This thread is mostly aimed at @promethean75 and his absolute resistance against Free-Will and absolute support for Cosmic Super Magic Spinoza Determinism. But of course all are welcome and encouraged to participate.
How can a person possibly “take responsibility” for something, for an object, over another person (like your own biological child), for an event, etc.? To “take responsibility” for a set of events, for example, is similar to, or the same as, “making a choice”. But how can this action of “taking responsibility” or “making a choice” possibly occur? Inevitably, to the Absolute Determinist, all such notions must be reduced to mere illusions. They are forms of coping of the individual psyche of the person. Human beings, thinkers, any organism with a brain, merely wants to ‘pretend’ to Power. No organism is actually Powerful. No organism is actually capable of Power.
There is NO actual “will power” to the Determinists, except perhaps, only in Self-Delusion.
And this is the basis of power and existence to the Determinists. What humans call “you” or “I” are merely our self-conscious experiences, our consciousnesses “along for the ride”. We can never actually change the course of the ride. We are stuck along a supposed one-course track. And if any organism had the power of foresight or accurate predictability, then it would foresee where all tracks lead. It would be able to see this supposed “Absolute Determinism”. Therein, to Determinists, only an Absolute God would have “Choice” or be able to “take responsibility”, but none else. It’s not a matter of degree. It’s a matter of absolution.
You can either change the whole universe, for all time, or you can do nothing.
Free will is different than responsibility. For instance if a killer robot kills people, the question is not “did the robot have choice”. It is irrelevant if a philosopher determines robot has free-will or not. There are simply actions and then consequences for those actions. The robot would probably be taken to the garage and reprogrammed and given more beta-testing and QA.
Its only in primitive backwards human societies that supposed Christians have some kind of vendetta against prisoners and want prisoners to suffer. Prisons are a place of boredom which causes madness. It is wholly irrational. They are causing madness on dangerous persons and then letting them out on society.
In socialist countries with more prisoner rights they actually have less crime and recidivism, so the hardass arguments all fall apart.
You are blaming the robot though. You are presuming responsibility within the robot. According to the Absolute Determinists, you cannot do this, because neither the robot, nor anybody else, nor the programmer, etc. is “responsible”.
Then they must not believe in separation or objectification. They don’t view the robot as object or separate from everything else, they just view everything as one big mush of porridge. Clearly it was the robot that did it, and before them the programmer that programmed the robot, and before them the society that programmed the indoctrination and genetics of the programmer, and before that the abiogenesis that created the society. But all 4 are distinct objects on the causal chain. The easiest course of action would be to isolate the first object on the chain and fix that.
Its like if a cop arrests someone in the act of a crime, the cops job is just to put duct-tape on society and a temporary fix, not to be a philosopher and blame society for creating the criminals, its supposed to be politician’s job to blame society and fix society, of course most politicians are just scumbags who obey billionaires so that’s not going to happen though.
As a binary processing biological machine bot. only exists and doesn’t exist because it doesn’t possess life (you need to exist to claim that you don’t exist.If you clam that you don’t exist then you are a liar who exists) then it’ll get thrown away as a faulty product.If you want life then you have to take responsibility for your actions.
Many individuals exist and claim that they are a misrepresentation of reality (an illusion). They are not a misrepresentation of reality at all.They merely exist and don’t exist because they don’t possess life.
You need to exist first to claim things.You need to exist first to claim anything at all,even lies.
Free will is the experience of consciousness, consciousness is the experience of free will.
If you’ve driven the same route to work over a thousand times, you’re barely conscious of doing it- you need very little of your free will, but then if a lorry swerves into your path, suddenly your level of consciousness shoots up- you need every bit of your free will that you have.
When you dream, your consciousness- and therefore your free will- BECAUSE THEY ARE THE SAME THING- is very low, and your mind produces its strange stories in the darkness. When your consciousness increases during your dream state, you lucid dream- you have free will in your dream.
Freewill is when you are debating yourself. When there are 2 thoughts in your brain that are contradictory… and the “self” or “soul” picks which one to obey (or disregard both.) Science has measured this as 2 different neural clusters firing, and one of the neural clusters is chosen.
I’ve found that they’re subjectively selective about it. It’s a matter of Convenience. Free-Will and Choice, when it’s convenient for me and my ego, but Determinism when it’s not. This is something I wanted to challenge Prom on. Actions ultimately expose their hypocrisies and contradictions though.
You’re onto something. The Universe and Existence is all one mash of porridge (Determinism) when it’s bad for me. But it’s separate and I have self-control, autonomy, choice, when it’s good for me. This is how they “think” anyway.
It’s not a circular argument RealUn it’s an argument about the nature of something, with evidence to back it up. I’ll try making the argument in a different way.
Question- Does free will exist?
Answer- Yes.
Question- What is free will?
Answer- Free will is consciousness.
Question- What is the evidence for this?
A dead, unconscious, or deeply asleep person has no consciousness and no free will. A person lucid dreaming has very limited consciousness and also very limited free will. The same is true with a person half asleep or sedated. A wide awake person is fully conscious and has full free will. Drugs can increase consciousness and free will. A tennis player on cocaine has increased consciousness and increased free will to play tennis due to higher reaction times.
The correlation between consciousness and free will is clear to the point where it seems the causal link is so powerful that in fact consciousness and free will are the same thing.
A researcher might say : Free-will is dependent on consciousness and requires consciousness. Free-will is a component of consciousness. There is a correlation between the ability to have free-will and consciousness. When consciousness increases free-will tends to increase.
You say that Free-will = consciousness, and free will is the same as consciousness.
