Biological Will

[surreptitious75]

There are consequences for choices and penalties to be paid for wrong ones but sometimes for the right ones also
Mistakes are unavoidable but also necessary because it is through those experiences that we grow as moral beings

[Meno_]

There are agencies which absorbed responsibility in the hierarchy or the agencies' standing, where responsibility induced far enough down that hierarchy may perceive perceived vastly larger latitude of action , without needing to find right from wrong.

The liberal trend in the enforcement of misdemeanors and infractions stemming from traffic violations have been grossly liberalized within the span of the last few decades. The gradations within the liberal spectrum have had causitive underlying politocal and economic pressures upon them, which harm to be relaxed for various reasons. The conservative overall agenda may have such pockets within them, appearing as such, and in no way conflicting with overall conservative positions.

As matter of fact , such do the opposite to what they seem, and the contradiction is illusionary, for they are based not on logistics of equaminty, but serve compensatory goals for stability.

The same goes form the appearent moral/ethical divide.
The contradiction is subscribed to, for political , reactionary purposes.

[Artimas]

@Artimas

No you can't really. Because determinism is an argument that the past or external aspects to will must control the present moment, that we react based off of what has happened to us. This is called indoctrination.

I could just as easily say freewill is Christian indoctrination, or globalist, the idea that our biology, race, sex and upbringing have little-no bearing on who we are and our behavior, the notion that the past has next to nothing to do with our identity.

You have a will of which is free and you use it under the false guise of being determined,

Here it sounds like you're admitting determinists are still exercising their freewill subconsciously.
Behaviorally does it really matter whether one believes they have it or not?

Determinism is a descriptive position, not prescriptive.
Determinists don't necessarily believe we should try to align our behavior with what we believe about our neuropsychological nature, they only necessarily believe that our behavior is the result of our nature reacting, or responding situationally, and that our nature was formed by our past biological and psychosocial conditioning, nurturing, whether we're conscious of it or not.
It's an explanation for why they think, feel and do what they do, not them trying to act in accordance with some psychoanalytic construct of themselves they've accepted.

Determinists aren't necessarily anymore rigid than indeterminists.
Determinists permit deviation.
If determinists diverge from what they believe to be their norm, this too they will chalk up to their nature, which they recognize can be complex, dynamic, fluid and so at times ambiguous, but still causal, whereas indeterminists will (tend to) attribute it to freewill, metaphysical spontaneity, partly or fully acting independently of one's nature, that is if they admit they have a nature at all.

Determinism isn't anti-deviation from one's beliefs about oneself, it is just an explanation for how we came to be as we are, whether one is or isn't presently conforming with their norm, or whether the determinist believes what they believe to be their norm needs to be reassessed in light of compounding aberrations.

but be my guest if you wish to throw away the only freedom you have, to be yourself. What's innovation if all is external? Experience can happen internal with the will alone.

For me the freewill vs determinist debate is a lot like two guys watching this dancer:



One guy declares she's twirling clockwise, the other insists she's twirling anticlockwise.
So which one is it?
The reality is: it can validly be interpreted either way.
She's turning both/neither, it's ambiguous, yet our brain normally compels us to interpret it as wholly one or the other at a time.

Well, a lot of reality works like that, perhaps especially the dimensions of reality philosophers have tasked themselves with exploring and making sense of: the meta.
It's why the philosophical community rarely arrives at widespread consensus on anything, even after millennia of discourse on the same subjects, by and large these riddles remain unresolved, which's not to say everything the scientific community says is set in stone either, but I digress.

Absolute vs relative, objective vs. subjective...freewill vs. determinism, nearly every regular on these boards has an opinion, and they remain just that, an opinion.
And everyone has an argument and sometimes it can be said one has gotten the better of it, but fundamentally these disputes remain unsettled, and probably always will be for the foreseeable future as long as man is man.

Really they're humbling, or they ought be, because we're coming to the limits of what we can know.
If anything they ought to make us all the more empathetic, openminded, tolerant of a broader array of perspectives, but instead as so often happens on these boards, they only serve to make us even more stubborn and unwavering, and in my opinion, that is real a shame.
We don't know it all, not even close, but isn't that the source of all true philosophy and science, it's been said, that sense, that feeling of wonder?

This seems to be for the most part, accurate.

It is a matter of perception, determinism could be associated with pessimism/nihilism from my view and free will the opposite, if you balance yourself between the two extremes, you see that both exist. It depends upon the mind in which one sees realities functioning. The semantics don't really even matter, we all speak differently but of the same thing ultimately but from my consensus, without a free will we cannot observe a deterministic system, it would be impossible because the system itself would not reveal itself, yet it does and we discuss such, it's because no matter what we do, we have the option to learn contextually, negative or positive. But the contrast shapes the perception you see. For every bad there is a good, extremes and a middle. The balance achieved is where one may switch their own perception to see both sides of just about anything,(often referred to as enlightenment) the philosophical capability to learn just about anything in existence. Even the imagination is real, we may or may not manifest anything within its realm, the real question is, should we and what.

Man this is a crazy existence and world to be in, I'm glad I am here with you all, despite our differences in language and perception.

Determinism determined itself free you see, by allowing learning to be available to perception contextually through any scenario. For every question, the contextual questions may be posed, learned/undeestood and answered, who, why, where, what, why, how, and for every possible question we are lead to, there will always be more contextual freedom than not. I hope this makes sense. And if such is the case that more of those contextual questions are free in terms of availability of options than not, then the will is more free than not and may only grow more free through an inevitability that is both absolute but at the same time a continuity, wisdom.

[Gloominary]

Now what follows is just a thought experiment, I haven't given this that much thought and may very well be dead wrong about it:

But, is determinism really that falsifiable?

If I flip a coin 100 times, odds are I'll get heads about 50 times and tails 50.
However, what are the odds I'll get heads exactly 50 times and tails 50?
It's more likely I'll get heads 50 times and tails 50 than any other outcome, like say getting heads 100 times and tails 0 or vice versa, the two least likely outcomes, but getting H51 and T49 or vice versa isn't much less likely than H50 and T50, nor H52 and T48 and so on, so it's actually very unlikely I'll get exactly H50 and T50.
Now what if I flipped the coin in 100 sets, and in each set I flipped it 100 times?
While getting close to H50 and T50 would probably come up much or most of the time, in some sets I might get about H80 and T20 or vice versa, in a few sets I might even get close to 100H and 0T or vice versa.

Now when we look at human behavior, we look for patterns...in fact we're pattern fixated, we ignore randomness, so there may be far more of it out there, and in here than we're aware of, or care to admit.
Humans are complicated beings, and while no behavior may appear in the same or very similar situations 100% of the time, some behaviors show up more frequently than others.
Some behavioral patterns, like consuming food over non-food occur frequently (but yes there's exceptions, like people eating deodorant, glue, etcetera), but other behavioral patterns are weak to nonexistent, like what color we prefer, there doesn't appear to be a strong tendency in color preference among humans as a whole.
And some behaviors, like trying to shove a bowling ball through your ear while licking a pinecone and bouncing on one foot to the rhythm of Joy Division's song 'dance to the radio' probably never made an appearance, altho it may after me writing this.

Now what makes us so certain any of these behavioral patterns were determined?
What even makes it probable?
Again, even in a perfectly random, extremely complex system, where lots of things are occurring over a very long period of time, patterns, like getting heads thousands, perhaps millions of times while getting tails only once are bound to show up from time to time, it still wouldn't prove it's not perfectly random.

Perhaps human beings and everything we do is an exercise of freewill...perhaps the entire cosmos is.

For the determinist, one instance of H2 and T0 is enough to prove the cosmos prefers H, and for the indeterminist, one instance of H1 and T1 is enough to prove the cosmos has no preference, but in this cosmos, we encounter billions of things we think we can explain, and billions of things we think we can't, billions of instances of chaos and billions of order.
Todays inexplicable becomes tomorrows explicable and vice versa.
Today it's fashionable to think the cosmos is 100% orderly, and that instances of apparent chaos are a by-product of order, but yesterday it wasn't and tomorrow it probably won't be either, it could just as easily be said the apparent order is a by-product of chaos.

[Artimas]

Now what follows is just a thought experiment, I haven't given this that much thought and may very well be dead wrong about it:

But, is determinism really that falsifiable?

