Have you prayed about it?
No, I’m not a religious type, but I do believe in the laws that govern us.
Heat death it is!
Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions
Shaun Nichols, Joshua Knobe
Here of course things get downright…ineffable?
And that’s because intuition in and of itself seems to intertwine so many complex facets of the self…
1] the intellectual, the emotional, the psychological
2] the conscious, the subconscious, the unconscious
3] the genetic, the memetic, the two in combination
Thus, in regard to “intuitions about free will and responsibility”, what does this…
“Intuition: the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning”
…even mean?
You say, “I have a gut feeling about free will and responsibility…they’re the real deal”.
Someone else says, “I have a gut feeling about free will and responsibility…they’re not the real deal”.
Then what?
My own point, more or less. Making claims about free will and moral responsibility in a world of words is one thing, backing those words up as scientists go about backing up their own assessments experimentally and through empirical research, another thing altogether.
I’m no less embedded in the philosophical assessments myself. But at least I recognize the limitations of that. In the end, philosophers can only take their own conclusions to those who can plug them into the efforts being made to study actual brains making actual decisions.
Yet years go by and there is still no definitive assessments from the hard guys and gals either. Or, rather, none that I am familiar with. Google free will and neuroscience and you get this:
google.com/search?q=free+wi … nt=gws-wiz
So, peruse the links and get back to us on whether you perused the links of your own free will or not.
Next up:
Surprising because we freely opted to be surprised? Or surprising because we were never able to not be surprised?
Obvious when you think about it.
ME:
HIM
Assuming I’m not compelled by my brain wholly in sync with the laws of matter to assume that we live in a free will world: click.
When Sculptor tells you that something is “obvious when you think about it”, he means when you think about it exactly as he does.
Again, as noted above, the topic can be determinism or politics or morality or religion. Makes no difference. You either share his own existential prejudices, or you are his own equivalent of a moron.
He’s just one more run-of-the-mill fulminating fanatic objectivist. If not a pinhead. They abound in places like this.
Or, rather, what’s left of places like this.
It seem to me that you spend too much time looking yourself in the mirror, when you would do better trying to engage with others on the Forum.
ME:
HIM:
Click.
Ah, of course, like he is engaging in a substantive exchange with me here on this thread. 
In fact, in my view, given a free will world, he won’t even admit to himself that one does not properly engage with him here unless one agrees with him here.
How is he not but one more fulmianting fanatic when it comes to religion and morality and politics and determinism?
That’s the discussion I’d be interested in pursuing. Why is he like this? How is his own frame of mind not just another manifestation of what I call the “psychology of objectivism” in my signature thread?
Note to nature:
Compel him to go there please.
you are just talking to yourself.
Note to nature:
From the Big Bang…to this?!!! 
Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions
Shaun Nichols, Joshua Knobe
Any ordinary people here? How about normal people? How about ordinary and/or normal people here who have spent years as top-notch neuroscientists employing the scientific method in order to study how the brain functions in the act of actually making a choice. Using fMRI technology in examining the brains of subjects who have either stolen candy bars or have not. The brains of, say, devout moralists or sociopaths.
Any links we can turn to here?
Gasp?!
Physical events unfold in the either/or world. Over and over and over and over again when you do something in the either/or world you get the results you’d expect. Or, when you do something and get different results, if you dig deep enough you can determine why the result was different. The difference is not predicated on conflicting personal opinions regarding what the result ought to have been because different people want a different result.
That’s why moral conflicts are so exasperating. Each side digs down and, given their own set of assumptions, demands that others embrace the results that they want. In other words, for the moral objectivists among us, there is no distinction between the either/or and the is/ought world.
Then it’s just a question of [existentially] embracing one or another God or No God font.
Compatibilism
Michael Lacewin
Clearly, the only way that this can make sense is to construe determinism in such a way that “somehow” it does not encompass everything that our brains in sync with the laws of matter compels us to think, feel, say and do.
Obviously, unlike a rock that tumbles down a mountainside wholly in sync with the material laws of gravity, if we choose to pick up a rock and bash someone alongside the head with it, this reflects the laws of matter – of choosing – in a whole other way. Mindful matter is different – enigmatically, ineffably different? – from mindless matter.
But how? Take God out of the picture and the bottom line is that here and now neither philosophers nor scientists can tell us.
To do what you want. How is that different from wanting what you want?
Some then go “further” and argue that even if we do construe determinism in this manner it is only because we were never able not to.
Then we’re stuck because intelligently argued conflicting conclusions are still the bottom line.
Here, of course, we are stuck with words. We create arguments about choosing and about willing such that the arguments themselves are often bursting at the seams with conflicting definitions and deductions.
Like we can pin up unequivocally if we are freely able to will what we will.
Yes, other events lead up to what I choose but there is still a component buried “somewhere” in my brain that “somehow” makes the final decision mine and mine alone.
Thus Mary’s abortion is the result of her choice. And her choice is embedded in a series of events that led up to it. And if those events had been different, she might have made a different choice. But how exactly does noting this demonstrate that in a determined universe where Mary chose an abortion there is “somewhere” in her brain an “I” that “somehow” might have prompted her not to choose the abortion.
Sure, there may well be. God or otherwise.
But where is the hard evidence that confirms it?
Compatibilism
Michael Lacewin
All of this does get tricky because it depends on how far back you take determinism. What if your compulsion and your addiction themselves were no more than an inherent manifestation of the only possible reality?
Indeed, some argue that even in regard to how far back you do take it, this too is just another necessary component of a wholly determined universe.
It can get maddening. Why? Because we just don’t know how the human condition fits into the nature of existence itself. The ineffable reality of the brain grappling to explain itself. So, what some do here is [compelled or not] to conjure up God. At least then there is an entity that we can turn to explain, well, everything, right? Unless perhaps this too is completely beyond our control.
Back to Schopenhauer, right? What many compatibilists seem to focus in on is the fact that we do choose things. We’re not like rocks and mountains and rivers and forests and other facets of nature that are completely mindless. Tropical storm Nicole will hit the East coast of Florida as a category 1 hurricane. But it’s not like it chooses to do this. But human beings do choose to live on the coasts…in the path of these [at times] extremely dangerous storms. Ian for example.
So, what’s the difference?
And what if, as mind-boggling as it seems, there isn’t one?
Determinism so-called is a fact of reality. Nothing ever happens for literally no reason at all.
Think about that sometime.
I think you mean nothing happens without cause.
There is no reason why an apple falls from a tree. Gravity might be the reason we append to the event, but apples fall whether or not we have an interest in them and their fall is caused by the wind, the weakness of the stem, the mass of the earth and the apple… a possible infinite set of casualties.
To say that inanimate objects have “reasons” might imply that there is a widespread teleology to the universe. And whilst humans decisions might be called reasons, underneath it all we are fulfilling a set of neural causalities.
You think a basic statement about deterministic causality and the principle of sufficient reason has anything to do with necessarily implying “teleology”?
Think again.
DUh.
No.
It think that a misplaced word such as “reason” implies teleology.
SInce the word in the way you used it is better replaced with “cause”. Conscious agents have “reasons”. But there is no reason that Mars has no water. It did not happen for a reason; but there are causes which left Mars with no water.
Its the difference between “why” and “how”. And the difference between god did it and science.
False. “Reason” implies only necessary cause. Nothing like a teleological ex ante plan/goal/purpose/end.