straw man
How can it be a straw man? He was asked for his own definition.
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.
âŚattention/seeking.
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He should steel man his definition since heâs opposed to it (unless ⌠of course ⌠he isnât ⌠in which case ⌠heâs fugazi). He should steel man it, regardless, though â why go in for a straw man when there is steel available? Not like it costs extra in the realm of thought. Perhaps heâs afraid of real world fireballs from mean, nasty witches? All the more reason to steel man it, man. (lol jk but srsly)
A refresher on my previous steel manning:
Trying to work âgodâ into a debate between freewill and determinism is hopeless and only muddles the problem even more. The most ironic of these muddling effects is the fact that if an omniscient creator does exist, freewill would be absolutely impossible⌠when theists somehow try to believe freewill could be simply granted by this âgodâ.
Here is a brief demonstration of this fundamental problem. If god knows you are going to get up in five minutes to get a pepsi, only one of two things can be happening.
A) you have freewill, and god is wrong in saying you will get a pepsi in five minutes if you decide in five minutes not to get a pepsi. This would disqualify godâs omniscience (since he is not all knowing). God canât both know you will and will not get a pepsi. Or better⌠god canât only know you may get a pepsi or not. If âheâ did, it would mean he wouldnât be certain about a particular chain of events and how they will play out. And this, in turn, would mean there is something about how the laws of physics work that he isnât aware of (having even been the lawâs creator). G should have known what would happen in the brain at the moment of the pepsi decision loooong in advance. And yet, here âheâ sits, swearing on his momma that youâll get up in five minutes to get that pepsi.
B) you donât have freewill, and god knows you will get a pepsi in five minutes because not only did âheâ design the natural laws and causation (through which they work), but he also knows in advance what is going to happen to and in the universe. This option qualifies âhisâ omniscience.
But now all this is only what happens when you anthropomorphize this âgodâ. These are the anthropomorphic consequences of such a setup; an omnipotent omniscient creator and a world of freewills. Some pretty absurd shit happens as you can see.
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The funniest part about this is youâre not even talking omnipotence at this point.
And I would point you to this:
The two are not mutually exclusive.
Which is why being of one mind does not require dissolution of the individual [which would meanâŚbyebye mind(s)].
#SheLogic 
Something Sartre either didnât get, or hinted at behind the veil. <><
I didnât quote it right. Oh well.
has strange urge for Pepsi
âUnless BriBri came to me in a dream that I donât recall, I am here of my own initiative.â
Well what actually happened was, cold late night, so long ago when I was not so strong, you know. A pretty girl came to me. Never seen eyes so bluish green. Even though I could not run away, it seemed weâd seen each other in a dream. It seemed like she knew me
She looked right through me. Yeah.
There was also The Blue Footed Boobie Incident involving one phoneutria and myself back in 2016ish, which was classified as a type 6.b Jungian synchronic causally non-local psychokinetic paranormal event by my colleagues pending a definitive scientific explanation⌠which has so far not been possible.
You can prolly find something about it if you search the forum for terms âblue footed boobiesâ. I donât wanna type the whole story out again.
I have gained much from this discussion.
Yeah this just seems like kicking the can down the road. Any choice we make to go against this or that impulse is itself an impulse derived from the sort of person we are at a given moment. Infinite regress trying to stand somewhere outside of that causal chain. Deservedness is simply incoherent. We hold onto it to justify certain behaviors that would seem odd/unpleasant to us without the illusion of deservedness. We donât like the cognitive dissonance around enjoying luck unperturbed by guilt or obligation to share or pursue equity, so we evolved a sense of moral deservedness made up of reactive attitudes and socioeconomic norms. But the deservedness requires a fallacy. Namely the just world fallacy.
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Your issue is less with freedom than it is with guilt/responsibility/deservedness.
But if you break free of the cycle of thinking that love is about deserving, then you will know the truth.
See:
So your definition of free will already precludes any possibility of it being true?
In logic that is called begging the question.
Letâs try this.
[your definition] Free will = a capacity to make choices without regard to antecedent conditions (since adding âstates of the cosmosâ is extraneous and irrelevant to this anyway, so letâs just keep it necessarily simple)
If that is your definition, then we simply ask: is it even possible for anything to exist without regard to ANY antecedent conditions? The answer is clearly no. That would not be possible. Nothing just pops into being for literally no reason at all, or has literally no reference to anything else. That is patently nonsensical at face value.
So all you have done is preemptively define âfree willâ in a patently nonsensical way, then come to the âconclusionâ that free will is impossible because it leads to a patently nonsensical result.
Wow, amazing. Who could have seen that coming!?
