"Free will was given to man by god."

[Lacewing]

It's all in your mind.

Actually, it's all written down here in the forum...and it has been pointed out to you repeatedly. But I guess that's inconsequential to what's all in your mind.

So, a man who demonstrates personal blindness and denial in regard to himself and what he has said, and who accuses other people falsely of what they believe and think, claims to be hated for his "truth" and blames secularism when he is challenged!

[Nick_A]

It's all in your mind.

Actually, it's all written down here in the forum...and it has been pointed out to you repeatedly. But I guess that's inconsequential to what's all in your mind.

So, a man who demonstrates personal blindness and denial in regard to himself and what he has said, and who accuses other people falsely of what they believe and think, claims to be hated for his "truth" and blames secularism when he is challenged!

This is like talking to AOC and the Squad. A lot of intensity but no substance. It isn't me that is hated but rather ideas of a certain quality. They have been hated for ages. This emotional rejection which can be observed as hatred has caused enormous harm especially for the young. But this hatred is fashionable in the world now. So I support those who oppose the premature death of the great ideas

Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses. ~ Simone Weil

Oh how true and the dedication to creating more corpses is sadly succeeding and being furthered by the dedication to define philosophy as the effort to get rid of Trump made possible by the glorification of blind denial

[RCSaunders]

Free will is an invention of religion; wholly political, and has no metaphysical basis.

You do realize, since you are not a volitional being able and required to consciously choose what you think and do, that the sentence, "Free will is an invention of religion; wholly political, and has no metaphysical basis," means nothing at all; because, whatever you do (or write) is determined by something other than your choice, like a dead tree falling in the woods, it's just a meaningless physical event. Right?

[Of course if you answer it won't mean anything either since it will just be something that physics caused you to do.]

[Belinda]

From the "Free Will" entry in Stamford:

many in the modern period saw belief in free will and an afterlife in which God rewards the just and punishes the wicked as necessary to motivate us to act morally. According to Spinoza, so far from this being necessary to motivate us to be moral, it actually distorts our pursuit of morality. True moral living, Spinoza thinks, sees virtue as its own reward (Part V, Prop. 42).

[Immanuel Can]

From the "Free Will" entry in Stamford:

many in the modern period saw belief in free will and an afterlife in which God rewards the just and punishes the wicked as necessary to motivate us to act morally. According to Spinoza, so far from this being necessary to motivate us to be moral, it actually distorts our pursuit of morality. True moral living, Spinoza thinks, sees virtue as its own reward (Part V, Prop. 42).

You miss the point.

Under Determinism, this "true moral living" of which the comment speaks, isn't even possible, because "moral" is a word with no meaning. Instead, the word "inevitable" should be substituted. There is, per Determinism, absolutely no possibility of anyone doing anything but what they actually do, so therefore nobody is deserving of either praise or blame. No actions are "theirs": all are merely the consequence of prior forces. And ultimately, there's no "them" to make the decision either. So there's no such thing as morality, and nobody to "choose" morally.

If the complete eradication of morality as a concept is a price you're prepared to pay, I guess you can go on and be a Determinist -- though it won't be your choice, according to Determinism, if you do. Otherwise, you're only being inconsistent.

[Belinda]

But it's you. Immanuel, who misses the point. The basis of necessitarian ethics is not God's authority but virtue. The way to virtue is reason ; not obedience, rewards, and punishments.

I don't blame you for your lack of virtuous agency, for we all lack virtuous agency, and I praise you for the virtues for which you are an agent.

I need no supernatural add-on called 'Free Will' in order to explain virtue.

[Immanuel Can]

The way to virtue is reason

You're wrong about that. Spinoza was a loony on this one too. There are no "Necessitarian Ethics." The very idea is an oxymoron. That which comes about by "necessity" is, by definition, nothing to do with "ethics" at all. Ethics are about choices. In Determinism, there are no choices.

Meanwhile, reason is a morally neutral calculating method, like maths. In itself, in reason itself, it has no particular preference or agenda, and no virtues. You can "reason" your way to being what is conventionally regarded as "good" or to what is conventionally regarded as being a "moral wreck" by the standards of our society. There's no universality in it. Reason simply tells someone who has a given agenda what that agenda requires of them next: it does not contain any means for judging the agenda. So again, it has no moral virtues. (You might say it requires certain epistemological practices be taken for granted, like consistency and coherence -- but these are neither "virtues" in any real sense, nor moral in any sense at all.)

But free will is a different issue. Without free will, no person has "virtue," nor can any be praised or blamed. After all, if you did not decide to donate to charity, you don't deserve any praise that money went from you to orphans...it was Determined to be so anyway. And if you did not decide to decapitate school children, you are not to be blamed...prior causal factors compelled it to be so that you would kill the schoolchildren. You did not decide to do it.

[henry quirk]

I need no supernatural add-on called 'Free Will' in order to explain virtue.

Nor do I. Me, bein' a free will, ain't got nuthin' to do with right or wrong, or religion (it was me bein' a free will that led me to deism, not the other way around), or virtue.

