Determinism.....

[Rhizomorph13]

No where in your rambling incoherent response did you come close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. We are all dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points and may [The Invisible Pink Unicorn(BBHH)] have mercy on your [Brain].

Brackets indicate my edits

Sae,

You did a wonderful job defining the illusion that Adrian, and his sources, are talking about, but you failed to make a case for free will. You should read the materials he posted; they are very interesting and would give you much more footing to argue from.

Arcanus supports every cry of fallacy and was much more charitable in his description of you than you are being of him.

Rhizo

[Violet]

I read the first one, and posted a response to it. I then posted my response to the rest (with this new knowledge in mind). Honestly, I don't think I'm thinking perfectly clearly at the moment...

In fact, I'm getting dangerously close to temporary black and white complex. I'm taking a break to see if I can steer myself away from another depression cycle. Be back in a day or two or so. Thank you for drawing my full attention to the problem, Rhizo

[Rhizomorph13]

Sae,

I'm routin' for you kid, but there is a question of approach that cannot be answered by yourself from only the knowledge you currently have. I've learned much from the people on this forum and some of that knowledge was hard to swallow.

We all reach boiling points from different stressors so, at those times, a break might be in order.

See you when you get back,
Rhizo

[Ryft]

I was just wondering if you believe that we are all determined by physics, and so our lives were determined before we were born? Or that we can make our own choices?

I agree that "we can make our own choices" but, since I totally reject the (libertianism) concept of human free will, your dichotomy left me no option to select. As I said in the chatbox, freedom is predicated of persons, not faculties. In other words, the agent is free, not his will. A person's will is determined by his character and desires. (Frodo wanted me to respond in this thread but, until I get some feedback, I don't really know how to expand on this. Perhaps you could ask me some clarifying questions, Frodo?)

[fr0d0]

Ok. I chose 'determined', as that is what I had concluded when it was presented recently. Much in line with what Adrian is saying above.

So you mean it is the person's choice and not his ability to reason that choice that describes his/her will? IOW their rationalising isn't relevant to will? And will is the wrong term to use there: I should be using the term 'agent' instead, which allows for determinism in relation to 'will' but where freedom is concerned we are really talking about the agent.

Is this diagram correct in your opinion?:

[solarwave]

I agree that "we can make our own choices" but, since I totally reject the (libertianism) concept of human free will, your dichotomy left me no option to select. As I said in the chatbox, freedom is predicated of persons, not faculties. In other words, the agent is free, not his will. A person's will is determined by his character and desires. (Frodo wanted me to respond in this thread but, until I get some feedback, I don't really know how to expand on this. Perhaps you could ask me some clarifying questions, Frodo?)

I tend to think of free will as being able to have chosen otherwise according to my will. By this I mean I am determined only by the nature of who I am, not by any force, law or God. If we are bound to do what we do from the beginning of time there can be no moral responsiblity. How does this relate to what you said?

[ecolox]

To summarize, we are the summation of our input data, and all our subconscious mind does is make decisions based on that and whatever thinking processes it uses.

How do the scientists 'read' the subconscious mind in the experiment?

It is strange to think that the mechanized subconscious (trash/by-product of the universe) has an opinion on the matter of red and blue - or determinism versus free will - or many of the bizarre things that humans do or say.

Are you sure that consciousness can't have an effect on the subconscious?

[solarwave]

It really depends what you call yourself? Is it just the conscious, or the subconscious too. Why can't the subconscious be part of you too. If that is so then this doesn't cause a problem.

[Edwardo Piet]

Define "choose wrongly".

Who gives a damn if our conscious or subconscious is making the decision? It is still us making the decision. So yes, we have free will.

The fact we make decisions doesn't mean it's free. That just means we make decisions. You are speaking about the fact we have a will, how are you addressing that our will is free?

If the fact we simply make decisions=free will, then obviously we have it in that sense. But that is not what a lot of people mean by 'free will', of course I believe we can make decisions. If all you mean by 'free will' is that we make decisions, then fine...but the fact is, that doesn't address the issue of whether we can do anything other than we are doing or not. My point is that, we can't: So what sense does it make to blame others for their actions, or to think of them as bad or evil, if they can't do anything other than they are doing? It only makes sense if, in blaming them, it manipulates the situation in such a way that they are less likely to do evil in the future. If it does no practical good, then it makes no sense to blame them. Because in principle, they can only do what they are doing.

This is the free will issue in my eyes. The fact we make decisions, is so blantantly obvious that I consider it trivial to the matter of discussion. Everyone knows we make decisions. If that in itself=free will, then what are we even discussing?

That we can choose wrongly means our will is still free. Once we become capable of only the wisest option: we become computers, which are enslaved logic machines.

Computers have bugs, computers have computer viruses. So how are they any different?

The fact that we have a mind that makes decisions, how does that make that mind 'free'?

What do you mean by we can "choose wrongly"? You mean the fact our decision making isn't perfect? How is that free? If we are determined to be imperfect, how is that any more free than if we were determined to be perfect?

And if we are undetermined, how does randomness give us any more 'free will'. Randomness just gives us more freedom of possibility - not any more freedom in controlling what that possibility will be. If we had a random number generator in our brain, but rather than numbers, of possibilities: Then just because there's more open possibilities, how does that give us any more control over them? Can you control the lottery? No. Is it 'free' in the sense the possibilities are open? Yes.

