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Compatibilism: What's that About?

Here are some specific questions for DBT that I am not sure he has ever concretely addressed, only indirectly addressed at best (I could have missed some of his answers).

Do you believe that the state and condition of your brain just IS you?

Do you believe there is a difference between WILL and MUST?

Do you believe that there is a difference between WOULD NOT have done otherwise, under identical conditions, and COULD NOT have done otherwise?

Do you believe that the laws of nature are prescriptive, or descriptive?

Under modal logic, the logic of modality, there are two broad categories, necessarily true propositions and contingently true propositions. All propositions are either necessarily true (true at all possible worlds), like “All triangles have three sides”; necessarily false (false at all possible worlds), like “Some bachelors are married”; and contingently true or false (true at some possible worlds, false at others), like, “I had salad for lunch today.” You keep speaking of determinism requiring the necessitation of outcomes. This is sometimes called physical or nomic necessity. Where do you place such a category in the heuristic of modal logic, since, as a matter of fact, this category does not exist there?
 
Let me pre-empt one possible response (about so-called nomic necessity) by pointing out the following:

It might be claimed that an example of such necessity is that if you use Newton’s equations to plot a spacecraft’s voyage to Mars, then it is physically necessary, if you calculate correctly and the spacecraft does not malfunction, that it will hit its target, Mars. This, however, doesn’t go through, because Newton’s equations themselves are contingently true (true at some possible worlds, false at others). It must be emphasized that “possible worlds” deals with logically possible worlds; and the test for such necessity is that if you can conceive of a possible world in which x does not hold without bringing about a logical contradiction, then x is, was, and always will be, contingently true. The upshot of all this is that modal logic shows that any appeal from determinism to necessitation cannot succeed.
 
Let me pre-empt one possible response (about so-called nomic necessity) by pointing out the following:

It might be claimed that an example of such necessity is that if you use Newton’s equations to plot a spacecraft’s voyage to Mars, then it is physically necessary, if you calculate correctly and the spacecraft does not malfunction, that it will hit its target, Mars. This, however, doesn’t go through, because Newton’s equations themselves are contingently true (true at some possible worlds, false at others). It must be emphasized that “possible worlds” deals with logically possible worlds; and the test for such necessity is that if you can conceive of a possible world in which x does not hold without bringing about a logical contradiction, then x is, was, and always will be, contingently true. The upshot of all this is that modal logic shows that any appeal from determinism to necessitation cannot succeed.
Lets imagine a universe. You would imagine that you are a dwarf, "a collection of potentials on a field", if we are going to get to the particle physics of your universe.

Now, over the long span of time, if your universe is processed, there may be some time before the heat death of the thing, when something in your universe becomes truly self aware.

This is not that time in your universe. You are not strictly self aware.

It's a hard mindset to put oneself into.

One has to be able to abstract pointers, I think? Or do similar in their field.

There is a (need:FIGHT!).
(Where (gathering place)?)
((To (subconscious?): Where Gathering Place?)
<<(From(subconscious?): Gathering Place is (set)[paths])
(Selected_path=Evaluate choice_function([path]))
(Go: selected_path)

Now, what lay on this path is beyond the horizon of predictable determinancy is concerned for you. The only thing you can do is try it and find out what happens.

If you were a thing of meat with internal narration, it may speak of this thing you have done: "there is a clear path to here, and I have selected it, with my choice function!"

I can objectively observe this of you, that the choice function of the dwarf of the binary field selected to go to the tavern.

If I didn't, I couldn't do what I'm about to do...

But you are not. You do not need to understand that you selected it with your choice function. You get to be a dwarf.

You have WILL, even the primative thing as you may be, a mere set of binary particles on a single field processed by one single unifying behavioral description in a deterministic way.

If you didn't, I wouldn't be able to... Well, we'll get there.

You do not know that your choice function is far from perfect, and there's a locked door there.

It's imperfect because, well, from one moment to the next in your universe something was changed. I changed it.

Now, it could have just been a built in function that doors may pseudorandomly lock, in a fully deterministic way.

It could have been a lot of things.

In this example, I take responsibility for locking the door and guaranteeing that your will was not free.

See, there was a history here. You've been, well, a dwarf. It's not the first time there's been a locked door but there's no way you can understand that. The knowledge of it is processed by being added to the history of dwarf. That history is cumulated into a stress level OF "dwarf" dwarf.get_stress_level() or some such.

Well, let's get back into it. I'm not even to the good part yet.

So,
(While selected_path: walk(selected_path.get_next_step(){
...
If(was_door)
{
If(place.getDoor()->open)
{
Evaluate Step_function();
}
Else
{
Goto: failure;
}
}
)

you walk some steps and there's a door.

your understanding said it was unlocked.

your understanding was wrong, and you got a failure case.

your will was observable and, well, I can objectively observe it is not free.

"If failure, calculate stress caused... Add memory. After memory: remember things."

it goes in your memories as a complex arrangement of more shit in your binary field, not the same shape as the binary field elements that caused it.

The things that you did in this moment are collated, each a part of your overall complex particle.

The process that defines you, perhaps some part of your "subconscious" goes through all that accreted junk and arrangement and sums up their abstract stress value, among other things

That abject stress value necessarily will exceed the sum total that it takes for you to...

Need changed: THROW TANTRUM!

It's still a function of dwarf, of course, but hey...

There is a (need:TANTRUM!)
((To (subconscious?): Where, of (accessible) (trouble_target)?)
<<(From(subconscious?): [paths])
(Selected_path=Evaluate choice_function([path]))
(Go: selected_path)

The result of this is a statue.

This, well, there are no unlocked doors on this path. Your will is free.

That's the point. I can't just... Well, I could just, but I'm not going to is the point.

You walk up to the statue and tip it.

Congratulations you're a wererabbit.

Then things get fun. While you do not get to freely will that every time the full moon hits, in about 5 ticks or so, you become a massive rabbit hungry for flesh, at least long enough to batter down the door, Find someone to attack, and start a curse wave.

you:
Willed, but not freely to go through the door.
Had imposed on you by your history a tantrum.
Willed, freely to knock over a statue.
Had imposed on you by the laws of the universe that you shall now be cursed.
Had imposed a change of state on you by the universe that you shall now be bloodthirsty beyond bounds
Freely willed (in a bloodthirsty state) to batter down a door
Freely willed (in a bloodthirsty state) to rip apart a bunch of other dwarves
even if you didn't freely will to become a wererabbit.

Things get more interesting when you are a.much larger collection of more complex particles on what appear to be 4 much less binary fields.

I stopped playing that game.
 
Of course flaws can be observed objectively. But I insist they be by methods be tested empirically, by material test carried out publicly, through use of the Scientific Method.
The test is not what makes it objective. This can be tested said empirically, MUST BE, if the universe is a machine of stuff and material.

It's necessity as the result of being an observable function of objects, is what makes it objective.

+it doesn't matter if it is observed by one person or many.

the fact that others can see it, repeat it, is an academic insistence, not a scientific one. /+

What you are saying is you trust your lying eyes to make the right judgement about your plan
Yes, I trust"trust" my lying eyes, +through academic pursuit of knowledge/+ because someone else's eyes see the same "lie" +but moreover this merely gives truth to "doubt" as a concept/+, and I understand well enough the shape of their lies to account for them through doubting my lying eyes, +and often I discover that/+ the shape of their lies is too small to impact the predicted future "out of course".

