A thing about religious (and other) people and the illusion of free will

[Ahriman]

Well we obviously have free will, to some extent, but does that change anything? No, it really doesn't.

[The Grand Nudger]

Our decisions either are or are not causally determined. A prisoner is not not-a-prisoner because his cell has a window. This does not make him free to some extent. It makes him a prisoner with a window.

That's where I think we are with respect to our brain. We aren't in charge of it, we don't know how it works, all we have is the tiniest window into what it's doing.

[Ahriman]

That's a good point, but it's not like a prisoner spends all of his or her time in a cell.

[Istvan]

What I find interesting about that...is that free will wasn't even a thing until abrahamism was a state religion. We were fated. Our fates are the thing (or one of the things) that god(s) knew. Theological determinism. The nuts only got in an uproar about determinism when we figured out that their god wasn't The Determinator.

But we didn't get rid of that idea, we just dressed up the gods in sci-fi costumes. All the talk of causal chains and determinism sounds like secular theology to me. Another poster here says if we just get a computer big enough and feed it enough information, we could know everything about the past and predict the future with 100% accuracy. Each to his own magical thinking, I guess.

I have no problem with the paradox of assuming I'm making free-enough choices while acknowledging the deterministic nature of physical reality, any more than I have a problem with the paradox of seeing the Sun move through the sky while I understand that the rotation of the Earth causes that phenomenon. And we at least acknowledge a certain amount of personal input in people's decision making: if we made plans to meet somewhere and I blew you off, you probably wouldn't accept my excuse that I wasn't free to do otherwise.

[Angrboda]

Only if none of it is subjective.  Subjectivity is like piss in the pool.  Once it's in there you can't get it out.  There is no such thing as a fact about a thing that can make it desirable in and of itself.

I guess that's one opinion.  Is it a fact?  Is it free of the piss in your pool?  Mind you, -I- don't demand that you be somehow free of piss in your pool in order for your opinion to be factual.  I think you can probably still communicate at least some facts from a pissy pool.

What purpose do you think is served by pointing them out?  It seems a pointless digression even if you could get clear of the fallacies.  

If you'll recall, the comments of mine that you weighed in on were in response to a position on blame, retributive justice, and free will posed by a guy named Robert Sopalsky.  Another poster had mentioned that positions like his would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Maybe so for retributive justice.  I'd call that part of the bathwater, not the baby.  

Who can we blame for arson?  The arsonist.

How can we justify imprisoning or committing people who commit arson?  To prevent them from starting more fires.  

Why don't we imprison or commit people who haven't committed arson?  Because that won't more prevent fires.  

Why do we imprison or commit arsonists for starting fires when we don't imprison or commit smokers for smoking (drinking, jaywalking, debt, littering, etc).  We do.

I haven't needed free will to explain or justify any of this.  

No, nothing about fires themselves leads to a justification for holding arsonists accountable.  It is solely a fact about a subjective state.  Free will seems necessary if we are to hold people accountable for what are in other people's minds, but you seem to think that lacking an intention relevant to you, I am somehow responsible for what is or isn't in your mind or someone else's mind.  That's why the just so facts necessarily including subjective ones is a problem without free will.

I'll give you a tip.  This all traces back to your being confused about the nature of the moral system you have endorsed.

No one freely wills themselves into a fender bender, but people often pay for it.  I may not want to pay for it.  I may not like paying for it.  However, I can see that I should pay for it.  I did the damage.  I'm responsible.  I'm accountable. 

More than this, as in retributive justice - for example...is, as I stated above, not something that I think is objective or arising from any objective place.  So if you mean "hold you accountable" in some way other than acknowledge that you did it and believe that you should make or be made to make whatever reparations you're capable of.  Hold you accountable as in punish you until I feel better or society feels better - then I wholeheartedly agree.  There's nothing about being an arsonist (freely willed or otherwise, in a world where free will exists or where it doesn't) that objectively leads to those sorts of "justice" schemes.  Honestly, I don't think that they're justice at all, objective, subjective, whatever.  

