For the discussion of all things philosophical.
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The changes are pretty minimal, and pretty obvious.Greylorn Ell wrote:The revised formats are just too stupid to even try to deal with. Not worth the frustration. The one useful thing that they might have changed was the style of "smilies," but no such luck.
Sorry to abandon my conversation, but I'm out of here.
Greylorn
This isn't true at all.Free-will is meaningless, not inevitable. If it is not compatible with the laws of cause and effect it simply does not make any sense at all.
You are shooting yourself in the foot, I think.Immanuel Can wrote:This isn't true at all.Free-will is meaningless, not inevitable. If it is not compatible with the laws of cause and effect it simply does not make any sense at all.
Free will isn't "meaningless", as it's a concept that is much debated and well understood. But you make your own assumption clear here...namely, that there is only one effective force in the universe, "cause and effect" and human will is not part of cause and effect.
But this is completely silly, because...you're arguing with us.
You can't argue with someone who cannot change their mind.
They can't change their minds without doing something that is not cause-and-effect.
Let me illustrate this for you:
I had this argument once with a Calvinist. Their pet word for determinism is "predestination" (an abuse of the theological term, but let that be). So I asked him, "Do you believe in Predestination?"
"Yes," he said.
"Fine," I said, "Then why are you arguing with me?"
He said, "Because free will is wrong. It doesn't exist."
I said, "Wait a minute: it seems I'm predestined not to agree with you. So why are you still arguing?"
He didn't know what to say to that.
That's the fundamental problem with arguing in favour of determinism; if you can change my mind, determinism is not true. For if my mind was predetermined to change, I did not really change it, and you did not make anything happen in my that was not predestined to happen anyway. But if you DID actually cause a change in my that was not predestined to happen anyway, then determinism is not true.
So either you have to quit arguing, or admit you're not actually a believer in determinism.
Think it over.
Well, you think wrongly.You are shooting yourself in the foot, I think.
This makes no sense, and no reasonable person is going to believe it. We cannot be "free to do" in any sense if we are not "free to will." The "will" indisputably comes first, then the doing; but the vexed question is whether that "will" itself is a product of determinism or not.We are free to do as we will, but not free to will as we will.
No. You're begging the question here. You have to PROVE that "will" is within the limits of antecedent conditions, not just claim it and think we'll agree.Free-will, if a meaningful idea, is a human volition which causes an effect, but has to be within the limits of antecedent conditions, like all other examples of causes and effect.
You're skipping the obvious question again: is "self" a property determined exclusively by nothing other than forces outside itself, or can it genuinely originate things? You seem to think "No," but you've done nothing at all to prove it.That we act on our will is obvious: that this will is free, is a contradiction. Free of what exactly? As we can not be free of ourselves, then what?
Ha! You've fallen into your own mind trap. Don't you realize that if [Calvinist] "God" is a deterministic property, a Materialist Universe is equally deterministic? You can't dismiss Calvinism simply because you don't like what it says; and ironically, your own view leads inescapably to precisely the same outcome re: determinism!A Calvinist has to believe in Predestination as he also is of the opinion that there exists a omniscient God, who, in knowing every sparrow that falls, and every hair on your head, must also know exactly what you are going to do tomorrow morning, and next Tuesday at teatime. So much for God.
Oh, I see...you don't actually know what" determinism" means.As a determinist, I know that, although the Universe will unfold as it shall, I have no way of knowing what that will look like, and so I know that decisions are making that future. As a human with a will, we are all agents of determinism, helping to cause the future.
Like many idiots on this Forum you overstate your case.Immanuel Can wrote:Hobbes writes:Well, you think wrongly.You are shooting yourself in the foot, I think.
This makes no sense, and no reasonable person is going to believe it. We cannot be "free to do" in any sense if we are not "free to will." The "will" indisputably comes first, then the doing; but the vexed question is whether that "will" itself is a product of determinism or not.We are free to do as we will, but not free to will as we will.
