Freewill exists

Oh my goodness, this is one of the lamest arguments I’ve seen in a long time.

This entire post is moot if anyone just adds the word “non anthropomorphic” before they use one of these words.

I wanted to go to the mall be-CAUSE of two main reasons:

  1. A movie
  2. Go to a favorite restaurant for their pot-stickers

The movie wasn’t that great, but I had to see it anyway. The pot-stickers were delicious though, always a big treat, and made the whole trip worthwhile.

Pot-stickers were the first cause, the Prima Causa, the driving-force for going to the mall. To eat. To live. To add to my Will-To-Power.

Nuh-uh. your mom is moot.

And even on top of your want and desire or attributing value to the cause of going, you could have subconsciously wanted to go as well, which al it of times people subconsciously do things or something surfaces from that aspect of mind to the conscious mind, there’s multiple causations I’d say, in reality.

Just because words can refer to their means of communication, doesn’t mean the words aren’t still separate from their means of communication.

In computer programming, you have values but you also have addresses to where said values are stored in memory. You can create “pointers” to values, which hold value addresses as their value instead of the value itself, but pointers have their own address different to the address of the value, and you have to “dereference” them recall the actual value. Now, you might equally try to create a pointer to point to its own address (analogous to “I am speaking”, or any tautology) but even if compilers let you do this, the pointer value and the pointer address would give you the same value but this doesn’t mean values are addresses.

Overlap/coexist doesn’t mean convergence into the same thing. Operational equivalence isn’t complete equivalence: a good example that’s on topic is that Fatalism and Determinism could both be used to predict the future, so they are operationally equivalent, but they aren’t the same thing because how you get there makes all the difference. It’s like two routes of the same length to the same destination are not the same route: “I am speaking” is not the same as I am speaking (without inverted commas).

Your last two challenges have been fun! I had to give them some thought, keep 'em coming.

Do you mean Molinism?

I “loled” because it’s like me recommending that you go read something that you were saying in much the same words anyway - like telling a teacher to go to one of his own classes. I don’t think it’s bizarre to lol at something like that.

Yes Fatalism would allow choice and Free Will, and all kinds of feel-good stuff that isn’t actually true - it’s like a botch attempt to reconcile things like Free Will with the fact that things can be totally predictable (by Determinism), just for the sake of holding onto the feel-good stuff. Fatalism fits all the criticism said to be against Determinism, because Free Will advocates like the feeling of being in control, having a prima causa self that can decide ex nihilo, but under Fatalism it wouldn’t matter - which is demoralising . Determinism does away with the feel-good stuff by sticking to hard truths that can be reliably and repeatedly tested, which just so happens to fit perfectly with the fact that things can be predicted - even complex things.

There’s still choice in Determinism, but you need to examine what you mean by choice. I still choose to write this post instead of do something else that I want to do, but it’s because the four fundamental forces resulting in me choosing that - not because my prima causa self decided ex nihilo. Even if Free Will could be true, you still only ever choose one choice just the same as under Determinism, except under Free Will you “could have” just as easily chosen to do some other thing instead, even though you didn’t. It seems like you could have, and yet you didn’t for a reason, and no evidence that you could have chosen otherwise at that point in time will ever occur again because the time has gone. Choosing something different at a later point in time is not the same thing as choosing it at the previous time, because the determining factors have changed. Even if you could go back in time to choose the other choice, the determining factors would have changed. If you went back in time and had no recollection of it, and all determining factors and reasons reset as well, the reasons for you choosing your choice would be no different, so you’d still choose the same thing that you had your reason to choose just the same.

This is all Determinism really requires for you to get to grips with: a proper examination of terminology and what terms really mean (like “choice”).

