Free Will -- the "materialist string" pulls both ways.

[brewer]

I believe I have free will. It's limited, not absolute, but I believe I have it.

At a minimum it is a useful illusion, kind of like a stationary Earth with respect to a moving Cosmos.

For you an illusion, for me reality.

[FebruaryOfReason]

Can I use this thread at my trial?

[Jehanne]

At a minimum it is a useful illusion, kind of like a stationary Earth with respect to a moving Cosmos.

For you an illusion, for me reality.

Materialism is a bottom-up philosophy and not so much a top-down one; if you believe that you have free will, I would not want to disturb your conscience.  Taken to its extreme, however, the notion of free will would justify beating Alzheimer's patients, who are, after all, just "choosing" to forget the names of their children and grandchildren.  While enough beatings they would, no doubt, "choose" to remember?

[Jehanne]

Can I use this thread at my trial?

No.

Look, once again, the "materialist string" pulls both ways.  Take a sex offender; if Society truly believed that person (usually, a man) had "free will", then what's the rationale behind civil confinement, that is, keeping an individual locked-up after the completion of his sentence?

[Edwardo Piet]

"Free Will" is an oxymoron

QED

[Edwardo Piet]

P.S. Best OP on a free will thread ever by light years, including my own (which suck) and I had absolutely no free will in making this post. Thank fuck -- I kind of want the Law of Identity to remain intact... Oh wait it has to and that's the point. Yay!

P.S. Whoever you are who is reading this my opinion is that there is a way greater than 99% chance that I am far happier than you are. Holy shit I am happy. Just saying. It's not like I had the free will to say otherwise. Of course I am a hard incompatabilist but I am no fatalist. I chose to post this post, just not with a free will -- I chose it using the intense ecstatic and enthusiastic wave of emotion I am riding on, fully constrained by the laws of nature, physics and logic

TL;DR: Fucking incredible OP, Je.

[brewer]

For you an illusion, for me reality.

Materialism is a bottom-up philosophy and not so much a top-down one; if you believe that you have free will, I would not want to disturb your conscience.  Taken to its extreme, however, the notion of free will would justify beating Alzheimer's patients, who are, after all, just "choosing" to forget the names of their children and grandchildren.  While enough beatings they would, no doubt, "choose" to remember?

Must free will be viewed in the extreme? Do all cases have to end in reductio ad absurdum?

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

I can be just as bad as I'm good.
I always have a choice.

I would argue that you don't; rather, I would argue that you are incapable of doing evil things, such as robbing banks, kidnapping little children, torturing animals, etc.  I would cite as evidence the fact that individuals who do such things, without exception, have deficiencies within their brains and/or past environments which has a direct and discernible causal link with their present behavior.  These correlates can be demonstrated using statistical methods.

You would argue that I wouldn't be capable of doing evil things and base your belief of the non existence of free will on that?

Yeah, good luck with that.

[Jehanne]

I would argue that you don't; rather, I would argue that you are incapable of doing evil things, such as robbing banks, kidnapping little children, torturing animals, etc.  I would cite as evidence the fact that individuals who do such things, without exception, have deficiencies within their brains and/or past environments which has a direct and discernible causal link with their present behavior.  These correlates can be demonstrated using statistical methods.

You would argue that I wouldn't be capable of doing evil things and base your belief of the non existence of free will on that?

Yeah, good luck with that.

There is no other explanation.  What would it be?  A soul?  A spirit?  Your brain produces your mind, "you", and all of your behavior is simply the electro-chemical reactions of your brain, nothing more, nothing less.  When you die, you will cease to exist; it will be, from "your" perspective at least, that you were never born in the first place.  Conservation of energy, momentum and charge work everywhere in the Universe; why not in your head, also?  If so, then there is no "you" causing electrons to jump from one orbital state to another; rather, it is just the 100 billion neurons and the 100 trillion synapses that give rise to "you", and consequently, your behavior, your every thought, your every action.  The point of my OP is that well-form neural circuits and pathways lead to well-formed individuals.