According to Robert Sapolsky, human free will does not exist

[peacegirl]

To me this discussion has devolved into a great big exercise in pounding sand,

I’ve stated my position endlessly and will summarize it one more time. Then others can squabble over it if they choose.

I am basically a Humean or neo-Humean compatibilist. Among other things this means that I reject the idea that the “laws” of nature are laws at all, or that they somehow “govern” the universe or our actions.

They govern only because we cannot go against them. If you are a dog, you cannot change the attributes given to you as much as you want to become human.

The “laws” are not prescriptions, they are descriptions. They are not, as mentioned in the article linked earlier, “pushy explainers.”

How many times have I said these laws do not prescribe? So there's no argument here.

In addition, I reject the claim of “physical necessity” as unevidenced or superfluous. I recognize only logical necessity. Given a choice between Coke or Pepsi, it is obviously logically possible that I can choose either. It is also physically possible because I see no evidence for any modal category called “physical necessity.”

Completely irrelevant to the issue of whether a person could have done otherwise after the fact. No one is claiming physical necessity.

So when someone claims something like, “the laws of nature, in conjunction with antecedent events, entail all future outcomes,” I reject the premise of the first clause and I reject the conclusion.

Antecedent events only mean the options that are being considered. It does not mean that A means B means C. If I eat eggs for breakfast, that does not mean tomorrow it is necessary that I will eat eggs for breakfast. Modal flaw.

That the past, present and future are all fixed I have no doubt. However, as I have repeatedly pointed out, fixity is not fatalism. We, by our free acts, do our bit to help fix the past, present, and future. Free will does not require us to have the ability to change past, present, or future — only the ability to help make things be as they were, are, and will be.

A block universe, if I understand it correctly, does not prescribe anything; it just theorizes that what happened in the past, what is happening now, and what will happen in the future are not something that can be changed because the past, present, and future exist simultaneously. This concept does not challenge determinism, but it doesn't explain it satisfactorily by making it appear fatalistic. Looking back, all our choices would have been predetermined because we cannot escape the fact that we move in one direction, away from that which dissatisfies to that which gives us greater satisfaction; therefore, everything that has happened could not have happened any other way, but what this theory cannot do is necessitate that we make a particular choice in advance of our making it. That would be prescriptive, which would be a modal fallacy and not the more accurate definition this author uses.

Finally, this “could” or “could not have done otherwise” discussion is a red herring. I have repeatedly stated my position, that given certain antecedents, I WILL do a certain thing; I just deny that I MUST, for that is a modal fallacy.

I guess you haven't been reading anything I have posted. Determinism does not prescribe. It does not say YOU MUST DO THIS WHEN YOU DON'T WANT TO DO WHAT IT IS TELLING YOU TO DO. This is not the determinism I know to be true.

Besides, how do you know that I could not have done otherwise, given the exact same circumstances? You don’t — there is no test you can run to determine this. This is an entirely question-begging hard determinist assumption.

There is no test to prove that you could have done otherwise, so free will remains a theory, but that in no way means determinism is false, which would prove free will true, WHICH CANNOT BE PROVEN. You don't even get what the problem is here.

However, I am not an agent-causal libertarian because I do not believe that our actions are entirely severed from antecedents.

You want your cake and eat it too. Your reasoning is flawed, Pood. Think it through more carefully, and maybe you'll come to your senses.

I strongly recommend Carrier’s essay that I linked, but have my doubts that anyone has read it. It seems some in this discussion are just intent on peddling their unevidenced bromides. For example, I have repeatedly asked @DBT how the Big Bang composes symphonies, writes novels, etc., for that is really the substance of his position. He claims he has answered the question, but as explained, his answers are always actually evasions.

Confirmation bias, which is not proof of anything. No one is saying the Big Bang caused symphonies. This would be equivalent to saying, The Big Bang caused the Holocaust. No, it doesn't work that way. You deserve to enjoy your accomplishments given your God-given talents and efforts to get where you are today, which you rightly deserve. But there is one caveat: If will is not free, you must give up the pride that you did this of your own free will.

 

[steve_bank]

Now I understand pood.

Pounding sand builds character.

My view is I do not and can not know the universe works. What I know is I have to make decisions which can affect others.

Causal determiner, free will, comparabilism on a national scale does have implications.

The prevailing view is free will. We have responsibility for actions. Civil and criminal law.

If all our actions are causally predetermined then there is no responsibility. If you come up with a new invention it was not your hard wrork it was predestined.

 

[Jarhyn]

If you are a dog, you cannot change the attributes given to you as much as you want to become human

And yet again, people fail to see that the laws of physics don't actually say that.

If you are a "dog", becoming a human is actually physically possible... It's just exceedingly difficult, and so difficult in fact that most people don't consider the possibility worth actualizing on.

Depending on how ethical you are or aren't, you would first need to find or locate or build or learn how to build a machine, or conscript someone else to help build such a machine that could fully scan your brain matter and configuration.

