According to Robert Sapolsky, human free will does not exist

[DBT]

The Basics, once again

The Core Problems With Compatibilism​

The Redefinition Fallacy of Compatibilism​

Compatibilism’s central move is to redefine what ‘free will’ is so that it fits in a deterministic universe. The traditional notion — that free will means the ability to have genuinely done otherwise, with choices not predetermined by prior causes — is abandoned. Instead, compatibilism offers a watered-down version: free will now means acting according to your desires, intentions, or internal motivations, even if these factors are themselves determined outside of one’s control.

By doing so, compatibilists don’t solve the problem of free will under determinism, they simply evade it, by offering alternate definitions to core terms. The question now is not “Can determinism and genuine free will coexist?, but “Can we call something ‘free will’ even when it is clearly not what is traditionally meant by the term?”

It’s like changing the definition and meanings of variables half-way through solving a maths problem. It’s just creating an easier question to avoid the original, more difficult one. This is exactly why I call compatibilism the “stupidest compromise ever.”

The Illusion of Choice​

Compatibilism claims we have ‘free will’ because we can act on our desires and intentions. But the desires which are mentioned here are themselves determined by prior causes completely beyond our control. So the freedom compatibilism celebrates is just the illusion of choice — the feeling of deciding freely when everything is pre-set. As Arthur Schopenhauer once said:

“You can do what you will, but you cannot will what you will.” 1

This illusion doesn’t solve the problem. Saying “you acted freely because it matched your desires” is just relabelling determinism, repackaging it, and then calling it ‘free will’. Real freedom would require control over those desires themselves (which cannot be granted here as compatibilism affirms determinism, and affirms Schopenhauer’s previously mentioned quote) — something compatibilism denies.

 

[Jarhyn]

Compatibilism’s central move is to redefine what ‘free will’ is so that it fits in a deterministic universe

Not really, no. More, the move is to recognize you committed a syntax error in the discussion of the sea battle.

Determined outside of one’s control

Yet again there's this myth of the absence of automatic control, as of autonomy isn't a thing!

We have covered this and DBT just acts like it wasn't discussed at all.

Your posts are full of religious foolishness DBT, and there is very little that could convince me otherwise than that it is a personal failing for you.

You post this trash again and again and never actually answer to the fact that I have exposed multiple times the direct presence and cause of autonomous self-modification, and the fact that the actual determination, the very process of it, is under the control of things that exist under determinism: you yourself acting and making decisions on your own behalf.

It's right fucking there.

This shouldn't take more than an hour to understand, let alone 10 years.

 

[steve_bank]

Out of all the -isms, -ologies, and -osophies over history which are robust and unshakeable?

Unconditionally predictable.