free will

Is free will real. are living things not deterministic like a all other natural phenomenon. If given the same person in two separate but identical rooms will those two separate but identical people not do the exact same things. I understand that stuff such as the uncertainty within some things like the decaying of radioactive isotopes. however I think that we will find reason behind such things eventually and we will eventually be able to predict them. the way a great many people behave backs up my belief. most people live and act the same as each other. most people act in deterministic ways most people can be predicted with a degree of certainty. The Newtonian ideas of a deterministic reality and universe seem to be correct by my understanding of the universe and sciences. is there any absolute certainty that living things possess a true free will if so is it absolute. do things like the digitized fly brain show that animals dont posses free will and does that apply to other living things especially people. I dont want free will to be false but I just cant find a way with certainty that it is. what do you all think

>>7599 >deterministic like a all other natural phenomenon Natural phenomena are not deterministic. We've known that we don't live in a clockwork universe for a century now. See: quantum mechanics. True randomness is a fundamental property of the physical world.

>>7600 I believe the typical next step in this argument is that, even if quantum randomness manifests on a macroscopic level, then that just means that some of our decisions are based on quantum randomness - which hardly captures what we mean or want out of free will. If my computer has to turn green when a random number is odd, and red when a random number is even, we would hardly say that just because it's display color is non-deterministic that the computer now has free will. I don't know what the typical response to this step is, though. I'm sure there's a strong counterargument, but I haven't personally tracked that dialectic down yet.

>>7599 To me, there are some questions such as >what is the meaning of life? >do we have free will? >is there an afterlife? you get the gist. The problem with them for me is at the root, any conclusion is cojecture. If we are to be serious about answering these questions, we will see some things respectively. The meaning of life is not really knowable without knowing in what system 'life' lies within. You need knowledge of what is beyond life. This naturally brings up the afterlife question. No living person has been to the afterlife, so no living person actually knows if there is one, much less the nature of it. The first two questions are unanswerable because they depend on knowledge beyond our living existence. Free will is similar. We require a complete and certain understanding of the brain to begin to answer this, without this it is pointless to debate. We do not have that, and frankly I expect we never will. Of course people assume biological creatures would be fully deterministic, but they don't really know, do they? We ought to stop wasting our time with questions that are truly unanswerable.

