Oh no not another free will thread.

[Edwardo Piet]

So the shortcoming of your non-science position, is that your 'intuition' is science.  It's shitty science, but science none the less.  

It's not science. How many times have I told you I'm literally speaking about whatever is outside of science if anything is outside of science at all?

Here is an example of using the 'objective reality' escape hatch.  You 'think' there are causes.

Beyond the realm of science. Yes. You think there aren't causes beyond the realm of science. Yours is no less based on an 'intuition' or 'theistic' than mine.

  I made, I think, a really strong point about prior knowledge not making acausal events causal.  And then you went off all over the place with the philosophy nonsense (more followed this post) to get away from it.  

The fact you call it philosophy nonsense shows you're in no place to be criticizing it.

My point is that this is a thread about free will... and we started talking about philosophical determinism. Scientific indeterminacy has nothing to do with that. As I have said, you conflate scientific indeterminacy and philosophical indeterminism.

You think you made a really strong point about acausality within science. But as interesting as it is in itself it's a total red herring on this thread. I explained that in the OP.

That's something you do.

Ironically... you are the one who went on an irrelevant tangent about science when we're discussing something metaphysical.

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I think this is a case where biases and world views over-ride obvious truths.

I'm standing in front of a candy rack.  I am choosing what candy I would like to eat.  I kind of process my feelings for a while, and then I say, "Aha!  I want M&M candies."

To me, this is an obvious expression of my free will: the unfettered capacity to express my nature in my behavior.

Compatabilist free will or incompatabilist free will?

"Obvious truths" you say. Perhaps you are merely committing hubris. Or perhaps you are merely speaking of compatabilist free will.

If the logically incoherent and logically impossible incompatabilist conception of free will is something you consider "obvious" then you're the one who clearly hasn't thought it through.

People can argue all they want about determinist causality stretching back to the Big Bang (unprovable, by the way), but so what?

The point is that with or without determinism and causality the kind of free will that isn't compatible with determinism is logically incoherent and impossible for the reasons given.

 "Free will" is a word about the human experience of doing what I'm doing-- making a choice which is an expression of my nature.

Are you talking about compatabilist free will?

Nevermind about whether causality stretching back to the big bang is provable or not (I agree with you on that by the way... it's unprovable... but that's not the point)... the point is if that is the case do you consider free will to be possible in such a universe? If the universe is like that, do you still consider free will to be possible? If you do, you're a compatabilist, and free will is trivally true in that sense but misleading as a term because many people believe in more than that. If not, then you're an incompatabilist and you believe in something logically incoherent and impossible for reasons given.

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You think the objective reality is Causal.  Why?  You talk about logic.  Let's see some.  Give us some premises, and draw some conclusions that are more substantive than "Hammy has a gut feeling".

That would be pointless when I said I both don't have any and don't need any on this matter. We're literally talking about an area where intuition is as good as we've got. An area where you can't have logic or evidence about this either.

My intuition is that it's more parsimonious to believe that the universe makes sense generally and on the quantum level but we simply aren't capable of fully making sense of the quantum level's causality... than to think that the strangeness of the quantum level means the whole universe is acausal and just seems causal outside of the quantum level. It seems more parsimonious to me to think that the way the universe seems causal outside of quantum mechanics is actually consistent it's just that because quantum mechanics is so strange we become unable to make sense of causality for it.

You may find this baseless and it either is or it pretty much is. But it doesn't matter because the opposite position is just as baseless. You have no more reason to believe the opposite. All we can have is intuitions in this area because as I said I am literally talking about the world as we can't experience it and the world where there is no evidence if such a world even exists.

 You can understand being dismissive of ideas who's bedrock is "Hammy's intuition says..." right?  

Well what's your intution? You may say you're neutral on the matter.... as the rational thing to do is to take the agnostic position and say "I don't know, I'm waiting for the evidence."

That's usually the rational response. But that doesn't apply here. Because I'm literally talking about aspects of reality that may or may not exist but by definition there can never be any evidence for, and are completely outside of knowledge. I'm talking pure metaphysics... there's no way to make sense of it being more rational to not have an intution than to have an intuition in this case. Because it makes no sense to sit and wait for evidence before jumping to conclusions when the conclusions that we are jumping to have absolutely no bearing on reality as we live it because it's completely beyond reality as we live it and there can't possibility be any evidence for it.

Musings about whatever may exist beyond what is possible for there to be any knowledge or evidence of, are no more irrational than the absence of such musings about such things that we will never possibly know even exists.

Because that's what you've presented.

Nope. You are continuously not understanding what I am saying.

Science at the moment says the world appears to have some a-causal events.

And I'm not talking about science. Our conversation is just you making the same red herring over and over again as you tell me what I'm saying and I tell you I'm not saying that and you're talking about something irrelevant to the discussion about philosophical determinism/philosophical indeterminism.

Some scientists are skeptical because of everything else we've observed, and are attempting to reconcile the premise of causal existence with the observation of a seemingly acausal event.  But YOU are saying "Nah, I think the objective reality is causal, because of a feeling."

More irrelevant rambling about science.

It's funny you know, when I react with something akin to "That's true and science is awesome but that's still irrelevant" you react as if I'm saying "That's not true and science is bullshit!" 

As I said, it's fine if you want to make conclusions on stuff like presentism and causal existence.  But it's nonsense.  It's just meaningless words.

It's not meaningless words. It's meaningful words about something that may or may not exist.

Once again, you are confusing epistemology with metaphysics. I am well aware that your epistemology doesn't give a shit about this. That doesn't change the fact that my claims are metaphysical and I'm specifically talking about whatever is beyond our knowedge. If it exists.

 That is true regardless of whether Science is the end all or not.  Because your thinking is based on no ideas of any value.

Irrelevant. As I said, whether it's valuable or not doesn't mean it isn't true. I could be talking about things that may be true and actually do in reality happen to be true... but are completely unknowable. If things actually are that way in reality, then they actually are that way in reality. Whether it's useful or not or valuable to you or not is irrelevant.

Imagine if belief/non-belief in free will had absolutely no consequences of any value. Like, whether people believed in free will or not... they behaved exactly the same way and debating it was completely pointless. I don't think that's the case. I do think it's a question of pragmatic and moral value. But imagine if it wasn't. Imagine if we knew it wasn't and we wanted to discuss it anyway because it was interesting to discuss. Why would it be interesting to discuss to some people even if that were the case? Because regardless of if such a thing is valuable or useful or not to discuss... it's still a question about the nature of reality. And in the case of free will, it's about the nature of ourselves. "Do we have free will or not?" is a legitimate question with a right or wrong answer regardless of whether answering that question rightly or wrongly is completely useless or of no value or not.

You seem to be conflating truth, reality and knowledge all with each other. I think you're a lot more confused than you think you are! You think I'm confused, but I've not only thought about this stuff over and over and over again... but you simply keep misrepresenting what I'm actually saying and repeatedly go off on irrelevant tangents about science when we're discussing a non-scientific philosophical question.

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Science, as I think of it, is really just our most informed view of the objective world.  I'm not saying it's fully accurate.  The question is what rationale would lead a person to think they know better on a specific topic?

We, LFC and I, are not saying we know better about any topic that science actually covers.

Like I said to Jor:

This seems to point to a deterministic conclusion that quantum randomness is real, and not just an artifact of this or that bit of ignorance.

Real within science. Science doesn't speak outside of itself. That wouldn't even make any sense.