Do you believe in free will?

[tackattack]

I apologize in advance because this week has been horribly busy and I dind't get back to the repsonse yet. Hopefully I'll have time to catch up on the thread.

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1- Not a substance separate from reality, but becomes the reality of the viewer, as he deems his hallucinations as real. Reality = perception (within the4 mind) of reality. Unless we’re defining some absolute value for reality. Many people have false memories of things that never really happened due to reconstructive properties of memory. That doesn’t negate the real implications of what really happened with who they are, or lessen the affects of what they perceived happening 20 years later on their decision process.

You are confusing perception with projection. Perception, by definition, cannot be of anything other than the external reality. False or apparent perception - also called projection, is the conscious or unconscious effect on perception. That is a result of a person's mind. Neither are independent of or separate from the physical reality.

3- OK let’s say that we took a guy, knocked him into a coma for a few months while we augmented and messed with how he thinks chemically and physically. Then he wakes up and goes about his life acting as a completely different person none the wiser, but he is the same person. Which is the real him the one caused up to that point or the one we caused while he was in the coma? What happens when he starts realizing his memories aren’t his and never really happened? None of what we did interrupted the causal chain. What we did do was affect why he makes decisions, not how he makes them. At no time could (while he’s conscious) we reduce what he define’s as who he is (or his agent) to not functioning. Whether he’s aware or unaware of the tampering of his mental self, there is an irreducible “I” and the ability to introspect

Why would he be the same person? The same body - perhaps. If the very agency by which the decision is made is changed, then the agent is changed as well. There may be an "I" - but that "I" is separate in both cases.

OK, we’ll roll with this:
1. There are two separate components of reality - physical and non-physical (which could be alternatively referred to as mental). Ok fine I agree that that is my position.

2. The mental component is not only separate from, but independent of the physical component. I don’t believe it’s completely independent of causation, as everything we are comes from before. I don’t believe though that it falls in an unalterable causal change.

3. I do believe in a reality beyond the physical reality but not that this reality to holds primacy. Maybe if you better define this primacy then I could take a closer look at it.

Justify your second premise. Causation is applicable to the physical reality because of its feature of being temporal. The non-physical reality can either be temporal or be non-temporal, but not both. If its not, then it would be independent of causation. If it is, then it would fall under unalterable causal change.

As to your third - primacy means when the laws of two reality are in apparent conflict - which one would you consider as applicable. An action being the result of causation and it being independent of causation are contradictory and cannot be true at the same time. Here you have two realities - one where causation is undoubtedly applicable, the other where it is somehow both applicable and inapplicable. But, for some reason, in a conflict between free-will and causation, you choose a less applicable one.

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I think I get it, but as was pointed out, if your nature is all that makes your capability to choose then it’s not free, unless you can exceed who you are.

The very definition you present here requires violation of law of identity. You can only be who you are - neither less nor more. Any requirement of negating this premise takes away any ground for a logical discourse.

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1- Perception is just the product of perceiving. That typically comes from sensory input, but if our agent has a means to perceive rather than just cogitate than we can recognize or understand why we are and who we are. We can intuit or reason then why we are deciding. That gives us conscious choice. If the agent can exist without material means than it is independent of the material and that would seperate from physical reality correct?

3- So what you're saying here is he still can't change who he is, even though he knows who he now perceives himself to be is not truly himself?


J2-why can't it be both? Can we not think back to things that were with memory? It's not the reality now, but it's sequential and out of temporal current reality. We don't always necessarily feel the way we felt as the observer back then, despite potential ghost sensory inputs giving us a projection. I believe thoughts are categorical not analogical. Let me ask you this: Can you perceive something in any way other than the way you typically expect to perceive it?

J3- How is there a primacy issue when I state reality can be comprised of phenomena that seem more real than noumena only because of their tangibility. I'm not saying either have the ability to divorce themselves completely from the causal chain, but in fact change its course. This perception of noumena and phenomena with introspection and reasoning , filtered through identity, are what encompasses free- will to me.

4- If you can't be anything other than who you are (law of identity) can you be more than more than one you? I'm fairly certain that there are some multiple personalities I'd like to introduce to you. If each has their own identity and are unaware of the others the whole would be schizophrenic but the parts break the law of identity.

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1- Not a substance separate from reality, but becomes the reality of the viewer, as he deems his hallucinations as real. Reality = perception (within the4 mind) of reality. Unless we’re defining some absolute value for reality. Many people have false memories of things that never really happened due to reconstructive properties of memory. That doesn’t negate the real implications of what really happened with who they are, or lessen the affects of what they perceived happening 20 years later on their decision process.