If I flip a coin 100 times, odds are I'll get heads about 50 times and tails 50.
However, what are the odds I'll get heads exactly 50 times and tails 50?
It's more likely I'll get heads 50 times and tails 50 than any other outcome, like say getting heads 100 times and tails 0 or vice versa, the two least likely outcomes, but getting H51 and T49 or vice versa isn't much less likely than H50 and T50, nor H52 and T48 and so on, so it's actually very unlikely I'll get exactly H50 and T50.
Now what if I flipped the coin in 100 sets, and in each set I flipped it 100 times?
While getting close to H50 and T50 would probably come up much or most of the time, in some sets I might get about H80 and T20 or vice versa, in a few sets I might even get close to 100H and 0T or vice versa.

Now when we look at human behavior, we look for patterns...in fact we're pattern fixated, we ignore randomness, so there may be far more of it out there, and in here than we're aware of, or care to admit.
Humans are complicated beings, and while no behavior may appear in the same or very similar situations 100% of the time, some behaviors show up more frequently than others.
Some behavioral patterns, like consuming food over non-food occur frequently (but yes there's exceptions, like people eating deodorant, glue, etcetera), but other behavioral patterns are weak to nonexistent, like what color we prefer, there doesn't appear to be a strong tendency in color preference among humans as a whole.
And some behaviors, like trying to shove a bowling ball through your ear while licking a pinecone and bouncing on one foot to the rhythm of Joy Division's song 'dance to the radio' probably never made an appearance, altho it may after me writing this.

Now what makes us so certain any of these behavioral patterns were determined?
What even makes it probable?
Again, even in a perfectly random, extremely complex system, where lots of things are occurring over a very long period of time, patterns, like getting heads thousands, perhaps millions of times while getting tails only once are bound to show up from time to time, it still wouldn't prove it's not perfectly random.

Perhaps human beings and everything we do is an exercise of freewill...perhaps the entire cosmos is.

For the determinist, one instance of H2 and T0 is enough to prove the cosmos prefers H, and for the indeterminist, one instance of H1 and T1 is enough to prove the cosmos has no preference, but in this cosmos, we encounter billions of things we think we can explain, and billions of things we think we can't, billions of instances of chaos and billions of order.
Todays inexplicable becomes tomorrows explicable and vice versa.
Today it's fashionable to think the cosmos is 100% orderly, and that instances of apparent chaos are a by-product of order, but yesterday it wasn't and tomorrow it probably won't be either, it could just as easily be said the apparent order is a by-product of chaos.

Good analogy and post.

I made a similar point before, I'm not sure if it was in this thread or "New Discovery" but basically the idea was that it's the consistency of usage of free will that blinds us to its existing and so we automatically bounce to another idea, which is determinism and both do exist but work based off of the framework of one's mind and their perception of reality. The key is to learn to swap perception at will, once this is learned and understood, one can see so much and think so deep that ones mind will show them near whatever it is one wishes to see.

Chaos does still exist, it always will. Just like darkness and nothingness. The oldest teaches it's youngest brother and even if the oldest were to die completely, the youngest brother will still carry within it, it's older brothers lessons. And if carried still, it is not truly dead. Contrast has to exist for balance and existence to be. So we are caught up in an ever growing/expanding variety of differentiating contrasts that never ends in it's multiplying variables. Determinism and free will are two contrasts go each other in language, yet both exist based off perception. I view it a little more objectively though, such as a subconscious state being much more deterministic than a conscious state. The observation can be made by us viewing humanity in comparison to animals in nature. We as conscious individuals compared to animals whom are subconscious.

A subconscious state, I view as something that can possess knowledge and understand from direct experience to an extent but not able to always apply such knowledge effectively nor think in terms of a priori.

Conscious state is being able to understand knowledge completely with usage of a-priori as well.

[promethean75]

It is a matter of perception, determinism could be associated with pessimism/nihilism from my view and free will the opposite

those determinists are just as confused as the freewillists. in the same way that pure nihilism is impossible (everyone values something), fatalism is as well. it makes not one iota of difference what the cause of me deciding to eat a bagel really is; would i decide not to eat the bagel if i discovered my choice was caused by something other than myself?

'here man, have a bagel'

'can't do it, bro. i'm not sure it'll be my choice to take it. what if my brain is making me think i chose to take it? '

'wtf difference does it make, dude?'

'it fucking makes a difference dude because i want what i do, to matter... i want to be the one in control, i want the freedom to be able to choose or not choose to eat the bagel. if i can't be certain i don't have the freewill to take that bagel, i won't take it and i'll sit right here and fucking starve to death because i'm a fatalist and a nihilist and a pessimist now'

'suit yourself. one more bagel for me.'

now, would he really do this? this is what i mean when i say there is very little praxis in this problem; very little is changed by the verdict except for a reorientation of moral attitude toward others. you'd find no observable difference between a determinist and a freewillist except that the freewillist will have a tendency to complain more... especially about what other people do. when the freewillist is offended, he blames and manipulates and undermines, he poisons the conscience. when the determinist is offended, he attacks. he couldn't give two shits about what the cause really is. x does y and i don't like y; attack. get her done, bro. moreover, the determinist also possesses greater patience and undertanding. he knows choices are never random... he knows people can't not believe what they do is the 'right' thing to do... he knows everyone acts toward greater satisfaction. he is quicker to put himself 'in the other's shoes', to switch perspectives. he is in every way conceivable more evolved, intellectually and spiritually. the freewillist is a philosophical toddler by comparison who's world would come crashing down at the thought of no longer being able hate something. and this is only the psychological profile of the freewillist. the intellectual profile is even worse. like the freewill/determinism test is one of the easiest to pass. it's hardly even philosophy 101.

if you balance yourself between the two extremes, you see that both exist.

naw, this is an 'all or none' deal, bro. either the natural laws pervade completely and absolutely throughout all space/time, or they do not. there is no 'sometimes' my choice is free and 'sometimes' it isn't. there is no sometimes a special causative immaterial cartesian agency breaches material causes and makes the body move and sometimes it doesn't.

Man this is a crazy existence and world to be in, I'm glad I am here with you all

oh c'mere ya big lug. give us a hug. i know it's hard, man. the internet is a veritable cornucopia of philosophical nonsense and it's very easy to get swept up in it if you aren't careful. imma look out for you though, homes.

[Artimas]

naw, this is an 'all or none' deal, bro. either the natural laws pervade completely and absolutely throughout all space/time, or they do not. there is no 'sometimes' my choice is free and 'sometimes' it isn't. there is no sometimes a special causative immaterial cartesian agency breaches material causes and makes the body move and sometimes it doesn't.

A determinist is someone whom gives power to context over will, instead of will having power over context. Whichever you believe, will be. I see it everyday. No excuses, no blame, no complaining. What do I care if one sacrifices their only freedom, will? The only effect it has on me is universal for the entire species, it doesn't help me more than it helps the individual trapped by context, aka determinism. The only absolutes that I can see exist for sure are, nothing, something, energy, pain, wisdom. Determinism isn't an absolute when it is in the process of freeing itself. Though you can observe them both being somewhat absolute, determinism being a past absolute. Free will being a future absolute though both are continuities in a sense, based off perception.

It isn't 'sometimes'. That isn't what is being said. It's a matter of how you look at it. It's all the time, perception is what alters it. Both exist and are observable by/of varying differentiation in option, understanding, etc, through individuals, both human and animal. Comparison. It's the changing of perception that makes it seem as if it is "sometimes" but both, are all the time.. Whether you wish to observe and attribute it value is up to you, but our valuing it or not doesn't matter to its functioning how it does. I value determinism as far as it goes but I value free will as well as it has more power over context if such is believed and executed from points of understanding.

Determinism does seem nihilistic because if everything results from a system out of an individuals control, then things become more meaningless, less freedom, things seem to have less value.

when it's just a view, not the full case of being.

There are also a lot of things I have done in a present moment that I knew weren't the right things to do, people do it all the time, self destruction. Deterministic instincts and emotions such as anger, fear, etc, kept me from the true doing the right thing. Once such it realized, the will may become free by understanding how to execute oneself properly and bypass or not give full power to that system of instinct. But this is a choice between two paths, a fork in the road. One path is to play victim and give power to context over will, the other is to give power to will and be better, to learn, pursue wisdom, practice such. That is an execution of a free will by a past deterministic event (instinct) then, being understood after. Every event results in the will becoming more free. How can you not see that? Why is that so against what you say?
It was not free to attain but it is free to use, forever. Wisdom is power, is it not? Hence, a free will. Freedom must be fought for, it must be chosen.

[MagsJ]

Can't say that I do.

He was no fun.. no fun..

