Dan Dennett on free will and determinism

[Edwardo Piet]

In a deterministic world, free will is an illusion, and therefore even if you think you have a choice (do I pull the trigger or not?), you really don't. Your choice was predetermined, if you hesitate and change your mind, that was predetermined, and your decision was predetermined. You may feel guilty over killing this person, but that feeling was also predetermined.

Yes if the future is predetermined it is by definition, just that, - predetermined.

And If you feel empathy that is determined too.

The sad thing is that some people think this implies that if the world is predetermined that their evitability would inevitably be less and they might as well just "give up".

Because the thing is - am I right in thinking that although determinism is incompatible with the conventional meaning of free will as in 'choosing' your thoughts and 'choosing' your beliefs etc, rather than them simply operating mechanically.

Am I right in thinking that although determinism implies no free will in this sense...--

Indeterminism DOESN'T imply HAVING free will in that sense.

If someone is bad because of the beliefs they hold strongly - if that wasn't determined does that imply they chose their beliefs?

Or does it simply mean it could have went another way (because it wasn't determined) but they still can't CHOOSE what belief they will have?

I also do not see how determinism implies any less responsibility than indeterminism - OR how indeterminism implies the conventional understanding of 'free will' (not Dennetts).

Dennett's meaning of evitability I believe is true whether the world is determined or not.

If there is no choice in the matter whether determined OR predetermined - some things are still avoidable and others aren't.

Not in the sense of choice - in the sense that birds can fly using wings - we can't we have to build aeroplanes and the like.

This is not a choice matter - but humans and birds have different evitabilities.

Evitability in the sense that - its easier to dodge something being rolled at you very slowly than to dodge a bullet.

Whether you have any choice in the matter of whether to dodge or not or how you react at all.

And just to clarify, the area of quantum mechanics that supports indeterminism is the calculations that show that certain parts of the quantum world are random and uncaused. Namely that given a known location of a sub-atomic particle, and all the information about it, the best you can do is predict a probability distribution of where it will be next. You will never be able to accurately predict it's next location because it's movement has some randomness in it as well. This is know as the uncertainty principle

I've heard of the uncertainty principle and I suspected that's what it was (or something like that, I know quantum mechanics is very unpredictable basically).

I just didn't know enough about Quantum Mechanics to say that I understood how it supports - or knew that it supports - indeterminism. And I wasn't going to pretend otherwise.

Evf