But if all proper examination and use of examples to prove my point is “waffle” to you then stay in the dark all you like. Determinism is still the best model of what’s going on and Free Will is still full of contradictions. You’re just being determined to side with the contradictions at this point. It could change, given the right reasons being determined - but with incomplete information of exactly what’s stopping you, we’ll just have to find out. If anyone was able to follow the complexity of what’s determining each neuron in your brain to not see sense then it would be perfectly possible to figure out how to get you up to speed - difficult technology would be needed but it would be perfectly possible.

More interesting questions arise here though - what happens when such technology is possible and the exact complexity of Determinism behind people’s thoughts is cleared up? The potential for misuse is scary, but it seems this is most likely our future. On the positive side, we wouldn’t need to dance around in circles if a machine could simply process “oh this is the reason he doesn’t understand”.

It’s amazing that you wrote this immense post(which I enjoyed) without responding to the fact(in a previous post of mine (that determinism is by definition not falsifiable.))

You actually never quoted, nor have directly responded to that post. The post is here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194947&start=250#p2728904

I take that back… silhouette, you posted a snippet of it and then argued your definitions of determinism and fatalism in reverse

Oh ok.

Well to determine if something is falsifiable, you have to be able to devise a test that could show that it could be wrong.

To do that for Determinism, you need to define exactly what constitutes evidence that shows Determinism is not causing an effect: namely that effects are occurring for certain without cause.

This is problematic because the intention here is to not only prove a negative, but also to prove a negative in a general case rather than just a specific one. I suppose you could try, for example, to find certain circumstances where none of the fundamental forces show their expected effects, and you’d have evidence that in that specific case, Determinism doesn’t model what’s going on. But for the general case you’d need to show the fundamental forces don’t work anywhere - despite the evidence being overwhelmingly strong to support the theory that they do operate everywhere we test them. Determinism is getting proven all the time, even as we speak, but that’s not to say it’s impossible to prove it isn’t.

There could be proposed a new theory that supercedes Determinism, which would partially disprove it in the same way that general relativity disproves that time and space are absolutes, even though in everyday conditions you can explain things very accurately even if you assume they are absolutes.
But if you wanted to prove that Free Will was going on in special cases like the mind, as a better explanation than Determinism, you would have to prove that, given a reason to choose one way over another, the outcome was no greater than random. Experiments show that not only can choices be influenced, the illusion that you were making the choices yourself remains in tact. You could try and trick this experiment, and choose as randomly as you can, in spite of having a reason to choose one way over another, but then you would also have to prove your impetus to trick was similarly not caused by prior conditions to any degree more than random chance - because your impetus to trick becomes your new reason to choose how you do. So Determinism catches everything here.
Basically, even if something superceded Determinism, it wouldn’t be Free Will to any degree, and if indeterminacy was going on in specific circumstances alongside Determinism, it won’t falsify Determinism. But that’s not to say you couldn’t find evidence that Indeterminacy was actually going on everywhere and the seeming Determinism was all an illusion.

So given all of the above, it should be clear that it’s perfectly possible to falsify Determinism in certain ways, but even if you did you would not be proving Free Will in its stead - to any degree. It would be some “God-of-the-gaps” argument to try and say, given any lack of Determinism modelling what’s going on, that we can safely fall back on a predecessor model instead. That would be fallacious, resembling the False Dilemma fallacy.

This is why, given the perfect falsifiability of Determinism as I’ve just demonstrated, I only give credence to indeterminacy in its stead, and even then only in specific situations alongside Determinism. If Determinism ever is falsifiable, it will be to yield to the next evolution up from Determinism, whatever that may be, but it won’t be a step back down to Free Will to any degree.

Good, so you admit that Determinism is unfalsifiable by your own admission here.

Anything else…??

Yeah one more thing. Freewill is unfalsifiable too, and the principle of parsimony would lead us to avoid it in theory. It’s much, much more complicated than the theory of determinism. Occam wouldn’t shave with it, I can assure you.

How is the ability to attribute value from understanding/wisdom more complicated than cause and effect?

Why do you say “too”? Do you think Determinism is unfalsifiable?