>>7599 The base of your question seems to be physics. I'm not a physicist, but I still have learned certain information relating to physics due to my concerns about free will. One thing I learned was that the activity of subatomic particles cannot have an impact on the human body, not even our neurons, the particles are too small and the components of our bodies are too large. But of course, the question relating to subatomic particles is whether their behavior is deterministic, not if they literally impact our bodies. If the basic components of our existence act deterministically, it could follow that all things made out of them are also deterministic. There is what I feel to be a false belief that the behaviors of particles are random. You mentioned it with the radioactive decay of atoms. Some people see that physicists cannot always reliably predict when a single atom is going to decay, and take this to be an indicator of some randomness in the universe. The atom decays when it is struck by a particle. Predicting when and where one single particle is going to come from before it strikes an atom is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, given our current equipment. On the other hand, if you have a group of radioactive atoms, and one of them decays, its decay prompts the decay of other atoms, and this proceeds at a fixed rate which is deterministic. If we should develop better equipment and a better understanding of physics we might be able to predict things like the decay of a single atom. Either way, things like this do not prove randomness to exist anywhere other than our minds. Randomness is also not proof of free will, as you said in this post >>7602. I think the root of the free will issue is whether we are entirely an amalgamation of matter shaped by forces beyond our control, that our behavior is the result of this, or whether there is immutable aspect of our beings within us that is uninfluenced by the external world, which in some way influences our behavior. I think it would help if we agreed on some definition of free will. To me, it's simply our ability to freely make decisions. This ability is essentially a black box, because if we study our behavior, and ascribe certain causes to behaviors, we are effectively demonstrating how a certain behavior is not "free", and so we're chipping away at the black box. I personally feel that free will is merely a black box which will probably be elucidated by scientific research, much like other natural phenomena we used to ascribe to the supernatural. I don't think free will can be defined in a meaningful way. I'm not aware of any evidence for free will beyond the mere intuitive sense that we possess it, which could easily be false. We have things we know to influence our behavior, and then we have elements of our behavior that we do not fully understand (at this time), or cannot fully ascribe to something. I think that often times the evidence people use in favor of free will stems from an inability for people to adequately ascribe an action to some antecedent. I think that there's a logical leap being made there, it's similar to the god of the gaps, if anything. It does not necessarily mean that free will does exist. Free will isn't entirely responsible for one's personality, or any of their cognitive abilities i.e speech, vision, recognition of moving objects, intelligence. "Free will" is easily influenced by drugs, including alcohol. Traumatic experiences, both in childhood and adulthood, can also change one's personality and through that their "free will". What does free will consist of, other than nebulous, yet to be elucidated aspects of human behavior? Also, what is responsible for free will? If we can't establish this, I don't think we can have a meaningful discussion. The cause of free will most likely isn't our brains, our understanding of neuroscience seriously undermines that notion. We have plenty of evidence that implicitly tells us that we have less free will than we think. We observe it regularly. Person A makes a request of Person B. Person B responds harshly to Person A. A few hours later, Person B apologizes to Person A, saying they were emotional because of some prior event, and that they overreacted. Most people can agree that our state of mind influences our actions. Many things may influence our state of mind. Hormone levels, blood sugar levels, drugs, life experience, disease, mental illness, the structure of our brain. In a court of law, a judge may be more lenient upon a person should they be sentenced for some crime they committed while in an unsound state of mind. A person in a state of psychosis who commits murder will not be sentenced to death where a sane person who commits murder might be, as people have come to the belief that it is not right to kill a person who is not/was not in control of their faculties. In cases where a heavy sentence could be meted out, a judge may demand the defendant give some reason for their actions, so that their actions may be understood, and perhaps in some way sympathized with. This reason they are expected to give is usually something that would impede their "free will". Often times in criminal trials a defendant's upbringing comes to light. A rapist's childhood in which they were horrifically abused may come to light during trial, for example. A person's upbringing in an impoverished area ridden by crime, without decent schools, social services, or role models, may come to light. People's personalities are in part the product of their environment. The influence of their environment begins at their conception. The impact of a person's environment upon them before they have the power to influence their environment is not negligible. The manner in which a person influences their environment once they have that power could be determined by how their environment influenced them back when they did not have that power. Personality traits can also be inherited genetically. Obviously one does not have control over their genes. This study suggested that human personality is 30-60% heritable https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-018-0263-6 Regardless of specific figures, genetics do contribute to one's personality. On an individual basis it seems absurd to attempt to quantify the impact of inherited personality traits on decision making. Would you say that something was 30% responsible for a particular decision you made? In that case, what would "you" be other than an amalgamation of matter, which was molded by various forces beyond your control? To come back to the idea of an immutable aspect of our being guiding our decisions. There is one well known case where a seemingly normal man suddenly began to develop pedophilic compulsions and other severe sexual compulsions. He began collecting child pornography and his compulsions manifested in him abusing a child, which got him into legal trouble. He could either go to a rehabilitation center, or go to jail. He chose rehabilitation, but he ended up getting expelled from the rehab center because he wouldn't stop trying to solicit sexual favors from people there. Now he was going to jail. Before being sentenced for his crimes he began to complain of severe headaches, so he got an MRI, and a tumor was discovered. The tumor was removed, after which his behavior normalized. He was able to be rehabilitated after this. A year later he began collecting CP again, and a subsequent MRI discovered his tumor had regrown. What was striking was that he had known all along the way that what he was doing was wrong, but it was as though he couldn't help himself. There's a condition called alien (or anarchic) hand syndrome, which causes people to lose control of their hand. It's usually caused by callosal syndrome, or by brain damage, usually the result of a stroke. A person could be at a dinner table eating with one hand, and then their other hand will reach over to slide another person's plate onto the floor, and they'll have to fight their own hand like Dr. Strangelove. They might flick on a light switch, and right after they've done this, their other hand will flick it off. They could be driving, and all of a sudden one hand will try to veer them off of the road. These behaviors seem to be the result of several streams of consciousness in a person's brain opposing each other. There are different streams of consciousness between the left and right brain hemispheres. There's an anecdote in relation to this from the neuroscientist V.S Ramachandran. He said he once verbally asked a patient if they believed in god. The patient said no. However, Ramachandran also held two cards in his hands, one of which said "Yes" and the other "No", and the patient pointed towards the "Yes" card. Speech is regulated by the left hemisphere and it understands language much better than the right hemisphere. The right hemisphere somewhat understands language but it cannot speak. So, the right hemisphere answered with the card. Clearly much if not most of our decision making is the result of our brains, and our brains are physical. If there is some abnormality with our brains, our behavior can be influenced dramatically. If there was an immutable aspect of our being, it should be able to withstand the physical changes brought about by callosal syndrome, or brain tumors. If our brain isn't providing us with free will, what is?

