The Problem of Imperfect Revelation: Your Thoughts?

[The Reality Salesman01]

Me too

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False claims of existence, made about things that do not exist lack verifiable, and measurable proof, and cannot be correlated with otherwise tangible properties.

The Christian God lacks verifiable and measurable proof which cannot otherwise be correlated with tangible properties.

The Christian God is the product of a false claim of existence, and therefore does not exist.

[MindForgedManacle]

More than the argument now I'm interested in why you think a libertarian account of free will is incoherent Could you explain why?

Dan Dennett's "Elbow Room" is a good place to look if you want to see an actual, good philosopher of mind take a whack at free will.

But as for your question, I'm about to go to bed so this'll be a bit cut and dry. I guess the short of it would be that for the usual libertarian view of free will (i.e the ability to have done otherwise than you did), you have to avoid determinism. But, you cannot be satisfied with indeterminism either, because then it's essentially random; it would then more appropriately be called 'random will'. So, how can you have the mechanism(s) by which we have [libertarian] free will and thus not be deterministic, while simultaneously also not being indeterministic?

And what's this mechanism supposed to be? Substance dualism is even more fundamentally flawed (always the interaction problem), so it's pretty much a no-go, and doesn't solve that problem either.

Even philosophers like Robert Kanes who are considered to have given rather clever attempts at shoring up libertarian free will's many flaws (I just gave one that I vaguely recall), his arguments received thorough critique from the likes of Dennett. It's libertarianisms many flaws that have driven it down in popularity in the philosophical community (it's around 14% of adherents among philosophers, last I checked, in comparison to compatibilism's ~59%).

That's what comes to mind anyway. The user Genkaus has shown me errors in my thoughts on free will in regards to God before, so he might be a better person to ask on such philosophical issues.

[The Reality Salesman01]

Being able to have done differently than you did?

That's pure illusory. At every instance of choice, people do the exact thing that they're conditioned to do, and they cannot act in a manner that is inconsistent with their nature or beyond their ability to conceive. They can condition themselves to do different things in the future, but the conditioning which leads to them is what determines them. All of our choices are determined. The retrospective recognition of alternatives creates the illusion of freedom, but this is after a decision is made. To say you could have chose differently, is to say you could have lived in a different universe. A puppet is not free, even if it likes its strings.

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Furthermore, can anyone give an example of a time where they chose differently than they did? Since they could have, surely it's been done before.

[Tonus]

Being able to have done differently than you did?

That's pure illusory. At every instance of choice, people do the exact thing that they're conditioned to do, and they cannot act in a manner that is inconsistent with their nature or beyond their ability to conceive.

I'm not so sure about that. In situations that are out of the ordinary we may default to subconscious reactions that were nothing like what we would expect from ourselves. The most common example would be around someone we are smitten with, a situation that comedies lampoon to no end. But high-stress situations can do the same. I think that whenever we're removed from our comfort zone, we hand a great deal of control over to our subconscious, and that's like handing the house keys to the crazy uncle before we leave on a long vacation. We don't know what will happen, but it's likely to be much worse than we'd have hoped.

[MindForgedManacle]

The key thing to remember when talking about the "ability to have done otherwise than you did" is that this is in the context of everything being exactly the same as before, and still being able to have done differently.

[The Reality Salesman01]

Being able to have done differently than you did?

That's pure illusory. At every instance of choice, people do the exact thing that they're conditioned to do, and they cannot act in a manner that is inconsistent with their nature or beyond their ability to conceive.

I'm not so sure about that. In situations that are out of the ordinary we may default to subconscious reactions that were nothing like what we would expect from ourselves. The most common example would be around someone we are smitten with, a situation that comedies lampoon to no end. But high-stress situations can do the same. I think that whenever we're removed from our comfort zone, we hand a great deal of control over to our subconscious, and that's like handing the house keys to the crazy uncle before we leave on a long vacation. We don't know what will happen, but it's likely to be much worse than we'd have hoped.

The thing we are conditioned to do can still be something that surprises ourselves, or something different than we expect. Think about what it means to "surprise yourself ".

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

More than the argument now I'm interested in why you think a libertarian account of free will is incoherent Could you explain why?

Dan Dennett's "Elbow Room" is a good place to look if you want to see an actual, good philosopher of mind take a whack at free will.

But as for your question, I'm about to go to bed so this'll be a bit cut and dry. I guess the short of it would be that for the usual libertarian view of free will (i.e the ability to have done otherwise than you did), you have to avoid determinism. But, you cannot be satisfied with indeterminism either, because then it's essentially random; it would then more appropriately be called 'random will'. So, how can you have the mechanism(s) by which we have [libertarian] free will and thus not be deterministic, while simultaneously also not being indeterministic?

And what's this mechanism supposed to be? Substance dualism is even more fundamentally flawed (always the interaction problem), so it's pretty much a no-go, and doesn't solve that problem either.

Even philosophers like Robert Kanes who are considered to have given rather clever attempts at shoring up libertarian free will's many flaws (I just gave one that I vaguely recall), his arguments received thorough critique from the likes of Dennett. It's libertarianisms many flaws that have driven it down in popularity in the philosophical community (it's around 14% of adherents among philosophers, last I checked, in comparison to compatibilism's ~59%).

That's what comes to mind anyway. The user Genkaus has shown me errors in my thoughts on free will in regards to God before, so he might be a better person to ask on such philosophical issues.

I imagine Dennett is a reductive materialist, right?

[Neo-Scholastic]

The interaction problem objection is an argument from ignorance.

[The Reality Salesman01]

Don't shift that burden.

[MindForgedManacle]

The interaction problem objection is an argument from ignorance.

And yet it isn't.

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I imagine Dennett is a reductive materialist, right?

I can't actually remember, but he could be for all I know.