What about the points I raised in my last post? I show quite clearly that you can falsify Determinism, even if it’s not without difficulty.
Like all things, you can prove outcomes that do not abide the by a theory, or better, you replace it with something else, which explains both what the previous theory explains but also what it doesn’t. This is what Determinism did to Free Will, and maybe one day something else will do it to Determinism but it won’t be Free Will.

It would be possible for an idiot to take my post to mean you can’t falsify Determinism (they’d be saying you can’t falsify anything if they tried to pull that one), but you’ve proven yourself to be far from idiotic, promethean.

Free Will is also falsifiable, you just show everything thought to be Free isn’t free - like Determinism did.

Free Will is not un-falsifiable because I can prove that some organisms are freer than others.

An Olympic athlete can high jump 8 ft. Most humans, most animals, cannot. The Olympic athlete is freer than most others.

I can give millions and millions of other examples.

Silhouette, cannot give one example of his claims.

I was thinking the same thing, the method in which depicting some organisms more free than others.

That kind of freedom has nothing to do with free will. The moon can’t send out solar flares. Is the Sun more free? The range of capabilities one has has nothing to do with the kind of freedom talked about in free will. Free will is not being controlled by the domino sequence of internal and external causes. To have an uncaused cause, so that something that might never have happened could happen. No one has given a clear indication of what that process would be like. As said, I black box the issue and see problems with both free will and determinism positions, but this repeatedly framing the issue in ways that are category errors
just feed the determinists.
Silhouette, I think, is too confident in his determinist position and the problems of thinking dterminism and thinking one is rational. But at least he would understand the differences between the types of freedom: the one relevent to free will and the one that is relevent to the capabilities or qualities of an organims or thing. The latter having nothing to do with free will.

So he will just, and rightly so, come back and present his case, because your argument here has nothing to do with free will.

nothing.

I don’t think it’s a categorical error to compare between states of consciousness. The moon and sun is not conscious, so it’s sending out a solar flare could happen if the correct variables and time are present, this isn’t Conscious decision of the sun to do such, which means it is innocent if it were to. There is no intent because there is no conscious value attribution.

Comparing an unconscious state to a conscious state is the very proof of different states. Not sure how it is a categorical error. It doesn’t need to be “free” of cause and effect because it is the very ability to understand cause and effect of which that ability is not confined in the first place, using that understanding to cause an effect, willingly… you know, choose ones own fate? That is freedom.

It’s funny how some people say the matrix is a good movie yet miss the entire sentiment of what it is about, that entire movie is about determinism vs free will and guess what, neo used his free will and that’s why he won because determinism by itself is what? Predictable in states of unconscious/subconscious, which is absolute determinism.

We’re we too not once unconscious and then subconscious? So again, so is comparing between conscious states to depict a lesser and higher a categorical error? The same distinction of consciousness can just as easily be made for society and there being a higher and lower in awareness and wisdom.

IN both jumps, there is a conscious decision to jump. It is not more free will to jump higher. His example.

But further, the issue is why the consciousness would choose X or Y. And it begs the question to say that jumper B can jump in a wider range of heights. That’s a category error. Does his choosing have more freedom - in the free will sense of not being caused by what went before - then the jumper who can’t jump as high? I see no argument anywhere to support that an olympic jumpers choosing is

less
free
from
past causes.

None.

Category error.

Jimmy can jump between 0 feet and 2 feet. The olypic jumper can jump between 0 and five or whatever it is.

that
has
nothing
to do
with whether each is choosing
freely.

The olympic jumper is not suddenly freer in relation to utter causation because his range is larger. He just has more options to choose from. But his choosing is either caused utterly by what went before or not.

Category error.

Range of options confused with being free from causation.

And note that everyone who chooses will tell us why they chose. Conscious and unconscious desires and external factors will either inevitably lead to the choice or not.

Dominoes or not.

The choices come from the previous state or not.

This has nothing to do with more options.

Or we gained more free will because now we can buy more brands of sneakers.