>>7605 One more thing, I couldn't add it to the end of my post as it was too long. >>7600 True randomness is not a fundamental property of the physical world. It certainly isn't treated so in science. There's literally an entire field of mathematics dedicated to studying seemingly random phenomena like hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc, it's called Chaos theory. Brownian motion also relates to this. The behaviors of particles may only appear random due to an inability on our behalf to gauge all of the variables influencing their behavior. Our equipment that we use to observe the particles could also be influencing them in ways we don't understand, depending on the context. We cannot yet prove that randomness is anything other than a figment of our imagination. I personally believe that chance "probably" exists exclusively within our minds, I don't think it can be proven otherwise.

>>7599 Free will and determinism aren't incompatible. Even if the universe is completely deterministic, free will still exists.

>>7602 Agreed. I wouldn't suggest that intrinsic randomness has much if anything to say about the question of free will. My own guess is that free will is an illusion, and that our decisions and actions are determined either statistically at the macro level, or *extremely* rarely determined randomly by some Schrodeinger's Cat type process.

>>7599 A very interesting thing that shifted my perspective on the topic was the following: How would randomness change anything? How is your will any more free if it is influenced by an event you do not control because of its randomness?

>>7675 Consider this: Suppose you are making a decision, and a high-energy particle from outer space or from the Earth's natural refiation strikes and destroys a neuron that happens to be critical to the decision-making process, and that causes the decision to go a particular way.

I never understood the incompatibility of determinism and free will. If our brains evolve according to the laws of nature and are entirely predictable, then how does that make our decisions not our own? We are still taking those decisions exactly how we want. >but we could not have taken a different decision! We are like falling dominoes! A domino has no way to process information or influence the world, unlike us. But if being influenced by physics is so bad, then what exactly would you even consider free will? I don't see how a decision process evolving randomly, or not influenced by the universe in any way would be more "free". We all intuitively accept that we are subject to causality. If you don't like swimming, you won't go to the pool. Does that mean that you are a slave of logic? Or of your lack of desire to swim? Would throwing a coin to decide make you freer? What reason for (not) going to the pool would make you freer than your personal damn preference? And as for your lack of enjoyment for swimming, what does it matter if it's due to brain physics or some immaterial soul? At the end of the day, you are faced with the fact of who you are, without choosing. But everything you actually do is your choice. This whole free will idea is a meaningless, nonsensical concept in its modern interpretation IMO

>>7678 >If our brains evolve according to the laws of nature and are entirely predictable As mentioned previously, the laws of nature (and our brains) are not entirely predictable. They are only statistically predictable to a certain degree. At the macro level we experience, that degree is very high, but not 100%. For instance, if you listen to Geiger counter clicks due to radioactive decay, you are hearing events that are entirely unpredictable due to any "cause". This is not a comment on your other statements, just a correction of a very common misconception.

>>7675 >>7677 Very good point. Randomness plays no role in whether or not we have free will. In fact randomness is an enemy of free will.

>>7599 In a different way, I am disappointed with determinism and free will. One of my problems is that it is hard to wrap my head around the whole chain of causality. Do we really understand or identify a thing and its causes enough for determinism to be useful or worthwhile? What kind of person wants a world where the future is not open for them? Both of these perspectives inherit a certain set of interests. Free will was propagated by a priestly caste to provoke guilt and bad conscience, while determinism is blockheaded and tries to remove any responsibility or fluidity in life. I like beautiful ideas and both of these positions seem tired and weary.