The fact that I can do static analysis and the anlysis of both branches of deterministically modeled effect can be accounted for and lead to their predicted result, and that the stochastic elements are well bounded, +and I can repeat this observation/+, then I can say "objectively observed" and that both are tested and we can arrive at the same objectively true answer about the feasibility of the plan mean that it is an objective observation.


+I can then cast doubt on myself and say "what determines what is currently stochastic in the model? Can I functionally operate the model to eliminate the need to replace such stochastic effect with deterministic prediction or at least deterministic function under smaller stochastic bounds? And "is the determinism I have observed as deterministic as I think it is? Can I repeat this? So future observations bear under the weight of what system I have observed determines?/+

That I have not had someone else do it makes this no less objective.

The scientific method can be operated by a single person. It doesn't need all that extra infrastructure as publishing and peer review. It needs doubt, held by the observer, over the conclusions +or completenss of a model/+

I could be a single immortal scientist on a planet with no other humans, and use the scientific method to discover more about my world, and it will be just as objectively true.

+What you seem to be trying to describe is the system of academic peer review. These are an important part of academic pursuit of knowledge. Academic is different from scientific though.

The academic method is no less important than the scientific method. First, it is the basis for understanding that doubt is valuable+of oneself/+.

You don't seem to understand how one can doubt themselves. Maybe this is why you do not understand free will.

My initial intuition on this says "from here it should not be hard to reach proof that self-doubt is fundamental to free will".

I'll need to think on that quite a lot./+
I can absolutely doubt myself, and change what I think and recognize my own wrongness, and generally you are more harm than good, @fromderinside

Self-revision is totally within the capabilities of a process.
Breaking down you 'take' on my criticism. I never said it took another to perform an experiment. I said it took one to conduct an experiment defined against known material facts (operational definitions) in a public process with agreed to rules of experimental conduct and control.

As to your BS.

What? You can recognize your own wrongness? Against what marker and with what evidence? Blathering, blathering, blathering you go changing what you think you know.

Sure. Processes can be subjective. However subjective processes cannot be scientific or academic processes in there is no way to determine gains or loses in knowing beyond self in subjective processes.


Suggestions:

If you want a metric for whether the scientific method is better than the analytic method all you need do is count up the amount of knowledge gained since the advent of the scientific method in the renaissance. Socrates and Plato popularized the analytic, associative, methods around 400 BC including the periods of Archimedes and the popularization of '0' somewhat earlier are what you compare against.

Or you can take the sketchy information from early hominid to religious aware hominid to agricultural city-state hominid to renaissance hominid as a grand initial base. From use of nature to making tools to reflection and imagination and language to burying to harvesting to metallurgy to notation to writing to publishing to modernism.

Opinion: I don't think you've published a paper in a refereed journal. Had you, you wouldn't be spouting such BS. I think you accepted someone's dogma whole cloth.

In the future I suggest you cite references and definitions and sources. Your concoctions just wrap you contentions in more and more gauze.

Finally: we are in a public forum discussing topics which have many and varied sources. Ergo there are many referent worthy resources for us to connect what we believe. We should use them to move discussion forward.
 
Last edited:
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Of course flaws can be observed objectively. But I insist they be by methods be tested empirically, by material test carried out publicly, through use of the Scientific Method.
The test is not what makes it objective. This can be tested said empirically, MUST BE, if the universe is a machine of stuff and material.

It's necessity as the result of being an observable function of objects, is what makes it objective.

+it doesn't matter if it is observed by one person or many.

the fact that others can see it, repeat it, is an academic insistence, not a scientific one. /+

What you are saying is you trust your lying eyes to make the right judgement about your plan
Yes, I trust"trust" my lying eyes, +through academic pursuit of knowledge/+ because someone else's eyes see the same "lie" +but moreover this merely gives truth to "doubt" as a concept/+, and I understand well enough the shape of their lies to account for them through doubting my lying eyes, +and often I discover that/+ the shape of their lies is too small to impact the predicted future "out of course".

The fact that I can do static analysis and the anlysis of both branches of deterministically modeled effect can be accounted for and lead to their predicted result, and that the stochastic elements are well bounded, +and I can repeat this observation/+, then I can say "objectively observed" and that both are tested and we can arrive at the same objectively true answer about the feasibility of the plan mean that it is an objective observation.


+I can then cast doubt on myself and say "what determines what is currently stochastic in the model? Can I functionally operate the model to eliminate the need to replace such stochastic effect with deterministic prediction or at least deterministic function under smaller stochastic bounds? And "is the determinism I have observed as deterministic as I think it is? Can I repeat this? So future observations bear under the weight of what system I have observed determines?/+

That I have not had someone else do it makes this no less objective.

The scientific method can be operated by a single person. It doesn't need all that extra infrastructure as publishing and peer review. It needs doubt, held by the observer, over the conclusions +or completenss of a model/+

I could be a single immortal scientist on a planet with no other humans, and use the scientific method to discover more about my world, and it will be just as objectively true.

+What you seem to be trying to describe is the system of academic peer review. These are an important part of academic pursuit of knowledge. Academic is different from scientific though.

The academic method is no less important than the scientific method. First, it is the basis for understanding that doubt is valuable+of oneself/+.

You don't seem to understand how one can doubt themselves. Maybe this is why you do not understand free will.

My initial intuition on this says "from here it should not be hard to reach proof that self-doubt is fundamental to free will".

I'll need to think on that quite a lot./+
I can absolutely doubt myself, and change what I think and recognize my own wrongness, and generally you are more harm than good, @fromderinside

Self-revision is totally within the capabilities of a process.
What? You can recognize your own wrongness? Against what marker and with what evidence? Blathering, blathering, blathering you go changing what you think you know.

Sure. Processes can be subjective. However subjective processes cannot be scientific or academic processes in there is no way to determine gains or loses in knowing beyond self in subjective processes.

If you want a metric for whether the scientific method is better than the analytic method all you need do is count up the amount of knowledge gained since the advent of the scientific method in the renaissance. Socrates and Plato popularized the analytic, associative, methods around 400 BC including the periods of Archimedes and the popularization of '0' somewhat earlier are what you compare against.

Or you can take the sketchy information from early hominid to religious aware hominid to agricultural city-state hominid to renaissance hominid as a grand initial base. From use of nature to making tools to reflection and imagination and language to burying to harvesting to metallurgy to notation to writing to publishing to modernism.
I'll give you something I gave pood if that may help you:

 
Of course flaws can be observed objectively. But I insist they be by methods be tested empirically, by material test carried out publicly, through use of the Scientific Method.
The test is not what makes it objective. This can be tested said empirically, MUST BE, if the universe is a machine of stuff and material.

It's necessity as the result of being an observable function of objects, is what makes it objective.

+it doesn't matter if it is observed by one person or many.

the fact that others can see it, repeat it, is an academic insistence, not a scientific one. /+

What you are saying is you trust your lying eyes to make the right judgement about your plan
Yes, I trust"trust" my lying eyes, +through academic pursuit of knowledge/+ because someone else's eyes see the same "lie" +but moreover this merely gives truth to "doubt" as a concept/+, and I understand well enough the shape of their lies to account for them through doubting my lying eyes, +and often I discover that/+ the shape of their lies is too small to impact the predicted future "out of course".

