(May 16, 2025 at 8:11 pm)Nay_Sayer Wrote: Over/Under on this thread, somehow also including IKEA furniture instructions?

Seems everything else has ended up in it.

If you put your kivik between two poang, you can admire your kallax.

Boru

(May 16, 2025 at 8:03 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Free will of a limited kind is a profound contradiction in terms.  Limits are exactly what people skeptical of free will are talking about.  Limit being a damned good antonym for freedom in the first place.

Not really.  We have free will even if we only have two bad choices. Freedom only extends our possible uses for our abilities to assess and choose.

Every restaurant menu, with its limits, would negate our ability to choose by your argument.

(May 16, 2025 at 7:48 pm)Alan V Wrote:

(May 16, 2025 at 6:28 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: But of course, the problem with those who oppose free will is that they just handwave things like this as illusions.

This is why I think the burden of proof falls on the determinists, since they have to demonstrate why appearances are incorrect.  

From a neurocognitive point of view, our brains have executive functions which can pass for free will of a limited kind, and our brains are an essential part of us from a materialistic point of view.  But many atheists still object to using the concept of free will, which has religious connotations to some people.  So perhaps we should be talking about top-down and bottom-up causation.

And just to be clear, there are both emergent materialists and determinists within atheistic ranks.  Atheists don't agree with each other on a number of issues.

Heya Alan, been a long time. Just thought I'd give my 2c since we've talked about free will extensively in the past, and never really reached an accord... or even been on the same page (but it was still a fun conversation )... and I'm still a card carrying determinist. At the end of the day I don't think our failure to get on the same page was due to any fundamental disagreement but rather a difference in how we frame what free will actually is... with my own framing of it perhaps being far more reductionistic than yours. Ie I don't necessarily dispute what you guys are calling bottom up and top down causation in the brain, those being or seeming qualitatively different, the latter being the so-called executive functions that seem to be able to override the former... and if that is the level of description we're talking about when we define free will, then I can agree that the top-down part is, or can be seen under that framing as, free compared to the bottom up part. If that's what you've meant all along, then we don't necessarily disagree at all.

But what I've personally always meant by free will, the altogether more reductionistic view, is that ultimately both the bottom up and the top down functions in the brain are enacted via the same physical mechanisms, eg neurons. Different areas of the brain may have different functions relative to each other, but they are all achieved through the same physical mechanisms, which follow the laws of physics and thus, barring quantum effects, are determined in my view, and thus cannot be considered 'free'.

Ultimately I accept that my framing of the meaning of free will is probably less useful philosophically than the other, less reductionistic view, but that being said it does inform my own personal philosophical speculations, so there is that... I guess what I'm saying is I don't think there's necessarily any 'right' way of framing it, just different strokes for different folks so to speak, depending on how their minds work and how they perceive things. I'm just someone who is always reductionistic by nature, in everything I do, and thus that's how I usually frame things, and that's the sort of philosophy that would appeal to me... whereas you may be altogether more 'big picture thinking' as you seem to be... just different ways of perceiving. So I still doubt we'll ever get on the same page about this, but just saying I think that's fine and perfectly understandable, just different ways of looking at and framing the issues (probably).

(May 16, 2025 at 9:23 pm)Alan V Wrote:

(May 16, 2025 at 8:03 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Free will of a limited kind is a profound contradiction in terms.  Limits are exactly what people skeptical of free will are talking about.  Limit being a damned good antonym for freedom in the first place.

Not really.  We have free will even if we only have two bad choices.  Freedom only extends our possible uses for our abilities to assess and choose.

Every restaurant menu, with its limits, would negate our ability to choose by your argument.

Actually, yeah, that's a good boundary to set.  If all of our choices are actually more like a menu..where the options are constrained...and then within each of those possible choices we're strongly predisposed towards one or against another...the freedom of our will quickly becomes a term of art. Consider a menu made almost entirely of things you hate, with one item you enjoy. Did you freely choose that one thing, or were you compelled?

In the context of the opq, the idea of being compelled to christ or compelled to christendom or compelled to christian evangelism are all pretty well explored. I have no reason to doubt that the afflicted are exactly that and have little to no choice in the matter. Christian propagandists, however, will tell a person that their beliefs are a matter of choice both to suggest that the believer has done something worthy of reward, and that the non believer has done something worthy of admonition or worse.

(May 16, 2025 at 1:47 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Free will is a great context to explore what propaganda is.  Let's say we have this free will stuff.  Cool.  Christian propaganda will tell you that your free will is effective where it is not and consequential where it ought not be in it's pursuit of getting more people to adopt particular beliefs and behaviors.

Right, can you practice free will when you believe in a god who knows and can do everything?





And somehow this god who values free will also makes Hell to punish those who practice free will that doesn't comport with his own. Yeah, that's free.

(May 16, 2025 at 5:47 pm)Alan V Wrote:

(May 16, 2025 at 3:56 pm)Sheldon Wrote: Or he did, and just doesn't understand it very well. 