I'll begin by saying that debating free will is an utter waste of time and energy unless done solely recreationally. The outcome, due to the way it's framed, should not have any bearing on anything beyond personal contemplation, let alone be used for things like a criminal court or judge ruling. In short, it really does not matter whether "free will" is real or not. I've heard people went into a personal crisis over concluding that it doesn't. Don't be that guy, it's stupid and you don't need to have a depressive episode over it. The two camps I've identified while I was deeply intrigued by this question are: >people who really want their interpretation of the Bible to be true >same people, or at least there's an overlap, who make arguments for creationism, space is fake cuz firmament or engage in wordplay like those ontological arguments and >some uni professors who at best just feel irrelevant and now are chasing clout by trying to associate their face with the bombastic claim that "free will doesn't exist" >or worse, they found a fancy excuse to pardon violent criminals and their migrant bronze age minded pets My brief view on either is that there is no magical substance, ghost or soul in the cartoon sense. There's no Casper living in each of us and then gets released upon death. But also if someone or something behaves like an animal they should be treated as such. Caged, put down or released back into the wild. And it is incredibly destructive to argue otherwise. There simply is no place for feral creatures to roam unrestrained in a civilized society, no matter if they don't have control of their faculties or "didn't know better". Even dogs have leashes for that reason. But also is this Atheism+ view wrong that we're "just chemicals" or "star dust". While true on some base level, we're also more than that. We're a highly complex corporal process that resulted from a highly complex selective process, that can become aware not just of its being but also of its own awareness and god knows how much more recursive you can get with this. And this is something that, as far as we can observe, only found between the ears of a reasonable person. So anything beyond a bare animalistic mode of being is a candidate for what we could consider "free will". And the more complex, sophisticated, conscious, aware, unique and unpredictable (not random) it is the more "free" it then must be, right? And the thing about prediction is that the moment you know an outcome it changes the outcome. We may make good approximative models on populations (and intel agencies do that) but anything beyond that is in the realm of thought experiments. For instance a machine which predicts the future. It must not only consider the turbulence of all relevant atoms over the required stretch of time but that it is also aware of itself and that it is aware that it is aware, and so on, ad infinitum. Hence even if free will doesn't really exist, for all practical means and purposes this doesn't matter to our day to day lives. That's because we can't predict a decision or behavior with absolute certainty anyway. This is what I meant by my opening statement. >>7605 Wasn't there a recent discovery that we do in fact have a component to our neurons which is influenced by quantum mechanics and by such makes us susceptible to the background jitter of the universe, be it ever so slightly? >>7605 >it's simply our ability to freely make decisions. >>7607 >because we still choose them A decision that's highly influences by the preceding causality. >>7678 >A domino has no way to process information or influence the world, unlike us Not quite. A domino processes in a way the current state that it's influenced by, say being tipped over, prompting its change of state from standing to fallen. Just like each particle is processing its own state according to its own internal physical rules. Just like each Turing machine or every single of our neurons does by its own accord. Down to the most fundamental layer of the universe that decides whether something exists or not, which is a state that's being processed by the virtue of its own nature. In some respect we're just a different shape to that of a domino and fall over or fall into place just in a different way. The function of a single neuron is fairly simple but so is a single pixel in Conway's "game of life" or a stone in a game of Go. Yet incredibly complex patterns can emerge. Despite following deterministic rules, are exponentially more expensive to calculate with each added part. The question of "free will" is fundamentally that of predictability. When people discuss it they do it from the lens of something like the movie "Minority Report", where if a crime can be predicted reliably then is it fair to punish that person preemtively? I think it's not since it hasn't happened yet, at least not to the full extent but also should negative outcomes be prevented like if the authorities are aware of a potential terrorist instead of letting it happen. Attempted murder for instance is a valid and punishable judgement for instance. And not knowing the law is a debatable area that might be out of scope to this topic. My closing statement on this is that the question of free will seems like it's stated incorrectly. A loaded question essentially, that hides the premise that there's nothing special going on if our being is dictated by natural and fundamental laws. Or that there can be no meaning or joy of life or that everything would be inherently pointless if it is so. While the better question would be if there can be meaning in an action if it was always destined to happen? And to that I say that complex life forms such as us were yielded by natural and possibly deterministic phenomena. And us being able to make moral judgements that are often reasonable (albeit also often incomplete) given the context and circumstances, just like a computer can only yield one answer for a given input. I believe something along those lines should refute the notion that meaning can't be present as a result of determinism or the only way a thing can be. And the only danger with determinism that I see is that psychotic smartasses will try to essentially perform a timing attack on everyone else's brain and mind in order to gain a massive advantage over others. Reality is odd this way.

I believe in Max Stirner's egoism. It doesn't matter if free will exists or not because my actions largely match with my ego.

>>7600 There has not been an experiment that proves the universe is fundamentally nondeterminstic, only experiments that rule out certain models of determinism. Interpreting those results very quickly turns to philosophy rather than science. That said, even Newtonian mechanics allows for nondeterminism, and thermodynamics is based on the idea that you can't predict the motion of individual atoms and have to use statistics, yet it is still a great model. The notion of well-posedness is much more precise, and it can be generalized to stochastic processes too. Now, if the laws of nature *and* the boundary conditions of the universe are such that the whole system is well-posed, do we have free will? I argue yes. In fact I think well-posedness is necessary for free will. If our actions were fundamentally random, our actions would be no *less* free. So, either I am an immaterial soul that somehow controls or is perfectly correlated with my desires, or I am merely a lump of matter and my will is a property of the matter. In either case, what I will is a result of what I am, and what I do is a result of what I will.