You would next need to arrange either computer parts or actual wet neurons of human tissue into that configuration from the time of the scan, such that all neurons motions and activations relative to their neighbors would be equivalent in terms of all the agentic portions (the top level control loop), while transliterating all the other control requests to human versions, likely through "retraining" while "locking" the rest of the behaviors and structures from being "trained" away.

Then, you would need to either connect that system to a transmitter or to implant it directly in a compatible human body grown from human cells, preferably ones genetically compatible to the brain you (re)ssembled, assuming you went that route.

You might want to wait until you are done with the infrastructure for completing the action, however, before running the scanner, just to make sure you keep any lessons learned from the engineering or process.

But at the end, if you started as a dog, you will have ended it as a human.

Both you-as-dog and you-as-human would need to sort out together how to handle the original you-as-dog however.

If the process makes the brain scan on a computer, first, you could sync the two or do a destructive scan to guarantee no duplicates and a single "mended thread".

Either way, yes, a dog can... It's just exceedingly hard, and it'll be at least another 5-20 years before that happens, depending on where we are with the scanner tech.

We'll probably have dogs in humanoid drone bodies long before we have them in actual human bodies, and possibly BEFORE we end up seeing humans in such bodies (same as we sent a dog up to space before we sent a human).

 

[pood]

@peacegirl, I wasn’t directing my comments at you, but mainly @DBT. As I explained ages ago, and you predictably ignored, your version of determinism/free will is NOT the same as his. But, to reiterate, your idea that a choice, after it is made, could not have been different, is logically incoherent.

Moving on:

Sabine Hossenfelder explains why the future exists.

This is an interesting video. In the middle of it she sketches out the light cone, and shows why, via Einstein’s relativity, that the past, present and future all exist. This is called the block world.

When she says past versions of herself exist (as well as future) it just gives me further reason to believe that Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, pre-relativity, was right.

If my past selves exist after I die, then I always exist, in the world line between my birth and death. So via Nietzsche and the block world when we die we will all subjectively experience our lives all over again from birth.

More interesting is toward the end, how she tackles the idea that the block world inspires defeatism because it seems to imply fatalism. But she then says (correctly) that our choices matter. The only problem is that this is just a segue into pitching the idea of choosing to support one of her sponsors.

That said, she has earlier said we don’t have free will because we can’t change the future, which is logical nonsense. We don’t have to change the future to have free will. So she contradicts herself here.

Still, a recommended video.

 

[Jarhyn]

@peacegirl, I wasn’t directing my comments at you, but mainly @DBT. As I explained ages ago, and you predictably ignored, your version of determinism/free will is NOT the same as his. But, to reiterate, your idea that a choice, after it is made, could not have been different, is logically incoherent.

Moving on:

Sabine Hossenfelder explains why the future exists.

This is an interesting video. In the middle of it she sketches out the light cone, and shows why, via Einstein’s relativity, that the past, present and future all exist. This is called the block world.

When she says past versions of herself exist (as well as future) it just gives me further reason to believe that Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, pre-relativity, was right.

If my past selves exist after I die, then I always exist, in the world line between my birth and death. So via Nietzsche and the block world when we die we will all subjectively experience our lives all over again from birth.

More interesting is toward the end, how she tackles the idea that the block world inspires defeatism because it seems to imply fatalism. But she then says (correctly) that our choices matter. The only problem is that this is just a segue into pitching the idea of choosing to support one of her sponsors.

That said, she has earlier said we don’t have free will because we can’t change the future, which is logical nonsense. So she contradicts herself here.

Still, a recommended video.

Interestingly, assuming the universe is "aperiodic" in nature in the same class as Spectre, due to the properties of finite patches being inevitably and infinitely repeated, this recurrence happens not "before" or "after" but to the left and right, top and bottom, fore and aft, at different rotations, an infinite number of times.

Then, there are also classes of systems which do not repeat even some finite subsection, despite being infinite sequences.

Aperiodic systems imply that there might not be an infinite recurrence but that there very well could be an infinite variance... Or when the cycle comes to a close and restarts somehow, we end up seeing everything shuffled about in a way that does not align in any way with the prior: the universe could be abstractly cyclic but not perfectly repetitive!

Some untold distance from here at a funny angle to here, some version of me could very well be typing this same exact shitpost not merely tomorrow or yesterday (or some large number of them), but right now.

Still, this does not change the existence of the past, present, or future as a block.

 

[pood]

Please also note, @peacegirl, if you “choose” to view the video (yes, it is your choice) the part where Hossenfelder says that when we look at our toes “now,” we are seeing then as they were about one picosecond in the past.

 

[peacegirl]

To me this discussion has devolved into a great big exercise in pounding sand,

I’ve stated my position endlessly and will summarize it one more time. Then others can squabble over it if they choose.

