Do you believe in free will?

[tackattack]

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It doesn't have to actually be predicted. But if your choice is in theory accurately predictable, then how is it free? It means it doesn't matter if your perception says you might have made a different choice, you in reality could never have made but the one you made. You are always totally and effectively coerced. It is merely a matter of when you are concious of coercion, or not.

So my view is there can never be any degree of freedom in a will, only degree of insensibility to the constraints that are rigidly controling it.

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You’re making it not a matter of whether or not you’re coerced but whether or not it’s predicted. If it’s completely 100% predictable and you don’t have access to that prediction mechanism or the prediction, it wouldn’t be part of your coercion correct? If you are totally and effectively always coerced (self or external) then the only way predictions would factor in would be if you were aware of them. If you knew 100% what you were going to do could you stop it is the questioning I have for your logical process.

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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.

The nature of reality, that could do with its own thread. Blimey.

Hmm, I think you can put a objective standard for reality as something which can be objectively measured, and to clear up any potential confusion on my interpretation of that, I mean things that have the potential to be measured, even if we lack the technology to do so.

So in many respects, there are things we are aware of, such as decision making processes in the brain, that we haven't got a solid grasp on measuring.

The studies I've mentioned in this thread rely on technology which will no doubt improve as time goes on, and my opinions on determinism are not set in stone, but simply a reaction to what we know at this point in time.

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?

Depends on what you mean your nature, the psychological nature, or physiological nature. Either way, psychological nature is based on the physiological in my estimation.
I imply, I think(!), this is a new area of discussion still for me, that we are forced to act in purely line with our physiological nature. We are no different to the movement of planetary bodies, and the weather system. Vast, almost unknowable in complexity but ultimately driven by fundamental laws that we can no more change, than if we try to pretend gravity doesn't coerce us to stay on the ground.

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Sorry, I tend to wax wide and philosophical when overworked and under rested.
1- So you think you can put an objective standard for reality as something which can be objectively measured. Could it ever be divorced from personal perspective though? I think that requires the impartiality of mechanization. I think you and I both do a lot of rigorous subconscious daily tests on what’s real, hence the term “reality checks”. Here’s a question to put your theory to the test. If you and I agree on what blue looks like does the object it’s describing that make someone else seeing it as gray any less real? As far as your stance on determinism, I can’t recall who exactly stands where or on what but your position seems a reasonable one.
2-I’m attempting to divorce the psychological and physiological. By nature I meant our individual sense of agent at an instinctual level. I believe our nature is shaped by conditioning and genetics. It is also a large part of the self identity, and categorically the basest definition of self definition. If we had no ability to self correct and realize the course could be changed, then we would be no more the sum of our physical parts (and just like a planet). It’s not about the originating cause or natural laws. We’re not talking about going outside the bounds of natural laws. I believe within the bounds of natural laws we can effect change. I think you assume that causal determinism is a natural law, and that we’re trying to say we’re apart from those laws. I’m not saying that. I’m saying that part of who we are is our perception and desires. Those desires and perceptions are both outputs and inputs to the causal chain and if they can be shown to be altered, shows we have the ability to not be the sum of physiologically are determined to be.