Compatibilism

As an agent who makes a choice on my own will, (unconscious thought processes however illusory they may be deemed), then the choice ought to be attributed to “me”. I am a vessel that causal determinism flows through, however I affect it. I am the unconscious biological processes that aren’t necessarily at the forefront of my consciousness. I change it. My choice is influenced by this flow of determinism, but ultimately the choice is mine. It is not the “choice” or direct causation of things that preceded me, that influenced my choice, that led to the effects of my choice. This is compatibilism, this attributes moral responsibility on us all for our actions.

Just as when a ball falls into a pool of water, the ball is attributed with making the ripples. Perhaps the wind blew the ball into the pool, but the wind doesn’t get attributed with making the ripples. The wind couldn’t, the ripples are a product of the weight and form of the ball. The wind influenced the ball, the wind attributed to the force of the ball hitting the pool, at a certain angle at a certain speed. The pool itself and the condition it is in is also a factor of how it would be affected by the ball that was blown in by the wind, but the ball itself can be attributed with causation, just like us.

Free will has been inappropriately deemed being able to act without the influence of deterministic cause and effect, somehow. An old magical definition it seems, that doesn’t make much sense, that isn’t needed. Free will was never completely free, we are confined to our capabilities in making choices. We are confined to our conscious and unconscious capabilities, what can we even perceive as options. We all have our different abilities, different knowledge of what we can and can’t do in certain situations. We are also confined to physics and the things around us in our choices. We can’t simply just have the will to fly up into the sky on our own will. We can “will” only what is possible, and free will is essentially being able to choose between different options. As conscious human beings, we have that ability. We have the power to choose between going outside, or not going outside. If one determines our choice to be a matter of fate because it is the culmination of all of our biological and environmental conditions that “forced” us to choose, well, that isn’t really appropriate considering we are “our biological conditions”. As such, we are making the choice.

The choices are not yours as they are limited to the environment and your relation to it.

You may have multiple choices to choose from however they all extend from your relation to environment.

Choice is an elaborate illusion. What choices does a rat have in a controlled laboratory maze?

The choices are not yours : You may have multiple choices to choose from = contradiction

What choices does a rat have in a controlled laboratory maze? The choice of where to go, of course. Now you seem to think that in order to have choice, you must be free from all constraints of reality, which doesn’t make sense. By your standard, it seems, only an almighty god can have a choice.

The environment and your relation to it is what creates your choices. You don’t create the choices independently or out of some whimsical free will.

You merely react to what limited choices are presented to you environmentally.

In the end you’re reacting to things out of your control and this is very compatible with determinist thought.

:laughing: I am an atheist. God is not even a factor.

Actually only those that control or have power over the rat maze can have a choice although even then those choices are somewhat limited or determined. They still have more choices compared to the average man and woman.

The rest of us are just actors just going through the motions in what is presented to us.

Such as choosing to breathe underwater? Obviously not.

Welcome to compatibilism.

That’s right. The will of humans is not free but relatively free (relatively unfree).

I am confused with your analogy as I am pretty sure humans can’t breathe under water.

Peculiar wording Arminius. Can you explain more on the relation between relatively free and relatively unfree?

Just the same, a rat can’t choose to go anywhere else from where the maze allows it. I can have the will to breathe under water, but that doesn’t mean its going to happen.

Way back when I was little, had asthma and was sickly, I held the record for swimming under water the longest and that included all ages even adults. It was a trick I developed thanks to science. I knew water was two parts oxygen, I knew water when ingested gets into the bloodstream and I knew sucking water in through my teeth caused bubbles . I would exhale a tiny bit then manage to inhale a tiny bit of air before swallowing the water. 125 or 150 yards under water I can’t recall. I also did not try to swim fast or move to hard. I had the will to breathe under water to win.
While free will does not truly exist we can increase choices by taking chances and thinking outside the box even if it is not a logical thing. We tend to limit ourselves on will.

You gonna choose what you gonna choose, this is already determined.
There is no free ghost in the machine which is detached from always moving onwards reality.

Yet the idea of free will and free choice is the backbone of Anglo thinking and informs their social policies and so on.

Environment matters.
Genetics matter.
Free will does not.

Agreed. Wow, we agree on something for once.

Many people also tend to forget the environmental factors of determinism focusing only on biological or genetic ones.

A very important thing people tend to overlook.

Good for you, being right with me, hahaha

Such an explanation would be like answering the question whether a glass is half-full or half-empty. So objectively the terms “relatively free” and “relatively unfree” mean the same. But subjectively they may be different, because from a “relatively free point of view” the human will is relatively free, from a “relatively unfree point of view” the human will is relatively unfree.

If the will of the humans were free, then humans could and would for example live however they want to, as long as they want to, decide whatever they want to … and so on and so forth. In reality humans sooner or later realize that they have to accept facts like illness and death or consequences like punishment (jail or other isolations), if they did not behave according to their environment, to the law, the moral system of their group.

I think it matters in the case for moral responsibility. If you killed someone intentionally, but it wasn’t with your own free will, what does that mean?

The question whether something has happened with or without a human’s own “free will” is redundant, because the human’s will is not free but relatively free. All “rights” that are based on a the false “free will”, especially the so-called “human rights”, have to be rewritten, because they are not right but nonetheless “rights”, because they are very profitable, very efficient, very repressive, very destructive (which means that they are even more profitable, even more efficient … and so on and so forth). :wink:

It means I am still a murderer and a society must still decide if it can and should allow me to continue being part of that society.
But it’s true, it takes a different kind of approach to morality to think of somebody not just choosing to do something deemed immoral but having been born and grown up into being such an immoral person.

This relates also to the idea whether or not people do change (their character and thus their behaviour, desires,…). - Usually no, definitely not over night and only under severe pressure/difficult circumstances and often not the way a modern society would deem for the better.
That changes also the outlook on criminality and what to do about it, what actually can be done/what should be done, depending on what outcome for society is desired.

If its not your free will that killed a person, what did? You were forced to?

I did. But saying this might be confusing because of the “I”.
That “I” is not something which is free.
Better to say -
It happened
or
I happened