The fact that I can do static analysis and the anlysis of both branches of deterministically modeled effect can be accounted for and lead to their predicted result, and that the stochastic elements are well bounded, +and I can repeat this observation/+, then I can say "objectively observed" and that both are tested and we can arrive at the same objectively true answer about the feasibility of the plan mean that it is an objective observation.


+I can then cast doubt on myself and say "what determines what is currently stochastic in the model? Can I functionally operate the model to eliminate the need to replace such stochastic effect with deterministic prediction or at least deterministic function under smaller stochastic bounds? And "is the determinism I have observed as deterministic as I think it is? Can I repeat this? So future observations bear under the weight of what system I have observed determines?/+

That I have not had someone else do it makes this no less objective.

The scientific method can be operated by a single person. It doesn't need all that extra infrastructure as publishing and peer review. It needs doubt, held by the observer, over the conclusions +or completenss of a model/+

I could be a single immortal scientist on a planet with no other humans, and use the scientific method to discover more about my world, and it will be just as objectively true.

+What you seem to be trying to describe is the system of academic peer review. These are an important part of academic pursuit of knowledge. Academic is different from scientific though.

The academic method is no less important than the scientific method. First, it is the basis for understanding that doubt is valuable+of oneself/+.

You don't seem to understand how one can doubt themselves. Maybe this is why you do not understand free will.

My initial intuition on this says "from here it should not be hard to reach proof that self-doubt is fundamental to free will".

I'll need to think on that quite a lot./+
I can absolutely doubt myself, and change what I think and recognize my own wrongness, and generally you are more harm than good, @fromderinside

Self-revision is totally within the capabilities of a process.
What? You can recognize your own wrongness? Against what marker and with what evidence? Blathering, blathering, blathering you go changing what you think you know.

Sure. Processes can be subjective. However subjective processes cannot be scientific or academic processes in there is no way to determine gains or loses in knowing beyond self in subjective processes.

If you want a metric for whether the scientific method is better than the analytic method all you need do is count up the amount of knowledge gained since the advent of the scientific method in the renaissance. Socrates and Plato popularized the analytic, associative, methods around 400 BC including the periods of Archimedes and the popularization of '0' somewhat earlier are what you compare against.

Or you can take the sketchy information from early hominid to religious aware hominid to agricultural city-state hominid to renaissance hominid as a grand initial base. From use of nature to making tools to reflection and imagination and language to burying to harvesting to metallurgy to notation to writing to publishing to modernism.
I'll give you something I gave pood if that may help you:

Checked the reference it wasn't in the location your reference took me. Besides the elements of the reference constitute a basis for the Tower of Babel of subjective reference. Either connect to something to which I can refer in context or give up trying to use the function. I'll understand.

How about you try again.
 
Of course flaws can be observed objectively. But I insist they be by methods be tested empirically, by material test carried out publicly, through use of the Scientific Method.
The test is not what makes it objective. This can be tested said empirically, MUST BE, if the universe is a machine of stuff and material.

It's necessity as the result of being an observable function of objects, is what makes it objective.

+it doesn't matter if it is observed by one person or many.

the fact that others can see it, repeat it, is an academic insistence, not a scientific one. /+

What you are saying is you trust your lying eyes to make the right judgement about your plan
Yes, I trust"trust" my lying eyes, +through academic pursuit of knowledge/+ because someone else's eyes see the same "lie" +but moreover this merely gives truth to "doubt" as a concept/+, and I understand well enough the shape of their lies to account for them through doubting my lying eyes, +and often I discover that/+ the shape of their lies is too small to impact the predicted future "out of course".

The fact that I can do static analysis and the anlysis of both branches of deterministically modeled effect can be accounted for and lead to their predicted result, and that the stochastic elements are well bounded, +and I can repeat this observation/+, then I can say "objectively observed" and that both are tested and we can arrive at the same objectively true answer about the feasibility of the plan mean that it is an objective observation.


+I can then cast doubt on myself and say "what determines what is currently stochastic in the model? Can I functionally operate the model to eliminate the need to replace such stochastic effect with deterministic prediction or at least deterministic function under smaller stochastic bounds? And "is the determinism I have observed as deterministic as I think it is? Can I repeat this? So future observations bear under the weight of what system I have observed determines?/+

That I have not had someone else do it makes this no less objective.

The scientific method can be operated by a single person. It doesn't need all that extra infrastructure as publishing and peer review. It needs doubt, held by the observer, over the conclusions +or completenss of a model/+

I could be a single immortal scientist on a planet with no other humans, and use the scientific method to discover more about my world, and it will be just as objectively true.

+What you seem to be trying to describe is the system of academic peer review. These are an important part of academic pursuit of knowledge. Academic is different from scientific though.

The academic method is no less important than the scientific method. First, it is the basis for understanding that doubt is valuable+of oneself/+.

You don't seem to understand how one can doubt themselves. Maybe this is why you do not understand free will.

My initial intuition on this says "from here it should not be hard to reach proof that self-doubt is fundamental to free will".

I'll need to think on that quite a lot./+
I can absolutely doubt myself, and change what I think and recognize my own wrongness, and generally you are more harm than good, @fromderinside

Self-revision is totally within the capabilities of a process.
What? You can recognize your own wrongness? Against what marker and with what evidence? Blathering, blathering, blathering you go changing what you think you know.

Sure. Processes can be subjective. However subjective processes cannot be scientific or academic processes in there is no way to determine gains or loses in knowing beyond self in subjective processes.

If you want a metric for whether the scientific method is better than the analytic method all you need do is count up the amount of knowledge gained since the advent of the scientific method in the renaissance. Socrates and Plato popularized the analytic, associative, methods around 400 BC including the periods of Archimedes and the popularization of '0' somewhat earlier are what you compare against.

Or you can take the sketchy information from early hominid to religious aware hominid to agricultural city-state hominid to renaissance hominid as a grand initial base. From use of nature to making tools to reflection and imagination and language to burying to harvesting to metallurgy to notation to writing to publishing to modernism.
I'll give you something I gave pood if that may help you:

Checked the reference it wasn't in the location your reference took me. Besides the elements of the reference constitute a basis for the Tower of Babel of subjective reference. Either connect to something to which I can refer in context or give up trying to use the function. I'll understand.

How about you try again.
I gave you an example of a deterministic universe, with all terms well defined.

I could, and someone has, defined each of these things all the way down to the binary field and the "unifying process". The machine was built, we know it's a machine and each part of it's function is well understood.

We can observe the real property of free will exercised within the system under the definitions offered objectively.

It is most assured that the thing makes the choice.
 
I'll give you something I gave pood if that may help you:

Above is the reference you provided.

Below is the text the link provided
Lets imagine a universe. You would imagine that you are a dwarf, "a collection of potentials on a field", if we are going to get to the particle physics of your universe.

Now, over the long span of time, if your universe is processed, there may be some time before the heat death of the thing, when something in your universe becomes truly self aware.

This is not that time in your universe. You are not strictly self aware.

It's a hard mindset to put oneself into.

One has to be able to abstract pointers, I think? Or do similar in their field.

There is a (need:FIGHT!).
(Where (gathering place)?)
((To (subconscious?): Where Gathering Place?)
<<(From(subconscious?): Gathering Place is (set)[paths])
(Selected_path=Evaluate choice_function([path]))
(Go: selected_path)

Now, what lay on this path is beyond the horizon of predictable determinancy is concerned for you. The only thing you can do is try it and find out what happens.