I am basically a Humean or neo-Humean compatibilist. Among other things this means that I reject the idea that the “laws” of nature are laws at all, or that they somehow “govern” the universe or our actions.

The facts don't change. For example, we don't get to freely choose between killing or not killing someone if we were brought up that killing was wrong under any circumstances. We are pushed by our heredity and environment (not coerced against our will) to a particular outcome. Being a neo-Humean compatibilist doesn't save you either, Pood, because individuals can act according to their desires without external coersion, BUT THIS DOES NOT MAKE THEIR WILL FREE. This is what you keep missing, probably because of confirmation bias, which is hard to overcome.

A neo-Humean compatibilist is a philosopher who believes that free will and determinism are compatible. This perspective, rooted in Hume's ideas, suggests that while determinism describes the causal processes of the universe, it does not preclude the possibility of human actions being free. Neo-Humean compatibilists argue that free will can exist even in a deterministic world, emphasizing that individuals can act according to their desires without external coercion, as long as they have the ability to do so. This view contrasts with incompatibilism, which posits that determinism and free will are incompatible.

PhilPapers

The “laws” are not prescriptions, they are descriptions. They are not, as mentioned in the article linked earlier, “pushy explainers.”

In addition, I reject the claim of “physical necessity” as unevidenced or superfluous. I recognize only logical necessity. Given a choice between Coke or Pepsi, it is obviously logically possible that I can choose either. It is also physically possible because I see no evidence for any modal category called “physical necessity.”

So when someone claims something like, “the laws of nature, in conjunction with antecedent events, entail all future outcomes,” I reject the premise of the first clause and I reject the conclusion.

That the past, present and future are all fixed I have no doubt. However, as I have repeatedly pointed out, fixity is not fatalism. We, by our free acts, do our bit to help fix the past, present, and future. Free will does not require us to have the ability to change past, present, or future — only the ability to help make things be as they were, are, and will be.

How can time not be involved with the past, present, and future? That would mean they are on the same plane with no dimension of time and space to make what you call a "free" choice. Your words make no sense in that having the ability to help make things be as they were, are, and will be REQUIRE TIME. The future cannot be fixed before the future becomes the present.

Finally, this “could” or “could not have done otherwise” discussion is a red herring. I have repeatedly stated my position, that given certain antecedents, I WILL do a certain thing; I just deny that I MUST, for that is a modal fallacy.

I'm not sure who you are directing this to, but I already stated that "greater satisfaction" does not tell you that you must do anything before you do it. You do something because you want to do it. This is not a modal fallacy as you keep saying.

Besides, how do you know that I could not have done otherwise, given the exact same circumstances? You don’t — there is no test you can run to determine this. This is an entirely question-begging hard determinist assumption.

There is no test to prove free will true, but there is a way to prove that free will is false by proving that determinism is true. Determinism, defined accurately, is proven to be true, therefore free will is false. Free will, no matter how you try to make it compatible with determinism, is not compatible by definition. If will is free, it cannot be not free. If free will is not free, it cannot be free. If you can't accept this simple truth, you will twist your definition to force compatibility when no such thing exists. Nothing can make free will compatible with no free will except through your distorted definition of "free will" (the compatibilist made up definition) that proves only one thing: your resistance to the truth.

However, I am not an agent-causal libertarian because I do not believe that our actions are entirely severed from antecedents.

I strongly recommend Carrier’s essay that I linked, but have my doubts that anyone has read it. It seems some in this discussion are just intent on peddling their unevidenced bromides. For example, I have repeatedly asked @DBT how the Big Bang composes symphonies, writes novels, etc., for that is really the substance of his position. He claims he has answered the question, but as explained, his answers are always actually evasions.

This was answered adequately. No determinist here is saying that the Big Bang composed symphonies, wrote novels, etc. It's a true strawman. All determinism means, concerning this debate, is that there is no gap where free will enters into our decisions. So, looking back, you could say that from the beginning of time, we have developed exactly as it had to be. That's all it is saying. It is disingenuous for you to say that determinists believe that the Big Bang wrote novels.

 

[Jarhyn]

The facts don't change. For example, we don't get to freely choose between killing or not killing someone if we were brought up that killing was wrong under any circumstances

Naw, we still have the choice. It's just that the choice has earlier reasons.

Many might be brought up against killing and then decide killing is a worthy pursuit regardless of what others say.

Likewise, someone could be brought up with the intent that they murder folks, and then they go on to be pacifists.

When people make mistakes of that sort, the mistake to value killing when taught not to, generally we think there is something wrong with them, and when they value life despite being taught otherwise, we hold them in high esteem.

I was taught very foolish things, and taught to believe things for foolish reasons, and I have high esteem for those who were so taught and like me figured out that they were taught wrong and what "right" looks like instead.

The presence of people who do is a strike against the people who don't, though hopefully the people who do can lead those who don't through some equivalently educational path.

 

[peacegirl]

Now I understand pood.