Regarding a freely-minded person, a Free-Man, let's start with the obvious. When an individual goes through life, and most people and the Determinists here (Sil and Prom), say "You can't do X. You can't do Y. You can't do Z. It's impossible!" Then this individual keeps proving them wrong. He keeps doing what others say cannot be done. He will begin to laugh at "Determinism". Reduced, it's a matter of ability/power. Some people can do what others can't. And the most exceptional, make it look easy. A great athlete surprises his competitors and the audience, which is why Professional sports have millions and millions of fans who watch daily, the Spectacle. That very spectacle is as I say it is. Some individuals, Excellent and Noble, keep proving everybody wrong and denying expectations.

Not all are meant to achieve excellence in their field, be a high-achiever, etc. as they are the exceptions to the rules.

Denying the Determinists. But I don't want anybody here to presume that any power or authority is in the hands of the Determinists. Because it's not about living up to their expectations. It's about denying and laughing at them. You live up to your own expectations, which are vastly higher and "out-of-bounds" of everybody else. That's what makes somebody an Individual, and Free.

Sounds like determinism is designed to put one in one's (designated) place.. this is your lot, you ain't getting any more so don't expect any more. Who do they think they are..

That's what makes the rare types Un-determined. Because your rules, your limits, your expectations, do not necessarily apply to others. They apply to yourself, yes, but not everybody and everything.

i.e. don't try this at home kids.. because you can't!

Again, most people are negative-minded, Nihilistic, wanting to pull others down instead of raise themselves up. It's easy to be dominated by Limitations, Failure, and Apathy. You give up. You gave up, long ago. But the Free-Man never gave up. It's not in his vocabulary or method of thought. He keeps striving to individual goals, which are higher than everybody else. A higher standard, set of rules, laws.

A Higher Order.

Beam me up, Scotty?

Toxic types should be eliminated, and then they are free to do whatever they want within the very confines that they have set for others, to work within for themselves.

Friends become enemies and then strangers, family become strangers but not enemies, and the mind becomes content.. at its own expense.. never should it be at the expense of others, for that is a false dichotomy.

[promethean75]

Determinism does seem nihilistic because if everything results from a system out of an individuals control, then things become more meaningless, less freedom, things seem to have less value.

who or what is 'responsible' for some state of affairs is a question less important than the gravity of the deed, why it happened, and what can be changed to prevent it from happening again. a freewillist looks for a meager individual and quibbles over stupid moral questions like 'didn't you know better?' a determinist proper is above this arbitrary pettiness and places his inquisition elsewhere; he looks at the entire age, or the systemic political, economic and social structures in place... he doesn't ask 'omg how could this asshole have done this', because that's an amateur question. rather he asks, what about this person, what he believes, his environment, his education, etc., would contribute to him thinking what he did was the rational thing to do. the freewillist, on the other hand, needs to significantly narrow the scope of investigation so that he can comfortably grasp what he is intellectually unable to approach, much less accept. he must be able to simplify the problem so that he can comprehend it. he does these things like this; first he tells himself he knows what is 'right'. then he tells himself that everybody else is able to understand, and know, how what he tells himself is right, is right. finally he blames someone when they don't do what he thinks they think is the right thing to do. then comes the moral culpability, the blame, the guilt, and the shame. now it is much, much easier to do it this way then it would be to establish these facts first and foremost and proceed from there:

a) there is no imperative 'right' in this universe.
b) even if there was, you can't be sure you'd be able to discover what this 'right' was.
c) even if you did discover what this 'right' was, you can't be sure anybody else should be able to discover it as you have.

once this is understood, the entire approach to morality changes. the determinist recognizes that the impetus of every action is for the good - this means, a maximization of benefit in a particular context according to the person's understanding of things. a man steals a loaf of bread. no no no you shouldn't have done that, it's illegal! but is it therefore wrong? is 'wrong' and 'illegal' necessarily synonymous? if no, then there is no more substance to his guilt than there is to the asshats who try to shame him for doing it. ah but see it would be far more difficult to challenge the whole system for putting into place the circumstances that made that theft possible then it would be to just call the thief a bad guy and put him away. the pretense needed for this series of deceptions is freewill and objective morality. and so far, our leaders have been just such liars and imbeciles. in fact i couldn't really call them liars, because they actually believe in this nonsense.

what seems to boggle the minds of amateur freewillists is how a determinist could hold any entity responsible if there is no cartesian agency behind the wheel. this very question itself, that they would ask such a thing and scratch their heads over it, betrays the simplicity of their intellect and how tedious their discourse with men and state must be. these people are entirely oblivious to the world and lack the vision for looking deeper into the forces that move things. but what am i saying? the most difficult moral quandary these dummies have ever faced was an argument over who used the car last and left the gas tank empty. here, i suppose it is as easy as 'it's your fault, dude!' these folks can't help but extend this simple understanding into contexts which require a much more critical examination of the premises of the freewill argument... but most importantly, the veracity of the consequences if they're wrong.

now then. on the matter of 'holding responsible'. does one need to know what the cause of a deed is before they can make the judgement; 'this is wrong'? if a p-zombie shot a dude in the parking lot, and i later discovered this culprit to be a robot, would i be any less offended by the deed? do i need to know there was a 'free causative agent' responsible for making it happen, to be able to be repulsed by it? what does it matter if there are one or twenty people inside his head that made the choice to shoot this guy? i'm not looking to blame anyone. i'm not looking to hold anyone responsible. and i'm not doing these things because a) they can't be done philosophically, and b) i couldn't care less, anyway. what i'm trying to do is change and/or modify the circumstances that brought about this event, and i do this by examining the causes at work... one of which is not some ghost in the machine that has the magical ability to know what is objectively right... and then deliberately make the decision to do what is wrong, instead. none of this nonsense is in any way relevant to the determinist. to the freewillist, sure, because his head is not only occupied by a ghost in the machine, but also full of pancake batter as well.

so what does the determinist do to rectify a situation in which he has made the judgement; this is wrong. he sets out to change and/or eliminate factors and forces without paying any attention to the entity through which these things have manifested in the commission of the deed. the 'person' is almost infinitely less important than the structures in place making such an event possible. example. a lying, opportunistic prosecutor who charges a man with a crime he didn't commit. is what he did his fault? that's a cool question, but what the fuck does that matter? what matters is that this was even possible, and that this happens all the time all over the world. so... what makes this possible is our question. what allows lying, opportunistic prosecutors to exist, and how do we stop them from popping up all over the place? well, for one thing we don't waste our time shaking our finger at any one of them because we don't believe in freewill. this guy is a symptom, not a cause. get that straight first. next, ask what can be done with him, or to him, to contribute to preventing others like him from happening. we don't waste our time arguing with this piece of shit over such things as 'you shoulda known better' and 'what you did was wrong'. why? because who are we to say he shoulda known better, or that what he did was wrong? this kind of argument is for philosophers and amateur freewillists. what we determinists look for is consistency in structure between state and practice, between personal moral conviction and action, and we find circumstances that are producing conflicts between these things. we don't demand 'do the right thing', but rather 'do what you say and say what you do'. first criteria for establishing the social contract between state and citizen. later we can examine whether or not what is said and done is effective in producing optimal conditions for the improvement of life. but until you get this shit taken care of, you're still at level one. playing the stupid blame game because you are wholly ignorant of the mechanics of causality.

i'm beginning to feel like freewillists envy the determinist... like they feel impotent in the presence of such great architects. i understand some of this, and some of it i do not. i do understand the envy one experiences in the presence of a superior thinker (i experienced this in my adolescence), and the anguish of being forlorn and forgotten by someone you've always wanted to impress... but i don't understand the sense of panic these people experience at the thought of not having freewill. well wait. that's not what they panic about. the panic is over someone else not having freewill... because then they are unable to resent and hate. these miserable weaklings need such privilege more than anything else. a catharsis, as it were, to expunge one's impotence of action. but this psychosis runs so deep that even they aren't aware of it, and can even pass off as decent, regular folk. and yet this is what is so dangerous about what philosophy/religion has done covertly over the last few thousand years. a meme so powerful that it almost becomes genetic... almost an intrinsic feature of a certain type of person who can't be anything but a bad apple. you'd damn near have to perform a lobotomy to get rid of it, and i even believe that despite the triumph of science and the revolution of our future educational systems to follow, there will still be that type of person who can't get past this profoundest of errors (the belief in freewill). maybe one day they'll identify the gene(s) responsible for this psychosis.

but i personally have never been less forceful because i knew i had no freewill. it never bothered me in the least, because i never felt less in control without it. if anything, the range of my power has expanded. whole zeitgeists speak and work through me. what matters the little cartesian 'I' in this grand economy? but enough. i've spent another twenty minutes i could have spent rearranging my sock drawer.

