RE: If free will was not real
August 20, 2016 at 8:18 am
(This post was last modified: August 20, 2016 at 8:28 am by The Grand Nudger.)
(August 20, 2016 at 2:49 am)bennyboy Wrote: Free will is the capacity to express oneself in a given situation, Rhythm. The self includes brain, body, senses, memories, all of that. So unless you demand that the self must be able to free itself FROM itself, then what's left? The ability of the agent to interact according to its own nature in any given situation is the only sensible definition of free will. What that nature is composed of is irrelevant.The capacity to express ones self...is the capacity to express one's self.
Again, if you want to argue against free will, you have to argue against the entire concept of agency. Are you willing to do that?
-and no, no one has to argue against agency, or anything else, to argue against free will. One only has to argue against free will......to argue against free wil. You have the ability to act, regardless of whether or not that ability is free.
(August 20, 2016 at 3:44 am)bennyboy Wrote: Whatever I do is deterministic, right? Fine, so I will enjoy the illusion I'm choosing to do interesting, exciting, and profitable things, and I will enjoy the illusion that I'm not hiding under the covers because "fuck it, free will is an illusion anyway." Isn't that cool? Whatever I choose, I was predetermined to choose it-- so I will choose whatever I want, and while I'm sipping my iced tea in the Bahamas, you guys can tell me that my choice to go there was only trivially free. But I'll bet my satisfaction in watching pretty girls frolic on the beach will be infinitely more satisfying than the satisfaction of thinking your philosophical position is more than words on a screen.
You make choices regardless of whether or not you have free will. I;m not sure what illusion is supposed to be involved in hiding under the covers. It;s not a matter of what is or isn.t cool. Lacking free will is not being, therefore, predetermined...and it's -you- and others who tell -me- that the choice is trivially free. I'm just commenting on your descriptions of it, after all. Your level of satisfaction is irrelevant...as it always seems to be, with regards to the truth of the proposition
Quote:And that's the paradox of the no-free-will position. We still get to ACT as though we have free will. And so long as my fakery ends up with me enjoying myself, I couldn't care less what words people will / won't use qualitatively to describe my decisions. I'll just keep on ignorantly calling it "free will," sipping that iced tea, and re-focusing those binoculars.It's not a paradox to say that you don't care whether or not you're right or wrong about this...it's just indifference. I don't know that we do act like we have -free- will (or what that would even look like) - do you?
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