No. You're begging the question here. You have to PROVE that "will" is within the limits of antecedent conditions, not just claim it and think we'll agree.Free-will, if a meaningful idea, is a human volition which causes an effect, but has to be within the limits of antecedent conditions, like all other examples of causes and effect.
And is "will" a case of "cause and effect"? You haven't proved it is, and a voluntarist would only have to say that it went so far as the "will" itself, and the "will" was indeed the original cause of the effect. And then he'd have you.You're skipping the obvious question again: is "self" a property determined exclusively by nothing other than forces outside itself, or can it genuinely originate things? You seem to think "No," but you've done nothing at all to prove it.That we act on our will is obvious: that this will is free, is a contradiction. Free of what exactly? As we can not be free of ourselves, then what?
Ha! You've fallen into your own mind trap. Don't you realize that if [Calvinist] "God" is a deterministic property, a Materialist Universe is equally deterministic? You can't dismiss Calvinism simply because you don't like what it says; and ironically, your own view leads inescapably to precisely the same outcome re: determinism!A Calvinist has to believe in Predestination as he also is of the opinion that there exists a omniscient God, who, in knowing every sparrow that falls, and every hair on your head, must also know exactly what you are going to do tomorrow morning, and next Tuesday at teatime. So much for God.
Pot, meet kettle!
Oh, I see...you don't actually know what" determinism" means.As a determinist, I know that, although the Universe will unfold as it shall, I have no way of knowing what that will look like, and so I know that decisions are making that future. As a human with a will, we are all agents of determinism, helping to cause the future.
If it were otherwise, you'd never use the phrase, "I know that decisions are making the future." That phrase is anti-deterministic.
Let me help you out there: real "determinism" means there IS NO free will. It means we are not actually "agents" of anything, but merely cogs in an impersonal universal machine, and are merely deluding ourselves that we have choices.
Determinism is 100% fatalistic: if it's less, it's not determinism at all, but some form of voluntarism, and perhaps expresses only a reasonable sense of causality -- which voluntarists also have.
So are you a voluntarist or a determinist? You declare yourself the latter, but then talk like the former."
And you stupidly replied:"We are free to do as we will, but not free to will as we will."
I was deliberately quoting Schopenhauer. I did not realise I had to point that out being as the phrase is so well known. I truly think that Shop was a "reasonable person" that often made sense.This makes no sense, and no reasonable person is going to believe it.
I do not need to prove anything about the self not being some sort of ultimate first cause machine. You seem to want to counter what is a no-brainer with some mystical bullshit. The "self" whatever you think that might be is not a first cause machine; it did not cause itself to come into being. 100 years ago none of us on the Forum existed, we all have relied for our very existence on causality. We are part of a chain of events.No. You're begging the question here. You have to PROVE that "will" is within the limits of antecedent conditions, not just claim it and think we'll agree.
Poor guy. He just can't seem to find anyone that'll accept his incoherence as anything but. Bill finally has company on my ignore list.Immanuel Can wrote:Okay.
You can take your ball and go home.
It's been fun. No hard feelings.
Not so, we have computational models that are deterministic but we cannot say how they got there, so choice is a possibility in a deterministic world, just not 'free-will'. But 'free will' is just a hang-over and hang-up of the godbotherers as they need to reconcile a 'God's' will with theirs and tie themselves in knots over it.Immanuel Can wrote:...
Let me help you out there: real "determinism" means there IS NO free will. It means we are not actually "agents" of anything, but merely cogs in an impersonal universal machine, and are merely deluding ourselves that we have choices. ...
Well, pardon my French, but I would characterize any such statement as simply facile and manifestly untrue.'free will' is just a hang-over and hang-up of the godbotherers as they need to reconcile a 'God's' will with theirs and tie themselves in knots over it.