>>8164 >There has not been an experiment that proves the universe is fundamentally nondeterminstic As you know, there has never been a scientific experiment that "proved" any hypothesis. There are only scientific experiments that support or falsify hypotheses. So far, quantum mechanics is the most experimentally well-supported model of the physical wolrd in the history of science. And true randomness is a fundamental part of quantum mechanics. Every experiment that has ever been done to falsify it has failed.

>>7599 Determinism is based on the metaphysical premise that the universe exists in a definite state with respect to some reductionist breakdown, even though any breakdown that acknowledges measurement as a physical interaction implies the state of the system is inherently unknowable from within itself (because measuring any part of the system disturbs it, with potential higher-order consequences for all other parts). All reductionist theories have epistemological uncertainty built right into their atomic elements. It's not just a "bug" in QM. The dumber proponents of such theories assert that uncertainties go away on the macro scale, but this easily refuted by the existence of chaotic feedback loops that amplify even the tiniest uncertainties into serious consequences. The smarter ones will simply say "epistemological =/= ontological" and they'll be right. But then they're effectively stating that a key feature of their own model of reality, actually says nothing about the nature of reality. They simply override the suggestions of their model with external ontological assertions about what you'd see if you were God, or Laplace's demon, or a time traveller, or some other unphysical nonsense. Not only is determinism inherently untestable, it's also inherently at odds with empirical evidence: even the most spatially and temporally isolated experimental setup designed to prove determinism, will ends with some nice error bars. Not to mention that any "external" disruption of the experiment would be discarded as irrelevant, even though it literally manifests the uncertainties the experiment tries to disprove. The whole point of the determinist argument is that the future is uniqely determined by some "laws". Let's suppose nothing inside the universe can hold a fully faithful representation of the universe's entire state "in its head", to apply a "holistic" prediction method (nevermind the impossibility of knowing that state or deriving that method!). If so, all physical theories are stuck with reductionism. They will all suffer from that generalized "measurement problem". They will all look formally indistinguishable from descriptions of non-deterministic systems. From a physical standpoint, determinism will always be an arbitrary and external imposition.

>>7605 >I think the root of the free will issue is whether we are entirely an amalgamation of matter shaped by forces beyond our control, that our behavior is the result of this, or whether there is immutable aspect of our beings within us that is uninfluenced by the external world This is a total red herring. Even assuming reductionist physics is true, the same rules that make a rock helplessly roll down a hill also enable the formation of more complex systems propelled by their own internal dynamics, whose modeling involves elements like self-reflection and decision-making, which have causal efficacy. To assert that the existence of such systems is only an illusion, because you just "feel like" they don't play by your interpretation of this universe's rules, undermines itself: science operates under the implicit assumption that humans comprehend the essential characteristics of what they're observing and then inferring rules that explain those characteristics. You don't get to just claim "you're observing things wrong" when something doesn't conform to your personal head canon about how the universe works.

>>8165 >As you know, there has never been a scientific experiment that "proved" any hypothesis. Fine, there has never been an experiment that rules out determinism. >And true randomness is a fundamental part of quantum mechanics. This is the part where you lose me. There are deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics. Essentially, one has to choose between locality/local realism, which means every particle has a definite objective state that is influenced only by 'nearby' things, and determinism. There are also models called superdeterministic which change some of the assumptions about the experimental setup itself to recover both local realism and determinism (I think -- I must admit the way some of these QM people write is very hard to read as a mathematician). As I said, interpreting these results quickly turns to philosophy rather than science. >>8166 >Not only is determinism inherently untestable, it's also inherently at odds with empirical evidence something which is untestable cannot be at odds with empirical evidence. If it were, that would mean you have an empirical test for it. >From a physical standpoint, determinism will always be an arbitrary and external imposition. This is why physics cannot answer philosophical questions.

>>8168 >something which is untestable cannot be at odds with empirical evidence If that's what you think, you need to re-read that paragraph until you grasp it properly. >This is why physics cannot answer philosophical questions. So long as you're happy to admit that the observations are odds with your baseless ontological premises and that determinism has absolutely nothing to do with science.

>>8169 How could you run an experiment that disproves something untestable? That simply makes no sense. >So long as you're happy to admit that the observations are odds It can't be at odds if the scientific method simply cannot provide a positive or negative answer the questions you are posing. Are you the "totally not a physicalist" guy from a different thread?