And btw, no serious person would ever define free will like that. First of all because it makes no sense, also because it begs the question of the entire issue, and also because it is not even what we really mean when we employ the concept of âfree willâ. No serious person or thinker actually believes their choices exist without any reference to any other conditions outside of the choice itself. That would literally render the choice pure meaninglessness anyway, which defeats the entire purpose of making a choice to begin with.
But Iâve seen all these silly metaphysics 101 arguments a million times both online and at uni. If you can offer more that just that, please do.
Hi and thanks for your opinion!
Perhaps you are not going to like this, but this is NOT âmyâ definition. In philosophy and in science we donât say: âthis is my definition, this is yours, this is hersâ and so on. First, there is an acceptance (ideally unanimously) of a definition of a term, and then thinkers discuss upon this definition. Otherwise there is risk that the various differences are just semantics.
Free Will in philosophy has had a specific definition since many centuries ago, and it is exactly the one I gave above.
If you deny this to be true, let us all hear âyourâ definition. Also, if you believe that we could theoretically have chosen to do B, when we have done A.
With respect
G.D.
Thanks, and for clarity I never said nor meant to infer that the definition you used was âyourâ definition exclusively. I am quite well aware of how philosophy has traditionally tried to understand the notion of free will. Which is why I lumped philosophy or more specifically more like most of academic metaphysical philosophy into the same camp as getting it horribly wrong, including begging their own question.
Free will needs to be much more carefully (precisely, accurately) approached and understood⌠what is it that we are REALLY trying to get at, talk about, isolate and capture the meaning of when we use this term âfree willâ? What is really going on here?
Obviously that is not what most metaphysics is doing with the issue. They do what you did, basically come up with what they think is what free will is SUPPOSED TO mean in some abstract and simplistic sense, then go about pointing out how that doesnât make sense. Yeah, we get it, of course it doesnât make sense. Itâs how a small child might try to define it.
Real philosophy is about seeking the truth at all costs and for its own sake. Therefore we need to move beyond games of trying to understand something like free will by 1) coming up with a simple definition and 2) pointing out how that definition makes no sense. I mean, what is our goal really? To generate some kind of conclusion we can pat ourselves on the back about, or to really try and get at the truth of the matter? I was always more about getting at the truth than the worldwide circle jerk (as one poet referred to academia), hence why I left and started doing work on my own and with other like-minded thinkers online.
I would begin to try and understand free will by pointing out the very fact you already brought to bear if indirectly: everything has a cause, the principle of sufficient reason holds at least insofar as we must acknowledge as incontrovertible the fact that everything that occurs/is/happens does so and is so for reasons and not âfor no reason at allâ. Those reasons cannot simply = themselves, as if âI did X because I did X, because I did XâŚâ forever circling around in its own puddle of meaningless non-reference. In fact and when we bother to look at actual instances of acts we might refer to as or someone else might reasonably refer to as falling under the remit of âacts of more or less free willâ we can easily see that these acts/decisions/choices have very clear reasons for why they were done, and that those reasons are pretty easy to understand most of the time.
I chose to eat X for dinner, why? Not because of some magical agent causation free will thingy but because of a combination of causal factors such as the number of salient options available, how I was feeling at the time in terms of my hunger cravings, thoughts of nutrition and calorie count, costs and expenses of the food items in question, their expiration dates, how long and how much effort needed to prepare the items in question, all of that. It all factors into causal-deterministic calculus in our minds, and the result is something like the best-possible approximation or the most efficient optimization solution to the problem. And to make it even more complicated, each of those factors and types of factors causally involved has its own value-weights that may change from situation to situation based on still other factors.
Like Nietzsche said, regardless of the causality and rationality behind what we choose, it still feels like we did it freely or at least âIâ did it âmyselfâ simply because we are quite aware of the feeling, if not also the fact, that we could have chosen or done otherwise. But all this is just rote determinism combined with a little psychology, nothing very special. How then to continue on our quest to better understand what is referred to as free will?
Think about human cognition and mentality, how does it work? What are important parts of it? One important part I notice is how we can mentally understand, visualize and predict or model future results before they occur in reality. I can know that if I do X, Y will or is likely to result, before X is even done. Therefore based on the degree of my knowing or approaching Y mentally-virtually in my own mental modelling space, whether or not or how I do X will or at least may change. What is the philosophical significance of this in terms of metaphysical âfreedomâ and âwillingâ? It means we literally read the future before it happens, to some extent, or are at least capable of doing this at least some of the time, and this ability opens up new spaces and degrees of freedom for us which did not or would not otherwise have existed had we lacked that specific ability to read and know the future ahead of time.