Pounding sand builds character.

My view is I do not and can not know the universe works. What I know is I have to make decisions which can affect others.

Causal determiner, free will, comparabilism on a national scale does have implications.

The prevailing view is free will. We have responsibility for actions. Civil and criminal law.

I have said that this knowledge increases responsibility. This is why what I am presenting is so invaluable (I realize this thread has other posters with other points of view, but this is my contribution to this thread): how to prevent from coming back that for which blame and punishment were previously necessary. You are, like everyone else, stuck at the gate. You haven't even considered how the knowledge that man's will is not free and the knowledge that lies behind it overcomes the problems confronting our world, nor have you asked one relevant question. You just keep balking at the claim because you don't believe that war and crime can be eliminated. Surprisingly, not even one person has asked to hear more, even out of plain old curiosity.

If all our actions are causally predetermined then there is no responsibility. If you come up with a new invention it was not your hard wrork it was predestined.

No, you're not right. If you came up with a new invention, you were the inventor, no one else. No one is taking that away from you. What is being taken away is the fact that, because your will is not free, we have to see where it leads, not turn away because we don't like the implications. IOW, this poses a big problem for determinism, for how can we not hold people responsible for what we believe they didn't have to do since their will was free not to do it (i.e., they could have chosen otherwise, which is the theme of free will), or how, if not for threats of punishment do we get people to want to do the right thing by others? Isn't this hurting of others the central issue in this debate? It is not about blue or red shirts, or cereal or eggs for breakfast.

 

[peacegirl]

If you are a dog, you cannot change the attributes given to you as much as you want to become human

And yet again, people fail to see that the laws of physics don't actually say that.

If you are a "dog", becoming a human is actually physically possible... It's just exceedingly difficult, and so difficult in fact that most people don't consider the possibility worth actualizing on.

Depending on how ethical you are or aren't, you would first need to find or locate or build or learn how to build a machine, or conscript someone else to help build such a machine that could fully scan your brain matter and configuration.

You would next need to arrange either computer parts or actual wet neurons of human tissue into that configuration from the time of the scan, such that all neurons motions and activations relative to their neighbors would be equivalent in terms of all the agentic portions (the top level control loop), while transliterating all the other control requests to human versions, likely through "retraining" while "locking" the rest of the behaviors and structures from being "trained" away.

Then, you would need to either connect that system to a transmitter or to implant it directly in a compatible human body grown from human cells, preferably ones genetically compatible to the brain you (re)ssembled, assuming you went that route.

You might want to wait until you are done with the infrastructure for completing the action, however, before running the scanner, just to make sure you keep any lessons learned from the engineering or process.

But at the end, if you started as a dog, you will have ended it as a human.

Both you-as-dog and you-as-human would need to sort out together how to handle the original you-as-dog however.

If the process makes the brain scan on a computer, first, you could sync the two or do a destructive scan to guarantee no duplicates and a single "mended thread".

Either way, yes, a dog can... It's just exceedingly hard, and it'll be at least another 5-20 years before that happens, depending on where we are with the scanner tech.

We'll probably have dogs in humanoid drone bodies long before we have them in actual human bodies, and possibly BEFORE we end up seeing humans in such bodies (same as we sent a dog up to space before we sent a human).

We're off on another tangent. I didn't bring this up to discuss what appears to be science fiction. We will have to wait and see if technology can turn a dog into a true human being, not a humanoid. There are limits to what technology can do.

 

[peacegirl]

@peacegirl, I wasn’t directing my comments at you, but mainly @DBT. As I explained ages ago, and you predictably ignored, your version of determinism/free will is NOT the same as his. But, to reiterate, your idea that a choice, after it is made, could not have been different, is logically incoherent.

It is far from being logically incoherent. We have a chance to decide between alternatives before a choice is made, but once it is made, it could not have been otherwise, which is why our will is not free. We cannot choose what we did not choose, given the same EXACT conditions. You have yet to prove Lessans wrong.

Moving on:

Sabine Hossenfelder explains why the future exists.

This is an interesting video. In the middle of it she sketches out the light cone, and shows why, via Einstein’s relativity, that the past, present and future all exist. This is called the block world.

When she says past versions of herself exist (as well as future) it just gives me further reason to believe that Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, pre-relativity, was right.

If my past selves exist after I die, then I always exist, in the world line between my birth and death. So via Nietzsche and the block world when we die we will all subjectively experience our lives all over again from birth.

More interesting is toward the end, how she tackles the idea that the block world inspires defeatism because it seems to imply fatalism. But she then says (correctly) that our choices matter. The only problem is that this is just a segue into pitching the idea of choosing to support one of her sponsors.

That said, she has earlier said we don’t have free will because we can’t change the future, which is logical nonsense. We don’t have to change the future to have free will. So she contradicts herself here.

Still, a recommended video.

