The language created and used without intent is what you’re peddling? Or a happenstance discovery formulated into the language that expresses all that is and ever will be realized? Without intent, nothing exists.
Without consistency, nothing you say makes any sense, so whatever is intended is lost.
Intended consistency makes sense.
Crap! I’m fading already. Brain is shutting down. To be cont’d.
Logical consistency makes sense otherwise logic and logical systems such as mathematics and syllogisms would not be sound
By complete contrast intended consistency has no such requirement which means that it is very prone to error and unreliable
Thanks, MM! I don’t intend any consistency, though, lol.
@ Maniacal Mongoose.
You are freshly in love. That is good. Congratulations. 
Therefore my question:
Why are you still posting so much? 
Still, in a determined world the fact that you either know or do not know this is only as it ever could have been. Or so it seems to me if mind is just one more manifestation of matter that interacts in accordance with “laws of nature” that originated [if they did] in a big bang that is not as a result of something that a God chose to create. Whatever that might possibly mean.
Same here. How are the choices that we make really any different from the choices that, say, earthworms make [in a determined world] other than in speculating that you and I are the embodiment of the illusion that the choices we make exclude all of the choices that we might have made in being more autonomous matter?
I’ll be the first to admit that you might be right. But I just can’t wrap my head around how this actually “works” when, say, a woman chooses to abort her baby.
Was there ever a possibility that the baby might not have been aborted?
Also, had the baby not been aborted, is there a crucial distinction to be made between the fact that the baby has no choice but to develop in the womb per the laws of human biology, and the choices that it makes as an infant, and the choices that it makes as an adult?
If we live in a determined world?
Or, if we don’t?
How are choices here to be differentiated?
Maybe, but what does that really have to do with my point? How are the past, the present and the future not all intertwined in the only manner in which these events unfolded in a world that is wholly determined?
Again, I will agree that you might be entirely correct in your assessment. But how am I to convince myself that my reaction to your assessment is not only as it ever could have been in a world governed inextricably by the laws of matter?
Okay, everything that has happened, had to happen that way. Saying that is not saying much. It certainly doesn’t justify slipping into fatalism.
What’s done is done and cannot be undone.
You decide how things ought to happen in the future.
Hmm. You chose/“chose” not to respond to many of the points that I raised above. But I’ll choose/“choose” to ignore that.
But, pertaining to your point, my point is this: when you decide in the present what the future will be, is that future dependent on the fact that you might have freely chosen something else instead?
Also, is there perhaps an omniscient God “up there” somewhere noting that the future either is or is not in sync with what He knows it will be depending on what you choose to do here and now?
I get the part where no one can change the fact that Hitler chose to exterminate the Jews. But, at the time, was Hitler free not to choose this?
That’s the part I have never really been able to wrap my head around. How all of this endless intellectual speculation actually works/“works” out in the world that we interact in existentially from day to day.
I see you analyzing this in an unproductive way. You are asking questions which do not logically arise or they are unanswerable because of the unknowns in the situation.
Let’s say that a person lives in completely free world where he can make any decision he wishes. After making a decision he is in a specific location physically and mentally. If he looks back, then he must conclude that he had to make the decision that he did, in order to be where he is. If he had made a different decision, then he would be in another place and he again be looking back stating that he had to have made that other decision to be in this other place. Wherever you are, you came there by a particular route.
IOW, looking back … free choice and determined choice have the same appearance … there is the same apparent necessity.
Looking forward, you don’t know what is being forced on you. Looking back, you known exactly what was forced on to you -the recent past.
"God? "
What difference does it make if God knows everything or if God knows nothing?
“Hitler?”
He did something and that created a reality to which one reacts. What difference does it make if he chose freely or not? One reacts to the choice itself. And that reaction will be an input to the decision process of other Hitlers, discouraging or encouraging similar behavior.
If a person is hungry and I place before them a bowl of shit and a bowl of soup, can we draw any conclusions about the nature of choice and free will?
Is it a human reflex to use intellect to limit oneself? I thought philosophy was about going there, not staying here. By bringing everything down to Earth, why bother thinking at all when we are already here?
In other words, I don’t “analyze” it the way that you do.
Trust me: I get that part.
But: Is it or is it not knowable whether or not I have freely chosen to analyze it as I do? Or, instead, did I analyze it only as I ever could have?
Are there answers to those questions? Answers that are true objectively for all of us?
And how could that not be God? Mere mortals after all are situated out in particular worlds construed in particular ways. And there is always that gap between what we think we know and all that would need to be known in order to answer questions such as these. Or, in ways that the minds of mere mortals are unable to grasp, is God Himself compelled by the “forces” behind whatever the hell it is that constitutes the ontological and teleological parameters of Reality/Existence itself?
Okay, so how come the future is really any different? The specific location where you will be next Thursday at this time [both physically and mentally] is either predicated on the decisions that you make as an autonomous human being, or they are only as they ever could have been given that your mind is matter and matter interacts only in accordance with particular physical laws.