If you were a thing of meat with internal narration, it may speak of this thing you have done: "there is a clear path to here, and I have selected it, with my choice function!"

I can objectively observe this of you, that the choice function of the dwarf of the binary field selected to go to the tavern.

If I didn't, I couldn't do what I'm about to do...

But you are not. You do not need to understand that you selected it with your choice function. You get to be a dwarf.

You have WILL, even the primative thing as you may be, a mere set of binary particles on a single field processed by one single unifying behavioral description in a deterministic way.

If you didn't, I wouldn't be able to... Well, we'll get there.

You do not know that your choice function is far from perfect, and there's a locked door there.

It's imperfect because, well, from one moment to the next in your universe something was changed. I changed it.

Now, it could have just been a built in function that doors may pseudorandomly lock, in a fully deterministic way.

It could have been a lot of things.

In this example, I take responsibility for locking the door and guaranteeing that your will was not free.

See, there was a history here. You've been, well, a dwarf. It's not the first time there's been a locked door but there's no way you can understand that. The knowledge of it is processed by being added to the history of dwarf. That history is cumulated into a stress level OF "dwarf" dwarf.get_stress_level() or some such.

Well, let's get back into it. I'm not even to the good part yet.

So,
(While selected_path: walk(selected_path.get_next_step(){
...
If(was_door)
{
If(place.getDoor()->open)
{
Evaluate Step_function();
}
Else
{
Goto: failure;
}
}
)

you walk some steps and there's a door.

your understanding said it was unlocked.

your understanding was wrong, and you got a failure case.

your will was observable and, well, I can objectively observe it is not free.

"If failure, calculate stress caused... Add memory. After memory: remember things."

it goes in your memories as a complex arrangement of more shit in your binary field, not the same shape as the binary field elements that caused it.

The things that you did in this moment are collated, each a part of your overall complex particle.

The process that defines you, perhaps some part of your "subconscious" goes through all that accreted junk and arrangement and sums up their abstract stress value, among other things

That abject stress value necessarily will exceed the sum total that it takes for you to...

Need changed: THROW TANTRUM!

It's still a function of dwarf, of course, but hey...

There is a (need:TANTRUM!)
((To (subconscious?): Where, of (accessible) (trouble_target)?)
<<(From(subconscious?): [paths])
(Selected_path=Evaluate choice_function([path]))
(Go: selected_path)

The result of this is a statue.

This, well, there are no unlocked doors on this path. Your will is free.

That's the point. I can't just... Well, I could just, but I'm not going to is the point.

You walk up to the statue and tip it.

Congratulations you're a wererabbit.

Then things get fun. While you do not get to freely will that every time the full moon hits, in about 5 ticks or so, you become a massive rabbit hungry for flesh, at least long enough to batter down the door, Find someone to attack, and start a curse wave.

you:
Willed, but not freely to go through the door.
Had imposed on you by your history a tantrum.
Willed, freely to knock over a statue.
Had imposed on you by the laws of the universe that you shall now be cursed.
Had imposed a change of state on you by the universe that you shall now be bloodthirsty beyond bounds
Freely willed (in a bloodthirsty state) to batter down a door
Freely willed (in a bloodthirsty state) to rip apart a bunch of other dwarves
even if you didn't freely will to become a wererabbit.

Things get more interesting when you are a.much larger collection of more complex particles on what appear to be 4 much less binary fields.

I stopped playing that game.
Both provide a subjective set of terms that would choke Benjamin Franklin.

Clear as mud.

You answered nothing.
 
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I'll give you something I gave pood if that may help you:

Above is the reference you provided.

Below is the text the link provided
Lets imagine a universe. You would imagine that you are a dwarf, "a collection of potentials on a field", if we are going to get to the particle physics of your universe.

Now, over the long span of time, if your universe is processed, there may be some time before the heat death of the thing, when something in your universe becomes truly self aware.

This is not that time in your universe. You are not strictly self aware.

It's a hard mindset to put oneself into.

One has to be able to abstract pointers, I think? Or do similar in their field.

There is a (need:FIGHT!).
(Where (gathering place)?)
((To (subconscious?): Where Gathering Place?)
<<(From(subconscious?): Gathering Place is (set)[paths])
(Selected_path=Evaluate choice_function([path]))
(Go: selected_path)

Now, what lay on this path is beyond the horizon of predictable determinancy is concerned for you. The only thing you can do is try it and find out what happens.

If you were a thing of meat with internal narration, it may speak of this thing you have done: "there is a clear path to here, and I have selected it, with my choice function!"

I can objectively observe this of you, that the choice function of the dwarf of the binary field selected to go to the tavern.

If I didn't, I couldn't do what I'm about to do...

But you are not. You do not need to understand that you selected it with your choice function. You get to be a dwarf.

You have WILL, even the primative thing as you may be, a mere set of binary particles on a single field processed by one single unifying behavioral description in a deterministic way.

If you didn't, I wouldn't be able to... Well, we'll get there.

You do not know that your choice function is far from perfect, and there's a locked door there.

It's imperfect because, well, from one moment to the next in your universe something was changed. I changed it.

Now, it could have just been a built in function that doors may pseudorandomly lock, in a fully deterministic way.

It could have been a lot of things.

In this example, I take responsibility for locking the door and guaranteeing that your will was not free.

See, there was a history here. You've been, well, a dwarf. It's not the first time there's been a locked door but there's no way you can understand that. The knowledge of it is processed by being added to the history of dwarf. That history is cumulated into a stress level OF "dwarf" dwarf.get_stress_level() or some such.

Well, let's get back into it. I'm not even to the good part yet.

So,
(While selected_path: walk(selected_path.get_next_step(){
...
If(was_door)
{
If(place.getDoor()->open)
{
Evaluate Step_function();
}
Else
{
Goto: failure;
}
}
)

you walk some steps and there's a door.

your understanding said it was unlocked.

your understanding was wrong, and you got a failure case.

your will was observable and, well, I can objectively observe it is not free.

"If failure, calculate stress caused... Add memory. After memory: remember things."

it goes in your memories as a complex arrangement of more shit in your binary field, not the same shape as the binary field elements that caused it.

The things that you did in this moment are collated, each a part of your overall complex particle.

The process that defines you, perhaps some part of your "subconscious" goes through all that accreted junk and arrangement and sums up their abstract stress value, among other things

That abject stress value necessarily will exceed the sum total that it takes for you to...

Need changed: THROW TANTRUM!

It's still a function of dwarf, of course, but hey...

There is a (need:TANTRUM!)
((To (subconscious?): Where, of (accessible) (trouble_target)?)
<<(From(subconscious?): [paths])
(Selected_path=Evaluate choice_function([path]))
(Go: selected_path)

The result of this is a statue.

This, well, there are no unlocked doors on this path. Your will is free.

That's the point. I can't just... Well, I could just, but I'm not going to is the point.

You walk up to the statue and tip it.

Congratulations you're a wererabbit.

Then things get fun. While you do not get to freely will that every time the full moon hits, in about 5 ticks or so, you become a massive rabbit hungry for flesh, at least long enough to batter down the door, Find someone to attack, and start a curse wave.

you:
Willed, but not freely to go through the door.
Had imposed on you by your history a tantrum.
Willed, freely to knock over a statue.
Had imposed on you by the laws of the universe that you shall now be cursed.
Had imposed a change of state on you by the universe that you shall now be bloodthirsty beyond bounds
Freely willed (in a bloodthirsty state) to batter down a door
Freely willed (in a bloodthirsty state) to rip apart a bunch of other dwarves
even if you didn't freely will to become a wererabbit.