>>8170 I see that you still didn't understand that paragraph. Do you need to read it again? >How could you run an experiment that disproves something untestable? Maybe you're confused about what "at odds" means. "X is at odds with Y" doesn't mean "X disproves Y" (or vice versa). It means X and Y are pulling in opposite directions (in this case, philosophically). You can resolve this conflict by admitting that your philosophy is disconnected from (perceived) reality, on par with an infinite number of other arbitrary claims whose sole "strength" is being undisprovable for the same reason that they are unprovable. I guess you don't have to worry about shoving a square peg in a round hole if all you have is a hole.

>>8171 >It means X and Y are pulling in opposite directions Okay, so you mean something like "if X is true, then Y is less plausible". But again, if X is tested empirically, then wouldn't the statement "Y is less plausible based on empirical data for X" be an indirect form of testing Y empirically?

>>8172 > But again, if X is tested empirically, then wouldn't the statement "Y is less plausible based on empirical data for X" be an indirect form of testing Y empirically? I'm willing to retract that one statement and concede that determinism is testable and thus already refuted. How does that sit with you? Do you accept this? No, you just run for your metaphysical escape hatch and tell me a story about what God sees when he does a re-run of the universe. Being undermined by empirical testing doesn't "prove" anything to determinists. What do you want to call the situation where reality strongly suggests one thing, but you just ignore it and believe another thing, because you can make soykaf up to bridge the gap a logical contradiction?

>>8174 without a logical contradiction*

>>8174 Then I will once again bring up that determinism is actually not refuted by physical experiment. There are models which agree with experimental results (although I will admit I'm not fuy up to date on the literature) and feature full determinism. You just have to lose certain other features. Again, it quickly becomes philosophy and not physics.

>>8176 >determinism is actually not refuted by physical experiment It is refuted by experiments to the precise degree that it is testable by them. You're setting that value to zero and you can die on that hill for all I care. If your philosophy refuses to be informed by "objective" reality, and it simultaneously violates core human intuitions, it's simply not worth considering. >There are models which agree with experimental results ... and feature full determinism ... it quickly becomes philosophy and not physics. Of course. You didn't answer my question: what do you call the situation where reality strongly suggests one thing, but you just ignore it and believe another thing, because you can make soykaf up to bridge the gap without a logical contradiction?

>>8177 >It is refuted by experiments to the precise degree that it is testable by them. In the sense that you have to choose between determinism and some other properties, sure. >what do you call the situation where reality strongly suggests one thing, but you just ignore it and believe another thing, because you can make soykaf up to bridge the gap without a logical contradiction? Models which throw out determinism are also made up and are only considered valid because they don't cause a logical contradiction? It's called a hypothesis. You're entitled to your opinion on which hypothesis is more likely to be correct, of course.

>>8178 It's clear that the entire substance of the argument went completely over your head and you can't progress a single step beyond arbitrary axioms that your (using the word 'your' loosely here; you didn't arrive at this nonsense yourself) trivial belief system.

>>8179 Right right I have a puny mind that can't even begin to comprehend your grandiloquence. Next you'll tell me to ask chatgpt like you did. We've heard it before. Do you have any thoughts about the post you started this by responding to, or is that beneath you?

>>8180 >Right right I have a puny mind that can't even begin to comprehend your grandiloquence You have a puny mind that can't comprehend basic points, like the fact that your philosophy is vacuous because it's unprovable, it denies basic human intuitions, and it's also inherently at odds with anything that can ever be observed in principle. Your sole defense is that you can always do mental gymnastics to "explain" why you can't predict a future that is supposedly predetermined by laws, using those laws, except in statistical terms. You must be talking about some different laws. Not physical laws but the mystical and unknowable laws of fate. That's fine, so long as you always make this clear and stop trying to hide behind 19th century scientific common sense.

>>8181 >your philosophy is vacuous because it is unprovable I've got bad news about your philosophy, friend. >it denies basic human intuitions Determinism is a basic human intuition. Why can that be thrown out? Moreover, why must the world behave intuitively? >and it's also inherently at odds with anything that can ever be observed in principle. We've already been over this. >Your sole defense is that you can always do mental gymnastics to "explain" why you can't predict a future that is supposedly predetermined by laws, using those laws Unpredictability in this case is due to a fundamentally insurmountable lack of information. That part is true no matter which interpretation of quantum mechanics you pick. Again do you have any thoughts about free will and/or compatibilism?

