(March 26, 2012 at 2:52 pm)Chuck Wrote:

(March 26, 2012 at 2:47 pm)Norfolk And Chance Wrote:

(March 26, 2012 at 11:43 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote:

(March 26, 2012 at 11:29 am)Norfolk And Chance Wrote: Yes, I know I make my decisions.

Why? No one would care. We all know we have our own free will, there's nothing to discuss.

I used my free will to decide to post this reply on this thread, and I may or may not decide to reply again.

Why do you think your really had the freedom to choose from all the options that you recognized but eventually didn't chose? All you know is you don't see why you couldn't have chosen differently. But given the state of neuroscience, it seem hard to believe that you really could have seen very far down the exact neurological mechanism of your decision making process.

May be you recognize multiple choice, but it was as predictable as night following day that you will choice the one you actually chose. Choices only appears to be there due to gaps in your understanding of how you think. In reality you will chose exactly how you chose, and you can't deviate from it regardless of how many choices you imagine to have been available to you.

In this scenario, what is the meaning of free will?

My definition is simple, the individual ability to make choices.

Demonstrate this ability exists. If it is in theory possible to predict a priori exactly which choice you will select when you are confronted with the perception of availability of a range of choices, then what ability do you have to make choices? You are free to chose so long as you make the exact choice that could have been predicted eons ago.

(March 26, 2012 at 3:53 pm)Chuck Wrote: Demonstrate this ability exists. If it is in theory possible to predict a priori exactly which choice you will select when you are confronted with the perception of availability of a range of choices, then what ability do you have to make choices? You are free to chose so long as you make the exact choice that could have been predicted eons ago.

Why does me making a choice that I choose to make myself right now because it suits me, have to have been predicted eons ago?

It doesn't have to actually be predicted. But if your choice is in theory accurately predictable, then how is it free? It means it doesn't matter if your perception says you might have made a different choice, you in reality could never have made but the one you made. You are always totally and effectively coerced. It is merely a matter of when you are concious of coercion, or not.

So my view is there can never be any degree of freedom in a will, only degree of insensibility to the constraints that are rigidly controling it.

(March 26, 2012 at 4:12 pm)Chuck Wrote: It doesn't have to actually be predicted. But if your choice is in theory accurately predictable, then how is it free?

My choice is not predictable to you, when talking about general life situations.

I accept that if you locked me in a lab and gave me a choice of two buttons to press, and one meant certain death, you could predict which one I would choose.

(March 26, 2012 at 4:20 pm)Norfolk And Chance Wrote:

(March 26, 2012 at 4:12 pm)Chuck Wrote: It doesn't have to actually be predicted. But if your choice is in theory accurately predictable, then how is it free?

My choice is not predictable to you, when talking about general life situations.

I accept that if you locked me in a lab and gave me a choice of two buttons to press, and one meant certain death, you could predict which one I would choose.

It doesn't matter whether your choices are predictable by me personally. All it matters is whether it is in theory predictable at all. It's sort of like planets are constrained by newtonian gravity. If I personally can't predict orbits, that doesn't mean the orbit is thus free to change. So long as it is possible in any sense to predict it, that means the orbits are not free at all to break the theoretical prediction.

I think in theory will is predictable based on our current high level understanding of how the organ in which will is formulated is thought to work. The prediction might be extremely complicated, more complicated than could be attempted in the foreseeable future. But there is nothing that says in principle it can not be predicted. So there is no will, only an deficiency of understanding needed to spell out exactly how it is always coerced onto just one path in each circumstance.

Or maybe that's wrong and we think for ourselves (not including christians)

I am sure you think for yourself and freely choose the one choice out of many that you are allowed to make, from a large array you think you could have made but would in reality never have made.