Bringing me right back around to Sopalsky and Istvans criticism.  I don't think that conceiving of people as essentially bioautomata prevents us from doing a great deal of the effective work our justice system does.  If you take the suggestion seriously you might conclude that if we're being told that a person is in some sense not responsible for the arson they committed (some sense outside of..you know, having themselves committed it) - that all we are is a bundle of compulsions and exterior circumstances and preexisting routines.  That his poor circumstances made him this way - that his shitty life made him this way - that his abhorrent culture made him this way...that's an even better argument for locking a person up than "they just freely chose arson one day" would be.  He's fire starting bioautomata - might wanna put him in a fire retardant cell.  He didn't make a mistake, it wasn't because he was ignorant.  Arson is, apparently, what that person is.  Maybe, if people can be made a certain way, they can also be unmade that way.  A justification for rehabilitation.

Blaming the arsonist makes no more sense than blaming a thermostat because you opened a door and the draft of cold caused the heat to kick on. It makes no specific sense to blame the arsonist rather than his bad mother or the guy who cut him off in traffic which prompted him to light the fire. You've got a basic mereological problem. Why choose to consider the arsonist apart from the rest of the causal chain?

And you keep talking about damage and to stop fires. There is nothing objective about either of these. Damage inherently refers to instrumental utility and instrumental utility necessarily is a teleological concept and thus subjective. Objectively speaking there is neither harm nor damage, there is only change. What is a bad change to one person is a good change to another person. Our society considers the change incurred by the arsonist to be undesirable, and so we want to stop fires. But that's subjective. Another society could just as well want arsonists to burn down buildings, and the arson would be a good act, and you would be thought a monster for wanting to stop it.

Once you abandon free will, there's no more reason to blame the arsonist for being an arsonist than there is to blame the match he starts the fire with for being a match.

[The Grand Nudger]

Secular theology is an oxymoron, at least as far as I understand those terms. Our dog pissed the bed last night. My wife was giving her the disappointed voice as I was typing this. She knows what she did, she messed up. The wife, still talking to the dog but also to me (honestly, not much of a difference) says this. Then implicates our kids. They forgot and/or refused to walk her last night. The dog is in trouble because she pissed the bed and she pissed the bed because the she didn't get her walk when she was supposed to. Causal chains and determinism in a simple form. No gods required, just one dog and some kids.

Unless "enough" means all then I can't see how we could build a machine like that. "Enough" must mean more information than we currently possess - because we can't do that. If the bookends of "enough" info are us and all - it seems like there's quite a bit of distance between that machine and the light of day. Still, there wouldn't be anything magical about it, if it were possible. It would be mechanical. Both the machine itself and the means of discovery purported.

Do you think that seeming paradox or pseudo paradox or intuitive paradox could be better than paradox for those examples? There's no actual paradox between the earth revolving the sun and an observer on earth apprehending the sun revolving around the earth. That's what the sun revolving around the earth -or- the earth revolving around the sun looks like.....either way, the effect for an observer on earth is the same. Just trying to make sure we're on the same page. If it's like that, then yeah, I'm also fine with that. I'd say the whole free will thing is a bit like the sun. What do we expect decision making with/without free will to look like from the inside of the decision maker?

Not being free to meet a date? It's happened to me many times in life, and I've not been free to make many dates myself. If someone tells me they are not free to make a date I take them at their word. It might be a birthday or a funeral. I know what you mean, though. Not every missed date was a birthday or a funeral or whatever it is amounts to a cant miss for them, literally, as in they are compelled to attend and cannot fail to attend. Sometimes we get blown off and not being free is just an easy let down. I'd prefer it to "You're trash, not coming" though I'm sure that's at the heart of at least a few..... Madness down that road. So, like I said, as a general rule I'm content to take people at their word because a- I think that does happen...that it's a thing ; and b - I prefer that version of rejection.

That's why we're here, right, uncomfortable questions with even more discomforting answers. So how about those people that aren't unfree, or at least not unfree in the way that they're leveraging to blow us off? Did they freely decide that my face was ugly..and on second thought...? Did they freely decide what sort of ideological upbringing they had which views me as abhorrent, do they freely decide to continue seeing things in that way? Another poster already brought up a beautiful quote to that effect. Can we will what we will?