[Urwrongx1000]

who or what is 'responsible' for some state of affairs is a question less important than the gravity of the deed, why it happened,

But....you can't know why anything happened without first locating its source, its 'responsibility'...

and what can be changed to prevent it from happening again. a freewillist looks for a meager individual and quibbles over stupid moral questions like 'didn't you know better?' a determinist proper is above this arbitrary pettiness and places his inquisition elsewhere; he looks at the entire age, or the systemic political, economic and social structures in place... he doesn't ask 'omg how could this asshole have done this', because that's an amateur question. rather he asks, what about this person, what he believes, his environment, his education, etc., would contribute to him thinking what he did was the rational thing to do. the freewillist, on the other hand, needs to significantly narrow the scope of investigation so that he can comfortably grasp what he is intellectually unable to approach, much less accept. he must be able to simplify the problem so that he can comprehend it. he does these things like this; first he tells himself he knows what is 'right'. then he tells himself that everybody else is able to understand, and know, how what he tells himself is right, is right. finally he blames someone when they don't do what he thinks they think is the right thing to do. then comes the moral culpability, the blame, the guilt, and the shame. now it is much, much easier to do it this way then it would be to establish these facts first and foremost and proceed from there:

a) there is no imperative 'right' in this universe.
b) even if there was, you can't be sure you'd be able to discover what this 'right' was.
c) even if you did discover what this 'right' was, you can't be sure anybody else should be able to discover it as you have.

once this is understood, the entire approach to morality changes. the determinist recognizes that the impetus of every action is for the good - this means, a maximization of benefit in a particular context according to the person's understanding of things. a man steals a loaf of bread. no no no you shouldn't have done that, it's illegal! but is it therefore wrong? is 'wrong' and 'illegal' necessarily synonymous? if no, then there is no more substance to his guilt than there is to the asshats who try to shame him for doing it. ah but see it would be far more difficult to challenge the whole system for putting into place the circumstances that made that theft possible then it would be to just call the thief a bad guy and put him away. the pretense needed for this series of deceptions is freewill and objective morality. and so far, our leaders have been just such liars and imbeciles. in fact i couldn't really call them liars, because they actually believe in this nonsense.

So the thief is not responsible for stealing, nor is the baker not responsible for leaving his bread out, but "the leaders" are responsible for everything, yes??

what seems to boggle the minds of amateur freewillists is how a determinist could hold any entity responsible if there is no cartesian agency behind the wheel. this very question itself, that they would ask such a thing and scratch their heads over it, betrays the simplicity of their intellect and how tedious their discourse with men and state must be. these people are entirely oblivious to the world and lack the vision for looking deeper into the forces that move things. but what am i saying? the most difficult moral quandary these dummies have ever faced was an argument over who used the car last and left the gas tank empty. here, i suppose it is as easy as 'it's your fault, dude!' these folks can't help but extend this simple understanding into contexts which require a much more critical examination of the premises of the freewill argument... but most importantly, the veracity of the consequences if they're wrong.

If you think these topics are simple, then you'd be correct. I'm waiting on proper interlocutors to progress the discussion. Or I can go ahead, with or without you, but you wouldn't learn that way.

So whose fault is it really???

now then. on the matter of 'holding responsible'. does one need to know what the cause of a deed is before they can make the judgement; 'this is wrong'? if a p-zombie shot a dude in the parking lot, and i later discovered this culprit to be a robot, would i be any less offended by the deed? do i need to know there was a 'free causative agent' responsible for making it happen, to be able to be repulsed by it? what does it matter if there are one or twenty people inside his head that made the choice to shoot this guy? i'm not looking to blame anyone. i'm not looking to hold anyone responsible. and i'm not doing these things because a) they can't be done philosophically, and b) i couldn't care less, anyway. what i'm trying to do is change and/or modify the circumstances that brought about this event, and i do this by examining the causes at work... one of which is not some ghost in the machine that has the magical ability to know what is objectively right... and then deliberately make the decision to do what is wrong, instead. none of this nonsense is in any way relevant to the determinist. to the freewillist, sure, because his head is not only occupied by a ghost in the machine, but also full of pancake batter as well.

You're wrong here. People investigate the shootings because, ideally, understanding/knowing all the reasons, would mean that it could be prevented if-not mitigated in damage. If humanity knew-for-certain the cause of spree-shootings, or any basic murder, then they would, again ideally, try to prevent them from happening. But sometimes the causes are too fundamental and 'hurtful', to one's own ego, that the larger humanity ignores the reasons. It's too uncomfortable, that, male have less value or are less-valuable than females, for example, and so have almost nothing to lose from imposing violence upon others.

We could dig deep into the causes if we wanted to; and we should as Philosophers. But, if you want to give up, and say "it's all determined!" then you're only limiting yourself. It doesn't affect me, but it does admit your own situation, and possibly limits others' as well.

so what does the determinist do to rectify a situation in which he has made the judgement; this is wrong. he sets out to change and/or eliminate factors and forces without paying any attention to the entity through which these things have manifested in the commission of the deed. the 'person' is almost infinitely less important than the structures in place making such an event possible. example. a lying, opportunistic prosecutor who charges a man with a crime he didn't commit. is what he did his fault? that's a cool question, but what the fuck does that matter? what matters is that this was even possible, and that this happens all the time all over the world. so... what makes this possible is our question. what allows lying, opportunistic prosecutors to exist, and how do we stop them from popping up all over the place? well, for one thing we don't waste our time shaking our finger at any one of them because we don't believe in freewill. this guy is a symptom, not a cause. get that straight first. next, ask what can be done with him, or to him, to contribute to preventing others like him from happening. we don't waste our time arguing with this piece of shit over such things as 'you shoulda known better' and 'what you did was wrong'. why? because who are we to say he shoulda known better, or that what he did was wrong?

This is the 'Morality' aspect, and leadership of society. Some, few people, do "have to" be in charge of everything. Because "the people" blame each-other when things do go wrong. And there is a deep, fundamental, necessary aspect of morality and ethics, when it comes to Retribution, Revenge, and Justice. Can't you accept the possibility that it's easy for people to harm each-other, most often times, without even being aware of it.

This is where 'Power' becomes relevant. If one person is, habitually and daily, harming others, but the others can't do anything about it, because they are weaker, then at what point to people snap and risk great loss, for whatever redemption they have in-mind? As-if those who are low on social hierarchies 'should' be higher, or at least, could they have a keen or accurate sense of Justice?

No, immature and stupid people, over-exaggerate, and if you stepped on my toes, then does it warrant a death-sentence? Or isn't eye-for-an-eye more acceptable, more reasonable?

Certain crimes are not eye-for-an-eye though. If you break somebody's property, with sentimental value, then what is the worth of restitution? Who decides, what costs?

It's not me who's thinking too small here, Prom....

this kind of argument is for philosophers and amateur freewillists. what we determinists look for is consistency in structure between state and practice, between personal moral conviction and action, and we find circumstances that are producing conflicts between these things. we don't demand 'do the right thing', but rather 'do what you say and say what you do'. first criteria for establishing the social contract between state and citizen. later we can examine whether or not what is said and done is effective in producing optimal conditions for the improvement of life. but until you get this shit taken care of, you're still at level one. playing the stupid blame game because you are wholly ignorant of the mechanics of causality.

I'll clue you onto an important life-lesson, out of experience.

You can spend an entire lifetime looking through every possible-cause of everything, and you'll never have a complete picture, and it's always up for debate whether any "Authority's" picture is even accurate. It can always be undermined. And responses to the causes, Judgment, can also be flawed. So it comes down to Pragmatism. Judges/Authorities/Leaders have to "make-do" with the information they have, at the time. Is it flawed? Is it incorrect, inaccurate, wrong sometimes? Yes, but it's necessary.

In the Real-World, you have to make Decisions/Choices, based on a lack of information.


