Oh no not another free will thread.

[LadyForCamus]

Your second level is nonsense.  Which is fine.  There's nothing wrong with pondering things.  But it carries 0 weight.  So you using it as an escape hatch to get out of a position you don't like is theistic.

Objective world outside of science?  Can you word the question more clearly.  What constitutes 'inside of science.'

Is it that you just don’t understand him?  Science is the most accurate tool that we presently have to build working models of the physical world as we experience it, but science is still contingent upon human experience.  There may be aspects of reality that we, as temporal and experiential beings, simply can never have access to.  

Example: It may be a fact that there is a difference between a rock, and the human experience of a rock.  But if there is, we have no way of knowing.  We can’t leave our subjective experience.

Hammy’s position (and mine) is simply the philosophical acknowledgement that science is objective within the frame work of subjective experience, and therefore we are limited in what we can know.  There is nothing supernatural or fantastical about that.  It’s actually the most intellectually honest position to take regarding epistemology, IMO.  And, it in no way undermines the value science. There are no mutually exclusive ideas here.  Science and philosophy can cooperate with one another.

[henryp]

Your second level is nonsense.  Which is fine.  There's nothing wrong with pondering things.  But it carries 0 weight.  So you using it as an escape hatch to get out of a position you don't like is theistic.

Objective world outside of science?  Can you word the question more clearly.  What constitutes 'inside of science.'

Is it that you just don’t understand him?  Science is the most accurate tool that we presently have to build working models of the physical world as we experience it, but science is still contingent upon \

Science, as I think of it, is really just our most informed view of the objective world.  I'm not saying it's fully accurate.  The question is what rationale would lead a person to think they know better on a specific topic?

If everything we know points to A.  How do you justify B?  By saying "Well, science may be wrong!"?  But the follow up question is "Why do you think science is wrong in this case?"  To which they say what?  

Free will is a great example.  Hammy and I agree libertarian free will isn't real because of the evidence that it isn't real.  Other people, though, 'feel' like it is real.  So they start making up a bunch of shit outside of science.  But no matter how much logic they apply, it's all rooted in their 'feeling.'  A 'feeling' is a shit premise.  

If Lutrinae had said "Well, science doesn't know everything!"  I don't think we'd have all tipped our cap and said "Great point Lut!  That's the best argument for free will I've ever heard!  How foolish of us to have not strongly considered that!"

[Edwardo Piet]

You think the objective reality is Causal.  Why?  You talk about logic.  Let's see some.  Give us some premises, and draw some conclusions that are more substantive than "Hammy has a gut feeling".  You can understand being dismissive of ideas who's bedrock is "Hammy's intuition says..." right?  

I'm basing it on the fact that most of reality seems to make sense so I think once you get to the quantum level of matter it just becomes too difficult to find the causes and they may be beyond human understanding. I'm down to an intution which is absolutely fine because I'm not talking about anything that is testable by science. And the quantum world may be acausal as we experience it but much of life seems very causal. I don't think the quantum world is an indication of the causality of reality as a whole. I think it's an indication of reality becoming too complex and alien for us to find the causes. Ultimately I think all causes happen outside of our experience, which makes a lot of sense intuitively to me.

Because that's what you've presented.

You're only down to a gut feeling by saying it's acausal, too, if you're talking about reality outside of our experience. Science can only speak of reality inside our experience (as I've explained many times already).

Science at the moment says the world appears to have some a-causal events.

Key words being "appears to." Science at the moment says that the world as we experience it seems to have acausal events.

You're confusing scientific quantum indeterminacy with philosophical indeterminism. That's what you're doing and that's as concise as I can make it.

Do you see how foolish your opinion looks in that context?

Yes, I see that my opinion looks foolish when you keep repeatedly putting it into the context that I have repeatedly explained is not the context that my opinion is in. It looks foolish in that context because that's the wrong damn context as I have explained to you time, and time, and time again.

The crux of what I'm actually saying is in the autotune chorus by Richard Dawkins in this silly fanmade music video of scientists talking about reality:

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"Are there things about the universe that are forever beyond our grasp? Are there things about the universe that are ungraspable?" that's what I'm addressing and you just keep turning it into "But that contradicts what has already been grasped!" I'm not talking about what has been grasped or what is even graspable. I'm talking about whatever by definition is ungraspable.

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[henryp]

You think the objective reality is Causal.  Why?  You talk about logic.  Let's see some.  Give us some premises, and draw some conclusions that are more substantive than "Hammy has a gut feeling".  You can understand being dismissive of ideas who's bedrock is "Hammy's intuition says..." right?  

