(August 29, 2023 at 10:59 am)FrustratedFool Wrote: I'm no expert, but in its basic form libertarian freewill is the capacity for an agent to choose between two possible outcomes - A or B.
Under LFW it is within my power to choose to instantiate the stae of affairs where I type X or Y.
Contrary to this, determinism would state that I was always going to push X or Y and that there is no agent making a choice, only an illusion (perhaps) of such.
Under materialism where everything beyond the quantum level (or maybe QM too) has naturalistic prior cause, there can he no agent freewill. Whether I typed X or Y was due to the laws of physics outworking in my brain, one brain state to another, and that itself was dependant upon a prior state of affairs, all the way to back to the first cause.
In that case...
Can't say I am so much of a believer in terms of libertarian free will now. I am a follower of science, and what you said, pretty much makes sense. I did have a feeling that free will (itself) was kind of an exaggeration. Whatever the origin for free will itself is, I can see that it is not scientific.
Still, anyway, free will or laws of physics, nothing changes the fact that either way, we do not really need a god to rule over or do things for us. In fact, like I may have said, I do think god is a hindrance to us.
I mean, we are born with psychological needs, and I am sure needing a god, or someone else to help or do something for us, is a psychological need. I think the psychological need thing I mentioned would go well more with what you said about the laws of physics, more than free will could ever do.