Things get more interesting when you are a.much larger collection of more complex particles on what appear to be 4 much less binary fields.

I stopped playing that game.
Both provide a subjective set of terms that would choke Benjamin Franklin.

Clear as mud.

You answered nothing.
All of these terms are well defined in terms of potentials on a field under a physics that is completely understood and deterministic.

They are identifiable properties that are entirely analogous to aspects of our universe, the most important to speak to your religion that says free will is not a concept in deterministic universes.

The fact you cannot abstract "universe" and "physics" as a class rather than "definite article" is your problem, not mine.
 
Basically P1. It overlooks inner necessitation and the errors flow from that crucial but conveniently neglected detail.

A freely chosen will is when someone chooses for themselves what they will do, while free of coercion and other forms of undue influence (P1).

You seem to think that there is something about in the details of how the brain works that contradicts this. But, no, that is not the case. For example, there is nothing about dividing brain processes into conscious versus unconscious functions that alters the fact that the brain as a whole, with all of its functions in good working order, is actually choosing from the items on the menu what to order for dinner.

And there is nothing that Hallet's motor cortex is doing that will affect the brain's higher level decision making. To the contrary, it will be the brain's higher level functions that choose when to go for a walk, and where to walk to. The motor cortex will not participate in these decisions (except perhaps while we are imagining or dreaming that we are walking).

And Montague's dopamine transmitters do not work in isolation, but function in service to the brain as a whole. These can get forked up by drug abuse or be genetically impaired resulting in diseases like schizophrenia. In both cases it would likely lead to problems in the overall behavior of the individual. But when things are working normally, we'll be a little stressed when faced with the menu and relieved when our decision is made. That's the kind of thing that the brain would use the dopamine system for.

My point is that there is nothing going on inside the normal brain that prevents the person from deciding for themselves what they will do. The things that can prevent a person from deciding for themselves what they will do are coercion and other forms of undue influence.

So, it is a bit pointless to keep bringing up all these details about the inner workings of the brain. It's nice to know if someone is interested in those things. But none of these facts change what free will is about.

Free will is not neuroscience. Free will is a simple empirical event that we all witness every day, as people go about the business of deciding for themselves what they will do.

Inner necessitation eliminates the claim for freedom of will. If decision making and associated will is necessitated, it cannot be defined as being free.

Only if one has the illusion that free will must be free of causal necessity. But freedom from causal necessity is a silly, paradoxical, irrational notion. It is not what free will is about. Philosophy has managed to screw this up badly. The idea that we need to be free of causal necessity to be "truly" free is a self-induced hoax.

If someone must necessarily do x at time y, they are not free to do otherwise.

(A) I would agree that if we knew that we must necessarily do x at time y then we would not expect to be free to do otherwise. (B) But when we do not know what we must necessarily do, then we must invoke the logic and the language of possibilities, which deal with the many things that we can do.

It is within the logic and language of possibilities that we are indeed free to do otherwise. For it is in this context that what we can do is limited only by our imagination and our physical capacity to implement (realize, actualize, etc.) a given possibility.

During the normal course of our lives, we often find ourselves without knowledge of what will necessarily happen next, or even what we will necessarily choose to do next. To deal with this uncertainty, we evolved the notions of possibilities, things that could happen but that might never happen.

Possibilities are "otherwises". Things that can happen otherwise than they actually do happen. Choices we could make are otherwise than what we actually do choose. Key words like "can/could", "ability", "possibility", etc., inform us that we are in the context of possibilities.

Therefore, determinism and free will are incompatible.

The logic and language of possibilities evolved to deal with our uncertainty as to what will happen. It uses the token "can" to replace the token "will" to allow us to deal with the many different things that can happen, even though a single inevitable thing will happen. Until we know what will happen, we can only speak of the several things that can happen, the many "otherwises" and possibilities that we will imagine in order to cope with our uncertainty.

So, our deterministic evolution has causally necessitated that we would evolve a set of logic constructs to deal with our imperfect knowledge. It uses the concepts of possibilities and the many things that can happen otherwise than they actually do happen.

So, thank you, determinism, for the "ability" to do "otherwise" even if we don't actually do otherwise.

But it's not the will that sets about making the decision or performing the related action. That is the role and function of neural networks.

When are you going to catch on to the fact that "will" IS one of the functions of our neural networks?

The nature of the underlying means and mechanisms that make all of this possible is still being ignored.

We can safely assume that the underlying means and mechanisms provide the will to enter the restaurant, to sit at the table, to browse the menu, and to choose for ourselves what we will have for dinner. If that were not the case, then the events would not have happened.

Prior to that came needs and wants, the need to eat, wanting to eat, eating out, the desire for companionship with friends or family, etc. Antecedents. Needs and wants. Tastes developed through experience, past pleasures....

Fortunately, operational free will does not require impossible, irrational freedoms, like "freedom from the past" or "freedom from the laws of nature". It only requires freedom from coercion and undue influence.

Everyone acts for their own reasons. Decisions are a cost to benefit determination. Rational decision making, not free will. (Farah, et al.)

No, you cannot tack on "not free will" at the end, because acting for our own reasons, based upon our own considerations of the costs and benefits of our choices, is precisely what free will is.

Neural networks regulate both decision making and will.

Yep. Neural networks make decisions that choose what we will do. When they perform this function, it is us deciding for ourselves what we will do. There is no dualism, the neural network deciding and IS us deciding.

A Neural network is the sole agent of thought, deliberation and action.

Yes, your neural network is correct in saying that. And my neural network agrees.

It all happens milliseconds before our thoughts become conscious and our muscles twitch.

Well, Geez, let's hope there's not a lot of twitching going on in the restaurant.

It shouldn't come up time and time again, yet here we are, and it does. Just because there are a number of items on a menu doesn't mean that we can choose an option that is not determined in that instance in time.

Again, if we knew which item was determined, we would have already ordered it. But we had no clue which item was determined, so we invoked the logic and language of possibilities. Within that context, we could choose any item on the menu.

Only one option is realizable: the determined option.

Sorry, but as soon as you added the -able suffix, you invoked the context of possibilities. Every item on the menu was realizable, even though only one item was inevitably realized.

We are talking about determinism.

Sure enough. And, within a universe of perfectly reliable cause and effect, where every event is the reliable product of prior events, operational free will still holds, and remains a meaningful and relevant notion.
 
Last edited:
I'll give you something I gave pood if that may help you:

Above is the reference you provided.

Below is the text the link provided
Lets imagine a universe. You would imagine that you are a dwarf, "a collection of potentials on a field", if we are going to get to the particle physics of your universe.

Now, over the long span of time, if your universe is processed, there may be some time before the heat death of the thing, when something in your universe becomes truly self aware.

This is not that time in your universe. You are not strictly self aware.

It's a hard mindset to put oneself into.

One has to be able to abstract pointers, I think? Or do similar in their field.

There is a (need:FIGHT!).
(Where (gathering place)?)
((To (subconscious?): Where Gathering Place?)
<<(From(subconscious?): Gathering Place is (set)[paths])
(Selected_path=Evaluate choice_function([path]))
(Go: selected_path)

Now, what lay on this path is beyond the horizon of predictable determinancy is concerned for you. The only thing you can do is try it and find out what happens.