:-)

SEP on Stoicism Wrote:The Stoic view on modality is supposed to make the world safe for counter-factual possibilities. This means that when we speak of a person's actions, in most cases he could have done otherwise, given the Stoics' analysis of ‘could’ and other modal concepts. Is this enough? Do the Stoics confront the perceived conflict between universal causation and human freedom? Some Stoic texts suggest a position we moderns would characterize as ‘soft determinism’. Chrysippus used the illustration of a cylinder rolling down a hill as an analogy for actions that are within our control (Cicero and Gellius, 62C-D). It is true that the force that starts its motion is external to it. This is analogous to the impressions we have of the world. But it rolls because of its shape. This is analogous to our moral character. When our actions are mediated by our characters, then they are ‘up to us'. Thus, if I see an unattended sandwich and, because I am a dishonest person, steal it, then this is up to me and I am responsible. All things come about by fate but this is brought about by fate through me (Alex. Aphr. 62G). When, however, I trip and fall, knocking your sandwich to the floor, this is not up to me. The chain of causes and effects does not flow through my beliefs and desires.

The foregoing presents a Stoic view on modality and freedom as if there were just one and as if it constitutes a response to our modern issue of free will and determinism. Recent scholarship suggests that there may have been evolution and change within the school.

(March 26, 2012 at 3:10 pm)NoMoreFaith Wrote: As long as we are leaving the word free from your will, it naturally contradicts the possibility of alternate choice.

Why would we leave it out if the possibility of alternate choice is within the nature of the will?

(March 26, 2012 at 3:10 pm)NoMoreFaith Wrote: My definition of free will is the ability of an agent to to choose between alternatives free from causation.
It is important in a discussion of this nature to use the common consensus for the definition.

EDIT: Just to add.. there is no consensus, hence the difficulty in trying to discuss it with you.

I thought we did have consensus. This line of discussion started when you made the following argument regarding God's omniscience.

(March 25, 2012 at 6:55 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: 1. If God is omniscient, he knows all things
2. We have free will, defined by being able to make an uncoerced choice between alternatives.

and etc.

This is the definition I've been using all along. If you wish to change it now, don't lay the absence of consensus on my door.

(March 25, 2012 at 6:55 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote:

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Wrote:“Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives.

No mention of freedom from causality here and therefore, no requirement for freedom from causation - as your new definition states.

(March 25, 2012 at 6:55 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: As such, and I repeat, the human agent cannot choose a particular action from among various alternatives. His choices are made for him through the natural processes of his mind.

And as I've been repeating time and again - "he" is not something separate or independent from the natural processes of his mind. "He" is those processes and therefore the choice is being made by "him".

(March 25, 2012 at 6:55 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: You wish that free will is compatible with determinism, which is fine, thats your view, but just because it appears to be a free choice, ignorance of the causation of motivation make it pure illusion.

That would be the case if freedom from causation was required to make your will free. Given that nothing in its definition establishes that - my understanding of free-will is very much real.

(March 25, 2012 at 6:55 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: What can I say, our illusion of free will is a strange beast.

It hasn't been established as such.

(March 25, 2012 at 6:55 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: More to the point, if our instincts are subject to being justified, what makes you think the big decisions aren't.

Because you don't make up rationalizations or justifications for actions that are product of reasoned action.

(March 25, 2012 at 6:55 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: You're starting to remind me of the creationist who claims macro-evolution cannot be implied from micro-evolution.
What do you think big decisions are? They are just lots of small decisions put together.

When you aim for a career growth, you don't make instinctual choices and start justifying after the fact that they are all leading towards your intended goal.

Or when you cook, you don't automatically throw together whatever ingredients fall in your way and then claim that the final dish was what you were planning all along.

Or when you go to a restaurant, you don't grab your wallet, check your cash, lock your apartment, catch a cab, tell him where to go and get a table - doing all this on autopilot and then justifying it to yourself.

Unlike evolution, all these small actions are leading towards one single purpose - all of them the result of the same motivation for that purpose. The purpose isn't assigned after all the actions have been taken.

(March 26, 2012 at 11:15 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: The point is, that your motivation is certain and inevitable in a given situation. Of course their consistent. But ignoring the causation of motivation is your fundamental error in reasoning.

