Why There is No Free-Will (with Richard Carrier)

[pood]

Nice stuff on Buridan’s ass too.

 

[pood]

About halfway through. Libertarianism and hard determinism eviscerated, compatibilism vindicated.

 

[pood]

Disagree with Carrier somewhat, if I have understood him correctly, around the 30:00 mark about logical and physical necessity. The point I have been making in other threads is to deny physical necessity. There is only logical necessity. If I pick Coke over Pepsi at a certain time T, it is neither logically nor physically necessary that I do that. If I pick Coke, given the antecedents, I WILL do that; it is not that I MUST do that, which is a modal fallacy.

 

[pood]

Two thirds of the way through. Nice stuff from Carrier. He is impressive, as I already knew from his Drop of Reason essay I edited, and from reading things by him in the past.

 

[pood]

@Mr. Board Member if at same point you could supply a transcript of your conversation with Carrier it would be greatly appreciated. I’d like to quote and discuss the points that he made.

 

[steve_bank]

Hi All! Vice President of Internet Infidels here. I interview Carrier on Free-Will. We prove it is metaphysically impossible. Link:

Thanks,

Edouard Tahmizian

Ok, against my better judgement I'll bite.

Did you choose to post this thread of your own freer will or not?

What do YOU think?

 

[pood]

Hi All! Vice President of Internet Infidels here. I interview Carrier on Free-Will. We prove it is metaphysically impossible. Link:

Thanks,

Edouard Tahmizian

Ok, against my better judgement I'll bite.

Did you choose to post this thread of your own freer will or not?

What do YOU think?

The video is plainly arguing against libertarian free will and supporting compatibilist free will.

 

[Bronzeage]

The science(and/or theology) of the existence of free will shall remain a pointless intellectual exercise until such science or theology can predict the future.

The only difference between science and theology on this matter is, if there is no free will, science says it is inevitable we would discover this, while theology says God wanted us to discover this.

 

[steve_bank]

Hi All! Vice President of Internet Infidels here. I interview Carrier on Free-Will. We prove it is metaphysically impossible. Link:

Thanks,

Edouard Tahmizian

Ok, against my better judgement I'll bite.

Did you choose to post this thread of your own freer will or not?

What do YOU think?

The video is plainly arguing against libertarian free will and supporting compatibilist free will.

Is there anything about free will versus determinism that has not been covered over the last several years on multiple threads with many contributors?

It all comes down to what you believe and how it affects your thinking and actions. IMO the meaning of philosophy.

 

[Mr. Board Member]

Hi All! Vice President of Internet Infidels here. I interview Carrier on Free-Will. We prove it is metaphysically impossible. Link:

Thanks,

Edouard Tahmizian

Ok, against my better judgement I'll bite.

Did you choose to post this thread of your own freer will or not?

What do YOU think?

I used my will to choose. You still make choices under determinism because you consented to do what you did - you chose what you did and you did not feel like doing otherwise, nor were you forced against your will. It's not like you wanted to will otherwise but could not. You were free to do whatever you desired. This question wasn't hard.

 

[Elixir]

I chose not to watch the OP video.

 

[Jarhyn]

Disagree with Carrier somewhat, if I have understood him correctly, around the 30:00 mark about logical and physical necessity. The point I have been making in other threads is to deny physical necessity. There is only logical necessity. If I pick Coke over Pepsi at a certain time T, it is neither logically nor physically necessary that I do that. If I pick Coke, given the antecedents, I WILL do that; it is not that I MUST do that, which is a modal fallacy.

Not just you, either; I see it as a range between physical momentary truth and more general necessary truths. The necessariness of a truth would increase as it holds across wider and wider contexts, but getting to any sort of necessariness at all first requires abandoning some aspect of context.

To me this modal fallacy comes specifically from failing to respect that modal boundary, and see "necessary" and "must" only as a function under assumptions or axioms, and treat only as metaphysically necessary those identities of logic which seem to always hold in every metaphysical setting we can imagine (like DeMorgan's law).

I chose not to watch the OP video.

Personally, I choose to wait for transcripts.

At that point I'll do what I decided to do and eviscerate the language around any modal fallacies and hidden god beliefs, and so my best to vindicate the rest, which appears to be most of it from Mr Board Member's response to Steve.