Computer models aren't exactly analogous to metaphysics. Even if they were, to refer to a computer "choosing" would be an error. Certainly, a choice might exist, but only because the programmer was aware of it. If the programmer was not aware that the computer would have to "choose" between B & C "if A," then the program fails because the computer cannot proceed without instructions (at least so far. "True" AI will change this, of course). Every "choice" the computer makes is determined. Pile on as many lines of code as you wish, but if you are able to hold them all in tension, you can predict the outcome 100 times out of 100. In fact, you would be so certain of your ability to predict the outcomes that a variance would lead you to start looking for the mistake in the line of code or look to your own misunderstanding thereof. There is a reason programs can be represented by flowcharts. In a deterministic world, choices do not exist. The only reason we speak of such is because we (or our programmers) know what choice is, and so impose that framework on the deterministic world.Arising_uk wrote:Not so, we have computational models that are deterministic but we cannot say how they got there, so choice is a possibility in a deterministic world, just not 'free-will'. But 'free will' is just a hang-over and hang-up of the godbotherers as they need to reconcile a 'God's' will with theirs and tie themselves in knots over it.Immanuel Can wrote:...
Let me help you out there: real "determinism" means there IS NO free will. It means we are not actually "agents" of anything, but merely cogs in an impersonal universal machine, and are merely deluding ourselves that we have choices. ...
Immanuel Can wrote:ReliStuPhd:
Quite right. And this is pointed out well by Searle's "Chinese Room" thought experiment. Computers do not think...they merely reproduce instructions by means of a template pattern, and do not use intelligence to produce their outputs, even if those outputs sometimes fool us into thinking they can.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TryOC83PH1g
Not so, neural-net computations do not work this way. In a complex computational neural-net the outcome is determined but the route is not.ReliStuPhD wrote:Computer models aren't exactly analogous to metaphysics. Even if they were, to refer to a computer "choosing" would be an error. Certainly, a choice might exist, but only because the programmer was aware of it. If the programmer was not aware that the computer would have to "choose" between B & C "if A," then the program fails because the computer cannot proceed without instructions (at least so far. "True" AI will change this, of course). Every "choice" the computer makes is determined. Pile on as many lines of code as you wish, but if you are able to hold them all in tension, you can predict the outcome 100 times out of 100. In fact, you would be so certain of your ability to predict the outcomes that a variance would lead you to start looking for the mistake in the line of code or look to your own misunderstanding thereof. There is a reason programs can be represented by flowcharts. In a deterministic world, choices do not exist. The only reason we speak of such is because we (or our programmers) know what choice is, and so impose that framework on the deterministic world.
And yet as the Churchlands pointed out the Chinese Room nicely describes how a neuron works.Immanuel Can wrote:ReliStuPhd:
Quite right. And this is pointed out well by Searle's "Chinese Room" thought experiment. Computers do not think...they merely reproduce instructions by means of a template pattern, and do not use intelligence to produce their outputs, even if those outputs sometimes fool us into thinking they can.[/color
Swap 'Determinism' for 'God's will' and add his usual traits and your argument applies to 'it'. You can't have free-will but you can choose how you get there, as computational neural-nets point out.Immanuel Can wrote:Well, pardon my French, but I would characterize any such statement as simply facile and manifestly untrue.
"Free will" has plenty of proponents on the secular side. The division between Determinists and Voluntarists goes straight down the middle of a whole lot of ideologies. Kant was no determinist. Existentialism is non-deterministic.
In fact, the whole field of secular ethics is by definition non-deterministic, since it asks "What ought we to do?" a question one simply could not coherently ask in a truly Deterministic world...of if one tried, one would only be speaking out of some sort of prior Determinist programming, not issuing a statement with any real-world possibilities.
Argumentation is also premised on voluntarism. For if one cannot choose one's views, one cannot be persuaded to choose otherwise than one does. All positions are then merely situationally determined, not personally believed. And if Determinism is true, then the "god botherers" you are at pains to distain are not able to change their views, nor are you able to change yours.
The whole thing is simply self-contradicting. One cannot "believe" or "disbelieve" in Determinism if Determinism is true: one can only ridiculously play out the hand one has been dealt by forces at work long before one's birth. In short, Determinism is unlivable; and if true, it's also trivial, since no one can resist his/her programming.