Free Will Debate

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

For future reference:


Boru

You should delete my inappropriate post.  Though I am conflicted, I would prefer it if you did.

I considered it. However, I believe in giving people who contribute good content to the forum a freebie or two.

Boru

[Alan V]

@ Alan V

I get that…but the different vantage point the author provided was terminally silly.  An example of how a person might be brilliant at one thing, and a drooling loon at another.

For the record, from the reading I have done on brain science, I consider determinism terminally silly.  

Since there is no possibility of discussion with the dismissive, there is no reason to try except to state one's perspectives as such.  

In other words, I no longer care what determinists think.  I've done my own research and have different opinions.

[Foxaèr]

Slap my behind and call me silly, then.

[The Grand Nudger]

It’s not an issue of what either of us -considers-silly.

An argument from consequences is a fallacy, even if the consequences were real, which in this case they are not.

Here, let me show you.

If I don’t have unlimited power, then pumpkin pie wouldn’t be the greatest pie!

If Jesus Christ isn’t real, then we wouldn’t be saved!

If we don’t have free will, then science is invalid!

But hey, dont take my word for it, do your own research, then reread those excerpts. You might notice it’s a running gag of appeals to consequence.

Consider another one of the authors concerns. That if people believed they had no free will, it would be dehumanizing. Well, I don’t think we have free will, I don’t feel dehumanized by that, nor does it cause me to dehumanize others (quite the opposite).,..but even if it did… that would be irrelevant to the fact of whether we had free will.

Bad Things™ can be true things.

[Angrboda]

Free will cannot exist absolutely unless one is willing to say that all epileptics are choosing to have their seizures or that Alzheimer's patients are choosing to forget the names of their grandchildren.

Who claims that free will is absolute?

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You should delete my inappropriate post.  Though I am conflicted, I would prefer it if you did.

I considered it. However, I believe in giving people who contribute good content to the forum a freebie or two.

Boru

Hot damn! Give me a couple of days to decide how I want to use my Mulligan.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yet another, that if we didn’t have free will, it would be useless to write a book to change beliefs. Also not true, as you’d be writing a book to exploit deterministic machinations - and we can certainly do that ( that’s actually a good description of the utility of fallacious reasoning in rhetoric or propaganda)…..but even if it were true that it would be useless to write a book to change beliefs if we had no free will- that wouldn’t change the fact of whether we had it.

Perhaps another? That grim nihilism is the product of us not having a free will. Again untrue, but even if true, not capable of altering the fact.

Seeing a pattern? In truth, the author has only one argument or concern, and it’s silly, because it’s the same fallacy repeated in as many contexts as he thinks the reader might be sympathetic to. Fishing for concern.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Free will cannot exist absolutely unless one is willing to say that all epileptics are choosing to have their seizures or that Alzheimer's patients are choosing to forget the names of their grandchildren.

Who claims that free will is absolute?

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I considered it. However, I believe in giving people who contribute good content to the forum a freebie or two.

Boru

Hot damn!  Give me a couple of days to decide how I want to use my Mulligan.

 I've already said I think free will is largely an illusion, even though it's subjectively real to me .

Hadn't thought of it in absolute terms.  If free will is not absolute, that means it's limited.  How is it limited, and exactly where does one draw the line? Or is it a relative thing? If so, relative to what.

EG : When I was conscripted I allowed myself to be inducted into the army because it seemed a lesser evil than the other choices. IE being sent to prison for 2 years, plus losing my civil service job, permanently. OR leave the country for Canada ,where I had a lot of relatives.  I had Hobson's choice.  Was I exercising my free will when I chose to be inducted?

I ask because I'm intrigued. I'm not seeking truths. As far as I'm concerned , like most metaphysical matters, the free will/determinism dichotomy is unfalsifiable.

[Ranjr]

Hot damn!  Give me a couple of days to decide how I want to use my Mulligan.

Take as longs as you wish.  You won't be deciding.

But should you decide and then verify how your decision met the criteria for free will, I'm willing to read more about how to measure will.

[no one]

Who is Will Debate?
What did he do?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

If free will exists, I'm not sure how we could prove it. I mean, when I'm thinking about what to cook for supper and we wind up having haddock, it certainly feels as though it was a freely made decision. On the other hand, it's not implausible that the concatenation of every event, major and minor, since the instantiation of the universe, made haddock for supper on 24 November 2021 an immutable, unavoidable event.

It appears that the only possible way to prove or disprove free will would to be observe actions from an outside frame of reference. Good luck with that.

Boru