Hypothetically, science proves free will isn't real

[quip]

For religious folks, would you pack it in?  If they, in the future, could map out 'decision making', and show it's got nothing to do with 'choosing', that pretty much is game over for the foundation of all major religions, right?

Would you consider this to be proof that your God doesn't exist?

....assuming their capacity to do so?  

[Little lunch]

Personally, I believe that my sub-conscious is me. Just because it's in action ten seconds before I consciously make a decision doesn't mean that it wasn't thinking like I think I would think.
I make more one second decisions then I can count in a day.
That includes emotions.
It doesn't take me ten seconds to decide whether I'm happy, sad or angry about something.

Out of curiousity, if your sub-conscious is being altered, lets say through excessive alcohol, or involuntarily through drugs, or disease, or maybe Prozac type mood altering brain chemical changing stuff, do you still consider the things done under those circumstances to be 'you'?  Is there a scenario where you'd feel "That wasn't me" due to manipulations of your mind?

Yes, it would still be me. It would be the type of person I am under that sort of influence.

[Ignorant]

"Do you accept my definition that determinism is the belief that "in any given moment there is exactly one physically possible future".

No. I understand that this is how the debate is usually framed. Hopefully my previous posts have shown that I find this definition inadequate. In addition, it imports the concept of necessity into the concept of determinism, and I find that unhelpful and often misleading in a discussion trying to get at the actual reality.

So do you believe free will is compatible with determinism or not?

Well, I thought that was obvious that I have concluded that, under certain conditions, people are able to freely determine some of their own actions. As determinations of action, these are clearly 'compatible' with a causal history in which each moment successively determines the next moment.

If it isn't obvious yet, I reject a lot of the vocabulary of the typical compatibilism discussion as well as the limited concepts by which it progresses. If you insist that I use your terms and reduce the concepts of freedom, human action, determination, deliberation, will, and causality to fit your categories, we won't get very far.

Do you really just want to try to fit my position into one of your compatibilism/incompatibilism categories? Or would you rather try to understand a different perspective?

[Edwardo Piet]

By redefining things this way you're still not addressing your position on the normal definitions of the words. Do you believe free will is compatible with my definition of determinism or not? Are you a compatabilist or not?

Your redefinition of things doesn't even address the issue it just confuses everything.

[Ignorant]

By redefining things this way you're still not addressing your position on the normal definitions of the words. [1] Do you believe free will is compatible with my definition of determinism or not? [2] Are you a compatabilist or not? [3]

Your redefinition of things doesn't even address the issue it just confuses everything. [4]

1) Well, if I have not been clear, allow me to restate why. The 'normal definitions of the words' do not adequately describe the realities they aim at describing. My position, in my view, accounts for aspects of the realities for which the 'normal definitions of the words' are unable to provide an account. My position, in other words, requires a different vocabulary. In short, the 'normal definitions of the words' cannot address my position, and that is why I am not addressing my position according to the 'normal definition of the words'.

2) I think a certain description of free will is compatible with your version of determinism. I neither hold to that description of free will nor to your version of determinism, so I'm not sure how answering that question helps you understand what my position.

3) On your definition of compatibilist (which is defined in terms of your definitions of freedom, will, action, determination, determinism, necessity, etc), my position doesn't fit nicely into one of the categories you mentioned earlier. Yours don't account for a distinction between contingency and necessity, and the equivocation to which 'necessity' lends itself. Why should I pick one then?

4) It may be confusing to some, sure. So is relativity. That doesn't mean we demand that physicists conform their work on relativity to fit within a Newtonian/classical vocabulary and explanation. Rather, we recognize that relativity ultimately accounts for more of reality than the previous classical models, and while the classical models are acceptable for some contexts (F=ma seems to be good enough in a lot of settings), it fails in others. Do you really want to try and make sense out of elementary particles only using the classical models? If not, why try an make sense out of causal determination, freedom, and human contributions to a causal determination using only F=ma?

Here's what my plan would be (even though the discussion thus far does not encourage me to move forward): a) Adequately describe our universe's historical (i.e. successive) causal determination; b) Adequately describe the criteria required for human participation/contribution to a historical causal determination of the type described in (a); c) Argue for the presence of these criteria within our historical causal determination described in (a); d) Adequately describe the criteria required for freely participating/contributing to a historical causal determination of the type described in (a); e) Argue for the presence of these criteria within our historical causal determination described in (a); f) conclude that the free human contribution to causal determination within our own proceeding causal history is attainable.

[The Grand Nudger]

D is going to give you trouble. If you (or anyone) had that, there wouldn't be any disagreement on the subject. The void of D is called hard determinism. Good luck.