Why would ignoring causation of motivation be an error, once you have judged it irrelevant?

(March 26, 2012 at 11:15 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: However, do not apply that definition to me, you brought it up. I was merely pointing out that motivation and action are consistent merely because the causation of motivation leads to the action.

True. How does this make the will not free form coercion?

(March 26, 2012 at 11:15 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: You don't. There is no such thing as an uncoerced action. Hence hard determinism
The argument is that the illusion of freewill can make you feel free from the coercion of causative factors, but that is all it is.

That is where you are wrong. Either you don't understand what coercion means or you do not understand how to to apply the principle. The meaning of coercion is simple - if an act is according to the will of the agent, then it is not coerced. If it is against the will of the agent, then it is coerced. How the will came to be, is irrelevant.

To state that there is no uncoerced action - means that any and every action you undertake, you did not want to undertake. Any causative factors in the picture would not make an action coerced if there is no conflict between will and action.

(March 26, 2012 at 11:15 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: Simply because I agree with a hard deterministic school of thought on the matter does not equate to misunderstanding free-will. I can only put this down to arrogance on your behalf.

It is not your agreement with hard-determinism that leads me to the conclusion, but your virulent disregard for any concept with the words "free" and "will" in it - without any actual consideration to what the concept actually signifies.

(March 26, 2012 at 11:15 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: Kant sums it up quite nicely;

Immanuel Kant - Critique of Practical Reason Wrote:According to this, that is sometimes called a free effect, the determining physical cause of which lies within the acting thing itself, e.g., that which a projectile performs when it is in free motion, in which case we use the word freedom, because while it is in flight it is not urged by anything external; or as we call the motion of a clock a free motion, because it moves its hands itself, which therefore do not require to be pushed by external force; so although the actions of man are necessarily determined by causes which precede in time, we yet call them free, because these causes are ideas produced by our own faculties, whereby desires are evoked on occasion of circumstances, and hence actions are wrought according to our own pleasure. This is a wretched subterfuge with which some persons still let themselves be put off, and so think they have solved, with a petty word- jugglery, that difficult problem, at the solution of which centuries have laboured in vain, and which can therefore scarcely be found so completely on the surface.

You do realize that Kant committed the very same fundamental error I've been talking about (considering the agent independent of material world) and considered causality to be the illusion?

(March 26, 2012 at 11:15 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: CERTAINLY would not hold? The world of neuroscience awaits your revelation with baited breath. Everyone's a closet Nobel prize winner today.

No one in the world of neuroscience would greet it as revelation. Hell, no one with common sense would greet it as revelation.

(March 26, 2012 at 11:15 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: It still comes down to lots of little decisions to create the larger conscious decisions.

Yes, but those little decisions are undertaken with that larger conscious decision in consideration - the large decision is not justified a-posteriori.

(March 26, 2012 at 11:15 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: But until you present some evidence that the conscious ever directs the action itself without recourse to causation, I will remain a hard determinist.

Why would I present any evidence for such when that has never been my position.

(March 26, 2012 at 11:15 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: For that, there is no evidence you act after you think. I think that is remarkably telling.

I find the idea that you act before you think to be more revealing. I, however, try to think my actions through before acting them out.

(March 26, 2012 at 11:15 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: The indications do so far, seem to correlate heavily with a determined response system. Whether it is entirely true or has exceptions like you suggest, remains to be seen. But the indications are certainly there, and until I see evidence to the contrary, I see no reason to see determinism and free will as compatible.

Do you still not see your problem? Compatibility (not compatibilism) does not require free-will to be proven by exceptions to determined response system - free-will is a part of what determines the response of the system. I never suggested that there are any exceptions.

(March 26, 2012 at 11:15 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: Typical philosophy discussion, if the definitions are not clearly defined at the start, and philosophers have yet to come to a consensus on it, so theres no hope for amateurs like you and me.

I thought you started out with a pretty decent definition. I'm not sure where in between you lost your way.