And we did not get granted more free will because we can choose between more type of sneakers. Cause that is not an ontological difference. It’s just a greater range of choices, that were either utterly determined or not.

A category error.

And note how careful I am being not to say that determinism is the case. I don’t know and frankly I don’t care, because it does not change my day and what I will struggle to do. I am saying that this defense of free will - which note does not explain it in any way, does not show in any way how causation no longer applies - is a category error.

And if somehow you are not choosing based on training, learning, desires (conscious and not conscious)
is it really you who chooses?

If you are choosing based on your values - which are learned and based on desires and temperment - and desires, then it is caused by what you were that moment before the choice. IOW determined.

Unless there is something you guys have not mentioned.

You just keep repeating and celebrating arguments that are category errors.

So what’s the past have to do with the present moment of choosing to practice jumping higher? Value must be attributed before attainment of higher skill or understanding… it’s about utilizing and understanding the system, not escaping it. A determined state in absolute form is not able to willingly utilize it as we have, proof is in society being. And if he chooses not to jump at all? If he chooses to set a goal to jump higher than the other has no effect on if he jumps higher? If he consciously practices such specifically for an targeted effect out of cause? The entire point is /choosing/ cause to have an effect by value, value is what destroys the “confinement” that is trying to be demonstrated.

Yup, listed value and desire in the post above. And these are caused by temperment and experience.

It would be about not being utterly caused by the previous moment, period.

That sentence makes no sense to me.

Then he desired not to do it. And this desire caused that choice. And other desires and experiences caused that choice or the desire to do soemthing instead of jumping.

Oh, jeez. come on. It’s whether that choice to set that goal and not some other is determined.

It might, except values and desires are utterly caused
or
you will demonstrate how they are not.

and if they are not

then they have nothing to do with me and my desires

and what value is would that be?

It’s the same category error and I even talked about values and desires. Now I have had to repeat myself.

You don’t focus on the problem the free will believer has. You are making up other issues.

sil,

by falsifiability i mean in general what hume and popper were on about. metaphysical statements such as ‘everything is caused’ and ‘there is freewill’ aren’t deductive statements, on one hand, and on the other hand, even as inductive statements they aren’t testable. we simply can’t experience either determinism or freewill, and yet we know rationally that each thesis can’t be true.

this problem was fully established by hume - the problem of induction when dealing with causation - and the best attempt to save the subject from radical skepticism was made by kant. he sets out to prove that causality is a necessary feature of knowledge, something that structures experience such that experience can’t happen without it. but then in a last ditch effort to save the transphenomenal soul from the fatalism and immorality that he thought would result from pure determinism, he does the same thing descartes did and becomes a substance dualist.

now i’m of the contention that spinoza actually did create a series of deductive arguments proving causation that weren’t just meaningless tautologies. a logically solid ontology that is as close to a natural science as a philosophical thesis can get. i’m satisfied with it and feel that he resolved the problem quite well.

so did spinoza make freewill falsifiable? yes and no. he never provided any direct, existential experience of causation… never got past hume’s problem… but he did create a kind of intuitive sense via a line of reasoning that sort of indirectly brings one to the conclusion of determinism. he didn’t prove it, mind you, but he revealed how the theory of freewill would be much more sketchy and riddled with conceptual problems. this is why the final verdict must rest on the principle of parsimony. we have to accept the simpler conclusion for lack of evidence suggesting otherwise. this is to say a monistic reductionalism (even a neutral monism) leaves open less questions than a substance dualism, which is the precipice upon which the edifice will be laid to rest by the very best who passed the test of what hume addressed.

The will should be free from what?
From causes? That is not the premise.

Spinoza distinguishes the will which is/sets free from the affects, against the will-less being, which is driven by the affects.

So both are caused beings. One is will-less, the other endowed with will. In terms of its experience, the former is bound, the latter is free.

And what terms are there except experiential ones?
Silhouette would appreciate that!