I'm basing it on the fact that most of reality seems to make sense so I think once you get the quantum reality it just becomes too difficult to find the causes and they may be beyond human understanding. I'm down to an intution which is absolutely fine because I'm not talking about anything that is testable than science. And the quantum world may be acausal as we experience it but much of life seems very causal. I don't think the quantum world is an indication of the causality of reality as a whole. I think it's an indication of reality becoming too complex and alien for us to find the causes. Ultimately I think all causes happen outside of our experience, which makes a lot of sense intuitively to me.

When I compare what you're doing to theism, this is why.  It's too complex.  It's too alien.  It's not testable.  It seems, it's intuitive, I think, it makes sense, etc... .  Science has it's limits.  

Maybe we can get a theist to stop by, and ask them if these are a lot of the core tenets involved with why they think there is a God, because it absolutely is the same way they frame their arguments.

[Catholic_Lady]

It seems thinking this way is generally part of being human. We all have certain guesses, hopes, intuitions, theories, etc, about reality, that aren't rooted in scientific evidence. An atheist may not believe in God, but chances are he will still believe in something that can't be proven through scientific testing.

[Edwardo Piet]

It seems thinking this way is generally part of being human. We all have certain guesses, hopes, intuitions, theories, etc, about reality, that aren't rooted in scientific evidence. An atheist may not believe in God, but chances are he will still believe in something that can't be proven through scientific testing.

I think many atheists don't.

I certainly think the "philosophy is all a load of bullshit" breed of atheist doesn't.

More philosophically minded atheists like me might.

A lot of lovers of science tend to think metaphysics is all bullshit. That makes zero sense to me. It's useless maybe, but that doesn't make it untrue. That's why I can't stand philosophical pragmatism. I'm philosophically anti-pragmatist. The whole notion of "the truth is what works" really frustrates the hell out of me.

Ever heard of the paradox of hedonism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_hedonism

The basic crux of it is that directly seeking happiness or pleasure doesn't tend to lead to happiness or pleasure as much as if you just focus on something you enjoy and forget about the purpose of it being for pleasure or happiness. Like, getting lost in what you enjoy is more enjoyable than literally doing things because you want pleasure from them. Directly seeking pleasure and enjoyment tends to lead to less pleasure and enjoyment.

I think something analagous to that happens with pragmatism. Directly seeking The Useful ™ doesn't tend to be very useful. Think of anything useful... what is being sought is a specific purpose rather than usefulness itself. When a mechanic fixes a car he isn't reminding himself over and over that he's doing it to be useful. He's just trying to fix the car.

Likewise... some of the most useful inventions and technology to come out of scientific knowledge and discovery... didn't come about by scientists trying to think of truths that would be useful and ignoring all truths they didn't expect to have useful results. Many things that at first seem useless end up being useful later. So if you ignore the useless stuff you just stay in your comfort zone and not learn much of anything. Ironically, it turns out that the most useful approach tends to be to be genuinely interested in learning and seeking knowledge and truth in itself whether it's useful or not. And many of the best scientists throughout history were like this. They didn't do science because they wanted to discover useful truths, they just enjoyed exploring and understanding reality. And many of the best inventions have come out totally by accident.

So pragmatism as an ideal in itself... as a truth bearer... really vexes me because I think it's totally unhelpful. And again, even if it was the most useful view to view the truth as merely what is useful.... It doesn't change the fact that there may indeed be things out there that can't apply to us.

And look at it this way... I'm literally talking about something that isn't just useless but by definition is something that is completely unreachable and can't possibly become useful in itself. But still, it's an exercise of the mind to think about stuff... to philosophize. For me it makes a lot of sense to think that the world doesn't just make sense on the macro level, but also does on the micro level... whether we can make sense of it or not. The difference between you and I is that you think God can make sense of it even if we can't... but I think no one can make sense of it. I think there are some things no one can make sense of.

And even if there aren't things that are forever unknowable and we can never make sense of... even if ultimately given enough time and learning we can know anything and there is no reality outside of our experience.... to speak of the possibility of things being outside of that doesn't contradict it... that wouldn't make any sense. If I'm literally saying "If there are things beyond our experience, then those things are things we can't test" that is indeed an if. But it's still true as an if. Meaning, if you accept the if... it follows.

it's literally impossible to test the unexperiencable because: Testing is an experiential activity! All activity that humans experience is experiential! That's literally a tautology.

I hope you find this interesting and non-overwhelming

[bennyboy]

I think this is a case where biases and world views over-ride obvious truths.

I'm standing in front of a candy rack. I am choosing what candy I would like to eat. I kind of process my feelings for a while, and then I say, "Aha! I want M&M candies."

To me, this is an obvious expression of my free will: the unfettered capacity to express my nature in my behavior.

People can argue all they want about determinist causality stretching back to the Big Bang (unprovable, by the way), but so what? "Free will" is a word about the human experience of doing what I'm doing-- making a choice which is an expression of my nature.