Sorry Pood but this is all conjecture, pure imagination, and a way to calm existential dread that we might be gone when we die. There is nothing that can prove we live in a block universe, nothing. How can we change the future when it's just a word that does not describe anything real, just as the past doesn't describe anything real. The future is a thought in our minds of something to come, but it never arrives until it becomes the present, which is all that we have.

 

[peacegirl]

@peacegirl, I wasn’t directing my comments at you, but mainly @DBT. As I explained ages ago, and you predictably ignored, your version of determinism/free will is NOT the same as his. But, to reiterate, your idea that a choice, after it is made, could not have been different, is logically incoherent.

Moving on:

Sabine Hossenfelder explains why the future exists.

This is an interesting video. In the middle of it she sketches out the light cone, and shows why, via Einstein’s relativity, that the past, present and future all exist. This is called the block world.

When she says past versions of herself exist (as well as future) it just gives me further reason to believe that Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, pre-relativity, was right.

If my past selves exist after I die, then I always exist, in the world line between my birth and death. So via Nietzsche and the block world when we die we will all subjectively experience our lives all over again from birth.

More interesting is toward the end, how she tackles the idea that the block world inspires defeatism because it seems to imply fatalism. But she then says (correctly) that our choices matter. The only problem is that this is just a segue into pitching the idea of choosing to support one of her sponsors.

That said, she has earlier said we don’t have free will because we can’t change the future, which is logical nonsense. So she contradicts herself here.

Still, a recommended video.

Interestingly, assuming the universe is "aperiodic" in nature in the same class as Spectre, due to the properties of finite patches being inevitably and infinitely repeated, this recurrence happens not "before" or "after" but to the left and right, top and bottom, fore and aft, at different rotations, an infinite number of times.

Then, there are also classes of systems which do not repeat even some finite subsection, despite being infinite sequences.

Aperiodic systems imply that there might not be an infinite recurrence but that there very well could be an infinite variance... Or when the cycle comes to a close and restarts somehow, we end up seeing everything shuffled about in a way that does not align in any way with the prior: the universe could be abstractly cyclic but not perfectly repetitive!

Some untold distance from here at a funny angle to here, some version of me could very well be typing this same exact shitpost not merely tomorrow or yesterday (or some large number of them), but right now.

Still, this does not change the existence of the past, present, or future as a block.

None of this changes the fact that we have no free will (which has been proven, whether you believe it or not) and how grateful we will all be that a world of peace is within reach, as we begin to understand our true nature.

 

[peacegirl]

The facts don't change. For example, we don't get to freely choose between killing or not killing someone if we were brought up that killing was wrong under any circumstances

Naw, we still have the choice. It's just that the choice has earlier reasons.

We do have a choice, but it's not a free one.

Many might be brought up against killing and then decide killing is a worthy pursuit regardless of what others say.

Yes, many find killing a worthy pursuit even though they were brought up against killing, because they live in a society where the benefits in their mind outweigh the risks.

Likewise, someone could be brought up with the intent that they murder folks, and then they go on to be pacifists

That is true. It all depends on what experiences a person has had and what they feel is the better choice, in the direction of greater satisfaction. For example, they may have been introduced to a new church that they resonate with. This may help them to see people in a different light, especially if they are getting needed financial help from that church. This is a good thing, but regardless, whatever a person chooses, once he chooses it, he could not have chosen otherwise. This does not mean that in the next instant, he could not rethink his choice and make a different choice. It only means that it is impossible to change what has already occurred, not what has yet to occur.

When people make mistakes of that sort, the mistake to value killing when taught not to, generally we think there is something wrong with them, and when they value life despite being taught otherwise, we hold them in high esteem.

We are in a world where people will take advantage of others if they can. There is nothing wrong with these people mentally, other than not caring for their neighbor, because they have learned that taking advantage offers them some benefit.

I was taught very foolish things, and taught to believe things for foolish reasons, and I have high esteem for those who were so taught and like me figured out that they were taught wrong and what "right" looks like instead.

Thankfully, you were given information that helped you do what is right by society, but what is considered right may be wrong to someone who can't get ahead, has no opportunity, has no basic income, and has mouths to feed.

The presence of people who do is a strike against the people who don't, though hopefully the people who do can lead those who don't through some equivalently educational path.

The educational path is to find a way to give everyone an equal opportunity to get ahead, and an opportunity to survive the environment they were born into that was no fault of their own.

 

[DBT]

To me this discussion has devolved into a great big exercise in pounding sand,

I’ve stated my position endlessly and will summarize it one more time. Then others can squabble over it if they choose.

I am basically a Humean or neo-Humean compatibilist. Among other things this means that I reject the idea that the “laws” of nature are laws at all, or that they somehow “govern” the universe or our actions.

The “laws” are not prescriptions, they are descriptions. They are not, as mentioned in the article linked earlier, “pushy explainers.”