We reach an important point here: degrees of freedom. When we talk about âfreeâ will what do we REALLY mean, what is really going on in reality? Not some mystical agent causation mumbo jumbo disconnected from reality and causation. Rather, very complex and subtle, cross-temporal associations of meaning are being made and the various aspects of these are being evaluated in real time in terms of the present moment and also with drawing upon information from the past as our relevant memories, and all of that is also being fed into our mental model projection of future events that have not even occurred yet but which can be reasonably anticipated/known ahead of time based on the factors of the situation at hand and other things including our own level of interest, experience, intelligence and otherwise environmental access to relevant information to be useful as data fed into the mental model. All of that is ALSO taking place within, or perhaps more accurately can be said to be co-producing or participating in the generation of, an overall space that we might call the space of possible metaphysical freedom within the current situation and context at hand. This freedom does not mean âfree from causationâ, it means free FOR causation. It means we become more free to respond to, take into account, understand and act in terms of larger and larger spaces of meaning, truth, fact, outcomes, needs, etc. These are the implied degrees of freedom we exist within. The larger this space is, the more options are available to us.
If I am sitting on a train track and not aware a train is coming, my possible degrees of freedom are much more limited compared to if I am sitting on the track and I am aware the train is coming. In the first instance I am likely to die, in the second instance I am likely to gain the FREEDOM to save myself by moving out of the way. This is a freedom in the same sense as a directional degree of freedom, like air molecules leaking out of a hole and subject to different air pressures in different regions will or will not gain particular directional degrees of freedom for its movement. And like air molecules we, or rather in our minds, tend to take up the total space of all possible degrees of freedom eventually, given enough time needed to properly saturate those possibilities.
So freedom would be better understood as something like the number of possible options or possible outcomes that become relevant or known to us, based on many other factors, such that our own calculus and action-intentions can more accurately map the reality around us, which leads to a better overall outcome assuming we are acting in terms of our own self-interest or self-value. Which most of the time, we are or at least are attemping to do and more or less approximating. Freedom to be more of that which we are, freedom to come more fully into existence, to know more, to experience more, to achieve more survivability and access and opportunity and value in terms of the world around us⌠this is getting closer to what I think the real meaning of âfreeâ in free will is.
As for will, this is just a fancy word for intention. I prefer to always use intention instead of will, because after reading so much in metaphysics and so-called phenomenology their overuse of the word âwillâ is confounding at best, obscuring and impossibilizing at worst. If we think of the meaning of intention in terms of what I just wrote about the nature of freedom (and this is only one aspect of freedom, I am trying to keep things simple for now) it becomes apparent that what we intend is affected by, limited by, potentiated by (at least somewhat) both the realities of our available degrees of freedom and our perception of these realities. Intention is different than want or desire, intention is more like what we REALLY DO INTEND to do. Not just a want or feeling, but something we intend toward. Action or the energetic potential for an action and aimed at a certain outcome or set of outcomes is key here. If you see a cookie and donât want to eat it because of the calories, but then you eat it anyway, it cannot be said that you intended not to eat it; all that can be said is that you wanted not to eat it but you still intended to eat it anyway despite that. Intention must be tracked closely with out actual actions, words, efforts.
So we can place freedom and intention in two simple relations, both of which I think are meaningful and real: how free our intentions are, and how intentional are our freedoms.
The first is easier to understand. What causal, limiting and potentiating factors are affecting our intentions in a particular moment and situation? What is the metaphysical scope and size, also quality and content, of the space or degrees of freedom within which this intention occurs?
In terms of the second one, what is the nature of our space of metaphysical freedom and possible degrees of freedom with regard to that which we truly do intent, or with respect to the nature of our intentions either in general or more particularized to the situation at hand? How do the contents and key factors of both cross-reference from one domain to the other, to see each other and interact with each other back and forth to generate something like the emergent and final results (what we really do, the real outcome that occurs) and then to what degree can these outcomes be said to be associated with us as an individual being and person, the âIâ and overall self from which the outcomes emerge and for which they are assigned meaning and moral if not also causal relevance? We might be influenced by a host of factors outside our control, but this doesnât absolve us from being or acting as the focal point and major reference, the âthat from which the perspective obtainsâ regarding what is actually done in the real world. There is still a degree of âus-nessâ or âme-nessâ even when we trace causal determinants out beyond ourselves and into the world and history around us. This is in part the feeling of it that Nietzsche mentioned, and also in part what Shopenhauer touched on when he said we can do what we intend but we cannot intend what we intend. What we intend is simply âwho/what we areâ just as the biological factors that make us up do not belie or belittle what we are by being diverse-discursive or unknown and having their own proper natures and realities but rather define what we are to begin with. Part of what we are is beings that experience causal determination in a very complex, subtle and sophisticated manner and process all of that through self-reference in terms of our own meanings, perceptions and desires for a total self-valuational perspective that takes into account other beings and their valuation in degrees usually in terms of their closeness in relation to ourselves. This is simply one aspect of what we are, along with our total possible degrees of freedom in any situation and context and what we actually do intent, our âwillâ again which is also situational and contextual.
