determinism versus indeterminism

[Purple Rabbit]

But it may turn out that that kind of free will is nothing more than an anecdote we tell ourselves a posteriori! Afterwards we say that hadn't we acted so and so, event X would not have occurred. It is interesting in this regard that Dennett in his work on cognitivism shows adherence to this idea, that the body is acting before the mind has reached the 'decision' to act that way. Waht is left is not the freedom of choice but an emulated concept of free will a posteriori.

But there is still evitability right?

There is anecdotal evitability, we are able to construct a cause and effect tale for ourselves and save it on our 'hard disk' for later use.

I'd say it does! If by free will you mean the freedom to influence in any way a priori a specific outcome it does, because an a posteriori 'explanation' in terms of cause and effect is not the same. In other words, you will have the illusion of free will instead of a priori free will.

Yeah well if I think about it if you KNEW that a particular future was definitely going to happen you couldn't really stop it. But if you don't know it then whether you believe the universe is deterministic or indetermistic a future is inevitable. Whatever that future is.

That sounds like inevitablity to me.

But there is still evitability in the sense that you are not paralyzed if you think the future is determined. You can still make the same decisions as usual. You still have the same 'free will' that you generally think as free will.

And this sounds like evitability to me. So in the former quote you on the one hand conclude that our specific future is inevitable, and in the above you suggest that there is still somehow evitability. In order to do so imo you have to smuggle in a posteriori free will (free will reasoning afterwards).

Yeah in a deterministic universe I see how thats true actually. But it doesn't take away evitability in the sense you don't lose freedom. You don't lose any free will from knowing the future absolutely - in a deterministic universe. Right?

The essential issue isn't about deterministic vs indeterministic, I agree. But it certainly feels as a loss that free will does not exist in the sense that we can influence outcomes directly by intervening in cause and effect cycli with decision processess.

PS: In case you or anyone else doesn't know. Inevitable means unavoidable and evitable means avoidable. So if there is no evitability we would basically be paralyzed because we couldn't avoid anything at all. So there is of course, still freedom and free will; as in evitability - in a deterministic universe.

The cause-and-effect-anecdotes with which we analyse our actions (afterwards!) are saved as experiences and can be retrieved later in assessing a similar situation. Imo there's only evitability in the sense that our prior experiences are input for our actions. There is however imo no independent human decision process that intervenes in the cause and effect flow that is governed by laws of nature, be it deterministic or undeterministic.

PS: I too like this discussion and value your opinion.