Proof of nonexistence of free will

Curious how he is now arguing my point from a few posts back...

@guigus,

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There is a very good example in Marx's Capital:

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For instance, it is a contradiction to depict one body as constantly falling towards another, and as, at the same time, constantly flying away from it. The ellipse is a form of motion which, while allowing this contradiction to go on, at the same time reconciles it.

I'd consider this a good example of a contradiction that is more apparent than real: What's real is the elliptical motion; the deconstruction (if you'll pardon the expression) into two contradictory motions is purely a mental exercise by the observer, and not necessary to understand what's happening, since we can restate the description of this situation in terms of interacting forces (gravitation and motion) that are not in any sense contradictory.

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You are the same person you were yesterday, right? But you are also another person, since your body has changed. Then, you are both the same and not the same. That's called change. We live in a world that's constantly changing, so it violates the principle of non-contradiction much more times in a minute than you can think of in that same period of time. Of course that does not change the fact that you mind cannot conceive of contradiction: you cannot possibly conceive of A and not A at the same time. But that is your mind -- and mine -- not the world. Whenever you try to cope with objective reality, you must face contradiction, as quantum physicists have known too well for decades.

I reject any suggestion that personhood is equivalent to embodiment. As for change, your "same and not the same" is another pseudo-contradiction: what remains the same is not what changes, and vice versa. In other words, "sameness" is a quality of one thing or set of things, while change is a quality of a different thing or set of things. If one then wants to look at the "whole person," it's simply a matter of the person being multiple, with some parts changing and some not. If one considers the "essential person" as one part among others, I would argue that this is precisely the part that does not change.

Not to drag this out, but one more point: Much of the problem in discussing these kinds of subjects is the fact that we can conceive of A and not-A at the same time, but it's an act of imagination, like conceiving a unicorn.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Curious how he is now arguing my point from a few posts back...

Your point was that an idea could never be nothing, while my point is that it is both nothing and something: although my opposing your point may have given you the impression of holding an idea to be just nothing, I wasn't, as I am not holding now your point, according to which an idea could never be nothing. What I am doing is to oppose both unilateral points -- an idea as just something and an idea as just nothing.

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@Amphiclea,

Amphiclea wrote:

Quote:
There is a very good example in Marx's Capital:

Quote:
For instance, it is a contradiction to depict one body as constantly falling towards another, and as, at the same time, constantly flying away from it. The ellipse is a form of motion which, while allowing this contradiction to go on, at the same time reconciles it.

I'd consider this a good example of a contradiction that is more apparent than real: What's real is the elliptical motion; the deconstruction (if you'll pardon the expression) into two contradictory motions is purely a mental exercise by the observer, and not necessary to understand what's happening, since we can restate the description of this situation in terms of interacting forces (gravitation and motion) that are not in any sense contradictory.

If the body slows down it will fall onto the body around which it orbits, so its tendency to fall is no "appearance." Neither is its tendency to fly away, as you can easily verify simply by increasing its momentum. You are trying to escape elementary physics by adopting a view of the world in which there is only room for actuality, in much the same way some people try to escape quantum physics results by denying CFD.

Amphiclea wrote:

Quote:
You are the same person you were yesterday, right? But you are also another person, since your body has changed. Then, you are both the same and not the same. That's called change. We live in a world that's constantly changing, so it violates the principle of non-contradiction much more times in a minute than you can think of in that same period of time. Of course that does not change the fact that you mind cannot conceive of contradiction: you cannot possibly conceive of A and not A at the same time. But that is your mind -- and mine -- not the world. Whenever you try to cope with objective reality, you must face contradiction, as quantum physicists have known too well for decades.

I reject any suggestion that personhood is equivalent to embodiment.

Don't bother with semantics: just replace "person" by "body."

Amphiclea wrote:

As for change, your "same and not the same" is another pseudo-contradiction: what remains the same is not what changes, and vice versa.

What changes is your body, and what remains the same is your body -- what changes is precisely what remains the same, as in all change: the very concept of change would be just impossible if what changes and what remains the same through change were not the same.

Amphiclea wrote:

In other words, "sameness" is a quality of one thing or set of things, while change is a quality of a different thing or set of things.

Sorry, but you must not had been serious: change is not a quality of anything -- it is rather the change of at least one of its qualities. There can be change only if whatever changes remains the same during change, which is precisely what allows you to say that it has changed: if whatever changes ceased to be whatever it is, then it would have remained unchanged while being replaced by something else, rather than having changed.

Amphiclea wrote:

If one then wants to look at the "whole person," it's simply a matter of the person being multiple, with some parts changing and some not. If one considers the "essential person" as one part among others, I would argue that this is precisely the part that does not change.