[Edwardo Piet]

I'm basing it on the fact that most of reality seems to make sense so I think once you get the quantum reality it just becomes too difficult to find the causes and they may be beyond human understanding. I'm down to an intution which is absolutely fine because I'm not talking about anything that is testable than science. And the quantum world may be acausal as we experience it but much of life seems very causal. I don't think the quantum world is an indication of the causality of reality as a whole. I think it's an indication of reality becoming too complex and alien for us to find the causes. Ultimately I think all causes happen outside of our experience, which makes a lot of sense intuitively to me.

When I compare what you're doing to theism, this is why.  It's too complex.  It's too alien.  It's not testable.  It seems, it's intuitive, I think, it makes sense, etc... .  Science has it's limits.  

Maybe we can get a theist to stop by, and ask them if these are a lot of the core tenets involved with why they think there is a God, because it absolutely is the same way they frame their arguments.

You're really only here to strawman me aren't you? What a waste of time it is talking to you. I'm talking about whatever is outside of science if there is anything outside of science, and my intuitions about that personally, and you are consistently and repeatedly responding by ignoring that point that has been made very clearly repeatedly to you... by responding as if I'm talking about what's inside the realms of science.

Answer these two questions or I'm done talking to you about this on this thread as you're clearly not here to address what I'm saying if you're not willing to answer these two questions: 1) If there is anything outside of science, can you appreciate that an intuition about that being fundamentally acausal is at least no less intuitive and unscientific than my intuition about it being causal? 2) What is the metaphysical distinction between philosophical indeterminism about reality as a whole including noumenal reality on the one hand, and scientific quantum indeterminacy as understood epistemically via the empirical methodologies of science about the reality of phenomena on the other hand?

Because you really seem to get your philosophy and your science mixed up, and your epistemology and your ontology mixed up.

[Edwardo Piet]

So the shortcoming of your non-science position, is that your 'intuition' is science.  It's shitty science, but science none the less.  

It's not science. How many times have I told you I'm literally speaking about whatever is outside of science if anything is outside of science at all?

Here is an example of using the 'objective reality' escape hatch.  You 'think' there are causes.

Beyond the realm of science. Yes. You think there aren't causes beyond the realm of science. Yours is no less based on an 'intuition' or 'theistic' than mine.

  I made, I think, a really strong point about prior knowledge not making acausal events causal.  And then you went off all over the place with the philosophy nonsense (more followed this post) to get away from it.  

The fact you call it philosophy nonsense shows you're in no place to be criticizing it.

My point is that this is a thread about free will... and we started talking about philosophical determinism. Scientific indeterminacy has nothing to do with that. As I have said, you conflate scientific indeterminacy and philosophical indeterminism.

You think you made a really strong point about acausality within science. But as interesting as it is in itself it's a total red herring on this thread. I explained that in the OP.

That's something you do.

Ironically... you are the one who went on an irrelevant tangent about science when we're discussing something metaphysical.

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I think this is a case where biases and world views over-ride obvious truths.

I'm standing in front of a candy rack.  I am choosing what candy I would like to eat.  I kind of process my feelings for a while, and then I say, "Aha!  I want M&M candies."

To me, this is an obvious expression of my free will: the unfettered capacity to express my nature in my behavior.

Compatabilist free will or incompatabilist free will?

"Obvious truths" you say. Perhaps you are merely committing hubris. Or perhaps you are merely speaking of compatabilist free will.

If the logically incoherent and logically impossible incompatabilist conception of free will is something you consider "obvious" then you're the one who clearly hasn't thought it through.

People can argue all they want about determinist causality stretching back to the Big Bang (unprovable, by the way), but so what?

The point is that with or without determinism and causality the kind of free will that isn't compatible with determinism is logically incoherent and impossible for the reasons given.

 "Free will" is a word about the human experience of doing what I'm doing-- making a choice which is an expression of my nature.

Are you talking about compatabilist free will?

Nevermind about whether causality stretching back to the big bang is provable or not (I agree with you on that by the way... it's unprovable... but that's not the point)... the point is if that is the case do you consider free will to be possible in such a universe? If the universe is like that, do you still consider free will to be possible? If you do, you're a compatabilist, and free will is trivally true in that sense but misleading as a term because many people believe in more than that. If not, then you're an incompatabilist and you believe in something logically incoherent and impossible for reasons given.

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You think the objective reality is Causal.  Why?  You talk about logic.  Let's see some.  Give us some premises, and draw some conclusions that are more substantive than "Hammy has a gut feeling".

That would be pointless when I said I both don't have any and don't need any on this matter. We're literally talking about an area where intuition is as good as we've got. An area where you can't have logic or evidence about this either.