Pood will probably beat me to most of it, frankly, because he has the patience to watch a video.

 

[Elixir]

Personally, I choose to wait for transcripts.

I knew you’d do that!

 

[Jarhyn]

Personally, I choose to wait for transcripts.

I knew you’d do that!

It was inevitable (but only under the knowledge and assumption that part of jarhyn-property is hating-watching-videos property).

 

[pood]

I chose not to watch the OP video.

I’m not a big video watcher but this one is worth it.

 

[pood]

Hi All! Vice President of Internet Infidels here. I interview Carrier on Free-Will. We prove it is metaphysically impossible. Link:

Thanks,

Edouard Tahmizian

Ok, against my better judgement I'll bite.

Did you choose to post this thread of your own freer will or not?

What do YOU think?

I used my will to choose. You still make choices under determinism because you consented to do what you did - you chose what you did and you did not feel like doing otherwise, nor were you forced against your will. It's not like you wanted to will otherwise but could not. You were free to do whatever you desired. This question wasn't hard.

Compatibilism succinctly stated.

 

[pood]

Finished the video. It’s an excellent dismantlement both of pre-determinism and libertarianism, and a detailed vindication of compatibilism. Highly recommended.

 

[Elixir]

It’s an excellent dismantlement both of pre-determinism and libertarianism, and a detailed vindication of compatibilism

Thanks. I'll take your word for it.
Truth be told, my intellect and curiosity may be stunted, but this was never a question for me. I tangled with the question more than a half century ago and took very little time arriving at the conclusion that no human and no human creation could ever detect any mechanism of determinism that would differentiate it from free willery. Ergo - the whole kerfuffle is kinda pointless except as a source of amusement. And even that is minimal. Add recognition of the observable (by me) fact that many or most of my actions are involuntary, or at least not consciously willed, and the pointlessness becomes even more obvious.

 

[pood]

It’s an excellent dismantlement both of pre-determinism and libertarianism, and a detailed vindication of compatibilism

Thanks. I'll take your word for it.
Truth be told, my intellect and curiosity may be stunted, but this was never a question for me. I tangled with the question more than a half century ago and took very little time arriving at the conclusion that no human and no human creation could ever detect any mechanism of determinism that would differentiate it from free willery. Ergo - the whole kerfuffle is kinda pointless except as a source of amusement. And even that is minimal. Add recognition of the observable (by me) fact that many or most of my actions are involuntary, or at least not consciously willed, and the pointlessness becomes even more obvious.

Sure, a lot of our actions are involuntary, such as the flight or fight instinct in the presence of danger. There are plenty of other examples.

But when Sapolsky tells us we are meat robots of genetic determinism, or when Coyne tells us we are meat robots of the Big Bang (while at the same time rejecting genetic determinism, a clear contradiction) then this is something different. For reasons I have outlined and Carrier explains in the video, these ideas make no sense. Carrier does not actually specifically address the genetic determinism claim but he does explain persuasively why we should reject both hard determinism and libertarianism.

But I take your point. At the end of the day, I guess, who cares? And yet somehow I do care. To declare ourselves meat robots vitiates our humanity. Yet even so if hard determinism were true, then it’s true and our humanity is vitiated. An argument to consequences is a fallacy of logic.

Yet the evidence and logic shows hard determinism is not true.

 

[Elixir]

But when Sapolsky tells us we are meat robots of genetic determinism, or when Coyne tells us we are meat robots of the Big Bang (while at the same time rejecting genetic determinism... )

Jerry Coyne said it pretty well IMO. He says a lot of things very well indeed, especially talking about evolution. His exposures of the Behe - Dembski ID and Irreducible Complexity garbage are delicious.
To me, the sensation of being an observer, whether to my own conscious choice, to my fight or flight reflex, to semiconscious actions like scratching an itch, to habitual actions like how I hold and use a fork to eat, or biochemical events like dreams, or reflexive actions like jumping out of the way of a car, the sensation of observing it is what counts, not what it objectively is. All the free willlies plus all the dominoes in the universe can't really replicate or even significantly influence that.
As for optimizing the living experience to my own preferences, the actions I take depend on too many factors to spend my time counting them. To do that, would need a lot more factors to tip the balance, for me.
I do like Jahryn's solution of simply creating your own universe and appointing yourself god. What could possibly go wrong?