Forget the "person," let's talk about your body: it ages, right? So your body, the same old body of your childhood, has already changed into something very different, despite still being your body. That's change: the same thing becomes different from itself. If you try to isolate change from your body, then you end up with a collection of properties that change and another that do not, but how can some of those properties change without making your body change with them? If you make them no longer properties of your body, then they themselves become unable to change, since they can only change as properties of your body, so it is your body that logically make them changeable in the first place, by being changeable through them.

Amphiclea wrote:

Not to drag this out, but one more point: Much of the problem in discussing these kinds of subjects is the fact that we can conceive of A and not-A at the same time, but it's an act of imagination, like conceiving a unicorn.

This is tricky: although you can talk about "A and not A," you cannot conceive of it. For example, you can talk about someone being and not being in front of you at the same time, but if you try to imagine such a concrete situation, you just cannot (this is the problem with quantum physics, as also what makes it so weird). It is fundamentally the same problem with the concept of nothing: we can refer to it, but never conceive of it -- whenever you try to concretely imagine nothing, you just cannot.

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I found myself curious about the last time "free will" was actually mentioned in this thread; it looks like it was about a week ago. We seem to be spending most of our time talking about "proof of nonexistence" rather than "proof of nonexistence of free will."

Of course, if someone could prove that nonexistence nonexists, as I have been arguing in my clumsy way, it would show at once that free will can't be nonexistent. But "proof" may be unattainable in regard to this subject, and even convincing argument is looking pretty unlikely.

So maybe it would be helpful to dislodge the discussion from this black hole by restating the question. Rather than ask, Is free will nonexistent? maybe we should be asking, Can the individual human will/decide/choose with anything that truly deserves the name "freedom," or are we deluding ourselves in some way by thinking we can?

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I believe that free will and predetermination co-exist.
You make a free choice that pathway is then predetermined until you make a free choice to change.

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I have been hammering the point about existence for several pages now, but it seems to me that people don't get it.

To say that free will exists is about as meaningful as to say that the color red is 15 degrees celcius.
It's nonsense, and the only reason it seems sensible is due to a misunderstanding and a misuse of the word "existence".

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@Cyracuz,

Let me try to clarify once again.

"Free will" is not an object. It isn't an entity either. It is a description of a set of functions that we percieve as potentially useful to describe a certain aspect of human perception. Any person with a basic understanding of language knows that it doesn't make sense to say that a description exists or doesn't exist.

Free will isn't subjct to the question of existence or non-existence. It is subject to the evaluation of meaning. But those two are not the same.
And it is a fact that if you want to explore anything beyond the mundane and obvious you have to respect what words mean, or you will have no reference to guide your thoughts, and they will be indistinguishable from simple wishful thinking.

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@Amphiclea,

Amphiclea wrote:

I found myself curious about the last time "free will" was actually mentioned in this thread; it looks like it was about a week ago. We seem to be spending most of our time talking about "proof of nonexistence" rather than "proof of nonexistence of free will."

I see no problem in that: you cannot prove the nonexistence of free will without agreeing that it is possible to prove a nonexistence, which you cannot agree upon without knowing what a nonexistent is after all. This is not only a valid path, but also a quite rigorous one.

Amphiclea wrote:

Of course, if someone could prove that nonexistence nonexists, as I have been arguing in my clumsy way, it would show at once that free will can't be nonexistent. But "proof" may be unattainable in regard to this subject, and even convincing argument is looking pretty unlikely.

You yourself already noticed that saying that nonexistence does not exist implies it is something, hence that it exists in some way. You should value this insight more: it is a good insight.

Amphiclea wrote:

So maybe it would be helpful to dislodge the discussion from this black hole by restating the question. Rather than ask, Is free will nonexistent? maybe we should be asking, Can the individual human will/decide/choose with anything that truly deserves the name "freedom," or are we deluding ourselves in some way by thinking we can?

The defense of free will is a critique of determinism, which is the real issue here. And it goes far beyond the problem of free will itself, which hence cannot be solved independently. Of course you can always remember the practical situations that make determinism ridiculous, which unfortunately does not solve its philosophical problem.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Let me try to clarify once again.

"Free will" is not an object. It isn't an entity either. It is a description of a set of functions that we percieve as potentially useful to describe a certain aspect of human perception. Any person with a basic understanding of language knows that it doesn't make sense to say that a description exists or doesn't exist.

Free will isn't subjct to the question of existence or non-existence. It is subject to the evaluation of meaning. But those two are not the same.
And it is a fact that if you want to explore anything beyond the mundane and obvious you have to respect what words mean, or you will have no reference to guide your thoughts, and they will be indistinguishable from simple wishful thinking.

