Philosophy Now Forum

Yep, that's a winning argument: tell the other guy he doesn't really exist.

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"Free will is a moot point when one comes to realize that "your name here" is an illusion."

Mebbe 'you' are a fiction, but me, I'm flesh and blood and very real.

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"Spend some time in/as thought free awareness and the illusion of the ego will become apparent."

Nope. Meditate and bury your monkey mind all you like but when the meditation stops the monkey mind (you) comes back. That is: no-mind is the illusion.

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"Fundamentally the mind is describing what is happening; it is not in control of what it thinks it is."

Nope. The mind is the on-going, coherent action of a particular and peculiar kludge. Moreover, it is an action that is in charge of the kludge it rises up from.

"I am not saying we have or not have free will"

Mebbe not, but me and Mannie and Tibor are sayin' we have or are free wills. That is: we're meetin' your ambivalence with certainty.

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"my conclusion is there actually might not exist satisfactory answer"

There is a satisfactory answer, one is keepin' with the experience of every human being who has ever lived and who will ever live, that bein': the human individual has or is a free will (of the agent causation variety).

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"I am saying definition of free will as 'ability to choose otherwise' is wrong"

No, it's not and that's not the entirety of it (free will) by a long shot.

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If we live in a world with no free will and suddenly transport in a world where we have it, there is nothing new, nothing more you could hope to be able to do.

Of course there's sumthin' new, sumthin' different: the absence of 'us' in one, the presence of 'us' in the other. A fundamental element of a person (perhaps the fundamental element) is his capacity to shape and bend and end and begin causal chains. Without free will, we're just jumped up dominos waitin' on the fellow behind to give us a shove. In a very real way personhood and free will are synonomous.

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"what could possibly be the difference between a world with and without free will?"

In a world wihout: we're Roombas; in a world with: we're people.

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"Different physics maybe, how different? Perhaps in one world there are ghosts in the machines, while in the other there are no such ghosts. Or what?"

Might be as simple (and spooky) as a bit of odd computation runnin' in the brain. You don't now, I don't know. What we both know, however, is that we're in charge of ourselves and not merely points of discharge for deterministic forces.

We're agents, not events.

For some reason, you (and a whole whack of other folks) wanna deny what you know is true while I revel in it.

We're miracles and you'd have us be just hairless apes, flingin' poop.

"I guess in a world with free will, most people with a self-aware ego could wipe out the rest of the world simply by willing it."

Nope. Go read Tibor''s essay up-thread. Clearly, you ain't got a clue what free will is (or who it is).

henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed Oct 23, 2019 7:28 pm Yep, that's a winning argument: tel the other guy he doesn't really exist.

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"Free will is a moot point when one comes to realize that "your name here" is an illusion."

Mebbe 'you' are a fiction, but me, I'm flesh and blood and ver real.

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"Spend some time in/as thought free awareness and the illusion of the ego will become apparent."

Nope. Meditate and bury your monkey mind all you like but when the meditation stops the monkey mind (you) come back. That is: no-mind is the illusion.

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"Fundamentally the mind is describing what is happening; it is not in control of what it thinks it is."

Nope. The mind is the on-going, coherent action of a particular and peculiar kludge.

There is next to zero suffering within this consciousness.

I'm just letting ya'll know how it happened.

Just in case you also wish to no longer suffer.

You've been fooled by Xeno's paradox there. You're treating a continuum as if it were discrete moments in time...in geometric terms, you're treating a "ray" as if it were a "broken line." The problem is looking at "who you are" being a "point in time." Gotcha

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Let me rephrase it like this:

1. identity defines choice, relative to circumstances
2. identity can be deterministic description, say encoded in letters and numbers
3. such identity, as deterministic description, is not obstacle for free will
4. therefore, having no ability to choose otherwise does not confirm we have no free will

There's also no joy, no love, no aspirings, no pleasures, no strivings, no dreams, no ambitions, no creations (and damned little hot coffee, I'm thinkin').

For the coffee (and cigarettes) alone, I'll stick with what I (a real person) got, suffering and all.

I guess in a world with free will, most people with a self-aware ego could wipe out the rest of the world simply by willing it.

Wow, psychokinesis! And I have to agree. The mechanism required for that downward causation, that ability for mind to have output interaction with atoms and molecules of our body, has a name already. Mind over matter, it is called telekinesis.

So in a world with free will the freedom of will would be in that it can not only interact with molecules within own body, but also outside of it? I would say this is not senseless, and quite interesting, since if true, it gives us a way to experimentally test it.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed Oct 23, 2019 7:58 pm There's also no joy, no love, no aspirings, no pleasures, no strivings, no dreams, no ambitions, no creations (and damned little hot coffee, I'm thinkin').

For the coffee (and cigarettes) alone, I'll stick with what I (a real person) got, suffering and all.

Traded all that stuff for perfect contentment.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed Oct 23, 2019 7:48 pm "I guess in a world with free will, most people with a self-aware ego could wipe out the rest of the world simply by willing it."

Nope. Go read Tibor''s essay up-thread. Clearly, you ain't got a clue what free will is (or who it is).

You pretend to not care 'bout anythin' cause you're tough, so why suddenly so worked up about your lack of free will?

Anyway I read Tibor Machan's defense now, it's just the usual hogwash. Yes, of course some belief in free will is useful, pretty much necessary for everyday life, I live like that too.

But that doesn't mean that ultimately everything isn't predetermined. Inability to fully predict/understand etc. complex human behaviour, human diversity, doesn't mean that free will is real. That science leaves room for free will but hasn't found it so far, doesn't mean that free will is real. That we can change ourselves through introspection, make everyday choices, and perhaps even much more than that using some odd physics, doesn't mean that free will is real.