If you were a thing of meat with internal narration, it may speak of this thing you have done: "there is a clear path to here, and I have selected it, with my choice function!"

I can objectively observe this of you, that the choice function of the dwarf of the binary field selected to go to the tavern.

If I didn't, I couldn't do what I'm about to do...

But you are not. You do not need to understand that you selected it with your choice function. You get to be a dwarf.

You have WILL, even the primative thing as you may be, a mere set of binary particles on a single field processed by one single unifying behavioral description in a deterministic way.

If you didn't, I wouldn't be able to... Well, we'll get there.

You do not know that your choice function is far from perfect, and there's a locked door there.

It's imperfect because, well, from one moment to the next in your universe something was changed. I changed it.

Now, it could have just been a built in function that doors may pseudorandomly lock, in a fully deterministic way.

It could have been a lot of things.

In this example, I take responsibility for locking the door and guaranteeing that your will was not free.

See, there was a history here. You've been, well, a dwarf. It's not the first time there's been a locked door but there's no way you can understand that. The knowledge of it is processed by being added to the history of dwarf. That history is cumulated into a stress level OF "dwarf" dwarf.get_stress_level() or some such.

Well, let's get back into it. I'm not even to the good part yet.

So,
(While selected_path: walk(selected_path.get_next_step(){
...
If(was_door)
{
If(place.getDoor()->open)
{
Evaluate Step_function();
}
Else
{
Goto: failure;
}
...
Both provide a subjective set of terms that would choke Benjamin Franklin.

Clear as mud.

You answered nothing.
All of these terms are well defined in terms of potentials on a field under a physics that is completely understood and deterministic.

They are identifiable properties that are entirely analogous to aspects of our universe, the most important to speak to your religion that says free will is not a concept in deterministic universes.

The fact you cannot abstract "universe" and "physics" as a class rather than "definite article" is your problem, not mine.
Wow. Analogous properties. Does that mean they are self referred? No. Not even that?

So you're like a spring where everything bouncing off you is glue.

-nm

Finished. No nee to respond unless you want to make your self-referencing scotoma even more obvious.
 
That is not free will, it is the label that is being applied by compatibilists.

Sorry, but we've already dispelled that myth several times now. You can pick up any general dictionary and find both the operational notion of free will and the philosophical notion of free will. For example:

Free Will
Mirriam-Webster on-line:
1: voluntary choice or decision 'I do this of my own free will'
2: freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention

Oxford English Dictionary:
1.a. Spontaneous or unconstrained will; unforced choice; (also) inclination to act without suggestion from others. Esp. in of one's (own) free will and similar expressions.
2. The power of an individual to make free choices, not determined by divine predestination, the laws of physical causality, fate, etc.

Wiktionary:
1. A person's natural inclination; unforced choice.
2. (philosophy) The ability to choose one's actions, or determine what reasons are acceptable motivation for actions, without predestination, fate etc.

To keep it brief and to the point and avoid needless repetition;

If it was that simple, the debate would have been settled centuries ago.

Dictionaries don't delve into the means and mechanisms of decision making, the nature of determinism or freedom in relation to determinism.

Freedom of will demands the possibility of alternate actions. Determinism excludes alternate actions

Freedom of will, by definition - freedom +will - demands agency through will. Will does not control neural networks or their function as information processors.

That essentially negates the notion of free will, making the term a mere label, just words that people use when someone is not being forced by external elements, but neglecting to consider internal necessitation;

''An action’s production by a deterministic process, even when the agent satisfies the conditions on moral responsibility specified by compatibilists, presents no less of a challenge to basic-desert responsibility than does deterministic manipulation by other agents. '' - Oxford Scholarship paper.
 
unconscious information processing activity that leads, in microseconds, to the experience of thought, deliberation, decision making and the will to act.
Just this part though...

You call it "unconscious", I call it pre-narrative.

Call it whatever takes your fancy. You are wrong

Information input is not conscious, transmission of information via the nerves, axons, dendrites, synapsis and processing by neurons, etc, is not a conscious process prior to conscious activity and representation of information in conscious form.

The former feeds information into the latter. That's physics at work. Information processing is neither willed or open for conscious regulation.

Information input, not will, alters the system.
 
Here are some specific questions for DBT that I am not sure he has ever concretely addressed, only indirectly addressed at best (I could have missed some of his answers).

Do you believe that the state and condition of your brain just IS you?

Of course I have addressed it. Everything has been addressed and repeated numerous times

I have pointed out that the organism, body, brain, mind, is you.

Which does not mean that will is the agency of decision making or that consciousness has access to its means of production or that we have alternate actions open to us within a determined system, etc, etc.

'You' is a general term that tells us nothing about human behaviour or what makes us tick.

Do you believe there is a difference between WILL and MUST?

Too vague.

Do you believe that there is a difference between WOULD NOT have done otherwise, under identical conditions, and COULD NOT have done otherwise?

That has been addressed time and time again. Word play, mere semantics, doesn't alter the rules of determinism where no alternate action is possible under identical conditions. No alternate action means that there is no possible alternate action under identical conditions.

Do you believe that the laws of nature are prescriptive, or descriptive?

Under modal logic, the logic of modality, there are two broad categories, necessarily true propositions and contingently true propositions. All propositions are either necessarily true (true at all possible worlds), like “All triangles have three sides”; necessarily false (false at all possible worlds), like “Some bachelors are married”; and contingently true or false (true at some possible worlds, false at others), like, “I had salad for lunch today.” You keep speaking of determinism requiring the necessitation of outcomes. This is sometimes called physical or nomic necessity. Where do you place such a category in the heuristic of modal logic, since, as a matter of fact, this category does not exist there?

The term ''determinism'' describes the principles or attributes of a determined system, how the system works.

Marvin Edwards, Jarhyn and I have given virtually identical definitions of determinism.
 
Basically P1. It overlooks inner necessitation and the errors flow from that crucial but conveniently neglected detail.

A freely chosen will is when someone chooses for themselves what they will do, while free of coercion and other forms of undue influence (P1).

That is an assertion that ignores inner necessitation.

Again;
''An action’s production by a deterministic process, even when the agent satisfies the conditions on moral responsibility specified by compatibilists, presents no less of a challenge to basic-desert responsibility than does deterministic manipulation by other agents. '' - Oxford Scholarship.

Necessitated actions - being determined - are by definition are neither chosen, negotiable or alterable, events that proceed or unfold deterministically according to antecedent events and the laws of nature. Necessitated actions are not freely willed actions.

To label necessitated actions, not being willed, as an example of free will is case of mislabeling determinism, which is the error of compatibilism


You seem to think that there is something about in the details of how the brain works that contradicts this. But, no, that is not the case. For example, there is nothing about dividing brain processes into conscious versus unconscious functions that alters the fact that the brain as a whole, with all of its functions in good working order, is actually choosing from the items on the menu what to order for dinner.

The nature and process of decision making, which is not willed, or subject to will, contradicts free will. Necessitation contradicts freedom of will.

That which is necessitated is not free.

It is you doing it, therefore free will is not an adequate argument because it ignores the means and mechanisms of decision making,

Necessitated actions - being determined - are by definition not chosen. These are events that proceed or unfold deterministically according to antecedent events and the laws of nature. Necessitated actions are not freely willed actions.