Like someone constantly quoting Aristotle, while using known common logical fallacies. 

It's kind of cute when they try though. 

Lets not forget, we're talking about someone who has claimed to believe the earth is a few thousand years old, and becomes very reticent when you ask about miracles.

There is depth, and nuanced thinking, and then there is bullshit and word salad.

In this forum, John is largely playing the role of Christian apologist.

However, I do enjoy (and much prefer) him talking more about psychology.  I think of most of Christianity as being uninformed about psychology, so I am still looking forward to how he tries to reconcile them.

Whenever I have read any apologist trying to square free will (of any stripe), with an omniscient deity, it is usually a car crash of contradictions. The worst was an Islamic apologist who simply vacillated endlessly between two mutually exclusive claims. Usually (if they've thought it through) we get "omniscient lite".

(May 16, 2025 at 6:28 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(May 16, 2025 at 4:19 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: The tricky bit about the free will debate is that the universe would look exactly the same whether or not free will exists. Let’s say you had eggs for breakfast. How could you possibly know if that was a free choice or if it was a necessary consequence of the universe unraveling in a particular way?

I think the absence of free will heavily implies complete capture by external stimuli. I would expect to see nothing but cascades of reflexive behavior from top to bottom. And what's telling here is that we do have such systems in limited quantities. In a typical reflex arc, if you grab a hot plate the sensory signal travels to the spinal cord and bounces back as a motor signal prompting your hand to let go. The behavior is mostly on a closed circuit, and there's no reason why all behaviors can't be on train tracks like this, with nothing but inputs and outputs as the behaviorists used to theorize. However, I said mostly because even in such reflexive loops, there is still veto power coming from another source: the brain. You can voluntarily inhibit the reflex circuit for whatever reason, like not wanting to drop and break the plate. And if you've ever been in that situation, you can feel the push and pull between your volition and the impulse to let go.

As I mentioned much earlier, autonomy is one of our most fundamental motivational needs. If you want to predict how intrinsically motivated a person will be at doing anything, measuring how much autonomy is involved is a great predictor. In other words, the brain wants to be in control and avoid external capture. Conversations like this just don't make sense without free will. You don’t build a system obsessed with agency and self-regulation if all behavior is passive output.

But of course, the problem with those who oppose free will is that they just handwave things like this as illusions.

Does the deity you believe exists, know the future, I mean does it know what we will do before we do it? Only this is where notions of autonomy, are often contradicted by beliefs in an omniscient deity, not always of course, hence the question. 

It seems obvious we have will, how free it is, is another matter. Though obviously I think it's limitations are not as a consequence of any deity.

(May 16, 2025 at 9:23 pm)Alan V Wrote:

(May 16, 2025 at 8:03 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Free will of a limited kind is a profound contradiction in terms.  Limits are exactly what people skeptical of free will are talking about.  Limit being a damned good antonym for freedom in the first place.

Not really.  We have free will even if we only have two bad choices.  Freedom only extends our possible uses for our abilities to assess and choose.

Every restaurant menu, with its limits, would negate our ability to choose by your argument.

Exactly, I hate the term free will, as it can never be entirely free, certainly we perceive some autonomy of choice, the question is whether that autonomy ends, in the same place as our perception. Or if it is all allusion, but as another poster has already pointed out, determinism and fatalism carry a burden of proof, and seem for now to be unfalsifiable ideas. 

On a more amusing note, why would a fatalist or determinist bother trying to find out, if nothing they do will change the result.

(May 17, 2025 at 4:14 am)Sheldon Wrote:

(May 16, 2025 at 9:23 pm)Alan V Wrote: Not really.  We have free will even if we only have two bad choices.  Freedom only extends our possible uses for our abilities to assess and choose.

Every restaurant menu, with its limits, would negate our ability to choose by your argument.

Exactly, I hate the term free will, as it can never be entirely free, certainly we perceive some autonomy of choice, the question is whether that autonomy ends, in the same place as our perception. Or if it is all allusion, but as another poster has already pointed out, determinism and fatalism carry a burden of proof, and seem for now to be unfalsifiable ideas. 

On a more amusing note, why would a fatalist or determinist bother trying to find out, if nothing they do will change the result.

The same can be said of free will, I think, since even the perception of '...some autonomy of choice...' may be deterministic.

Boru

(May 17, 2025 at 1:33 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(May 16, 2025 at 1:47 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Free will is a great context to explore what propaganda is.  Let's say we have this free will stuff.  Cool.  Christian propaganda will tell you that your free will is effective where it is not and consequential where it ought not be in it's pursuit of getting more people to adopt particular beliefs and behaviors.

Right, can you practice free will when you believe in a god who knows and can do everything?





And somehow this god who values free will also makes Hell to punish those who practice free will that doesn't comport with his own. Yeah, that's free.

There is no free will gift FROM god. 

I was forced here and forced to abide to gods rules or be tortured.