Overall Machan is just bad at psychology, the diversity of human personalities baffles him.

Why are you so eager to deny what you know is true (that you have or are a free will)?

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"it's just the usual hogwash."

I disagree (which, if I lack free will, is not my fault).

Zelebg wrote: ↑Wed Oct 23, 2019 8:01 pm

I guess in a world with free will, most people with a self-aware ego could wipe out the rest of the world simply by willing it.

Wow, psychokinesis! And I have to agree. The mechanism required for that downward causation, that ability for mind to have output interaction with atoms and molecules of our body, has a name already. Mind over matter, it is called telekinesis.

So in a world with free will the freedom of will would be in that it can not only interact with molecules within own body, but also outside of it? I would say this is not senseless, and quite interesting, since if true, it gives us a way to experimentally test it.

Yeah, from the will's perspective (whether the will is mental or material, it doesn't really matter), the inside of the body is continuous with the outside of the body.
So either there is no free will, or enough people are using some sort of (apparent, but nonetheless magical to us) free will on the same level, to cancel each other out almost completely.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed Oct 23, 2019 8:20 pm Why are you so eager to deny what you know is true (that you have or are a free will)?

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"it's just the usual hogwash."

I disagree (which, if I lack free will, is not my fault).

What I suspect to be true is that ultimately everything is predetermined, I don't believe in some random supernatural.
But in my everyday life I just forget about this and live like there was free will (maybe in more ways than one).

Well you do that cuz you have no choice (are determined) or cuz your experience of yourself is as a free will (cuz you are one).

Which is more likely?

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"I don't believe in some random supernatural"

I don't either.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed Oct 23, 2019 8:52 pm Well you do that cuz you have no choice (are determined) or cuz your experience of yourself is as a free will (cuz you are one).

Which is more likely?

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"I don't believe in some random supernatural"

I don't either.

The first one is more likely, I was determined to do that.

Genuine free will is supernatural; you can rearrange nature at will.

Zelebg wrote: ↑Wed Oct 23, 2019 4:13 am Imagine something is wrong with your body and we have to transfer your mind to another body, another brain. We make two of new you and to test them we send them to the past. First one behaves exactly as you did, the other acts differently. Does that mean the second one have free will, or something went wrong and is not really you? Is it not the first one obvious choice for your mind-transplant?

Asking for free will is like asking for multiple personality disorder. You can not have it because as soon as you get it you are not you anymore. It seems to me pretty clear 'will' can not be decoupled from 'identity' and thus makes no sense to be 'free'. In other words, what you choose to do in any particular point in time is defined by who you are in that point in time.

So we are robots, not because free will is not physically possible, but because it is not even a logical possibility. If we live in a world with no free will and suddenly transport in a world where we have it, there is nothing new, nothing more you could hope to be able to do. Thus concept of free will is meaningless.

Well, no, not quite. The question of free will remains, it's just not about ability to choose otherwise, but how mind can have true causal power over body, a question of 'downward or top-down causation'. Unfortunately, even if downward causation proves to be real in the strongest sense, it seems to me the question whether it can be classified as free or not will still hold open. The problem looks rather semantic, so at the end the only true answer might as well be that it depends on the context given by the level of abstraction, that is depends on the point of view.

For a person that is trying to convince us that free will doesn't exist, you sure spout a lot of obvious fiction. Are we really to believe one so steeped in fiction, as the only means to argue against free will, has any real thing to contribute to the argument?

It's true that determinism is king, but there is free will within determinism's framework, however so slight it may be. Determinism lends to the fact that there is only one way anything can be.

For instance: it's a fact that sugar is a poison, just ask any PhD in biochemistry. Yet it's also a fact that companies put sugar in almost all processed foods. It's also a fact that soda or pop as some call it, is simply sugar water with a little artificial coloring and flavor. So wait a minute, why do some people drink the stuff? There's the determinism of the animals want/need to survive, yet there's the determinism of the human need to fit in, be influenced, peer pressured, taste buds preferring sweet(relatively safe) to bitter(largely poison), to name but a few, so which adhere to which choice that can be made as to their consumption? Determinism? Free will?

John Wayne got lung cancer in one lung, it was removed and he was told to quit smoking, he continued until the other was cancerous, and he then died of lung cancer. I smoked for 15 years, tried to quit for 14 years, and finally was strong enough. Unlike John Wayne I decided I wanted to live a long life instead of smoke, while John wanted to enjoy smoking instead of living a long life. Relatively where was determinism in all the cases presented above. Knowledge and want were different. Knowledge, determined? Want, determined? Belief, determined?

The facts are that as to animate objects, life, no one can be certain about cause and effect. With inanimate objects sure! But with animals that have brains, even though they be created through determinism, who is to say that determinism can't cause objects, (brains), capable of changing the cause and effect chain of universal existence?

Why do some choose to save their own life while leaving others to die?
Why do some choose to save others, knowing that theirs shall be forfeit? Determinism? Really? Can you be certain?

Keep in mind that scientists still don't know everything about the brain, so how could you possibly say you know, with absolute certainty?

I make choices that I determine based upon my choices to follow the path I choose. Many times I have come to a fork in the road of choice, and it was sometimes influenced(determined) by others but at others, especially with age, (amassed knowledge) I have made choices that countered those previous. Where was the determinism?

The truth is no one can be certain!

'I only know, that I don't know!' --Socrates--

I'm not checking this for errors, I just don't feel like it!