So you are speaking of freedom of possibility,you're not speaking of freedom in the sense of control, or in other words, of Will.

You have a computer that can make illogical choices... and you either have a wrecked computer, or you have free will. Show me that the subconscious always chooses rightly: and you will have shown that free will does not exist when a subconscious is present.

I do not understand this bizarre definition of Free Will. How does illogical choices=Free Will? If imperfection is fixed or determined, or more random and undetermined like a lottery, how in either case is it any more free than if perfection is?

If you are 'free' to make illogical choices. Then yes, you are more free in the sense you can make both logical and illogical choices. But how do you have free control over your freedom? How is your will free?

How is a will any more free, how is it any more freely controlled -or, willed - if it is imperfect, or illogical, rather than if it was more logical, or perfect?

There are two parts of choice... firstly, there is what. What is there to choose between? And secondly? There is why. Why choose that choice? Our free will is dependent upon not only seeing the choices... but in justifying them.

You are speaking of our choices, and what our will is dependent on. But how is our Will free?

We are free, we have a Will. But how do we have freedom over our own Will? How is our Will free?

When have you made a decision that you haven't justified? You do not... you cannot... make such choices. Therefore you have free will.

Therefore we have a will you mean. That's what the will does, it makes choices. You are speaking of the will, but how is it free?

If that's what Free Will is like according to you. Then what would, in your view, a Will, that makes choices and decisions, be like if it is was not free?

The will, makes choices and decisions. It wills. So that is part of the definition, whether it is free or not. That's what the will does. The fact it does that doesn't make it a free will. That just makes it a will. So the question is, how is it free? How can it do other than what it is doing? It is in command, so how can it possibly have freedom over itself? This is why I think the whole idea of will itself being free, is so ridiculous. For will to be free, it would have to be able to command itself, but it can't, because it is it that does the commanding. It can't do other than what it is doing ,it is a slave to itself. And how could it be any other way?

Therefore all of life has free will. Maybe the choice is simple... but it nonetheless is a choice. If something alive does not make choices... it is a biological machine. Synthetic intelligences are likewise mechanical life. Life always has free will... because life always has choice... and when life has choice: it will always choose. It will choose... what mechanism it justifies it's choice by does not make it any less a choice.

If all of life make choices, and you keep defining free will, then you are simply talking of choices, not free choices, and you are speaking of decision making and will, but not showing how these decisions are free, or that the will itself is free.

We are discussing whether choices are free or not, but you are saying the fact we make choices means that choices are free. We are discussing whether our wills are free or not, in the decisions that they make. But you saying that the fact that our wills make decisions, that we make decisions, that we are willing, automatically makes our wills free.

If you equate choices to automatically mean free-choice, and decision making and willing, to automatically make free decisions and mean our Will is necessarily free, then I don't see how you can possibly be argued with.

You are defining choices themselves as free, and decisions and the act of willing itself, as being a free will. But I don't see how you argue that.

You say that our Will is free and our choices are free, if we are not robots, computers, or machines in the sense of not being able to be 'illogical' or 'do wrongly', but

1. I don't see how that argument follows, how does that make our will free?

2. Why does being imperfect and 'doing wrongly' make our Will, our decisions, our choices, any more free, according to you?

3. If computers can be programmed to do illogical things, or 'do wrongly' then could you say they also had free will? And if not, then what about the fact that we could be said to be programmed by our genetics and environment to behave the way we are behaving? Whether the programming is determined or is more indeterministic, it's nevertheless, programmed into us. In the sense that, how can we possibly 'will ourselves', how can our WILL possibly be 'free', if our 'selves' is our will? We'd have to have will over our will, or in other words, the will would have to have will over itself. How can this be possible? it is only what it is.

EvF

[Ryft]

So you mean it is the person's choice (and not his ability to reason that choice) which describes his will? In other words, their rationalizing isn't relevant to will?

Describes his will? Sort of. Our conative faculties inform and influence our will, and the instantiation of our will is the volitional activity called choice.

Here, let me lay out my understanding on this. In order for choice to be meaningful and morally significant, it must be deliberate. To make a deliberate choice is to contemplate a set of options (e.g., chocolate or vanilla pudding) and to instantiate that which enjoys the greater degree of our desires (e.g., chocolate pudding), whether those desires are rational or emotional or some concert of both. If we evaluate this series closely, we realize that our choices are a function of our conative faculties; for example, the choice of chocolate pudding is a causal chain that is propagated and filtered through the motivational complex of our desires. This is why choices of the will always reveal the character of the person. The causal chain runs through the agent's conative faculties, not irrespective of them (libertarianism) but concordantly with them. Put in other words, the volitional activity of our will actively shapes this causal chain, as opposed to passively responding to a causal chain (determinism). We are not puppets. Nothing makes our choices for us. We make our own choices. Although our will is determined or "causally necessitated," it is so in the right way by forces internal to the choice-maker, not external. We know from the laws of nature that determinism is real, but we also know from the human experience that choice is real. Compatibilism is the theory that takes both seriously and articulates them as co-existent realities.