself, and I just have to grit my teeth and do it. My own fate is unknown, and maybe I'm stronger than I think I am; I'm only fallible after all.

Jesus I'm too drunk to contribute anymore. Thanks for the conversation.

>>2931023
>Both the randomness of quantum mechanics and the predictability of Newtonian mechanics are incompatible with free will.
That's a heck of an assertion that an awful lot of philosophers (and physicists and neuroscientists) would disagree with.

I don't really have a dog in this fight - either I have free will or I don't and arguing about it isn't going to change it - but it is frustrating to see people act as though something's universally accepted, even "proven," when it's in fact wildly controversial.

>>2931300
>You have no idea what you're talking about
Astrophysics is litterally my job ya dummy, and i haven't seen you write a coherent thought to contradict me

>>2931340
Because it is; there is no misunderstanding or question marks when it comes to indeterminacy - to ask such a question as you have is to not understand the subject.

>>2930907
You wanna know how I know you have no idea how physics and chemistry works OP?

>>2932161
This

>>2932170
You are wrongly assuming complete knowledge of all of our parts. There is certainly scope for a part you are unaware of which gives us free will. You also seem to be implying all parts of us are material, which I would contest. I am not saying "muh soul" or something, simply that there are demonstrably aspects of our existence which are non-material (for example the perception I currently have of typing this post).

>>2931961
>the first comes with moral and existential baggage and the second is more of a rank system that in the end is still chained by the first one
that's what's in question though, why believe that free will only has that moral and existential baggage if free will requires indeterminism?

>>2931959
>Free will, the kind that's invalidated by a deterministic universe, is a logical impossibility. And it's undesirable.
I don't know why people talk this way about free will, as if there are multiple senses of the word and the relevant one to debate is somehow by definition the one that is touched by determinism
it's like if someone proposed evolution and you responded "evolution, the kind that involves the inheritance of acquired traits, isn't real"
Lamarckism isn't "evolution" in a different sense of the word--it's not like the word is ambiguous like "bank"; Lamarckism and Darwinism are different theories about what evolution consists in
you're assuming that addressing free will necessarily means addressing free will according to an indeterminist theory of it, just like in my example you'd be assuming that addressing evolution necessarily means addressing it according to a Lamarckian theory
the question is, "Does determinism contravene free will?" and any argument for saying "Yes" must rely on some theory of what free will is; it makes no sense to decide by fiat that the only theories of what free will is that you are going to consider are the ones that involve indeterminism
that's like considering the question "Does the non-inheritance of acquired traits contravene evolution?" and answering "Yes" because you will only consider those theories of what evolution is that involve the inheritance of acquired traits

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How exactly free will is not determinism but can be attributed to a person decisions instead of chance?

>>2932771
>There's no doubt that we as humans enjoy an immense amount of freedom compared to animals
yeah, and my point was that some of this freedom is literally freedom of the will
>Just because our lives are already determined doesn't mean that they're easy, and we still have to make the hard choices to make them better ... There's no point in imagining yourself as subject to the forces of the universe.
and what I'm implying is that it would be false
I'm implying that the freedom of the will in which we surpass all animals makes it false to say things like "we are just subject to the forces of the universe" or "we are not in control" or "we are being steered" etc.
After all, it's true that "our lives are already determined" even if causal determinism is false but logical determinism is true (i.e. the future is set); but in that case we are not being controlled or steered or dominated by universal forces etc.; it's just the case that there are certain things we are in fact going to do, which doesn't imply that we are being forced to do them

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What philosophers do you tink started the debate between modern and post-modern?

I´d say with Nietzsche and Kant

>>2933664
ups that was supposed to be a post. fucking shit tits thc motherfucker kunt

>>2932170
>your parts give you instructions
literally nonsense

>>2933327
you've been aggressively pushing this line the whole thread
how do you know this issue is settled? what evidence is there of a consensus?