My intuition is that it's more parsimonious to believe that the universe makes sense generally and on the quantum level but we simply aren't capable of fully making sense of the quantum level's causality... than to think that the strangeness of the quantum level means the whole universe is acausal and just seems causal outside of the quantum level. It seems more parsimonious to me to think that the way the universe seems causal outside of quantum mechanics is actually consistent it's just that because quantum mechanics is so strange we become unable to make sense of causality for it.

You may find this baseless and it either is or it pretty much is. But it doesn't matter because the opposite position is just as baseless. You have no more reason to believe the opposite. All we can have is intuitions in this area because as I said I am literally talking about the world as we can't experience it and the world where there is no evidence if such a world even exists.

 You can understand being dismissive of ideas who's bedrock is "Hammy's intuition says..." right?  

Well what's your intution? You may say you're neutral on the matter.... as the rational thing to do is to take the agnostic position and say "I don't know, I'm waiting for the evidence."

That's usually the rational response. But that doesn't apply here. Because I'm literally talking about aspects of reality that may or may not exist but by definition there can never be any evidence for, and are completely outside of knowledge. I'm talking pure metaphysics... there's no way to make sense of it being more rational to not have an intution than to have an intuition in this case. Because it makes no sense to sit and wait for evidence before jumping to conclusions when the conclusions that we are jumping to have absolutely no bearing on reality as we live it because it's completely beyond reality as we live it and there can't possibility be any evidence for it.

Musings about whatever may exist beyond what is possible for there to be any knowledge or evidence of, are no more irrational than the absence of such musings about such things that we will never possibly know even exists.

Because that's what you've presented.

Nope. You are continuously not understanding what I am saying.

Science at the moment says the world appears to have some a-causal events.

And I'm not talking about science. Our conversation is just you making the same red herring over and over again as you tell me what I'm saying and I tell you I'm not saying that and you're talking about something irrelevant to the discussion about philosophical determinism/philosophical indeterminism.

Some scientists are skeptical because of everything else we've observed, and are attempting to reconcile the premise of causal existence with the observation of a seemingly acausal event.  But YOU are saying "Nah, I think the objective reality is causal, because of a feeling."

More irrelevant rambling about science.

It's funny you know, when I react with something akin to "That's true and science is awesome but that's still irrelevant" you react as if I'm saying "That's not true and science is bullshit!" 

As I said, it's fine if you want to make conclusions on stuff like presentism and causal existence.  But it's nonsense.  It's just meaningless words.

It's not meaningless words. It's meaningful words about something that may or may not exist.

Once again, you are confusing epistemology with metaphysics. I am well aware that your epistemology doesn't give a shit about this. That doesn't change the fact that my claims are metaphysical and I'm specifically talking about whatever is beyond our knowedge. If it exists.

 That is true regardless of whether Science is the end all or not.  Because your thinking is based on no ideas of any value.

Irrelevant. As I said, whether it's valuable or not doesn't mean it isn't true. I could be talking about things that may be true and actually do in reality happen to be true... but are completely unknowable. If things actually are that way in reality, then they actually are that way in reality. Whether it's useful or not or valuable to you or not is irrelevant.

Imagine if belief/non-belief in free will had absolutely no consequences of any value. Like, whether people believed in free will or not... they behaved exactly the same way and debating it was completely pointless. I don't think that's the case. I do think it's a question of pragmatic and moral value. But imagine if it wasn't. Imagine if we knew it wasn't and we wanted to discuss it anyway because it was interesting to discuss. Why would it be interesting to discuss to some people even if that were the case? Because regardless of if such a thing is valuable or useful or not to discuss... it's still a question about the nature of reality. And in the case of free will, it's about the nature of ourselves. "Do we have free will or not?" is a legitimate question with a right or wrong answer regardless of whether answering that question rightly or wrongly is completely useless or of no value or not.

You seem to be conflating truth, reality and knowledge all with each other. I think you're a lot more confused than you think you are! You think I'm confused, but I've not only thought about this stuff over and over and over again... but you simply keep misrepresenting what I'm actually saying and repeatedly go off on irrelevant tangents about science when we're discussing a non-scientific philosophical question.

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Science, as I think of it, is really just our most informed view of the objective world.  I'm not saying it's fully accurate.  The question is what rationale would lead a person to think they know better on a specific topic?

We, LFC and I, are not saying we know better about any topic that science actually covers.

Like I said to Jor:

This seems to point to a deterministic conclusion that quantum randomness is real, and not just an artifact of this or that bit of ignorance.

Real within science. Science doesn't speak outside of itself. That wouldn't even make any sense.

[henryp]

It seems thinking this way is generally part of being human. We all have certain guesses, hopes, intuitions, theories, etc, about reality, that aren't rooted in scientific evidence. An atheist may not believe in God, but chances are he will still believe in something that can't be proven through scientific testing.

This is my impression as well.  Just odd watching people do something they're incredibly critical of others doing with no self-awareness.