The fact that things have causes, contexts, reasons for being what they are does not belie those things but rather supports and ontologically defines them into being. It makes them MORE real, more substantial and meaningful, not less. This is a key perspective to understand when we try to look at what is meant by the notion of free will. Just like in the inverse, the whole idea that because we exist within causal determination and what we do/are is always with reference to causes and reasons beyond us, the idea this is somehow a slight or makes us lesser is simply absurd. Imagine a being that doesnât even interact with the world around it, that doesnât attempt to accurately take clues and cues from its environments and weave these into the causality of what is actually is and does, within the overall scope and need and valuation of its own being? That would be a silly being indeed.
The fact that we exist causally-deterministically is part of the power that adds to our degrees of freedom, as well as to our power of intentionality or âwillingâ. The more we know of, embrace and understand and push into the deeper lines and linkages of causal realities around us and wed throughout and within-between us and everything else, the more powerful we become, the more real we become, the more ethical we become (possibly anyway) and the more we expand our own degrees of possible actions, and the more we really are able to be what we really are. This entire picture is much closer to the actual reality and truth of what is meant when people use the term âfree willâ than any silly little agent causation or anti-determinism theories.
The definition matters.
Conventional use is irrelevant.
A word represents a concept.
How we define the word determines our understanding of the concept.
We can define a concept in a way that would make it impossible for it to exist, even if we experience it daily.
Iâm not saying to impose our definitions on others.
Iâm saying to use an objective standard, like an action.
Will is an action. An action with intent.
We begin, when and if possible, with what we all experience and can independently verify.
In the case of âfree-willâ we have a qualifying term, âfree,â and a term referring to an act we all experience in others and in ourselves.
No need for a deeper understanding or explanation, at this point.
Will is not a âthing.â it is an act. Every organic act is an act of willâŚthat is to say, it is an act with an intent, an objective.
We all will.
Will is what differentiate the living from the non-living.
Will is the act - intentionality - in relation to an objective.
Only life has objectives, and so only life wills.
No need for an understanding of the brain, or how this all works⌠like gravity, or light, we experience it, so it exists.
We can interact with it, and so it exists.
Our understanding can begin with the acknowledgment of an act we can all independently experience.
All our definitions must be limited by the act itself.
Will is how an organism focuses its aggregate energies upon an objective.
Schopenhauer claimed that the primary (primal) objective is life - Will to Life.
This is another way of sayingâŚWill to Will.
Will willing itself.
He was msitakenâŚthere is no Will "outside space/timeâ or causality.
Schopenhauer simply took Abrahamismâs Godâs Will and eliminated the âgodâ part. Eliminated cosmic intentionality.
Nietzsche expanded the concept or reduced it to its basic component: power.
Power is another way of saying âenergy.â
All is energy.
Willing continuously consumes and attempts to replenish its energies.
Only one lifeform can place an objective above life. itself.
He wanted to differentiate higher form lower life forms - or aristocratic from base willing.
Will power, does not mean a will must be omnipotent.
In fact, if it were to become omnipotent it would cease willing.
The key term there is âtoâ, signifying movement - intentionality.
A movement towards an objective.
Consequently Free-Will does not imply the will must be liberated from the determined past, or from causality, or from suffering.
A free-will need not be god-like to have freedom, no more than it needs to be omnipotent to have power.
The attainability of an objective is also determined by how weâve chosen to define it.
Our choice - whether it be adopted or not - exposes our intent.
If we subconsciously want to not attain an objective, we define it in ways that make it unattainableâŚ
All value-judgements are based on a subjective relationship with its chosen objective.
Intentionality exposes the nature of the subject. Its essence.
All concepts can be defined in ways that make them absurd or impossible to exist.
Like âgod,â as it has been defined by Abrahamism - adopted by Marxismst and Moderns/Postmoderns.
Like âmorality,â as it has been defined by Abrahamism.
Abrahamism is the issue.
It defines concepts in supernatural terms, essentially defines them âout of existenceâ for reasons I will not get into here.
Welcome back.
Now letâs see if you can do better this time around 
HamburgersâŚ
No Iâm not.
The retard will have to ban me, this time.
You know heâs aching for an excuse.
Sure but donât give him one.
And be glad youâre back here, one day after I posted for you to be back. Strange coinkidink eh?
Then maybe, just maybe, try to read a bit deeper into the whole cheese burgers thing. Just saying.
Your own density can also be your own undoing. Ever heard of decompression sickness or the bends? I recommend you pace yourself.
Be careful what you wish for, HamburglerâŚwhen you evoke the devilâs name he will appear.
Oh, I donât mean to take this place seriuoslyâŚ
Is it not a place for banter?
But our new friends came here with legitimate curiosity⌠and are not like you.
Hypocrites.
The response was directed to them, not you.
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