(That means you're Un-determined/Indeterminate!)

i'm beginning to feel like freewillists envy the determinist... like they feel impotent in the presence of such great architects. i understand some of this, and some of it i do not. i do understand the envy one experiences in the presence of a superior thinker (i experienced this in my adolescence), and the anguish of being forlorn and forgotten by someone you've always wanted to impress... but i don't understand the sense of panic these people experience at the thought of not having freewill. well wait. that's not what they panic about. the panic is over someone else not having freewill... because then they are unable to resent and hate. these miserable weaklings need such privilege more than anything else. a catharsis, as it were, to expunge one's impotence of action. but this psychosis runs so deep that even they aren't aware of it, and can even pass off as decent, regular folk. and yet this is what is so dangerous about what philosophy/religion has done covertly over the last few thousand years. a meme so powerful that it almost becomes genetic... almost an intrinsic feature of a certain type of person who can't be anything but a bad apple. you'd damn near have to perform a lobotomy to get rid of it, and i even believe that despite the triumph of science and the revolution of our future educational systems to follow, there will still be that type of person who can't get past this profoundest of errors (the belief in freewill). maybe one day they'll identify the gene(s) responsible for this psychosis.

but i personally have never been less forceful because i knew i had no freewill. it never bothered me in the least, because i never felt less in control without it. if anything, the range of my power has expanded. whole zeitgeists speak and work through me. what matters the little cartesian 'I' in this grand economy? but enough. i've spent another twenty minutes i could have spent rearranging my sock drawer.

I don't think much of this is relevant. The "Free-Will" issue matters, of utmost importance, when it comes to "Cause" and "Blame" and "Agency".

How can people be blamed for anything when causes are forever unknown, or worse, it's physically impossible to know them? You could, always be wrong.

That doesn't stop people from blaming, and forcing the issue. Because, again, pragmatically and realistically, people are readily willing to punish you, or anybody, for what they perceive as a wrong-doing, and furthermore, that punishment or attack doesn't need to be reasonable or justified.


People harm each-other egregiously, often times, because they can, and because they want to exercise their power over others.

[Gloominary]

Now what follows is just a thought experiment, I haven't given this that much thought and may very well be dead wrong about it:

But, is determinism really that falsifiable?

If I flip a coin 100 times, odds are I'll get heads about 50 times and tails 50.
However, what are the odds I'll get heads exactly 50 times and tails 50?
It's more likely I'll get heads 50 times and tails 50 than any other outcome, like say getting heads 100 times and tails 0 or vice versa, the two least likely outcomes, but getting H51 and T49 or vice versa isn't much less likely than H50 and T50, nor H52 and T48 and so on, so it's actually very unlikely I'll get exactly H50 and T50.
Now what if I flipped the coin in 100 sets, and in each set I flipped it 100 times?
While getting close to H50 and T50 would probably come up much or most of the time, in some sets I might get about H80 and T20 or vice versa, in a few sets I might even get close to 100H and 0T or vice versa.

Now when we look at human behavior, we look for patterns...in fact we're pattern fixated, we ignore randomness, so there may be far more of it out there, and in here than we're aware of, or care to admit.
Humans are complicated beings, and while no behavior may appear in the same or very similar situations 100% of the time, some behaviors show up more frequently than others.
Some behavioral patterns, like consuming food over non-food occur frequently (but yes there's exceptions, like people eating deodorant, glue, etcetera), but other behavioral patterns are weak to nonexistent, like what color we prefer, there doesn't appear to be a strong tendency in color preference among humans as a whole.
And some behaviors, like trying to shove a bowling ball through your ear while licking a pinecone and bouncing on one foot to the rhythm of Joy Division's song 'dance to the radio' probably never made an appearance, altho it may after me writing this.

Now what makes us so certain any of these behavioral patterns were determined?
What even makes it probable?
Again, even in a perfectly random, extremely complex system, where lots of things are occurring over a very long period of time, patterns, like getting heads thousands, perhaps millions of times while getting tails only once are bound to show up from time to time, it still wouldn't prove it's not perfectly random.

Perhaps human beings and everything we do is an exercise of freewill...perhaps the entire cosmos is.

For the determinist, one instance of H2 and T0 is enough to prove the cosmos prefers H, and for the indeterminist, one instance of H1 and T1 is enough to prove the cosmos has no preference, but in this cosmos, we encounter billions of things we think we can explain, and billions of things we think we can't, billions of instances of chaos and billions of order.
Todays inexplicable becomes tomorrows explicable and vice versa.
Today it's fashionable to think the cosmos is 100% orderly, and that instances of apparent chaos are a by-product of order, but yesterday it wasn't and tomorrow it probably won't be either, it could just as easily be said the apparent order is a by-product of chaos.

Good analogy and post.

I made a similar point before, I'm not sure if it was in this thread or "New Discovery" but basically the idea was that it's the consistency of usage of free will that blinds us to its existing and so we automatically bounce to another idea, which is determinism and both do exist but work based off of the framework of one's mind and their perception of reality. The key is to learn to swap perception at will, once this is learned and understood, one can see so much and think so deep that ones mind will show them near whatever it is one wishes to see.

Chaos does still exist, it always will. Just like darkness and nothingness. The oldest teaches it's youngest brother and even if the oldest were to die completely, the youngest brother will still carry within it, it's older brothers lessons. And if carried still, it is not truly dead. Contrast has to exist for balance and existence to be. So we are caught up in an ever growing/expanding variety of differentiating contrasts that never ends in it's multiplying variables. Determinism and free will are two contrasts go each other in language, yet both exist based off perception. I view it a little more objectively though, such as a subconscious state being much more deterministic than a conscious state. The observation can be made by us viewing humanity in comparison to animals in nature. We as conscious individuals compared to animals whom are subconscious.

A subconscious state, I view as something that can possess knowledge and understand from direct experience to an extent but not able to always apply such knowledge effectively nor think in terms of a priori.

Conscious state is being able to understand knowledge completely with usage of a-priori as well.

Thanks, and I agree with you.
I don't think everything we can say/think is a dichotomy, but all the dichotomies, perhaps especially the basic ones, and the ones we deal with in metaphysics: life/nonlife, mind/matter, objective/subjective, positive/negative, whole/part, free/determined and so on...there's no such thing as a one sided coin, both sides of a polarity are real, and we have to find, not any ole balance but the right balance between them, intellectually and in our lives.

Freewill isn't illusory, and mind isn't a by-product of matter, anymore than big is illusory, or left is a by-product of right.
Now cold and darkness may be the absence of warmth and light respectively, but I don't think pain is the absence of pleasure or pleasure pain, yet various philosophers have ran away with both sides of this polarity throughout philosophy's history.
Both pain and pleasure exist in their own right.

There needs to be more far more synthesis in philosophy and our daily thinking, but unfortunately we're too much under the spell of scientific epistemology and metaphysics, and yes it really does have a metaphysics, it's not just a method, just its metaphysics has become so deeply ingrained it's subconscious.

It's not that science is all bad, it's just its antithesis isn't bad either.
We need to get good at presenting the other side, it's grown far too powerful and its authoritarian reign must be challenged so we can be free.

At one time religion was Goliath and science David, but David has since become Goliath.
We don't need to re-establish religion, it should remain disestablished.
We need a new David for a new millennium.

It's philosophy, if anything, that doesn't assume a metaphysics, perhaps not even an epistemology, which's not to say science doesn't continually modify its worldview, but the fundamentals, materialism and so on go unchallenged.
Philosophy happens when different worldviews, the scientific, alt scientific, religious and ideological worldviews and everything in between and outside battle for supremacy.
And what's festering in the inhumanities, the whole western civilization is a white male patriarchy thing, that really needs to be overturned.

[promethean75]

I'll clue you onto an important life-lesson, out of experience.

cool. let me extend my thanks by giving you an important life-lesson in determinism.

in a court of law a person is not held accountable for committing a crime if he is judged to be 'insane' (they call it), judged to be 'not of sound mind', and therefore unable to recognize right and wrong. now it gets good. two idiotic assumptions are made before we even get out of the gate. first, that 'right' and 'wrong' have ever meant anything more than 'useful' and 'not useful'... valuations and judgments made in some context in which costs and benefits are being weighed against each other by a person who at the time is incapable of believing anything different than what he believed during the course of his actions. example; joe robs a bank to get the money to pay for his kid's liver transplant. joe knows what he's doing is illegal, but joe cannot believe it is wrong. or, joe might believe it is wrong... but he also believes it serves a greater good, and is therefore incidental.

second idiotic assumption; that joe had the freewill to not decide that he should rob the bank. now the court is in a pickle. they can't say he's insane, and they can't say joe can simultaneously believe and not believe what he did was the right thing to do. if holding joe 'responsible' here means anything more than 'being subject to consequences', such a concept is senseless. the court can certainly condemn joe for breaking the law, but not for doing something wrong, and certainly not for having the capacity to magically not believe what he believes and believe something else instead. dilemma; does the court proceed consequentially or deontologically? for the former, no need for the theory of freewill... for the latter, absolute reliance on the theory of freewill. but the latter is definitively false and with no empirical basis whatsoever.

why then does the theory persist in a court of law? because it simplifies for an institution that requires control but lacks it, a means to avoid the responsibility of preventing the circumstances that produce the criminals it needs to control. it is far easier to subdue a citizen by making him feel guilty then it is to make the effort to modify the environment in which he was made. and to top it off, they turn this inconvenience into an advantage. quite brilliant. they industrialize the criminal justice system. they turn it into a money making racket. they neglect their responsibility, create criminals as a result, and then figure out a way to get paid for it. unrequited genius. let the federal government give money to state and privatized prisons to house criminals the federal government doesn't have enough power to prevent. it's no mystery why the united states has the highest crime rates. there is not just 'correlation' between blue collar crimes and capitalistic societies. there is a causal relationship here.

