@cicerone imposter,
The word is "consciousness" not "conscienceness". I understand what consciousness is but what I do not get is how being aware of your choice has any bearing on making it free or allowing us to have realizable alternatives. Since we do not understand how consciousness works how can we assume it produces realizable alternatives?
All attempts at a definition of free will are based on a denial of determinism. Freedom is a lack of restraint. Without constaining conditions or determinism, free will could not be defined. Yet freedom is not necessary to define determinism. Because determinism can be seen to exist and free will cannot. So free will is like looking at a computer program and saying its not that. Or any other system and saying its not that either.
@tomr,
The fact that "you" chose to post on a2k shows you have free will. You could be doing anything else that you please.
@cicerone imposter,
Could I have? For you to know that would mean you could reconstruct the conditions under which the choice was made and see that I could have actually done something different. You do not have that power. So I will have to take your word on it.
@tomr,
Only you can know how you arrived at doing what you do; it's your choice - isn't it?
@cicerone imposter,
Knowing how I arrived at a choice and knowing that choice could have been different under the same conditions are two different subjects.
@tomr,
No, they are the same; that's the reason you made that "subjective" choice.
@cicerone imposter,
Anyhow nothing is entirely anything while everything is partly something else
@cicerone imposter,
I honestly do not understand what you mean by that. I see no way that knowing how I came to a choice is the same as knowing I could have chosen something else under the same circumstances. We only get one chance at picking the option, anytime we choose. It is not possible for you to say the alternatives could have been picked, you simply lack that knowledge.
@tomr,
You wrote,
Quote:I could have chosen something else under the same circumstances.
It still comes down to what you choose; nobody else is influencing your choice. You say you only get one chance, but that's "at that moment only." The other options are open for you to choose later on if you so desire. Can you identify other forces that's making you choose one option over all the others? Unless you're addicted or have other mental issues, it's your "free" choice to do as you please.
@cicerone imposter,
Quote:It still comes down to what you choose; nobody else is influencing your choice. You say you only get one chance, but that's "at that moment only." The other options are open for you to choose later on if you so desire. Can you identify other forces that's making you choose one option over all the others? Unless you're addicted or have other mental issues, it's your "free" choice to do as you please.
But there is nothing different between what you are describing and what a machine or a computer program can do. Just because I am not aware of all external forces acting on my decision making process does not mean they are not present. Yes just like a machine could pick A from the set {A,B,C} and then B from that same set a moment later. My choices are as "free" as a machines in this way.
@tomr,
Unfortunately, your understanding of the human mind lacks "logic" when you compare the human brain to a machine.
@cicerone imposter,
Quote:Unfortunately, your understanding of the human mind lacks "logic" when you compare the human brain to a machine.
It is appropiate that you put "logic" in quotations. You probably should do so every time you use the word. As your attempts at understanding the human mind draw no comparisons and yet you act as if you know what you are talking about.
Assessing the present state of play; over the last two days it's turned out that two of the free will deniers aren't talking about, at least one of, either free will or determinism. Instead they're talking about idiosyncratic notions that they have attached to those terms. Looking back through the thread, there was another denier misusing terms and, by my reckoning, two other deniers, at least one of who seems confused about the issue. If this has reduced the number of genuine deniers to one, the instigator of the thread, then we appear to have a denial rate of around 10% of the posters. This figure is consistent with polls that I've seen among philosophers and scientists, so is not a particular embarrassment to the site. However, the above reason for denial is an embarrassment.
Imagine a thread about life in a biology forum, in this thread some posters are expressing peculiar views and so are asked what they understand "life" to mean. If it turned out that one defined "life" as any self organising system and was considering the weather to be alive, and another defined "life" as anything studied by biologists and was posting about intracellular chemistry, it would be clear to everyone that this ridiculous behaviour disrupts the thread. Even in physics and maths fora, noted for their high proportion of crackpots, the crackpots use the relevant terms correctly and usually start dedicated threads in order to express their views. So how does one explain the peculiar phenomenon of philosophy fora, that posters think that they can make up their own definitions for terms which already have established meanings? Even worse that they think a discussion can take place with the disputants each having in mind an individually distinct and unstated definition for a term used in common. This is particularly puzzling as philosophers, if anybody is, are trained in how to think correctly, and thus take particular care to be as clear and unequivocal as possible, where things like definitions are concerned.