You solve no problem by asserting its nonexistence. You are acting like an ostrich.

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@Jakartaman,

Jakartaman wrote:

I believe that free will and predetermination co-exist.
You make a free choice that pathway is then predetermined until you make a free choice to change.

As Marx put it in the The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (a statement Sartre considered to be the essence of historical materialism):

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Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.

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@guigus,

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You solve no problem by asserting its nonexistence.

That is precicely my point. You solve no problem by asserting its existence either. The distinction, when applied to free will, tells us nothing.
It doesn't solve any problems, on the contrarty, it adds to the confusion.

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You are acting like an ostrich.

What, besides making me think you are an idiot, is the purpose of such a comment?
And just out of curiosity, how does it benefit you to make me think you are an idiot?

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@guigus,

Quote:

Your point was that an idea could never be nothing, while my point is that it is both nothing and something

Sure, from a non-dualistic perspective anything is both something and nothing. But from that perspective it makes even less sense to speak of free will.

In case it's not clear to you yet, I am not arguing free will, I am asking what "nonexistence" means, since it is a word included in the headline of the thread.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz;

Fascinating discussion!

'Nonexistence' can only exist because you can ruminate on what you know about 'existence', right? In your musing you 'reflect' 'existence' against 'nonexistence' and come to conclusions as to how they reinforce each other. Am I on the right track? You can gain agreement or disagreement and add mass to your postulation by starting a 'discussion' in an online 'chat room', a philosophy class at a university, or a symposium in a hotel ballroom, and, if people are willing to help you pay for renting the ballroom, you can make a profit on the room rental, the hotel rooms, a sit-down lunch or dinner, etc., if structured properly. Right?

Let's look at this a little closer. If there's money to be made here we should have all of our ducks in a row, don't you agree?

What is 'existence'? Isn't it the collection of criteria that include all of life and death? Including life, death, procreation, eating, consciousness, surviving, building shelter, accumulating wealth, the lives of fishes, the lives of animals, the distinction between fishes and animals, etc? You can discuss/argue with others about the different variations of what I'm pointing at, but you get what I mean, right?

Again, what is existence? Isn't it the collection of these criteria (and other characteristics) and then filing them away into a hanging file folder labeled 'Existence' which is alphabetically in front of 'Nonexistence'?

Stay with me, I think I'm on to something.

Who made the labels for the hanging file folders? You did (along with somebody else in history), right? Who collected the characteristics and filed them away? Again, you did with a little help from your friends, right?

Let's do some work on the time-line, shall we?

You made the labels, right? You put the hanging file folders together and made sure that they were in alphabetical order, right? You gathered up all the characteristics and filed them away, right.

'You made', 'You put', 'You gathered', and 'You filed', right?

Are you noticing a pattern here? 'You' always come before the 'made', the 'put', the 'gathered', and the 'filed'. The 'made', the 'put', the 'gathered', and the 'filed' always come before the 'labels', the 'hanging file folders', and the 'combination of characteristics' (concepts). Right?

So, 'you' (who you really are) came before everything else, right? Before the 'labels', before the 'hanging file folders', before the 'concepts', right? Without 'you' Be-ing there, there would be no 'labels', 'hanging file folders', and 'concepts', right?

Two more questions. If 'you' Be-ing are the source of the 'labels', the 'hanging file folders', and the 'concepts' (the combination of characteristics) then you can't 'be' the 'labels', the 'hanging file folders', and the 'concepts' (the combination of characteristics). If that is true, then who are 'you'? Aren't you even a little curious to find out who 'you' are?

Go ahead. Play around with 'Existence' and 'Nonexistence'. You created it. When you get bored with 'Existence' and 'Nonexistence' you'll create something else to distract your 'self' with.

Wait for it . . . . . (pause) Wait for it . . . . . (pause) There. (I couldn't resist ~ LOL)

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@Dasein,

Quote:

'Nonexistence' can only exist because you can ruminate on what you know about 'existence', right? In your musing you 'reflect' 'existence' against 'nonexistence' and come to conclusions as to how they reinforce each other. Am I on the right track?

No.
This is simpler than that. Logically, everything anyone can think of must be said to exist as the idea they hold in their minds.
Therefore it is nonsensical to speak of "non-existence" in relation to anything that is an idea we hold in our minds.

Therefore, the only thing that is left in the way of meaning to assign to the concept "non-existence" is the relationship between concept and physical representation. Only concept that have physical properties, but have no representation in the physical world, can be said to be non-existent in any meaningful way. In those cases it means that the concepts do not exist in the physical world even though these concepts, or "mental objects" have physical attributes.