If not - then it does seem to stand to reason that at least some of what we do or why we do it in response to the things some people will is without any objective or effective or rational or fair basis. Underneath it all, I think you actually agree with the proposition you're criticising more than you disagree. Sopalsky and you both think that, if x were true, then this invalidates some whole shebang. Baby, bathwater. I think, generously, that Sopalsky had a more limited set of legal outcomes or practices in mind - those specifically referenced in the quote. I don't think that he would say that because we do not have free will, we should not prevent arsonists from starting fires, even if that meant forcibly detaining them. If some people or all people truly are bundles of compulsion that lead inexorably to burning down houses that is a strong case for a compelling interest in the same.

I think that, lacking a free will, an arsonist is not to blame for being an arsonist in the sense that we then decide that an arsonist is morally evil because arson, and as a morally evil person they are subject to or even need harsh punishment. That we must go beyond holding them accountable and exact revenge in one form or another. Hurt them..until they do right, or even if they wont do right, or simply can't. Maybe to scare some other guy who hasn't...as yet...committed arson....or any other crime come to think of it. That we must make examples of bad people, or that their suffering must satisfy society or even the victims of their crimes. I think this is indefensible whether we have free will or not. What do you think?

As to personal accountability - or the purported loss thereof....my dog pissed the bed last night. I don't think she freely willed to do it. She seemed as surprised as I was. She is not personally wholly accountable for it. My kids didn't walk her, I didn't notice...I didn't walk her..and more broadly we're the ones that lock her in this fartbox every night. Big pup, small bladder. Sometimes...you just gotta go. So I don't blame her. I didn't call her a Bad Dog, I've not put her in a cage...but I did put the gate back up in the hallway. She did it, she doesn;t get access to the bed anymore. The kids were reprimanded, and we're going to add an extra layer of oversight and accountability to dog walking before bed time. Now she wont piss in it, and I won't have a cause to be pissy about that, and the kids won't get themselves implicated in pee crime, and I wont feel like a Bad Dad. Justice.

Now go piss on a real estate office downtown and see what that looks like in our legal system for humans, right?

[ShinyCrystals]

Are we truly free, or have free will, when we seem to be dependent on outside factors and the overall environment and when our lives are shaped by those things as well as our minds? Are we truly independent at all, when we may let others shape our lives and even (in terms of some people, like religious people) don't think for ourselves and just follow others like a supposed supreme being?

I don't think we are truly free or have free will.  Traditionally, for us westerners, free will was just an excuse for why our god seemed like such a cunt.  We freely willed all the nasty business - we deserve it, we had it coming.  Same bullshit crept into our legal systems.  Freely chose the homo sex, lets kill em.  Freely chose the wrong religion, lets kill em.  Freely chose to be black, lets kill em.  Freely chose to mock us for our idiocy - you know the drill.  We wash our hands of the blood of the other this way.

The idea that humans are somehow outside of the causal chain, or that each of our decisions is the beginning of an entirely new causal chain is ludicrous on it's face.  It's never not been a silly idea, but it's almost always been a useful one.  Even today, people who assert or acknowledge that we are not free in any of the ways free will demands still think we have one, a compatibilist free will, and that it's meaningful or useful to something.  I think it's just us clinging tightly to an idea that we've been so thoroughly indoctrinated to we're uncomfortable disabusing ourselves of it.  We've internalized all the batshit doom and gloom about how the world would be without a thing that doesn't exist.  How we are without a thing that doesn't exist.  Same exact meltdown the abrahamists have/had over it.

What I find interesting about that...is that free will wasn't even a thing until abrahamism was a state religion.  We were fated.  Our fates are the thing (or one of the things) that god(s) knew.  Theological determinism.  The nuts only got in an uproar about determinism when we figured out that their god wasn't The Determinator.

