Is free-will an illusion?

Rather than apparently making assumptions about my ignorance about the extrapolation of behaviorism to 'cognitive events' I suggest that you should do some thinking of your own about about the definition of 'events' in general and 'cognitive events' in particular.

I agree that there is a difference between doing things under threat and doing them without coercion, but that will not get us to doing things for reasons that differ from what experience has taught us.

If we ran with your position that choice was controlled by an inner agent and not the result of prior causes, then how would we know that your explanation is true?

So your position is that I wrongfully accuse you of ignorance on a topic and the logic you use to address this insult is to say that I am ignorant? No I'm not; you are? Is this really how you wish to have a conversation about a topic?

We're on a forum for hobbyists. The United Nations is not coming here for solutions to global crises. We don't know each other personally or professionally. I have no problem that you or anyone else has a different viewpoint on this or any other topic. I really could not care less. I will address what I view as misrepresentations of my position or misunderstandings about a discipline with which I have substantial expertise; as I expect you would do as well. If you "choose" to engage then I will consider your position on a topic and learn more about things about which I do not know. That's my plan.

My position on this topic can be summarized in two points:

1. Determinism is a rather dated belief system, a sort of religion really, not a proven fact. Actually, modern science -- eg quantum physics -- contradicts determinism. There is no reason to assume that the future is entirely predictable or "contained in the past", and that includes our own thoughts and decisions, which are partly haphazard and undertermined by the past. In that sense, our thoughts are partly "free". They have a certain "degree of freedom", not being entirely determined by the past.

2. The mind exists for a reason: it performs tasks that cannot be done without it, one of which is taking decisions, i.e. making choices, acting on them consistently etc. Furthermore, the mind can do so if and only if it is somewhat autonomous in its deliberations. Otherwise it would bring no value added and would just be a waste.

The combination of these two points is what I call "free will": the capacity for the mind to take decisions in a semi-autonomous way, decisions that are ultimately unpredictable and neither entirely determined by biology, nor by society and our past interactions with it.

If physics says something about how decisions are caused, then one has to wonder how the indeterministic functions of subatomic particles relates to how mentality interfaces with physical reality. Chance is not evidence of freewill. You do not choose the position of subatomic particles.



A brain exists. Mind is a metaphor.

Free will ? yeah sure, maybe in an asylum !

No, but indeterminism implies that the future is not already written to the last letter, that it's not entirely redundant with the past but brings something new. IOW, the future (including our future thoughts) is to a degree "free" from the past.


The opposite is true, in my mind. In order to prove it, I shall ask you to answer this very simple question: What evidence do you have that brains exist?

I suggest you check out the various meanings of 'ignorance' and decide which one I intended." BTW you appear to be 'ignorant' of Kant's noumena-phenomena distinction which was a watershed in the philosophy of mind.

You're becoming far too suggestive, Al Fresco.

First of, evidence is brough from previous past experience where else ?

Second if you were to be free from the past to whatever extent you could not be the causer of your own willing as willing itself requires causation, a contradiction in terms...

And experience is a mental event... Hence any experience requires the existence of some sort of "mental space" (aka a "mind") within which "mental events" happen (aka "thoughts"). Therefore experience (any experience) proves that at least one mind exists (ours).

On the other hand, the existence of the "brain" is inferred from observing humans and other animals, and rather arbitrarily segmenting their anatomy into several parts, one of which we then decide to call the "brain". Seems like weaker evidence to me than what we have for the "mind"...

The existence of the "mind" and "self" is inferred from experiencing just the same...now what ?
...I rather be left with a very generalist something IS then with a very specific whom...

More precisely, the existence of the "mind" is a logical pre-requisite to the existence of any experience. There can be no experience without a mind having it.

So you say...read my previous n pause, then come back !

Its amazing how Descartes stills sells in 2015...

Attacking me for whatever ignorance you perceive I may have on a given topic does not bolster your argument. Do you even have an argument for freewill? Is it anything besides "I have some thoughts. Temporally, these thoughts precede the things I do. Therefore, it FEELS like I'm making choices. There's your evidence?"

I have stated a thesis in support of determinism and the only argument you have made thus far is that you believe I am unaware of philosophy, unaware of different theorists, and that the field on which the thesis is premised is only good for therapeutics and money making; none of the arguments in the least bit scholarly, persuasive, or on point. Are these the best arguments that you have?

And why not? Descartes is one of the fathers of the scientific method, a great mind...

Because "mind" and "self" or the "I" are not exception to the problem of knowledge !
Yes Descartes was great but the famous: "I think therefore I am" is vacuous...

Who the **** is "I" ?

SOMETHING IS, PAUSE !!!

So where do your experiences happen, Fil, if not in your mind?

Keeping things unsegmented in a big heap of "experiences" doesn't exactly help figure out anything, does it?

I don't know. I don't qualify that.
Granted there is experiencing but not granted there is a final experiencer. Much less a free willing "I"...
"Experiencer" can be reduce to more experiencing !


Existence is the experiencing alone.
Moreover for all that I care rocks have some sort of information trade when they got heat from the sun, or "feel" the gravity of stuff around them, some sort of "experiencing"...

When it comes to deep knowledge I reduce everything to information and experiencing as the most vaguest of vague of concepts and avoid qualifying much unless in relative context for purposes of functional communication.