''Each state of the universe and its events are the necessary result of its prior state and prior events. ("Events" change the state of things.) Determinism means that events will proceed naturally (as if "fixed as a matter of natural law") and reliably ("without deviation").'' - Marvin Edwards




And there is nothing that Hallet's motor cortex is doing that will affect the brain's higher level decision making. To the contrary, it will be the brain's higher level functions that choose when to go for a walk, and where to walk to. The motor cortex will not participate in these decisions (except perhaps while we are imagining or dreaming that we are walking).

Both 'higher' and 'lower] functions work on the principle of information processing that is determined by the 'wiring' and connectivity of the network, brain region or structure, not will, not free will.


And Montague's dopamine transmitters do not work in isolation, but function in service to the brain as a whole. These can get forked up by drug abuse or be genetically impaired resulting in diseases like schizophrenia. In both cases it would likely lead to problems in the overall behavior of the individual. But when things are working normally, we'll be a little stressed when faced with the menu and relieved when our decision is made. That's the kind of thing that the brain would use the dopamine system for.

The point being: that it is the state and condition of the system, not will, that determines the decision made in any given instance in time.

Nothing is being 'freely willed' - the functionality of system is sole the agency of thought and action.

Saying ''you made the decision'' is just a general reference to the person as a whole. Which doesn't explain the nature of the process.

My point is that there is nothing going on inside the normal brain that prevents the person from deciding for themselves what they will do. The things that can prevent a person from deciding for themselves what they will do are coercion and other forms of undue influence.

It is specifically the brain that 'decides.' The brain acquires and processes information and makes decisions based on sets of criteria, the only possible option (being determined) can be realized in any given circumstance.

Today 'you' (specifically your brain) chooses salmon, next time 'you' (specifically your brain) chooses steak. Each option being the only possible action in each instance.

That is, by definition, how determinism works.


So, it is a bit pointless to keep bringing up all these details about the inner workings of the brain. It's nice to know if someone is interested in those things. But none of these facts change what free will is about.

Free will is not neuroscience. Free will is a simple empirical event that we all witness every day, as people go about the business of deciding for themselves what they will do.

Neuroscience is the means by which we gain an understanding of how the brain works, how decisions are made and actions are taken.
Which is without a doubt relevant to the question of free will....whether such a thing exists or not.


Abstract
''Belief in free will has been a mainstay in philosophy throughout history, grounded in large part in our intuitive sense that we consciously control our actions and could have done otherwise. However, psychology and psychiatry have long sought to uncover mechanistic explanations for human behavior that challenge the notion of free will. In recent years, neuroscientific discoveries have produced a model of volitional behavior that is at odds with the notion of contra-causal free will and our sense of conscious agency. Volitional behavior instead appears to have antecedents in unconscious brain activity that is localizable to specific neuroanatomical structures. Updating notions of free will in favor of a continuous model of volitional self-control provides a useful paradigm to conceptualize and study some forms of psychopathology such as addiction and impulse control disorders. Similarly, thinking of specific symptoms of schizophrenia as disorders of agency may help to elucidate mechanisms of psychosis. Beyond clinical understanding and etiological research, a neuroscientific model of volitional behavior has the potential to modernize forensic notions of responsibility and criminal punishment in order to inform public policy. Ultimately, moving away from the language of free will towards the language of volitional control may result in an enhanced understanding of the very nature of ourselves.''
 
unconscious information processing activity that leads, in microseconds, to the experience of thought, deliberation, decision making and the will to act.
Just this part though...

You call it "unconscious", I call it pre-narrative.

Call it whatever takes your fancy. You are wrong

Information input is not conscious, transmission of information via the nerves, axons, dendrites, synapsis and processing by neurons, etc, is not a conscious process prior to conscious activity and representation of information in conscious form.

The former feeds information into the latter. That's physics at work. Information processing is neither willed or open for conscious regulation.

Information input, not will, alters the system.
Information is input into the system also from the system.

you are continuing with your dualism.


You seem to be thinking that the narration is important.

In a very real way, the entity operating with free will does not even have to be conscious of it to have it!

My dwarves have free will by all the geometries of such as described, and are incapable of understanding what free will even is. They lack such narration and yet still have free will.

But moreover, all the terms in that post are well defined all the way to the binary particle field.

So, you are wrong.

And, I can quite easily consciously cause information to start swirling around in my head. The trivial example is "I want to play a song in my head. What song? I don't know... Figure out a song? I've played 'we don't talk about Bruno a lot... But I've played that song too much. Let's try a new one instead... No, that note doesn't sound good there, let's try a different one... Ok, that's a good progression of notes... Sad that I will forget it and lack an instrument to put it out in the air, but whatever, that's a nice progression."

Lots of information swirling around in there from the inside, all the product of mechanization a of itself.

I can have whole conversations in there without ever opening my mouth, and they yield more interesting results than would be implied by a machine that did not have conscious agency over itself.

That conscious agency is the result of yet another set of choice functions in the core behavioral loop of the system. I am my neurons and "I" am in there, not the narration but the thing being narrated to, and of.
 
What you don't seem to get is that the compatibilist argument is directly related to determinism, not stochastic, not probabilistic, not random

You really can't move your understanding between global and local reference frames can you?

You don't even understand what stochastic means in this context, and why it is important.

The compatibilist argument discusses the limitations Godel's Incompleteness Theorem places upon actors within systems.

This is not merely within "deterministic" systems, nor "stochastic" systems, but within ALL systems. Period. You would have to prove the universe is not a "system" at all, were you to try to get away from this.

Universe is a class of system.

That means that actors within it MUST necessarily model stochastically: they cannot possibly see a complete and perfect future, and information, for them (for US!) of systemic state is incomplete. In short, we as existing members of the system have horizons of information, oftentimes as pertains to the results of our own activities.
If it was that simple, the debate would have been settled centuries ago
It was settled centuries ago, by Voltaire in Candide, where he discussed proclaiming a lack of free will (hard determinism) as a dead-end philosophy for sociopaths and quite possibly also their victims, neither of whom can often come to terms with such deep forms of guilt.

Then it was discussed again by Camus in The Stranger, and further in The Rebel.

It's just clung upon by those for whom absolution is more important than acknowledging free will.

It is a bad penny that keeps turning up because it's the last bastion to defend a person from existential failure surrounding their choices.
 
Here are some specific questions for DBT that I am not sure he has ever concretely addressed, only indirectly addressed at best (I could have missed some of his answers).

Do you believe that the state and condition of your brain just IS you?

Of course I have addressed it. Everything has been addressed and repeated numerous times

I have pointed out that the organism, body, brain, mind, is you.
That’s fine. You have said several times that the state of condition of my brain determines what I will do. So I wanted to clarify. Now, by your own definition and reasoning, since the state and condition of my brain is me, then when you say that the state and condition of my brain detrermines what I will do, you must mean that I dertermine what I will do. That’s compatibilism.
 
I'll give you something I gave pood if that may help you:

Above is the reference you provided.

Below is the text the link provided
Lets imagine a universe. You would imagine that you are a dwarf, "a collection of potentials on a field", if we are going to get to the particle physics of your universe.

Now, over the long span of time, if your universe is processed, there may be some time before the heat death of the thing, when something in your universe becomes truly self aware.

This is not that time in your universe. You are not strictly self aware.

It's a hard mindset to put oneself into.

One has to be able to abstract pointers, I think? Or do similar in their field.