And: it ain't supernatural.

You and others can, of course, interpret or define free will as you like, just keep in mind: I, for example, will do the same.

[Nick_A]

But it's you. Immanuel, who misses the point. The basis of necessitarian ethics is not God's authority but virtue. The way to virtue is reason ; not obedience, rewards, and punishments.

I don't blame you for your lack of virtuous agency, for we all lack virtuous agency, and I praise you for the virtues for which you are an agent.

I need no supernatural add-on called 'Free Will' in order to explain virtue.

Now it is clear why the great perennial ideas which awaken us to our helplessness and the need for help from above must be hated. They threaten the common belief that "the way to virtue is reason." This is intolerable. Only a rare few have had the experience and have the maturity to make the efforts at self knowledge necessary to admit they are the wretched man as described by Paul in Romans 7 which easily falls victim to the hypocrisy practiced by the Pharisees.

The ability to reason is necessary but somethjng else is necessary which the world struggles to corrupt and deny at all cost. The means to remember it are being forgotten,

[Sculptor]

Free will is an invention of religion; wholly political, and has no metaphysical basis.

I guess all the experts are wrong...https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/

ad verecundiam fallacy

[Sculptor]

Free will is an invention of religion; wholly political, and has no metaphysical basis.

You do realize, since you are not a volitional being able and required to consciously choose what you think and do, that the sentence, "Free will is an invention of religion; wholly political, and has no metaphysical basis," means nothing at all; because, whatever you do (or write) is determined by something other than your choice, like a dead tree falling in the woods, it's just a meaningless physical event. Right?

[Of course if you answer it won't mean anything either since it will just be something that physics caused you to do.]

Every thing I say has meaning precisely because I am determined to say it.
Where I to have used "free will" my words would be meaningless and capricious.
As it is, what I say is result of a long chain of learning that caused my opinions to grow and be assessed by my brain.

[RCSaunders]

Free will is an invention of religion; wholly political, and has no metaphysical basis.

You do realize, since you are not a volitional being able and required to consciously choose what you think and do, that the sentence, "Free will is an invention of religion; wholly political, and has no metaphysical basis," means nothing at all; because, whatever you do (or write) is determined by something other than your choice, like a dead tree falling in the woods, it's just a meaningless physical event. Right?

[Of course if you answer it won't mean anything either since it will just be something that physics caused you to do.]

Every thing I say has meaning precisely because I am determined to say it.
Where I to have used "free will" my words would be meaningless and capricious.
As it is, what I say is result of a long chain of learning that caused my opinions to grow and be assessed by my brain.

Well I have no idea if what you are saying has any meaning or not, since some long irrational (i.e. unjudged and unchosen) long chain of causes, caused you to say it. I see no difference between your view: "Every thing I say has meaning precisely because I am determined to say it," and the religious who say, "Every thing I say has meaning because God determined my saying it." It's a kind of secularized superstition.

Of course it does let you off the hook for being responsible for what you do, since you don't choose to do it.

[Immanuel Can]

ad verecundiam fallacy

Fallacy fallacy again.

Read:

"The ad verecundiam fallacy concerns appeals to authority or expertise. Fundamentally, the fallacy involves accepting as evidence for a proposition the pronouncement of someone who is taken to be an authority but is not really an authority." -- Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy

You couldn't even get one message without messing it up. Charming.

[Immanuel Can]

Of course it does let you off the hook for being responsible for what you do, since you don't choose to do it.

Aw, RC...the poor guy can't help himself.

He's the unthinking pawn of prior insentient causal forces. He has to be irrational...he has no choice.

[RCSaunders]

... The way to virtue is reason; not obedience ...

I don't blame you ...

I need no supernatural add-on called 'Free Will' in order to explain virtue.

There may be a bit of a semantic problem here. Perhaps you can explain it.

I agree that reason, not obedience, is the way to virtue, but how can one, "reason," if everything they think and do is, "determined?" You told IC, you don't blame him, but if you do not choose what you do, it would not be "you" that does no blame him, but whatever determined the non-blaming, wouldn't it?

One problem I see is that phrase, "free will." You are right if you think that idea comes from religion and is mostly wrong. That is the reason I use the term, "volition," which means that everything a human being thinks and does must be consciously chosen. It does not mean being able to choose anything one likes, but, if one is to think anything they must choose to think it and if they are to do anything they must choose to do it, and what one chooses must be consciously chosen.

You know reason is the way to virtue, and to reason you must be able to make judgments. When considering two conflicting ideas, for example, deciding which is correct and which is incorrect requires you to make a judgment based on whatever you know about the question. Don't you have to consciously make that judgment. A judgment is a conscious choice between two alternatives. If not, are you simply a bystander observing what goes on in your mind without having choice about it?

There is nothing mystical or supernatural about the concept of volition. It simply means that within the limits of what you know and what you are mentally and physically able to do, to do anything you can and must consciously choose to do it. It also means everything you do you have chosen to do, and that makes you responsible for everything you do, but only to yourself.