'capitalist-democracy deserves every bit of the crime it has' - lenin (not verbatim)

instead of making health care affordable and/or a basic right, our capitalist-democracy uses an age old philosophical subterfuge to brainwash joe into thinking he's a bad guy... that he knew damn well what he did was 'wrong', and that he chose to do what he knew was wrong. that joe wasn't compelled by the preponderance of the evidence he believes that makes him feel robbing the bank is the right thing to do, and instead secretly knew it was wrong and what... just wanted to do a bad thing for the hell of it? get the fuck outta here. joe had a reason. he believed he was right. he had no choice in believing it was right, because he has no choice in what he feels certain of. there is no 'freewill' in any of this nonsense. and yet the greatest institution over and above society rests the very foundation of its practice on just such nonsense.

now i know everything i just said will enter one ear and go right out the other, if it even makes it into your head at all. i look forward to a response about gymnasts being able to jump higher than midgets or slaves being envious of their masters.

[Urwrongx1000]

In the US, upholding the law is generally primary, while morality and right-and-wrong is secondary, by a long shot.

It doesn't matter whether you're right or wrong. What matters, mostly, is that you broke a law, and it was proved, to a jury, by a prosecutor.

[surreptitious75]

That hypothetical example is incredibly morally ambiguous and is therefore probably not typical of most crimes that are committed
In most cases deontology is not going to be considered as the act will be regarded as simply being wrong [ both legally and morally ]
And in any case it is simply easier for juries to decide innocence or guilt based on what the law says rather than on what moral philosophy says
The ideal solution in the hypothetical example would be to find Joe guilty but due to the extenuating circumstances give him a lesser sentence

[Gloominary]

I tend to believe in freewill, but not moral absolutes.

Historically the two are linked, but not necessarily, in fact when you think about it, they're quite contrary.

I see little point in having freewill if we should only ever do a, b and c with it and never x, y and z.

[Silhouette]

Now what follows is just a thought experiment, I haven't given this that much thought and may very well be dead wrong about it

The probability you'll get 50 heads and 50 tails is just under 8%. The change in probability to getting H51 and T49 or H49 and T51 is only about 2%. That is to say you're nearly twice as likely to get either 49/51 or 51/49 as you are to get 50/50. The probability of exactly 50/50 decreases as you increase the number of coin flips, and interestingly the likelihood of something near to 50/50 increases as you increase the number of coin flips too.

What you end up with when you calculate all probabilities for all outcomes is a probability distribution - the most famous example of this being the "normal" or "Gaussian" distribution, (the "bell curve"). They signify that you're far more likely to get a similar number of heads to tails than you are to get much more of one than the other, but they also signify that you're actually likely to get more of one than the other a certain number of times on average i.e. the amount of times that you will get a significant amount more heads than tails is also calculable. There is even a mathematical way to detect fraud by the difference between what humans perceive as "looking random" and what random actually looks like, with far more edge cases than looks random to people.

So it's neither random that you'll get edge cases, nor is it the case that we ignore randomness - we actually have a whole science behind "randomness", called Stochastics. Unless you mean the layman, in which case yes - they are very bad at detecting or replicating "randomness", even ordering it to an extent to look "properly" random to themselves, and they don't like things that don't fit their expected patterns - an example of this being this thread. Few people here really seem to understand what randomness is, how much is known about it and what isn't it, and that's probably where a lot of the suspicion of Determinism comes from.

But the above isn't even representative of the Natural Sciences - it's Statistics. All science can be analysed statistically, but a main difference between the Natural Sciences and things like Social Sciences (where statistics are pretty much as far as you can go without Natural Science to support it), is the degree to which they study qualitative phenomena. In Physics, for example, you don't need to worry about how a coin feels to work out its motion when subjected to whatever physical forces. If you calculate the force of the flip, the resulting angular momentum, the coin's mass and spatial dimensions, air resistance, take into account the surface it's landing on etc. you can work out if you'll get heads or tails 100% of the time. At everyday scales, Newtonian Physics model what might as well be a deterministic world - even if it somehow turned out that Determinism was false, it still operates as though it is - and the Natural Sciences study this. You have to get to really extreme cases to find discrepancies with the Newtonian - like how Einstein fine-tuned things when you get close to the speed of light, or when you get all the way down to quantum scales. You don't need to care whether Determinism is "true" or not - I don't - but the quantitatively measurable world genuinely operates as though it does.

At everyday scales, you don't get someone jumping into orbit "every so often" as a statistical anomaly. Whilst probabilistically, eventually you'll get 1 million heads in a row, no number of jumps will get you into orbit.

This isn't to say you can't get into orbit by other means, nor that gravity ceases to affect you once you do. The hard part is achieving escape velocity, so you aren't just taking a huge jump only to come back down again. Gravity will still be pulling you back down to earth - that's why the moon keeps orbiting the earth. The effects of gravity even provably go interstellar, though they get weaker the further you go - the "special" guy who made this thread actually thinks astronauts "defy gravity" as though his "Free Will" overcame it, or as if he's some sports commentator. The lack of education is just shameful. Satellites are "falling to earth" constantly, but moving sideways so fast that as soon as they fall far enough, they're to the side of the planet and "missed it", and continue missing it. This is where the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's joke comes from - about how to fly: "throw yourself to the ground and miss".

So in short, "one instance of H2 and T0" is absolutely not "enough to prove the cosmos prefers H" to the determinist. It used to be fashionable to think the cosmos was 100% orderly, but now we know that science is an ongoing improvement to model reality "as though it was Deterministic", which is not the same as "because it is Deterministic".

The important thing to remember is that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

We appear to be able to improve our Deterministic models over and over, with less deterministically understood areas becoming more and more deterministically understood all the time. That's not to say the trend will continue forever (the problem of induction) but nor is it to say that any slowing down or stopping is evidence of the absence of Determinism. Proof of Determinism requires that there are necessarily circumstances where it can be measured that no causation is occurring - that is how you falsify Determinism.

Saying "absence of evidence is evidence of absence, therefore Free Will" is just lazy "God of the Gaps" un-thinking - or "The Argument from Ignorance" fallacy. You don't need to go there at all, except to understand properly why you don't need to go there - which I highly support. It's contradictory to be "both causatively influenced by the world in order to make an informed decision on how to causatively effect it, whilst simultaneously not being causatively influenced by it as a free agent" and you need to resolve the unresolvable mind-body problem, and to equate possibility with actuality - in order to justify Free Will.

It wouldn't even matter if Determinism was proven false, because the above proves Free Will can not take its place. I keep coming across the False Dilemma fallacy when I'm asked to prove something about "Determinism existing in reality" (which isn't even what I'm saying) in order to prove that if Determinism has a flaw (the Nirvana Fallacy) then Free Will must be valid (the False Dilemma fallacy). Free Will has an inherent contradiction, and insurmountable task and a conflation of different terms to overcome in order to be valid in the slightest - that ain't gonna happen, sorry.

[Urwrongx1000]

Free Will exists because Freedom is the inherent, primary quality of the Will.

It's the reason Will(to Power) exists, so that Desire can free and unlock itself.

Repeating it a hundred or a thousand times, you still don't get it though.


You'll do anything to absolve yourself of the possibility of freedom. This 'Victim' culture is just too precious for you and the others to let go of. Obviously the protections and institutions of Human Civilization have corrupted the vast majority. Very few would be willing to give up these comforts and pleasures (Security) for Freedom. This is obvious. But that doesn't mean you're even close to a persuasive argument concerning the physics of a 'Deterministic' universe, where hypothetically, all things are knowable.

Although they clearly are not, and the universe is instead, Un-determined.

