Attempt at reconciling free will and determinism

@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

As lame as it can be sold:

"Free Will" requires that your thoughts can CAUSE an action. It requires cause/effect.
"Free Will" also requires a causal discontinuity between matter and you. So that a chain of cause cannot precede your decision making...
...and yet you do directly interact with matter...

the "Randomness" argument from Libertarians is not valid as it washes away authorship. Tossing random coins invalidates you are the willing cause of an action, hence not free from a Randomness pov.

Same goes for those who endorse cause/effect.
If you are made of matter and the world around you is made of matter
then the chain of cause does not start with you. Hence you still not free.

Hope that helps.

Disagree

While matter is important , matter comes together in the Brain . The Brain supercides matter .

2 Replies

@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

As lame as it can be sold:

"Free Will" requires that your thoughts can CAUSE an action. It requires cause/effect.
"Free Will" also requires a causal discontinuity between matter and you. So that a chain of cause cannot precede your decision making...
...and yet you do directly interact with matter...

the "Randomness" argument from Libertarians is not valid as it washes away authorship. Tossing random coins invalidates you are the willing cause of an action, hence not free from a Randomness pov.

Same goes for those who endorse cause/effect.
If you are made of matter and the world around you is made of matter
then the chain of cause does not start with you. Hence you still not free.

Hope that helps.

Disagree

While matter is important , matter comes together in the Brain . The Brain supercides matter .

1 Reply

@north,

I am at a loss of words after reading your post...

0 Replies

@north,

Take a couple of Scotches and see the result in your brain. If you don't get it while your drunk since you didn't while you were sober you can always take some sleep and try again tomorrow...

0 Replies

@Fil Albuquerque,

And what do you mean by matter?

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

Then why are you on my post? To assert your views somewhere where you see some level of activity?
Free can be matched in a sentence, as it is a human idea and those tend to have the ability to fit more than one context. Free is the feeling I get when school ends on a Friday. The man is free. The slave is free of freedom.

1 Reply

@ghurt3,

Not much. The unified substance of Being and experiencing...for all that I care it could be abstract maths, information, or whatever else so long the wording unified is left in.

1 Reply

@ghurt3,

I am in your post because I can. As for your trivial use of freedom it has no baring on the topic. Its a simplified vulgar utilitarian use no one questioned. The point was focused on the substance. Does the word free makes any sense aside the trivial use ? I think not.

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

Ah, but you just stated that "we matter". How can we verb a noun?

0 Replies

@Fil Albuquerque,

"trivial" is relative

1 Reply

@ghurt3,

...relative (the way you brought it up) is being trivial...

1 Reply

@north,

The brain is matter.

0 Replies

@Fil Albuquerque,

-I still have unanswered questions there. Are you only going to respond to what you can argue against?
-That's also relative. I brought it up because you say these are trivial and you refer to what would not be trivial as anything that refers to the "substance". If you cannot tell me in words what this is then how am I to believe that you know the difference between it and its other uses. Also, It exists as a concept, so it must refer to some experience; there must be some essence of free will. Humans do not glitch and think of things for no traceable reason.

1 Reply

@ghurt3,

I wont lecture you on the evolution of language much less on the dimension of the anthropic boundaries of our conceptual constructs and its innate limitations. Concepts like functions are not infinite in scope, above all they serve a purpose on the ecosystem of human operations and interests Nothingness for instance is just another good example of the vulgar, careless, almost reckless use of language. Why does it succeed one should wonder, right ? Well for the same reason barking can work for dogs...

Free will is a contradiction in terms. When one wills one has reasons, causes to will, there is nothing "free" about it, further, those causes can be traced back to the initial conditions of our Reality. What is it that has no reason, cause, of being ? Just Reality. And even Reality for absence of alternative, or for having all the alternatives computed in a multiverse, is not free, rather its full.

1 Reply

For free, I will if I will, that leaves fall on Mondays Thursday's n Fridays on Summer not Winter and not because I like it, I just stumbled on willing...after all is for free ! Very Happy

0 Replies

@Fil Albuquerque,

Again: You said we matter in the grand scheme of things but also that matter is the substance of the universe when I asked what you meant by matter. What do you mean?
I didn't say that all concepts were accurate representations of reality. Perhaps none of them are. We don't know because we can't grasp any absolute concrete reality. All I said was that the word free exists for a reason and it is valuable to trace it to experience to get a better understanding of the psychology of the "free will vs determinism" debate.
The entire universe may very well be acting on its own, doing whatever it does for no reason other than that is how it is and how it preferred to arise. That would make it free as opposed to determined, wouldn't it? That would make someone's action just as much a free action of the whole as it is a determined action of a part within, right?

1 Reply

@ghurt3,

If none are reality, how are you able to post on a2k?

3 Replies

@cicerone imposter,

the matrix~or something like it which I cannot grasp conceptually

0 Replies

@cicerone imposter,

just a possibility which is possible however small a possibility it seems

0 Replies

@cicerone imposter,

Just because I have posted here does not mean that my concepts ARE EQUIVALENT to reality. "An apple" is not an apple. I use the concept of apple to tell someone about it, but the exchange of words does not generate the exact experience that I went through which gave e the concept.

0 Replies

Attempt at reconciling free will and determinism

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