There is a (need:FIGHT!).
(Where (gathering place)?)
((To (subconscious?): Where Gathering Place?)
<<(From(subconscious?): Gathering Place is (set)[paths])
(Selected_path=Evaluate choice_function([path]))
(Go: selected_path)

Now, what lay on this path is beyond the horizon of predictable determinancy is concerned for you. The only thing you can do is try it and find out what happens.

If you were a thing of meat with internal narration, it may speak of this thing you have done: "there is a clear path to here, and I have selected it, with my choice function!"

I can objectively observe this of you, that the choice function of the dwarf of the binary field selected to go to the tavern.

If I didn't, I couldn't do what I'm about to do...

But you are not. You do not need to understand that you selected it with your choice function. You get to be a dwarf.

You have WILL, even the primative thing as you may be, a mere set of binary particles on a single field processed by one single unifying behavioral description in a deterministic way.

If you didn't, I wouldn't be able to... Well, we'll get there.

You do not know that your choice function is far from perfect, and there's a locked door there.

It's imperfect because, well, from one moment to the next in your universe something was changed. I changed it.

Now, it could have just been a built in function that doors may pseudorandomly lock, in a fully deterministic way.

It could have been a lot of things.

In this example, I take responsibility for locking the door and guaranteeing that your will was not free.

See, there was a history here. You've been, well, a dwarf. It's not the first time there's been a locked door but there's no way you can understand that. The knowledge of it is processed by being added to the history of dwarf. That history is cumulated into a stress level OF "dwarf" dwarf.get_stress_level() or some such.

Well, let's get back into it. I'm not even to the good part yet.

So,
(While selected_path: walk(selected_path.get_next_step(){
...
If(was_door)
{
If(place.getDoor()->open)
{
Evaluate Step_function();
}
Else
{
Goto: failure;
}
}
)

you walk some steps and there's a door.

your understanding said it was unlocked.

your understanding was wrong, and you got a failure case.

your will was observable and, well, I can objectively observe it is not free.

"If failure, calculate stress caused... Add memory. After memory: remember things."

it goes in your memories as a complex arrangement of more shit in your binary field, not the same shape as the binary field elements that caused it.

The things that you did in this moment are collated, each a part of your overall complex particle.

The process that defines you, perhaps some part of your "subconscious" goes through all that accreted junk and arrangement and sums up their abstract stress value, among other things

That abject stress value necessarily will exceed the sum total that it takes for you to...

Need changed: THROW TANTRUM!

It's still a function of dwarf, of course, but hey...

There is a (need:TANTRUM!)
((To (subconscious?): Where, of (accessible) (trouble_target)?)
<<(From(subconscious?): [paths])
(Selected_path=Evaluate choice_function([path]))
(Go: selected_path)

The result of this is a statue.

This, well, there are no unlocked doors on this path. Your will is free.

That's the point. I can't just... Well, I could just, but I'm not going to is the point.

You walk up to the statue and tip it.

Congratulations you're a wererabbit.

Then things get fun. While you do not get to freely will that every time the full moon hits, in about 5 ticks or so, you become a massive rabbit hungry for flesh, at least long enough to batter down the door, Find someone to attack, and start a curse wave.

you:
Willed, but not freely to go through the door.
Had imposed on you by your history a tantrum.
Willed, freely to knock over a statue.
Had imposed on you by the laws of the universe that you shall now be cursed.
Had imposed a change of state on you by the universe that you shall now be bloodthirsty beyond bounds
Freely willed (in a bloodthirsty state) to batter down a door
Freely willed (in a bloodthirsty state) to rip apart a bunch of other dwarves
even if you didn't freely will to become a wererabbit.

Things get more interesting when you are a.much larger collection of more complex particles on what appear to be 4 much less binary fields.

I stopped playing that game.
Both provide a subjective set of terms that would choke Benjamin Franklin.

Clear as mud.

You answered nothing.
All of these terms are well defined in terms of potentials on a field under a physics that is completely understood and deterministic.

They are identifiable properties that are entirely analogous to aspects of our universe, the most important to speak to your religion that says free will is not a concept in deterministic universes.

The fact you cannot abstract "universe" and "physics" as a class rather than "definite article" is your problem, not mine.
Wow. Analogous properties. Does that mean they are self referred? No. Not even that?

So you're like a spring where everything bouncing off you is glue.

-nm
Again not my problem you can't understand a thing I say. I've been trying to get my head for weeks now through the full perspective shift so as to understand "physics", not as a specific "our physics" but as in as "a class of different things each a physics", where a physics is a model of field interaction of which ours is a member of.

Now, humans are fun because we can do all these different kinds of functions and more. We are capable of looking at our current goal and seeing a failure long before we even start to go to the place to do the things and figure out ways to get past the failure cases.

We have choice functions where we can reselect our goals. We have choice functions where we can create new values, or refine responses to those values in future encounters.

We even have choice functions where we can modify the feelings associated with historic events.
 
If it was that simple, the debate would have been settled centuries ago.

What is difficult for some may be easy for others. I was able to see through the problem as a teenager in the public library. Inevitability was not some entity exercising control over me. Inevitability was actually me, doing what I do, and choosing what I choose. Free will is just another causally necessary event. But causal necessity itself is neither a meaningful nor a relevant cause of anything.

It's basically the same notion as in Schopenhauer's and Kane's quotes, except that I'm using the other side of the conceptual coin. When it comes to inevitability and me, I am clear as to who is doing what, while many people are still trapped in the self-induced hoax that causal necessity is an agent who is responsible for everything that happens.

Dictionaries don't delve into the means and mechanisms of decision making, the nature of determinism or freedom in relation to determinism.

The job of dictionaries is to explain the meaning of words as they are commonly used in practice. William James in his lectures on Pragmatism, described it as the "cash value" of the word, what it means by how it works in actual use.

Freedom of will demands the possibility of alternate actions.

With the evolution of intelligent species we get imagination, evaluation, and choosing. With them come the possibilities of alternate actions.

Determinism excludes alternate actions

Determinism must include us, and our agency, within the overall scheme of causation. With us comes intelligence, imagination, and the possibility of alternate actions. Any version of determinism that fails to include us and our agency would be incomplete, and therefore false.

So, either find a way to incorporate us in your determinism or toss your crippled version of determinism in the forking trash.

Freedom of will, by definition - freedom +will - demands agency through will.

Will is the agency of all deliberate or voluntary action.

Will does not control neural networks or their function as information processors.

You still fail to see that will is a function of those neural networks?
You still fail to see that choosing what we will do is a function of that information processing?
Then you are trapped in a dualistic viewpoint.

That essentially negates the notion of free will, making the term a mere label, just words that people use when someone is not being forced by external elements, but neglecting to consider internal necessitation;

And that dualistic viewpoint prevents you from seeing that the neural process of choosing what we will do IS the internal necessitation of the deliberate act.

''An action’s production by a deterministic process, even when the agent satisfies the conditions on moral responsibility specified by compatibilists, presents no less of a challenge to basic-desert responsibility than does deterministic manipulation by other agents. '' - Oxford Scholarship paper.

Well, that's false of course. First, ALL actions are produced by deterministic processes. This includes deliberate acts of our own free will, as well as, acts forced upon us by other agents. The author is attempting to bury the moral distinction between deliberate choices and coercion in the generality of determinism.

Personally, I would judge such an attempt to be immoral. Care to discuss?
 
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