[Silhouette]

Culture has nothing to do with the fact that it's contradictory to be "both causatively influenced by the world in order to make an informed decision on how to causatively effect it, whilst simultaneously not being causatively influenced by it as a free agent" and that you need to resolve the unresolvable mind-body problem, and to equate possibility with actuality - in order to justify Free Will.

Again with your "Intentionality fallacy".

You can repeat that freedom is the inherent, primary quality of the Will and it still won't make it true.

Yet again with your "Proof by Assertion" fallacy.

The fact that you aren't persuaded by the universe empirically being consistently model-able by Determinism (regardless of whether or not Determinism is true in any absolute sense) doesn't stop it from being true.

The same old "Argument from Incredulity" fallacy...

[promethean75]

This 'Victim' culture is just too precious for you and the others to let go of.

only someone who felt powerless would spend so much time and make so much noise trying to convince himself (and others) that he wasn't a victim.

and always remember; not all victims are looking for sympathy. some are in fact proud of their suffering and become quite the braggart (i'm one such asshole). what you might interpret as complaining could in fact be showing-off.

suffering can be ennobling, can create distances and separations of rank. nobody likes this, because they'd not want to be thought of as small, ordinary and insignificant in the company of someone who has suffered more than them. more times than not, 'stop playing the victim!' really means 'don't think you're better than me!'

we all secretly love to suffer and wear our trials and tribulations with pride. but we don't like others to suffer more than we do. we'd not want them to get ahead of us.

[promethean75]

Free Will exists because Freedom is the inherent, primary quality of the Will.

here comes the metaphysical bewitchment of common metaphor. what is this 'will'? show me an instance where i can see the will at work. an ambitious fellow is climbing a mountain and the sonofabitch won't give up. look at that guy's willpower! but what does this mean? what is the behavior that is described as 'willful' here? well, he keeps climbing. and he keeps climbing. is will then persistence? but persistence is simply the physical repetition of the climbers movements, no? and these movements, like anything else that moves in the universe, moves as it does, like it does, when it does, under the causative influence of the natural laws. or is it a personality thing? but that's no different. dude's got a strong will. this means; he keeps at it. this means; he keeps moving. and....? what am i missing?

okay maybe i'm not getting it. are you saying the will is an entity inside the body... like some kind of immaterial substance like a soul or spirit or something? you'd have to be, because any other such quality about a person explained as evidence for and an act of, the will, would be nothing more than a description of a behavior. i can think of several ways we use the word 'will' in language, and none of them (except in the mouths of philostophers) suggest or show that there is anything causally free about the things and processes which they describe.

[Silhouette]

Philosophers are given to speaking of the will as if it were the best-known thing in the world; Schopenhauer, indeed, would have us understand that the will alone is truly known to us, known completely, known without deduction or addition. But it seems to me that in this case too Schopenhauer has done only what philosophers in general are given to doing: that he has taken up a popular prejudice and exaggerated it. Willing seems to me to be above all something complicated, something that is a unity only as a word - and it is precisely in this one word that the popular prejudice resides which has overborne the always inadequate caution of the philosophers. Let us therefore be more cautious for once, let us be 'un-philosophical' - let us say: in all willing there is, first of all, a plurality of sensations, namely the sensation of the condition we leave, the sensation of the condition towards which we go, the sensation of this 'leaving' and 'going' itself, and then also an accompanying muscular sensation which, even without our putting 'arms and legs' in motion, comes into play through a kind of habit as soon as we 'will'. As feelings, and indeed many varieties of feeling, can therefore be recognised as an ingredient of will, so, in the second place, can thinking: in every act of will there is a commanding thought - and do not imagine that this thought can be separated from the 'willing', as though will would then remain over! Thirdly, will is not only a complex of feeling and thinking, but above all an affect: and in fact the affect of command. What is called 'freedom of will' is essentially the affect of superiority over him who must obey: 'I am free, "he" must obey' - this consciousness adheres to every will, as does that tense attention, that straight look which fixes itself exclusively on one thing, that unconditional evaluation 'this and nothing else is necessary now', that inner certainty that one will be obeyed, and whatever else pertains to the state of him who gives commands. A man who wills - commands something in himself which obeys of which he believes obeys. But now observe the strangest thing of all about the will - about this so complex thing for which people have only one word: inasmuch as in the given circumstances we at the same time command and obey, and as the side which obeys know the sensations of constraint, compulsion, pressure, resistance, motion, which usually begin immediately after the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other hand, we are in the habit of disregarding and deceiving ourselves over this duality by means of the synthetic concept 'I'; so a whole chain of erroneous conclusions and consequently of the false evaluations of the will itself has become attached to the will as such - so that he who wills believes wholeheartedly that willing suffices for action. Because in the great majority of cases willing takes place only where the effect of the command, that is to say obedience, that is to say the action, was to be expected, the appearance has translated itself into the sensation, as if there were here a necessity of effect. Enough: he who wills believes with a tolerable degree of certainty that will and action are somehow one - he attributes the success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of that sensation of power which all success brings with it. 'Freedom of will' - is the expression for that complex condition of pleasure of the person who wills, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the command - who as such also enjoys the triumph over resistances involved but who thinks it was his will itself which overcame these resistances. He who wills adds in this way the sensations of pleasure of the successful executive agents, the serviceable 'under-wills' or under-souls - for our body is only a social structure composed of many souls - to his sensations of pleasure as commander. L'effet, c'est moi: what happens here is what happens in every well-constructed and happy commonwealth: the ruling class identifies itself with the successes of the commonwealth. In all willing it is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the basis, as I have said already, of a social structure composed of many 'souls': on which account a philosopher should claim the right to include willing as such within the field of morality: that is, of morality understood as the theory of the relations of dominance under which the phenomenon 'life' arises. -

[Urwrongx1000]

The Will is the source of your desires and the real-life application of those desires. So it is both the "Thing" of an organism and its Actions-in-motion (Power). That is the meaning of Willpower and Will-To-Power. You can define and identify organisms by their Will(Power). Because every organism has different Values (Order by which Desires are fulfilled or ignored/suppressed). So the "Freeing of the Will", Liberty and Liberation, refer to the moments in existence by which any organisms, especially Humans, use radical methods (displays of Genius/Genus), to achieve their Desires. This is most manifested and apparent in Art(ifice). Mankind has many artforms. All are expressions of His (Free)-Will.

Unlike the Modern-Post-Modern lingo, Man is not "Born Free" or born into a system of Rights. Rather, Freedom and Rights are matters of Becoming and Power, respectively. Obviously infants and children are powerless, un-free. So freedom and power, are both qualities of Maturation and development in life.

It's already admitted that much/most of this revolves around Ability. A Free-Man simply has so much more ability than the common man, that it seems impossible.


Just like it seems impossible for most men, in their minds, to climb a jagged vertical cliff, and then to an inverted incline.

But a few men are free to do so, while most are not, proving them wrong.


I think you two, Sil and Prom, both need a serious re-evaluation of your Expectations, your Values. Freedom is merely a competition of these values and expectations. What you deem impossible, or could not imagine, is not necessarily so for others, especially all others, and especially for all existence.

And it's a simple proposition, no "Assertion Fallacy" at all (ridiculous, by the way). All you need to do is imagine one single act of freedom in existence, and then freedom (and Free-Will) are both possible and evident. So what is one method or demonstration of freedom, opposed to not?

It's as simple as being tied-up, caged, or not. So don't pretend this is some "complex philosophical mumbo-jumbo". The only mumbo-jumbo is denying the obvious (denying Free-Will).

[Silhouette]

I think you two, Sil and Prom, both need a serious re-evaluation of your Expectations, your Values. Freedom is merely a competition of these values and expectations. What you deem impossible, or could not imagine, is not necessarily so for others, especially all others, and especially for all existence.

What do I/we deem impossible, what can't we imagine that is imaginable or possible for others?

What specifically?

And it's a simple proposition, no "Assertion Fallacy" at all (ridiculous, by the way).

That's the whole problem: it's oversimplified. I show its contradictions and you restate it regardless - this is the exact definition of committing the "Proof by Assertion" fallacy...

All you need to do is imagine one single act of freedom in existence, and then freedom (and Free-Will) are both possible and evident. So what is one method or demonstration of freedom, opposed to not?

You keep asking to imagine one single act of freedom, which you say would show that freedom and Free Will are both possible and evident, and then when you're not given one you keep taking this as criticism against opposing positions. So basically either we show that you're right, or we're wrong: "heads you win, tails we lose". Rigged/invalid questioning.