An example is a unicorn. You can say it doesn't exist, and the only sensible piece of information we can get out of that is that the mythical creature "unicorn" is not a physical creature found in the physical world.
But if you claim that the very idea of unicorn is non-existent, that is just nonsensical.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz;

Did you read everything I wrote or did you just react to the first paragraph?

Read on. What you and I are saying are exactly the same. The only difference is that you think you can 'have an idea'. I say, that your idea has you. Only you don't know it yet.

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@Dasein,

I read the whole thing. Several times. Your generous use of loose metaphors allows for a good deal of ambiguity in your words.
I think I get what you are saying, but from that perspective the whole discussion is meaningless. I am talking about what a word means, and in this context "existence" is the most basic assumption.

If we are talking about human perception everything changes, but we are talking about communication, as I see it, and so I think you are a bit beside the point.

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Only you don't know it yet.

I chose to ignore the condescending attitude of your last post, but if you keep it up I might run out of good will. Wink

I'm happy to explore the underlying aspects of human perception with you, but as I said, in this thread I am concerned with the meaning of the word "existence" and how that word can be applied to communicate meaningful information and considerations.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
You solve no problem by asserting its nonexistence.

That is precicely my point. You solve no problem by asserting its existence either.

Did I ever say that asserting a problem exists is the same as to solve it? Well, I don't remember saying that...

Cyracuz wrote:

The distinction, when applied to free will, tells us nothing.

What distinction?

Cyracuz wrote:

It doesn't solve any problems, on the contrarty, it adds to the confusion.

What doesn't solve any problems? What are you talking about?

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
You are acting like an ostrich.

What, besides making me think you are an idiot, is the purpose of such a comment? And just out of curiosity, how does it benefit you to make me think you are an idiot?

Don't feel insulted (hence don't insult me back), your being an ostrich referred to the characteristic behavior of an ostrich, which consists in pretending a problem does not exist so as to avoid having to solve it (as well as avoiding stress and fear). Of course this is an ineffective strategy, since the problem continues to exists despite its ignoring it. That's precisely your behavior regarding the problem of free will: you try to "solve" it by pretending it does not exist, which makes you a "philosophical ostrich."

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@guigus,

Quote:

What distinction?

"Does free will exist?". It's a yes or no question, and answering it tells us nothing.
How do you define "free will"?
Does this definition allow for an "objectification" of the concept? (Laws are "objectified" concepts. Their persistence in our culture and society depends very much on their physical expression in the form of books and computerfiles.

These "abstract objects", such as laws, can easily confuse us, because a law is something that originates within human mind activity, of our own initiative. A law is not a physical object, but it may not be nonsensical to say that a law doesn't exist. ("The laws to deal with this new situation do not exist", is a common and meaningful phrase.) But that is entirely due to the fact that the law is expressed in physical code, in books and computer files.

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That's precisely your behavior regarding the problem of free will: you try to "solve" it by pretending it does not exist, which makes you a "philosophical ostrich."

No. I am not trying to solve it! I am pointing out that the linguistical approach to this particular issue does not outline a very good basis for presice and meaningful discussion of the subject!

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
What distinction?

"Does free will exist?". It's a yes or no question, and answering it tells us nothing.

It may tell you nothing, but even so it is only because that's what you want...

Cyracuz wrote:

How do you define "free will"?

Free will is our capacity to choose our own destiny beyond external determination -- in other words, the possibility of free will is the possibility of an event that is not exhausted by previous determination/causation, hence that could not be predicted with total certainty from within the past. Is that good enough for you? If not, then Google for it...

Cyracuz wrote:

Does this definition allow for an "objectification" of the concept? (Laws are "objectified" concepts. Their persistence in our culture and society depends very much on their physical expression in the form of books and computerfiles.

So anything I write on a book will become a law, by being "objectified"? Wow! Perhaps that's the meaning of having the "power to define" that someone else has just mentioned in another thread...

Cyracuz wrote:

These "abstract objects", such as laws, can easily confuse us, because a law is something that originates within human mind activity, of our own initiative. A law is not a physical object, but it may not be nonsensical to say that a law doesn't exist. ("The laws to deal with this new situation do not exist", is a common and meaningful phrase.) But that is entirely due to the fact that the law is expressed in physical code, in books and computer files.

Have you ever considered that perhaps you are the one that is confused?

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
That's precisely your behavior regarding the problem of free will: you try to "solve" it by pretending it does not exist, which makes you a "philosophical ostrich."

No. I am not trying to solve it! I am pointing out that the linguistical approach to this particular issue does not outline a very good basis for presice and meaningful discussion of the subject!

Well, perhaps we could decide this with a fight, what do you think? Would this be non-linguistic enough to you?

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Proof of nonexistence of free will

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