Do you believe in free will?

[genkaus]

You mistake my position on the matter. This argument serves only to show why your question was a loaded question - not my position on free-will.

My position is very much that if you understand all the factors, you CAN determine the next instant.
This is where we fundamentally disagree. You believe there are factors which cannot be determined which allow for a choice which is free from all causal factors.
I see no reason to see that our brains are able to transcend causation.

I've said time and again that I do NOT equate free-will with freedom from causality. As such, I see no reason fro our brains to transcend causality. My argument here goes only towards your question - which presupposes determinism in a discussion about free-will vs determinism.

Playing the devil's advocate once again - if your position is that "if you understand all the factors, you CAN determine the next instant", you have already accepted a deterministic position. Any argument for a logically sound and yet causation-free free-will cannot follow from this premise.

Incorrect, I do not conceptualise free will as a fundamental law, I conceptualise as a rationalisation of our inability to calculate the determining factors. There is no law of free will, and no free will, is my position. This should be clarified immediately.

That is exactly what I said. In order to conclude that "the future is determined", you have already discarded free-will as a part of natural law and superceded it with determinism. To begin a discussion of free-will vs determinism with this position is asking your opponent to first accept all your premises and then show how his arguments follow from those.

In this I presume that free-will is not part of natural law? That is a presumption it exists at all, which is the entire discussion.
I can simply show, rationally and logically that the universe moves on in a stately fashion, including your biological body, no matter what this conceptual illusion of free will may trick you into believing.
There is no presumption of free will because the premise of argument is that there is no reason for it to exist. You are adding "Woo" to something that does not require it. You may WANT free will in the agents of change for the states of the universe in one instant to the next, but its pure speculation which contradicts what we DO know about the universe.

Yes, free-will - as you have understood it is not real, since you have already assumed it to mean freedom from causation. To clarify once more - it has never been my position that free-will must be free from causation or find its source in something supernatural.

In order for you to show free will, you have to presume it exists equally. As is clear, it depends on our presumptions, and neither is a scientifically provable point. In my favour however, is that we can prove how we come to decisions, and it is nothing more than neuron activity and electrochemical memories and their reactions to external AND internal stimuli. There is nothing separate at all (and I tire of you claiming I am.. its obvious to anyone, I am not saying anything of the sort).

That is - in fact - all that it is. And I never said that you said that there was anything separate. I say that you assume - "In order for free-will to exist, there must be something separate".

Without free will, the next instant in any given situation is wholly predictable.

And that is the presumption you made prior to framing your question about free-will.

I describe how I see the universe as working, and you have not refuted those assumptions. You have not refuted any description of how the mind works, the firing of neurons, recollection from electrochemical memories, and the reaction of such from external stimuli. All Natural. All incapable of being "willed" differently than you can will a ball from rolling down a hill.

That's because I accept them. I'm saying that posing a question about a supernatural interpretation of free-will, while ruling out the supernatural altogether is intellectually dishonest.

There are exceptions when it comes to extreme macro and micro versions of fundamental laws, which shows we don't know everything, and I can quite easily be wrong. I don't claim to have the answers.
But your version states free will as a an agent which can redirect natural law down different avenues.

Nonsense. I've - time and again - expressly discarded that version.

That is a loaded question, presuming there exists an agent which is capable of this, and egotistical to believe that you are such an agent.

Between a dichotomized discussion of free-will vs determinism, it would be loading the discussion in either way to presume such an agent does or does not exist. That is my argument. Since you assumed one way in your stated presumptions, you loaded the argument in your favor.

Since, as it happens, I accept those presumptions as well, while not accepting your interpretation of free-will - I went ahead and answered your question, while pointing out your mistake.