In other words, it’s less how things appear to be and more how things really are.
Intuitively, viscerally most of us have a strong sense – up to a point re dasein – of choosing to do this rather than that. But how do we go about demonstrating that this is more than what appears to be true? How do we demonstrate that in fact we can choose autonomously between different behaviors?
I am merely arguing that, though I believe this to be the case, I am not able to demonstrate this. And that the so-called “compatibilists” demonstrate only their facility with the language in making arguments that reconcile determinism and freedom.
They always seem to focus the beam on the fact that a choice is being made by a human being in interacting with others but not by a domino toppling over onto the next one in line.
But if the choice is only as it ever could have been it would still seem to be [to me] more dominoes. Merely far, far, far more sophisticated dominoes. Dominoes with brains.
Seriously? If an omniscient God knows everything how could He not know what you will be doing next Thursday at this time? And if He does know this how could you choose freely not to be there?
And that is the crux of it all isn’t it?
If Hitler did not freely choose to exterminate the Jews and we are not free to choose to react to that as we do, what on earth does it mean to speak of moral responsibility at all?
We may as well hold lions morally responsible for killing zebras, or the earth morally responsible for that earthquake in Italy.
Or so it seems to me.
Yeah, nobody can have a better point of view. Nobody can teach you anything or point you to an answer. Nobody can give you some advice or information that helps you.
They are just insisting that YOU MUST THINK EXACTLY AS THEY DO.
“Trust me: I get that part” about your attitude.
You manage to mangle even this simple hypothetical situation. 
I have decided not to respond to the rest of your post.
It’s pretty obvious that I can’t say anything that will be helpful or useful to you.
God almighty, how slow are you folks really?
“Freedom” is a word. “Determination” is a word.
It is not said, in no way is it said, that the two refer to actually contradicting states.
For gods sakes, drop your belief in words.
::
Look, the word “freedom” originated with an idea, vastly different from the context in which the word is used now in philosophical circles. The way the word is used now, it doesnt even mean anything at all. It is just bait for idiots.
Originally, and in reality still, “freedom” means a state of being able to follow up on ones impulses. A jailcell prevents freedom except if the person wants to be in that particular secluded space. “Free will” just meant to not be in prison or dirt poor or handicapped.
All that is free, is also determined. All that is determined is ‘free to be itself’ and ‘unfree to be something other than itself’.
Jesus.
Fixed Cross, a “will” that is not in bondage (enslaved) has an entirely different meaning to what is being discussed in this thread and so, yes, it’s all about words and it will always be about words.
FC - I think you have a point but I am not sure. Certainly philosophers, especially metaphysicians, tend to invent paired opposites out of nothing, and to reify words. But i think that “free will” in philosophy is 1) an essentially religious term and 2) mostly applicable to morality. Are we free to sin or commit a crime (or not) or has all that been determined before we were born. I’m not sure why it’s even important in any other context.
… Good thing the Bible didn’t have the word “internet” in it, else Atheists would hate that too. 
Yes, and all those points are moot, and that’s really a euphemism.
Of course it doesnt matter to me that by some confusion over a term that was invented to designate a physical liberty of movement some idiots let themselves entangled in wordgames for centuries trying to derive a should from all of this. Ridiculous that it happened, even more ridiculous that people are still signing up for that tail chasing fest. I could’nt imagine a less stimulating way to exercise my mind.
Some asshole decided to use the rudimentary ideas of particle physics to posit the idea that his decisions werent his but his particles, but forgot to realize that ‘he’ is also just his particles.
In as far as there is a ‘person’, he is made out of particles and their history, just as his actions are. The person is the action and the consequence of that action is also the person. Only someone who isnt able to make three consecutive steps in a logical strain of thought would be in the dark about this.
Am I wrong? Just look at the origins of the word “free”.
None of these roots have anything to do with the will being free of itself or something. It just means what it means, not what some Christian imbecile who wanted to rape his son figured it may also mean. Come on. The only logic to all of that is that morons, when they are numerous enough, can sometimes be overheard talking to each other.
Before all this confusion came about a punishment was just a response to an individual doing something that contradicts the values of a community or a more powerful person. Justice wasnt about objectivity, but about actual values that were in play in the context of the act that was considered a crime. The person doesnt matter except in that the action matters, and the person, as the origin of the action, is judged in terms of that action, and this judgment is made in terms of the values that predominate, with respect to which the action was abject.
At no instance does the question of accountability arise. There are only values and actions. Standards and events. Causality works the same among humans as between atoms; if value structures are violated, you get a lot of violence. Human justice is made of violent collisions, the gravities and structural integrities in play are the valuings, in case of law roughly the strength and cohesion of group-valuing versus individual valuing.
People separate values from reality. I dont know why, they’re idiots, but that isnt enough reason for actual insanity. I dont know why so few people understand that values are what drives necessity.