In addition, I reject the claim of “physical necessity” as unevidenced or superfluous. I recognize only logical necessity. Given a choice between Coke or Pepsi, it is obviously logically possible that I can choose either. It is also physically possible because I see no evidence for any modal category called “physical necessity.”

So when someone claims something like, “the laws of nature, in conjunction with antecedent events, entail all future outcomes,” I reject the premise of the first clause and I reject the conclusion.

That the past, present and future are all fixed I have no doubt. However, as I have repeatedly pointed out, fixity is not fatalism. We, by our free acts, do our bit to help fix the past, present, and future. Free will does not require us to have the ability to change past, present, or future — only the ability to help make things be as they were, are, and will be.

Finally, this “could” or “could not have done otherwise” discussion is a red herring. I have repeatedly stated my position, that given certain antecedents, I WILL do a certain thing; I just deny that I MUST, for that is a modal fallacy.

Besides, how do you know that I could not have done otherwise, given the exact same circumstances? You don’t — there is no test you can run to determine this. This is an entirely question-begging hard determinist assumption.

However, I am not an agent-causal libertarian because I do not believe that our actions are entirely severed from antecedents.

I strongly recommend Carrier’s essay that I linked, but have my doubts that anyone has read it. It seems some in this discussion are just intent on peddling their unevidenced bromides. For example, I have repeatedly asked @DBT how the Big Bang composes symphonies, writes novels, etc., for that is really the substance of his position. He claims he has answered the question, but as explained, his answers are always actually evasions.

To repeat.

The modal fallacy defense doesn't hold in relation to incompatibilism.

It is irrelevant because the issue is related to how compatibilists themselves define determinism and how they define free will in relation to how define determinism.

It is the compatibilist that provides the terms and conditions for both determinism and free will.

So if there is a modal fallacy to be found, the fallacy is related to Compatibilism and the terms and conditions that they provide.

As for the terms of the debate, it doesn't matter if the world isn't really deterministic. It wouldn't matter if the events of the world happen to be random.....why? Well, because it is compatibilism that provides the terms and conditions for their argument for the compatibility of determinism (as they define it to be) and free will as they define it.

 

[Jarhyn]

We're off on another tangent. I didn't bring this up to discuss what appears to be science fiction. We will have to wait and see if technology can turn a dog into a true human being, not a humanoid. There are limits to what technology can do.

"No true scotsman, we can't do it yet so we can't do it!"

The problem here is that you keep thinking "limitations for now" are "limitations forever", and that "don't know how" means "can't".

It's not my fault that you don't seem to know the meaning of the word "can" and "can't".

Its like this guy I was talking to yesterday on reddit about freedom: the guy expressed that unless he had the power to preemptively delete himself from ever being born, he was not suitably free... Excepting that he does actually still have that power, it's just indirect and difficult.

Instead of preemptively being deleted by himself some time ago, he has the power to preemptively delete the next instance, and to be the mediator of the events he wants to occur in the cycle of life. He has to actually start doing the things he wants others to have already done for him, such that the next time it turns out differently. It just takes work and suffering for a while now to get what he wants in abstract to exist.

It is not an easy task, and will never lead to complete and utter success, but not even the destruction of all life would do it as thoroughly; life would be back and life would make the same mistakes and someone like him would come to fore repeatedly at high rates for perhaps tens of millions of years!

But if we instead strive to understand why he does not want to exist and what patterns start to build that outcome and record all of this and how to avoid it, he will never be born again so long as life survives, or perhaps even buried in ruins and signposts so that even if life falls, they find the solution to not creating such that wish to never live.

Getting what you want is always a matter of work.

You not knowing what that work is means you need to start asking questions rather than pretending you already know answers.

 

[peacegirl]

We're off on another tangent. I didn't bring this up to discuss what appears to be science fiction. We will have to wait and see if technology can turn a dog into a true human being, not a humanoid. There are limits to what technology can do.

"No true scotsman, we can't do it yet so we can't do it!"

That's not what I'm saying. I am saying that technology has limitations. For technology to ever be able to turn a dog into a human, not a robot, sounds pretty outrageous to me.

The problem here is that you keep thinking "limitations for now" are "limitations forever", and that "don't know how" means "can't".

How ironic. It is true that "limitations for now" don't mean "limitations forever," and that "don't know how" does not mean "can't" when it comes to the claim that world peace is possible.

It's not my fault that you don't seem to know the meaning of the word "can" and "can't".

Its like this guy I was talking to yesterday on reddit about freedom: the guy expressed that unless he had the power to preemptively delete himself from ever being born, he was not suitably free... Excepting that he does actually still have that power, it's just indirect and difficult.

You really need to understand the terms when it comes to this debate. You are mixing up "freedom" with "free will."

Instead of preemptively being deleted by himself some time ago, he has the power to preemptively delete the next instance, and to be the mediator of the events he wants to occur in the cycle of life. He has to actually start doing the things he wants others to have already done for him, such that the next time it turns out differently. It just takes work and suffering for a while now to get what he wants in abstract to exist.