Now that's what I'm talking about, or was talking about. It would probably be that free will was a mad made concept, in other words, artificial, not occurring in nature. So, with that, free will can't possibly be something that is actually real. Plus, like religion and supreme beings like God, which are thought up by humans and thus fictional; free will is something that was thought up based on a lack of knowledge of how reality works, or in this case, the mind. I do think free will, possibly like fate, was created due to a lack of knowledge of how the mind works in the past, possibly even now.

I also agree on what you said about the idea of humans being outside the causal chain and all being ludicrous. That would be defying physics and causality, would it not? I mean, nothing, not even humans, can be exempt from the laws of reality and physics, or in this case, causality.

As for the first part of what you said about things like "chose to be black, homo, etc., let's kill 'em" stuff, I do think that partly goes with what I said about people's lives being shaped by others and the environment, and how that takes away from free will if it did exist somehow.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't know that I'd use artificial that way, or draw that inference based on that use. I don't want to argue too many things at once. Everything that occurs "occurs in nature". If there were a free will it would be a free will occurring in nature. Artificial things do occur in nature. Artificial selection - breeding, is real. It exists. So some thing x being artificial or "non naturally occurring" in whatever novel sense is in no way any indication that it cannot exist. That it cannot possibly be real.

Free will and fate. Free will and fate. The fundamental drama of experiential content. We feel like we choose, and we know how often we're pushed. I think it's somewhere in the middle. Our choices are also pushes and vv. I don't think that place has free wills...but I don't think that place is predeterministic either. Yes, things that happen effect what happens. The decisions that I make, free or otherwise, can be consequential. Adding me to a situation adds something, multiplies the possible consequences and outcomes of whatever it was. Fields don't just grow the way I use them. None of this needs me to be any more to what I do than an ant is to collecting aphids, though.

For some people, this is an apocalyptic suggestion. Hallowing out the very foundations of law and society. For me, it's an observation of connectedness. Of common origin. Of common purpose. Of common interest. Religious ideas, to make that explicit.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Now that's what I'm talking about, or was talking about. It would probably be that free will was a mad made concept, in other words, artificial, not occurring in nature. So, with that, free will can't possibly be something that is actually real.

Just because man thought of or made something doesn't mean it isn't real. Apartments are just as natural as beehives.

[ShinyCrystals]

I don't know that I'd use artificial that way, or draw that inference based on that use.  I don't want to argue too many things at once.  Everything that occurs "occurs in nature".  If there were a free will it would be a free will occurring in nature.  Artificial things do occur in nature.  Artificial selection - breeding, is real.  It exists.  So some thing x being artificial or "non naturally occurring" in whatever novel sense is in no way any indication that it cannot exist. That it cannot possibly be real.  

Free will and fate.  Free will and fate.  The fundamental drama of experiential content.  We feel like we choose, and we know how often we're pushed.  I think it's somewhere in the middle.  Our choices are also pushes and vv.  I don't think that place has free wills...but I don't think that place is predeterministic either.  Yes, things that happen effect what happens.  The decisions that I make, free or otherwise, can be consequential.  Adding me to a situation adds something, multiplies the possible consequences and outcomes of whatever it was.  Fields don't just grow the way I use them.  None of this needs me to be any more to what I do than an ant is to collecting aphids, though.

For some people, this is an apocalyptic suggestion.  Hallowing out the very foundations of law and society.  For me, it's an observation of connectedness.  Of common origin.  Of common purpose.  Of common interest.  Religious ideas, to make that explicit.

Sorry on the "artificial" part. I guess I could have used it better.

I do understand what you mean, though, as I would not say predetermination, or fate, is something that exists. Just causality.

In regards to the consequential thing, I do think not many people realize that actions have consequences, and I do think that in regards to some people who believe in free will; their thinking free will exists may cause them to not think about consequences, even though they do and will happen.

As I said before, free will; if it did exist; would not be that simple. I do think this about people believing in free will and thinking they are so free, even from consequences, all because of it; how can people even use free will if they do not understand it in its entirety?

In fact, can humans even exist with free will; or true free will for that matter? I ask because I think humanity would destroy itself by now if they did with each person having so much freedom if it did exist.