>>8182 >I've got bad news about your philosophy, friend. Really? Let's hear it. But make sure you tie your generic drivel to statements I actually made. Either way, you concede you have no a-priori justification for determinism. >Determinism is a basic human intuition. Right, except for when it isn't. It's an intuition about some things and some situations, which you baselessly extrapolate to everything, without solid justification, in violation of other, more fundamental human intuitions. So there's no intuitive grounds for determinism. >Unpredictability in this case is due to a fundamentally insurmountable lack of information. And here you concede there can never be empirical grounds for determinism, either. Not a-priori, not intuitive, not empirical... then what? Which ass did you pull your belief system out of? Also, do you completely reject the notion that the latent structure behind human observations says something about the nature of existence, or only when it comes to determinism? >Again do you have any thoughts about free will and/or compatibilism? My argument directly addresses OP's dubious assumptions regarding "natural phenomena". It's as related to Free Will as the OP. Now wipe that drool off your chin and to play with your toys outside.

Since I've already set up the context in these (>>8166, >>8167), I might as well state my bottom line: From an empirical perspective, agency has causal efficacy just like any other natural phenomenon. A viable theory of human behavior can only make its predictions in terms of probability distributions over possible actions, yet only one outcome will actually be observed. Agency can thus be defined as the internal experience and external observation of this gap's closure. Denying it on reductionist grounds is like denying thermodynamic laws because you think you can reason about the future of a gas container using deterministic accounts of individual molecules. Trying to refute the causal efficacy of elements in a higher-level model by appealing to a lower-level one is stupid in principle, but even if you're unprincipled, you can see that it's doubly stupid in practice: the lower-level model is useless for making any concrete predictions on the relevant scale. Even if it was computationally tractable, by the time you're done propagating snowballing microscopic uncertainties to the top level, you're left with a giant smudge - i.e. you can't even demonstrate the causal efficacy of your lower-level elements at the scale of your attempted prediction. Saying "I did X because I chose to" is as scientifically valid as saying "I fell to the ground because of gravity". To say "I did X because particle physics forced me do it", on the other hand, is pure wank. On any tenable level of analysis, your will is indeed a cause. So there you have a perfectly good way to define Free Will as a "positive liberty" wrt. physical reality. You can also formulate Free Will as a "negative liberty": if you take a reductionist view of reality, your future actions are not uniquely determined by any combination of conceivable laws and definable information (but neither are they random). If you take a holistic view, there is nothing truly external to you. In either case, it's impossible to substantiate how, why and what decides your final actions, besides you, yourself.

>>8183 >Really? Let's hear it. Your philosophy is not provable either. It doesn't really matter what it actually is, the fact that it cannot be proved is a fact of life. Treating that like a showstopper is a childish type of naivety. >Right, except for when it isn't Do you have an example where it isn't? And don't say "quantum mechanics" -- that is not part of anyone's foundational experience, and it is not intuitive. >And here you concede there can never be empirical grounds for determinism, either. Shocker! Now tell me all about your empirical grounds for rejecting determinism. >Also, do you completely reject the notion that the latent structure behind human observations says something about the nature of existence, or only when it comes to determinism? My entire point, this entire time, is that there has been no empirical grounds for rejecting determinism. In fact, I have no idea if the universe is deterministic. I think it could be, but it very well could not be. It doesnt actually matter. Unlike you, when faced with the inability to answer a question with empirical observation, I don't claim that this supports my interpretation.

>>8185 Talking to you is like talking to a bot. Even more boring. You're more predictable and much worse at simulating comprehension.