This is where your Motte and Bailey comes into play. On one hand there's the incomplete definition of freedom (quantity/quality of natural abilities, not being socially prevented by external or internal barriers), which nobody says doesn't exist, and on the other hand there's the complete definition of freedom that puts these things in terms of causation, which I say can be consistently done with overwhelming precision past/present/future, whether or not causation is a "thing that exists" in some absolute way - it's "as though" it did.
So "on the first hand", everyone agrees, and this has no bearing "on the other hand". But "on the other hand" reveals that "freedom" is the wrong word for "on the first hand".

This isn't "complex philosophical mumbo-jumbo", it's precision, which a philosopher ought to care about if they want to get to the truth of things: if two things are similar in some ways but crutially different in others - do you attribute importance to the differences or not? Do you straighten things out or not? If your answer is no, you conflate terminology and leave yourself vulnerable to deriving false ideals and conclusions as a result. If your answer is yes then you understand the difference between the Motte and Bailey here, and you understand why "free" is the wrong word.

Example:
What is meant by "you are free to do so"?
Let's say climbing a jagged vertical cliff to an inverted incline.
Impossible for most men to do and maybe even impossible in the minds of some men, sure. Some men are "free able to do so", some are not. Does a Deterministic model say it's impossible? You have to do the math on the specifics. But that doesn't mean that changing up the approach won't affect the specifics and therefore the outcome. Friction co-efficients don't bend to the will of mental willpower. Change the friction co-efficients, and maybe something that Determinism would deem physically impossible before is now deemed by Determinism to be physically possible. You can only appreciate how ridiculously powerful the limits of science are if you know what they are and how they work. If you don't know what an approach involves, you can't say it can't work.

It's already admitted that much/most of this revolves around Ability. A Free-Man simply has so much more ability than the common man, that it seems impossible.

Exactly right. The correct word for most of what you're saying about freedom is "ability". In your wording and in layman wording, freedom is synonymous with ability, but in my more specific and discretionary wording, ability was determined by prior causes, isn't free from them, so "free" is the wrong word. The word "ability" is fine. Infants and children are much less able, of course. They have much less power, of course.

The Will is the source of your desires and the real-life application of those desires. So it is both the "Thing" of an organism and its Actions-in-motion (Power). That is the meaning of Willpower and Will-To-Power. You can define and identify organisms by their Will(Power). Because every organism has different Values (Order by which Desires are fulfilled or ignored/suppressed). So the "Freeing of the Will", Liberty and Liberation, refer to the moments in existence by which any organisms, especially Humans, use radical methods (displays of Genius/Genus), to achieve their Desires. This is most manifested and apparent in Art(ifice). Mankind has many artforms. All are expressions of His (Free)-Will.

Feel "free" to read the Nietzsche quote I painstakingly typed out verbatim from "Beyond Good and Evil" (Chapter 1: On the Prejudices of Philosophers).

What is he saying?

He is saying that the concept of "will" is too often taken for granted by philosophers. It is easily insufficiently examined. It is a word that conflates a plurality of many different things. On one hand it is a "command" and the other it is "obedience", and all within the same "self".

If you command yourself to endure through "willpower", you must also obey this command in order for such power to manifest itself in enduring action. So are you the free and powerful master or unfree and powerless slave? "Will" requires that you are simultaneously both, otherwise the command would not actually happen. So is the will "free"? In this sense, even if the contradictions I highlighted about Free Will could have a resolution - even then the will is both free and not free, and neither. It's a bad term to gloss over complexities for the sake of simplicity.

You keep dropping Nietzschean maxims like his book title "Will to Power" but do you really even know what he said about will? What I quoted is just the start of it - he made several jabs at Schopenhauer's "Will to life" over the course of his career, explaining why he made them with absolute mastery. He was in the business of specificity in wording and concepts - the business of the philosopher. Sam Harris performs the same merciless and highly trained eagle-eyed examination of things like "Will" in his works - it's SO not so simple as you are making it out to be.

[Urwrongx1000]

Some people are free from "Causality/Fate/God's Will", yes. Because you Sil have no authority to speak as-if you knew what Causes were/are, or especially General Causality. Quite frankly, you don't know, and you don't have a clue. Your "Causality" is a long series of guesses and sets of presumptions. You don't know to any significant degree of certainty. And I think we all can further venture to guess too, that your ideal of "Causality" is deeply flawed and inaccurate. You're no scientist.

So in your mind, you have this idea of rock-climbing and there is "no way" that a rock-climber is Free, even if he has the greatest ability in skill.

You're wrong in two ways here.


The majority of humanity talk about and intuitively know, that Freedom is an abstraction from Ability. Some men are 'free' to do many things others cannot. And those who are bound, tied, jailed, etc. are in-general not free. So you're wrong here. You're wrong to abstract and pervert the notion of Freedom to "Existential Causality concerning Science and the Whole Universe".

The second way you're wrong is, you're no Authority, to speak on behalf of Science, Existence, the Universe, or Causality. You have no saying-power. You don't know the Causes which lead a rock-climber to Succeed or Fail, to Achieve or not. Furthermore, you don't know the Causes which would lead the rock-climber to defy your own expectations. And because of this, your own ignorance, you are wrong a second time.


Because, for you, Causes revolve around your expectations, obviously you will never have a keen, or even common sense awareness of Freedom.

[Silhouette]

Some people are free from "Causality/Fate/God's Will", yes. Because you Sil have no authority to speak as-if you knew what Causes were/are, or especially General Causality. Quite frankly, you don't know, and you don't have a clue. Your "Causality" is a long series of guesses and sets of presumptions. You don't know to any significant degree of certainty. And I think we all can further venture to guess too, that your ideal of "Causality" is deeply flawed and inaccurate. You're no scientist.

Cool. So enough about me, who has nothing to do with whether Determinism has any precedence at all, what about Determinism?

Science and scientists prove it's as though causes were literally everywhere all day every day. Are you going to call all of the findings of science and how they can all extremely consistently be very accurately modelled by Determinism and how real technologies can be rountinely created and operational in line with their findings "no authority" too? You don't seem to understand it's not about any one person, or "just guesses". "What works" is the only final arbiter, and science works. Astoundingly well.

So in your mind, you have this idea of rock-climbing and there is "no way" that a rock-climber is Free, even if he has the greatest ability in skill.

There are plenty of ways a rock climber can be "able", from extremely to hardly at all. They are "free" to try to achieve whatever bounds they wish, and Determinism sums up every single success and failure they manage every time. Does that mean they free.... from causation? Your point is that the best of them have more power, and you're right. You're right that they're very able and can achieve amazing things. And yet causation encompasses it all - whether or not it "exists". They are not free from that, thus they are not free. Free is the wrong word.

The majority of humanity talk about and intuitively know, that Freedom is an abstraction from Ability. Some men are 'free' to do many things others cannot. And those who are bound, tied, jailed, etc. are in-general not free. So you're wrong here. You're wrong to abstract and pervert the notion of Freedom to "Existential Causality concerning Science and the Whole Universe".

I'm well aware of the casual way in which laymen speak. Are you trying to pull an Argumentum ad Populum on me here, with "the majority of humanity blah blah"? You know that's not going to work by now, surely.

Some men are able to do many things others cannot. Those who are bound, tied, jailed etc. are all unable. You're talking about ability. Not freedom.

You need to prove some way that freedom is identical to ability, here.

You're throwing it around like it's a given in the exact same way that my Nietzsche quote described, and not discerning one iota. Proof requires that freedom is always ability, and ability is always freedom, and that there can be no exceptions. Oh, and you have to actually try.

You will never get anywhere if all you're trying to do is word in a different way what you want to be true. This is the definition of wishful thinking. Try and prove yourself WRONG. This will be your first step to becoming a philosopher. I've told you how to legitimately prove Determinism wrong. I want to be wrong. You want me to be wrong. You need to learn how to do this or we can never make you succeed, which is both of our goals. The whole point of science and philosophy is to find legitimate grounds to doubt something to inspire us to create new lines of thought to get around the flaw. That is genius!
Show something of this one key philosophical trait - show me you are "THE" philosopher.

You will now proceed to reiterate your same old points and not directly address anything I'm said, right? How about a change of subject to avoid it?
Relax your normal instincts. Nobody is here to hunt you. Calm.
Chill.
Take a deep breath and try to think of all reasons without any emotional dependence on any being right or wrong.
What could reality say from all possible sides?
You are not your thoughts, your theories, your ideologies.
Seek truth, not agenda.
If you understood all sides, the whole, right and wrong for all, just imagine what you could achieve...