Do you believe in free will?

[brewer]

You sound compatabilist.

Maybe, but I don't really care. Discussing free will typically ends up being a circular, go nowhere, non-practical discussion.

Let me ask you, in the end does it really matter?

[Disagreeable]

You sound compatabilist.

Maybe, but I don't really care. Discussing free will typically ends up being a circular, go nowhere, non-practical discussion.

Let me ask you, in the end does it really matter?

I think so. I think punishing people because they deserve it would go away in a society that doesn't hold to free will. Instead, we'd only punish people when it benefited everybody else as a whole.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I just don't know. I didn't vote, for that reason.

[Disagreeable]

Sounds like another compatabilist!

Wrong.

So how do you define free will?

[Silver]

I suppose it depends how you're defining "free will."

As for the individual option to choose, yes, "free will" is real.

[Disagreeable]

I suppose it depends how you're defining "free will."

As for the individual option to choose, yes, "free will" is real.

But you don't think that can cause your own actions. Right?

[emjay]

Generally I don't think it's that useful to talk about because it means different things to different people, what they consider the salient points are also often different, and it's very easy to conflate ideas within this space. All that said though, FWIW my own take, and the salient points for me, are that the anything my brain does follows the laws of physics and is therefore determined, and thus not 'free', but at the same time, my lived experience, illusion though it may be, is of the freedom to make choices... the freedom to weigh up options etc. In that sense I'm free, but given that ultimately it is my brain weighing up these options, deterministically, then ultimately no, I'm not free. But that is just my own 2c.

[Disagreeable]

Generally I don't think it's that useful to talk about because it means different things to different people, what they consider the salient points are also often different, and it's very easy to conflate ideas within this space.

Why do you think that "means different things to different people" equates to "not worth talking about"?

All that said though, FWIW my own take, and the salient points for me, are that the anything my brain does follows the laws of physics and is therefore determined, and thus not 'free', but at the same time, my lived experience, illusion though it may be, is of the freedom to make choices... the freedom to weigh up options etc.

Sounds like compatabilism.

In that sense I'm free, but given that ultimately it is my brain weighing up these options, deterministically, then ultimately no, I'm not free. But that is just my own 2c.

Again, sounds like compatablism.

[emjay]

Generally I don't think it's that useful to talk about because it means different things to different people, what they consider the salient points are also often different, and it's very easy to conflate ideas within this space.

Why do you think that "means different things to different people" equates to "not worth talking about"?

Just experience, that we don't usually get very far with these sorts of discussions, or that we end up going round in circles. Not to say it can't be fun in it's own right, if I'm in the right mood, but I rarely find it productive.

All that said though, FWIW my own take, and the salient points for me, are that the anything my brain does follows the laws of physics and is therefore determined, and thus not 'free', but at the same time, my lived experience, illusion though it may be, is of the freedom to make choices... the freedom to weigh up options etc.

Sounds like compatabilism.

In that sense I'm free, but given that ultimately it is my brain weighing up these options, deterministically, then ultimately no, I'm not free. But that is just my own 2c.

Again, sounds like compatablism.

I would usually describe myself as a hard determinist, and that's where I take philosophical comfort from in related questions, such as thinking about the clockwork universe... the thought 'it could not have been any other way', is often comforting. But lived experience is nonetheless of the illusion of freedom of choice, and indeed could be freedom of choice depending on how it's defined or what framework you're using to look at it, ...as I said, I think there are many working definitions and that makes it often a minefield to talk about.

[Disagreeable]

Nice to meet another hard determinist