Marvin Edwards
Veteran Member
True on the surface, but causation not subject to will. Whatever happens is determined by elements other than our will.Reliable causation is a prerequisite for accomplishing any intent. Without it, we would be unable to carry out our will. Freedom, especially free will, requires a world of reliable cause and effect.
Except when someone's will is the prior cause of the event. For example, you cannot delete the function of "willing" from a "willful action".
Nor can you delete "willing" from the causal chain, without falsifying determinism.
Information processing, not our will is the means of response.
You cannot delete willing from information processing! It's right there within the large catalog of the brain's practical functions. We choose what we will do. Our chosen intent then motivates and directs our body's actions to carry out that intent.
Nobody chooses their neural architecture.
Fortunately, it is not necessary to choose our neural architecture in order to choose what we will have for dinner in a restaurant.
The list of things that we do not choose does not eliminate any of the things that we do choose.
The appearance of alternative possibilities is not the same as having an alternative possibility in any given instance in time, where only the determined action is possible.
Since a possibility exists solely within the imagination, its appearance there is sufficient evidence of its existence. And, because it is a causally necessary mental event, and a logically necessary parameter of the choosing function, it damn well will appear, whether you like it or not.
The requirements of a possibility are simply that, if we chose to do it, we could actually do it. It is never required that we actually do it in order for it to be possible.
Not at all, where consciousness exists, consciousness itself is an inseparable part of the determined system and its progression of events.
EXACTLY!
Consciousness plays its determined role. You can't have it both ways, determinism on the one hand and consciousness being able to buck the system on the other.
There's no bucking the system. Conscious processes do their thing and unconscious processes do their thing, and they work together in the same brain. Every event within the conscious processes and every event within the unconscious processes is causally necessary from any prior point in time. But, causal necessity is so ubiquitous that it really doesn't add any useful information. It is the specific doings of the conscious and unconscious processes that are causally necessitating the choice.
It's a question of what implications 'all events proceeding 'without deviation' has for the idea of free will.
Well, one implication is that it will be causally necessary, and without deviation, that I will be making a choice as to what I will have for dinner.
Which do not appear to be good.
As you may eventually realize, the implications of causal necessity and events proceeding without deviation, are entirely neutral.