It is not an easy task, and will never lead to complete and utter success, but not even the destruction of all life would do it as thoroughly; life would be back and life would make the same mistakes and someone like him would come to fore repeatedly at high rates for perhaps tens of millions of years!

But if we instead strive to understand why he does not want to exist and what patterns start to build that outcome and record all of this and how to avoid it, he will never be born again so long as life survives, or perhaps even buried in ruins and signposts so that even if life falls, they find the solution to not creating such that wish to never live.

Getting what you want is always a matter of work.

Of course it takes work to do better. It is sad when someone throws up their arms and gives up.

You not knowing what that work is means you need to start asking questions rather than pretending you already know answers.

Huh? I ask questions, lots of them.

 

[Jarhyn]

For technology to ever be able to turn a dog into a human, not a robot, sounds pretty outrageous to me

Which is called "argument from incredulity". Look it up some time.

when it comes to the claim that world peace is possible

Well, it can't happen at all the way you propose. You proposed giving power to someone who matches the biblical antichrist, someone who supports attacking trans people for seeking peacefully that which gives them peace.

While I don't think world peace is perfectly achievable, it's DEFINITELY not achievable by you. Because you've proven you don't know the first thing about making that happen.

You are mixing up "freedom" with "free will."

No, you just seem to fail to read all my posts on the specific meaning of that specific term.

Search the forum for "misnomer" from user Jarhyn and you'll get your answer.

Having free will is about freedom, but identifying whether your will is free is about a specific will, so we have to be really careful about understanding those terms, which we also call "free will".

Both humans and self-driving cars can have their freedoms and wills identified by a third party, but only humans can identify it as a first party, and this is because humans have a Robust definition of "self" that the car lacks. We call that boundary condition and test, together, the will to remain free, and when it tests successfully to that end, that is the state of having free will with respect to the tested boundary.

You keep demonstrating that you don't really understand the difference very well yourself, though, so why should anyone care what you think?

It is sad when someone throws up their arms and gives up.

And yet that is exactly what people do when you tell them and they believe you that they lack free will and thus the power to make those decisions!

It's almost as if you should become a compatibilist and ditch your daddy. Or not almost, or "as if".

Huh? I ask questions, lots of them

Not really. You ask them rhetorically, but not so much in my experience as if you don't actually know the answers, despite the fact that you don't actually know most of the answers you claim to have.

People have freedoms. People have wills. Anyone with an ability to recognize relative boundary states and monitor things which cross or impinge on the boundary have the ability to gauge free will across said boundary with respect to what is inside it, and anyone capable of identifying the boundary around their brain meats should be able to do so for themselves.

But most importantly, with the words "free" with respect to a boundary and "will", we can ask the question "how free is the will with respect to some boundary" and then we have a measure of "free will"

If you find yourself adding some assumption and that all somehow mysteriously collapses due to apparent errors, then you added a bad assumption, same as this outcome implies for math.

 

[peacegirl]

For technology to ever be able to turn a dog into a human, not a robot, sounds pretty outrageous to me

Which is called "argument from incredulity". Look it up some time.

You are preaching to the choir, but some things are impossible. There are many things that were considered science fiction that became true, such as FaceTime. No one could imagine that we would be able to see a person on our phones. But some things are utterly impossible. Being able to turn a dog into a human being is one of them. That's magic. On the other hand, it is not science fiction that we can achieve world peace, even though people are incredulous that anyone could make such a claim.

Logical fallacy
The argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone concludes that something must be false because they cannot imagine how it could be true, or vice versa. This fallacy often leads to extreme conclusions, such as attributing supernatural explanations to phenomena that are difficult to understand or impossible to explain. For example, if someone cannot explain how a scientific theory could be true, they might conclude that it must be false. However, this reasoning is fallacious, as one's inability to imagine how something could be true does not imply that it is false.

when it comes to the claim that world peace is possible

Well, it can't happen at all the way you propose. You proposed giving power to someone who matches the biblical antichrist, someone who supports attacking trans people for seeking peacefully that which gives them peace.

While I don't think world peace is perfectly achievable, it's DEFINITELY not achievable by you. Because you've proven you don't know the first thing about making that happen.

Um, fair enough. Tell me what is not achievable by me, or could it be that you don't know the first thing about what can make it happen?

You are mixing up "freedom" with "free will."

No, you just seem to fail to read all my posts on the specific meaning of that specific term.

I read about your switches and your autonomous computers that don't follow a script. They can think for themselves. I'm not a computer nerd, but I believe that's the basic theme in your effort to prove that wills are free. You also started with the premise that no one can tell from what point a choice is made because it could be on a different plane, or something to that effect. Nothing that you have said proves freedom of the will, Jaryn, no matter how hard you try to prove it. As DBT said, according to your own definition, free will and determinism cannot coexist. It has to be one or the other.

