Of course if you don’t believe in free will, ‘they’ can’t help themselves. ‘They’ react to certain behaviors in ways determined all the way back in the Big Bang. There are no oppressors, since there are no agents.
If they are the only things that are seen as free, but if the whole thing is creative and free, then they would be participating in something rather than being separate from it.
Meaning is an illusion. Or rather, it’s an illusion when it is carried beyond meaningful grounds, such as when it’s made to be an unhuman and inhuman artifact. Still, I’m curious why you think a lack of free has all these implications on belief, truth, and knowledge in general.
Even if we had free will, you could still not dispute the fact that what we believe is not a function of choice. Try an experiment if you want. Try to believe that there’s a pink unicorn in your room right now. Try to disbelieve that you’re looking at a screen.
Hint: you can’t.
I don’t understand anything you ever say. Your writing style escapes my comprehension. 
Is freedom indeterminate then?
Do you want to be free? What is it that would be an obstacle to you if your freedom is not found? Do you care if things are determined or undetermined?
We don’t want to be free from what we know and what we have psychologically. If we were to be somehow freed from the knowledge we have about being free and not being free (freedom), there would be no “freedom.” Having no concern at all for freedom, including its implications, is a kind of freedom itself. It’s when you think – that you will arrive at something that will make your life better when you find freedom – that keeps you from freedom today.
Exactly. However, It doesn’t follow from your arguments that ultimately everything is not determined. But the complexity of how it is all determined is beyond our ken. So, practically speaking, granting at least a limited degree of cognitive freedom makes sense.
2op
Sure there’s free will, you ask me a question derived from your informational thought, it then passes through the physical medium and is translated back into informational thought in my mind. I then think about your question then answer it and an exchange is made. I know this occurs because its me doing it and I know it occurs in you because my questions and answers are replied to correctly via derivatives.
That doesn’t mean we are alien to the world, it just means the world is more than physical. There remains no duality because consciousness is a dimension [or something like] and facet of the multifaceted reality we live in.
Did I just jump to conclusions? Sure I did, but so did you in assuming there is no thinker which changes information brought into its sphere of perception.
No, not at all. Haven’t even taken a shot at that.
I just think the determinist position is a strange one - this does not mean it is wrong, but once you go about arguing in favor of it, you end up seeming like you do not believe in determinism or haven’t fully gotten the implications of it.
Freewill is one of those discussions that will really never have an answer. I believe that it is pointless anyways. We will all continue to live our lives as though we all have free will anyways.
Freedom is a illusion. Of course it exists in it’s delusional form much like any other belief.
Is it a delusion to believe in a self? What tells you there’s a self … with what do you to look at self?
You use your past experiences to help in describing what it is you call ‘self.’ You are encased in your past which is controlling everything, determining everything. That’s all you know and all you think. There’s nothing beyond that. So, what is this freedom being talking about? Even if you are dexterous at mentally modifying basic knowledge and producing ‘original’ thoughts, you still relied on the basics that were given you. The brain is not free to create. Neurons are limited to translation, conversion and containing.
There is a self but that doesn’t mean it is “free” from limitations or conditioned environments.
If you want we could even reduce the sense of self to neurological and brain chemical processes. It doesn’t change a thing for me really.
Yeah.
Presumably you think this is true for you. If it is true for you, then really, you have no idea if the above makes sense or if it applies to others. The way YOU generalize, by your own admission, is completely controlled by YOUR past.
You might be wrong about others who you only presume, compelled as you are to do so, are the same as you.
Once the position is taken that 1) one is compelled to have the beliefs one has and 2) one’s own ability to evaluate one’s own reasoning is controlled in the same way
I can’t see why someone, if they really believed this, would go ahead and present rational arguments.
Man is memory. One major function of the brain is to retain one’s stock of knowledge and experience. This ability, as a container, allows you to retain learned information and knowledge of past events and to retrieve that data and knowledge.
The functioning as a container of memory is the same functioning of the brain for everyone. Of course the information and experiences contained therein will be different.
Your constant use of memory (specifically the knowledge and thought) to create in you an identity with a ‘self’ and retain that self as ‘you’, is all that is there in you.
It is not you who is capable of irrationality. It is, rather, the knowledge that is used to communicate with that is capable of irrationality, even menace.
I don’t think you understood. Once you believe that your personal memory is controlling your beliefs, utterly, than any conclusion you draw or rationale you present is not only suspect but impossible for you to evaluate. Nevertheless you build from what you think is knowledge of yourself to generalized statements about everyone. This makes me think you do not understand the implications of your own belief.
I think the assumption is that this deterministic process is universal; and if everyone is affected by it (whether aware or not), any derived rationality is based upon and referred to a co-created scaffolding of knowledge. The point is that we continue to rationalize because it’s a part of the process; we don’t have the “freedom” to turn it off. Considering that the process continues, I don’t think it hurts to direct it at a philosophical forum where we can enjoy in its perpetuation.
TheJoker kindof understands.
Most of you sound silly to me in your replies.
Choice is a determining force based on how everything reacts with itself in the mind.
If we had 100% free will, only our free will would produce outcomes mentally.
Instead, our childhood environment can be hugely influencial on how we behave and think later in life.
Free Will is a mass delusion.
People don’t want to admit that they can’t fully control and choose what they are.
If I was free to choose my nature, i’d not be human at all. I’d be something far better, if i could be, but i can’t.
Being able to want something doesn’t make you free.
A prisoner can want to be out of the cell, but wanting that doesn’t mean he’s free. He’s still stuck there.
We can want to be better, but that alone isn’t enough to make us free.
Freedom requires a means to an end.
We don’t choose our genes or our culture or anything.
We don’t have the means to self determination.
What we do have is a weak force of internal optimization.
Choice functions as a system typically meant to optimize life.
Choice is mostly good. But it’s not free from the causal nature of the universe.
I’ll explain why free will sucks:
Christian free will assumes that God creates everybody with an equal soul.
God gives the soul free will.
The soul controls how we think and act.
God gave the soul the ability to determine its own behavior, and if it does something bad,
it’s not God’s fault, because God made it self causal and independant from God, only
having itself to blame.
This is nonsense because it has no proof or foundation.
Brain chemistry is a determining force.
How the brain reacts to itself and its stimulus produces choice, but, that choice is not free of itself or its cause.
Anyone whom doesn’t understand this I will judge as foolish.
Enemies and oppressors are people who prevent you from getting what you want. Nothing to do with determinism or free will.
Why should there be doubt?