Such is the case with free will. It is the reality of all of us, none of us feel constrained to act. In this, it is no different to hallucination. This has been my position all along. The illusion of free will makes it real to us, and we can feel the effects of the illusion, but it, like the hallucination, is only real to the observer, i.e. you.
To equate the hallucination with the illusion of free will, consider an optical illusion. We are aware of the brains mechanisms(or at least a very good theory) for creating the illusion, and the causation of why your eyes and mind interpret it in a certain way.
We are not defining the appearance of grey dots between areas of high contrast squares as reality, however the brain certainly perceives them as real, as per the hallucination. So the question is, do we consider the illusion of free will, as being equivalent to being real.
I consider free will to be the grey dots of the optical illusion, real to the observer, but no more than the interactions of the brain and the method in which it perceives.

2- I thought we were leaving God out of it, but I’ll go along with the thought process. You say we lack the ability to change the future, yet isn’t that the core of determinism? Everything you do and what you perceive yourself doing causes a change in the course of causality around you in your environment. I think the problem lies with premise 2. Changing the fundamental laws of HOW the universe works is not the same as not changing the COURSE of the universe through free will.

It is a thought experiment, God was the most economical way of introducing the pausing of time concept.
To clarify, the presumption we can 'change' the future is based upon a presumption that events would occur differently in which has been altered through the application of this concept of free will.
My argument is that free will itself is part of the causal chain, and cannot induce change at all, nor be modified beyond truly random factors (if they exist).
There are no crossroads of choice between alternatives, it would require an force capable of changing a fundamental property of the universe, for instance how the electric pulse routes its way through your mind. That pulse was always going to fire the same way if you replay that same instant a hundred times unless a force exists to change a fundamental property which affects how your brain reacts. Otherwise, we are all just reacting in a unchangeable chain.

In the example of pausing time, you can affect change to this causal timeline if you were to change how the electric pulses in the mind are about to fire to divert them to another course.
In another words, I do not believe that your free will can change things, which begs the question, how is it possible to have acted differently at all. Of this question, I have not seen an answer. If it can be shown than a variable in choice can be MADE to act differently given identical circumstances, then I am completely wrong. However, we have covered the fundamental unfalsifiable nature of this question, so it remains a idea, and untestable hypothesis.

3- OK let’s say that we took a guy, knocked him into a coma for a few months while we augmented and messed with how he thinks chemically and physically. Then he wakes up and goes about his life acting as a completely different person none the wiser, but he is the same person. Which is the real him the one caused up to that point or the one we caused while he was in the coma? What happens when he starts realizing his memories aren’t his and never really happened? None of what we did interrupted the causal chain. What we did do was affect why he makes decisions, not how he makes them. At no time could (while he’s conscious) we reduce what he define’s as who he is (or his agent) to not functioning. Whether he’s aware or unaware of the tampering of his mental self, there is an irreducible “I” and the ability to introspect

There is a presupposition that there IS a real him and a real you. The "I" is a product of the variables leading up to any instant. This concept of the reality of self is nothing more than the sum of all variables leading up to the instant you consider the self.
Your actions are a causal variable in that makeup, at the end of the day, were you ever capable of not knocking him out and changing his memories in this hypothetical. My proposition is that you were never capable of the choice any more than I have the choice to reply. The reasons I do so are the inevitable result of the self in this instant.
This is exactly the point, nothing you did interrupted the causal chain. It was always going down like that.
Am I the same person I was 10 years ago, no. Am I the same person I was 5 seconds ago, no. I am merely the sum of my parts up to this point, and do not exceed it.

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1- So you asked the question, do we consider the illusion of free will, as being equivalent to being real. If you define real as having an objective existence than no. However, how do you know what is objectively real? I don’t want to rehash things that I’m sure have been said as I’m not caught up on the thread. If you see these letters as black and I see them as black is that enough to make them really black? You fully admitted that none of us feel constrained to act. That’s as much an axiom as can be reasonably achieved, IMO, much like we agree on what a rock is or the color blue.
2- Can you condition yourself to think a certain way or think differently? Manipulating the subconscious has been practically a profession for some. Are they actually changing the way we think? Yes, I believe they are. Secondly I believe you can change how your brain reacts. The choice isn’t always A or B. When you factor in a strict timeline you can suspend deciding which changes causality. It’s never the left or right door that matters, it’s which and when that makes a cause and effect chain continue. Are you implying we can only react based on our nature or that we are forced to act on our nature?