Search the forum for "misnomer" from user Jarhyn and you'll get your answer.

Having free will is about freedom, but identifying whether your will is free is about a specific will, so we have to be really careful about understanding those terms, which we also call "free will".

Both humans and self-driving cars can have their freedoms and wills identified by a third party, but only humans can identify it as a first party, and this is because humans have a Robust definition of "self" that the car lacks. We call that boundary condition and test, together, the will to remain free, and when it tests successfully to that end, that is the state of having free will with respect to the tested boundary.

Yes, we have a self, and yes, this is a good thing. It provides a boundary, but it does not successfully provide the free will you believe it does. It has nothing to do with having free will, even if the self can choose, which I don't deny. You throw around words like "the will to remain free." What does that even mean in terms of freedom of the will used in this debate (or could have done otherwise)?

You keep demonstrating that you don't really understand the difference very well yourself, though, so why should anyone care what you think?

I can say the same thing about you. You don't really understand the difference very well yourself, so why should anyone care what you think? See? It's just as easy for me to say the same thing about you.

It is sad when someone throws up their arms and gives up.

And yet that is exactly what people do when you tell them and they believe you that they lack free will and thus the power to make those decisions!

You have no idea what this book is about by your comment. No one is saying we can't make decisions. You are using a definition of determinism that I have said is not the definition this author uses.

It's almost as if you should become a compatibilist and ditch your daddy. Or not almost, or "as if".

Compatibilism is a last-ditch effort to keep moral responsibility intact. It doesn't do any good because it contradicts the very definition you yourself have agreed to.

Huh? I ask questions, lots of them

Not really. You ask them rhetorically, but not so much in my experience as if you don't actually know the answers, despite the fact that you don't actually know most of the answers you claim to have.

What are the answers I don't have? You don't even know the questions to ask, so how would you know whether I have answers or not? This is as dumb as it gets.

People have freedoms. People have wills. Anyone with an ability to recognize relative boundary states and monitor things which cross or impinge on the boundary have the ability to gauge free will across said boundary with respect to what is inside it, and anyone capable of identifying the boundary around their brain meats should be able to do so for themselves.

People have the ability to mull over their options when making decisions. They have wills, it is true. Some people believe that determinism means it strips us of our wills altogether and that we have no self. That is not what this author is saying. But... just because we can make our own decisions based on our wills --- and just because we call them free in a colloquial sense, when nothing external (like a gun to our head) impinges on our ability to make decisions, in no way translates to having FREE will.

But most importantly, with the words "free" with respect to a boundary and "will", we can ask the question "how free is the will with respect to some boundary" and then we have a measure of "free will"

No, Jaryn. You are, once again, changing the definition of "freedom of the will" that philosophers use in this debate. Whether you are without much freedom because you are imprisoned, or whether you are the richest person on earth, does not give you more or less "free will." Yes, you have an unlimited number of choices to pick from if you are rich, but this does not mean that you have more free will than the person in prison. The person in prison may have fewer options to pick from, but this does not change the direction he must travel, which is a one-way street. You are conflating the meaning of these two words, "freedom" and "freedom of the will," which have very different meanings. Neither the rich person nor the person in prison has freedom of the will, and within their particular context, both can only move in one direction. Free will states that a person could have chosen otherwise, given the same exact conditions. IOW, he could have chosen other than what he did, in fact, choose. But could he have? No, he could not have.

If you find yourself adding some assumption and that all somehow mysteriously collapses due to apparent errors, then you added a bad assumption, same as this outcome implies for math.

I believe it is you are making assumptions that don't apply, and therefore the conclusions you draw are false.

 

[bilby]

But some things are utterly impossible. Being able to turn a dog into a human being is one of them.

What makes that impossible?

Dogs and human beings share a fundamental biochemistry, and have very similar genetic makeup; I could see turning a dog into a human being pointless (we have an easier and mkre fun way to make as many humans as we want); It would be unethical; It would be difficult and expensive.

But impossible? Why? What would be the obstacle to our doing it?

 

[peacegirl]

Now I understand pood.

Pounding sand builds character.

My view is I do not and can not know the universe works. What I know is I have to make decisions which can affect others.

Causal determiner, free will, comparabilism on a national scale does have implications.

The prevailing view is free will. We have responsibility for actions. Civil and criminal law.

If all our actions are causally predetermined then there is no responsibility. If you come up with a new invention it was not your hard wrork it was predestined.

That's totally wrong. No one said you are "causally predetermined." Achievement of any kind takes hard work and without it, the invention would not have been made. You were responsible for coming up with the idea and following through, no one else. Looking back, you could say it was predestined that you made this invention, but again, it doesn't prescribe that you must do anything before you actually do it. That would be a modal fallacy, which it is not. This is a serious problem with the definition that people can't seem to overcome, and why we are going round and round with no progress.