Free will is real, and determinism is not relevant to free will. Although I will also argue that we do not live in a deterministic universe - there are proveably indeterministic processes that we've observed, this does not mean we don't know how they work right now, it means we do know how they work and that they necessarily cannot be predicted. This is not relevant to free will, though. because you can still be guided by random processes without having much say in the matter. This is the case of anything that seems to consist of greatness, such as a crowd or a gas which is ostensibly composed of particles. since these are very different examples i don't think the latter would be worthwhile to explain as it concerns physics questions that get further from the subject. As for the former, you cannot sociologically predict what an *individual* is going to do - rather, you can make some predictions or observations on populations they might be a part of, but it categorically takes *some* understanding of the person themself to have an idea of what exactly they might do, their thought processes, and which or whether or not they will act on them. this understanding (if correct) should be treated like a gift - it is the domain of psychology, not sociology, to talk about individuals' thoughts and behavior which is also the field that notoriously is the least replicable of all the sciences. to the extent that some would deny it a science at all. what this means to me is that they are a part of the world outside of the sanitized, generic framework of science that while very powerful necessarily strips itself of the experience some call humanity, personhood, etc. Having dismissed of the naturalistic pessimism that typically associates atheism and an argument against free will, which I would even argue is not an atheistic argument at all but rather a protestant christian argument, this does not prove that free will exists, merely defends it from some of the preliminary arguments against it. proving, *philosophically*, that free will exists is much more difficult. i tend to defer from the argument itself because of this difficulty instead thinking about things like autonomy and degrees of freedom because they're more tangible, even measurable in some capacity. i am generally of the opinion that freedom exists wherein there is any determination of an individual or collective, not simply that freedom is the capability of something in the second sense but in a deeper, perhaps more defining sense of the word, i believe in autonomy. what this means to me, philosophically, is that concepts represent and enact themselves in some capacity that instances of them, like a work of art, in their content have implications in the form and structure around them. people have autonomy in this sense too, which is why ethics exists - it would be absurd to say it doesn't, even if it was entirely a delusional set of language game there would be reasons why it were to exist in the first place. this is briefly my thoughts on freedom, whether it should or should not exist and to what extent is a separate argument but I personally think it should be maximal, that we should have anarchy. the next part of the question is to define will. my understanding of such is based on personal experiences, which i have positive and negative. you can do something thats objectively a good decision such as in business or relationships, but if you feel compelled to do so outside of your own desires and judgment you will be resentful. what's more, there are even experiences you can have that might on some physical level or in some sense be enjoyed - if your consent is not given in the process, it will hurt that sense of enjoyment and darken your mind, contributing to depression and lethargy. i know this from being raped. while its true that your desires can come from somewhere external and this is the point of advertising, it does not undermine the autonomy of will. much deliberation could be made, for instance, to rationalize acting on immoral desires - this is because will exists in a complex and autonomous state that demands its expression. in the advertising example, things can be marketed to you however there are underlying needs to the marketing which are not equivalent to the need shown in the marketing itself. these needs exist socially just as much as they exist physically, you need food and water but you also need to fit into society, to talk to others, so for instance you need an internet-connected cellphone. advertising is simply a matter of *which* food and water, it is more likely that somebody will choose the one that is presented to them, which doesn't make them unfree - it merely demonstrates that people make decisions based on the information available to them. with this in mind, it is possible to consider a state of more information that enhances the ability of each individual to make decisions, this is not a hypothetical state but one which is practically achieved every single day. advertising then generally consists of various forms of information siloing,which are often in contradiction to an underlying desire to make the most informed decision possible - an extension upon autonomy. i would go on to add that we are not restrained by our "base needs" either. simply because they can be imagined and ignored, in fact, much of our social ideology seems to be based on our ability to do so. it is only *because* of our free will that it can be taken away from us, likewise to claim that it is a lie is to gesture towards the taking-away of the free will in question. these statements have a negative valence and are used for that negative valence and in line with pessimism precisely because they are denial of that which is. on a broader scope, socialization seems to consist of a series of interactions upon the premise that free will exists, and the arguments that then seem to arise against free will are not arguments of its nonexistence but rather the fact that, using our own free will, we can determine that metering it out and giving it away (getting a job, for instance) can be socially advantageous. and ironically, most of that social advantage is in fact to achieve greater future degrees of freedom that are considered to be exponentially greater than the freedom that will be experienced without calculating the most profitable outcome. >most people act in deterministic ways most people can be predicted with a degree of certainty. >is there any absolute certainty that living things possess a true free will if so is it absolute here is your problem: you accept the physical model as allowing indeterminate and uncertain possibilities, yet you ask for a case in which free will is determined and certain. natural science is concerned with the quantification of certainty precisely because it is not philosophy, which is the context in which these discussions are had. i would not even argue that the *possibility* of free will proves its existence, but rather that the exceptions to philosophical arguments - like "there is no evidence of free will" carry weight. in physics, "there is no evidence" does not mean there must be zero possibility of a measurement being made, but rather that the measure exists within an expected range of error provided by the hypothesis. we do this because the scientific method is useful. in philosophy, you must first prove that this way of talking about it isn't just circumstantially useful, but that it is meaningful in a way that overrides all contrary arguments. not strictly related, but I've recently read through this and found it to be very meaningful to the discussion of quantities and greatness, that seems to thread this entire discussion. https://web.archive.org/web/20150430223200/http://ctzen.org/sunnyvale/enUS/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=141&Itemid=57