One unhappy free will pretender is fed up with people not taking him seriously. His cries can be heard, "I do not like your definitions, use mine only." He yells out, " A machine is not a determined system." But he no longer addresses those that deny the thing he thinks he has but cannot explain exactly what it is he has. He has bags full of proofs that cannot be seen and that no one understands except himself. He stands tall and proud that he is right in his position and he fights the good fight for his own sake and peace of mind. Special pleading all around and denying too. He fights on to give his life a special meaning that cannot be seen to exist in nature. A meaning so special it is beyond knowing. It just is.
The fact is that I've been through all this, and more, with Tomr before. See, for example, this
thread, if you've the patience.
@ughaibu,
Ah those were the good old days when Ughaibu could address me directly. However, he would still talk about proofs that he could not furnish or that made no sense.
Ughaibu's comment from the other thread as evidence that we have realizable alternatives:
Ughaibu wrote:I can choose one of two numbers 01 and 10, if determinism is the case, then there is a fact now about which number I will choose on any future occasion. Similarly, if determinism is the case, then there is fact now about the result of any future occasion on which I toss a coin. There is no causal connection between the face shown by the coin and which number I choose, this is clear because if I do not look at the coin before choosing, my number will match the faces about half the time. However, I can choose to match the faces to my numbers so that if the coin shows heads I choose 01 and if it shows tails I choose 10, or equally, as 01 no more means heads than it means tails, I can match 10 to heads and 01 to tails. In fact there is an infinite number of ways that I can match the numbers to the coins, but these are the simplest. Nobody seriously denies that I can look at the result of tossing the coin and choose my number according to any system that I've devised for matching them. But in a determined world this is just a coincidence, and it's a coincidence which occurs for all of the results in a successive run of tests. As the probability of my numbers matching the coin is half for any one test, it's one divided by two to the power of n for any consecutive run of n tests. And as nobody seriously doubts that I can do this for any indefinite number of consecutive tests, the probability of determinism being the case is infinitely small and the probability that I have realisable alternatives is infinitely great.
Here is the great proof that determinism does not exist. Its logic is so misguided and its assumptions so bizarre that no one should take it seriously. First, I can write a computer program to do everything you are doing, except it will be able to pick far more combinations of different pairings of coin flips to numbers than you. Also how is it that because there is no chance two randomly generated infinite sequences will be identical, that this means that the probability that determinism is real becomes zero. You jump directly from the first point to an unfounded and unexplained assumption. Equally well I could say that because the coin and your brain are never under the exact same conditions, their governing factors do not guarantee identical results. And therefore the odds that two different machines guided by different functions will produce the same infinite sequence are vanishingly small (unless the function of one machine was to observe the second and match its result. Keep in mind that a machine could be given multiple options for sequences based on its governing factors-even the option to match the other sequence. And we know the machine does not have realizable alternatives because it doesn’t have will, whatever that is.)
Also we could build a machine to flip coins the same way infinite times and no one seriously doubts that. Or I could build a machine to watch you pick numbers and it could be programmed to choose to match or not match your particular sequence. No wonder you are afraid to show this argument it is so weak and easily diminished by analysis.
@tomr,
A coin is a poor substitute for what we're talking about, because in real life there are many more options, and the choice is subjectively determined by the individual.
@cicerone imposter,
What do you mean by subjectively determined? I know what it feels like to have the experience of choosing. How does my experience tell me I could have chosen any option I wanted under the exact circumstances.
If by subjectively determined you mean choices are determined by us in our thoughts, then how do you know that those thoughts aren't determined by something else.
@tomr,
Only you can answer that question. That's what "subjectively" means.
