(January 9, 2019 at 7:28 pm)tackattack Wrote:(January 9, 2019 at 4:35 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: How do you demonstrate you could really have done something else in that exact circumstance, as oppose to you will do something else in what you conceive to be like circumstances?
Free will is a pernicious concept precisely because it is utterly appealing while utterly undemonstrable. Basing a world view on it is to base it on mere assertion.
Well since the party hasn’t happene, it’s in the future, I can stop planning right now if I choose to. The fact that you asked a question about it is also reactionary evidence for free will. Did you have to ask me the question, we’re you compelled to, or could it have been ignored and unasked?
No it’s not. Prove to me that you really had the capacity to do anything differently than what you were going to do in that exact situation at that exact same pint in your life.
The fact that you perceive there to be alternatives does not prove you were really capable of deciding differently. It could easily means you might be conscious of part of the deterministic process that made it inevitable you will do what you will do, but unconscious of other parts, and thus deceived your self into believing it is all up to you. If you were somehow to be able to wind the clock back 100 times to the moment before you made the decision, and let it run forward again 100 times, it could easily be that you will predictably make the exact same “elective” choice each time.
If your neural state can be mapped precisely, it could well be that your choices made with what you conceive to be free will can be predicted with rigorous precision and accuracy long before you are even aware of the need to exercise your free will to make them. Where is the free will in that case?
What can you do to exclude such a case?
