compatibilism

[Iwannaplato]

I did not mean falsifiable in Popper's sense as applied to empirical theory and induction. I meant falsifiable as deducible from Einstein's theory of special relativity. If someone believes they chose from a position of Free Will , they are not taking into account that they are not only an agent of their choice but also related to relative causes of their choice.

I can't see how...

Special relativity is an explanation of how speed affects mass, time and space. The theory includes a way for the speed of light to define the relationship between energy and matter — small amounts of mass (m) can be interchangeable with enormous amounts of energy (E), as defined by the classic equation E = mc^2.

affects the possibility of free choice. And I can't see where it add more constraints than Newtonian mechanics. And there could be multiverse explanations for free will, so everything in this universe has certain causal effect chains, but one can slide from one to another. This is another way of saying using deduction for falsifiability is a problem, but it depends on the limited view of science, for example, at this stage in time. One could have used deduction to say that something cannot possibly be both a particle and a wave, say in 1900. One could have produced a nice deduction showing that qualities associated with did not fit the other and drawn a hard conclusion, but then science advanced the deduction no longer held.

Einstein's SR could possibly rule out faster than light travel, but many physicists think there are way around this. For example...
https://earthsky.org/space/warp-drive-c ... ce-travel/

Things that seem clear via deduction may very well not be.

Which does not mean that I believe in free will, I just think caution is advisable around deduction and ruling out. People rule things out all the time that then later turn out to be the case or possible. And that's during shortish periods of time, like a decade. How much ruling out conclusions will seem ungrounded in 100 years?

[Belinda]

I suspect you know more physics than I. By mentioning Einstein's theory of Special Relativity I meant only that events relate not only to laws of science( as per Newton) but also to the standpoint of the observer.

Dasein is where and how he is from his own point of view and he can't be otherwise than where and how he is. Dasein is not a stick or stone and he learns and changes to suit his environment as he perceives it to be. However he remains at all times Dasein. He is the observer as described by Einstein. His observations are a relation between laws of science and his own Dasein.

Since Dasein can't be otherwise than where his genetic inheritance and his culture have thrown him then he can't originate Dasein. Absolutely Free Will is impossible, and can't be compatible with a world in which every event relates to every other event.

I am aware there are odd happenings like subatomic particles influencing each other at a distance which seems chaotic. However Dasein is not a subatomic particle.

[iambiguous]

Philosophers and scientists (materialists) have difficulty dealing with the hard problem of consciousness, how unconscious matter can become conscious. Compatibilists have the same difficulty, how nonfree matter can become free. They however deal with another problem too: how something nonfree can be free. Strong emergence could be the only viable answer for the emergence of consciousness and free will. I however have an argument against strong emergence: To show this consider a system with many parts each part has a set of properties. Now let’s assume that the system has a specific property. This property should not be reducible in terms of properties of parts if it is a strong emergent property. There must however be a reason that the system has this property rather than any other property. This means that there is a function that describes the property of the system. The only available variables are however the properties of parts. Therefore the property of the system must be a function of the properties of parts. Therefore there is no strong emergence since the existence of the function implements that the property of the system is reducible to the properties of parts.

In my view, you're still stuck though. Just like all the rest of us.

I am stuck in what? What is wrong with my argument?

But my point still revolves around you demonstrating that you made your argument of your own free will. In a wholly determined universe as some understand it, there are no right or wrong arguments...not if the arguments themselves were never not able to be made. That's the part we're all stuck in.

Thus...

Thinking up arguments regarding the existence of strong emergence is not the same thing as demonstrating experientially and experimentally that you thought this up freely.

Consciousness/free will can only be justified from the first-person perspective.

So what? First person, second person, third person. They're all intertwined in the only possible reality if human brains are themselves interchangeable with all other matter in nature.

Unless of course...

Or, instead, that when non-conscious/non-living matter "somehow" evolved into conscious/living matter here on planet Earth, it included autonomy when matter "somehow" became human consciousness.

There are two problems here (if we focus on materialism): First, you need to prove that matter is not conscious, and second, you need to show how matter could become conscious.

But that's my point. The brain scientists working with actual functioning brains are hard at work trying to come up with answers to questions like this. The physicists and chemists and others are working on the nature of matter/energy itself.

On the other hand, how are philosophers here not merely defining and deducing their own answers into existence? A bunch of words defending the meaning of another bunch of words.

What, your own "world of words" here is somehow different?

In what way?

Consequently...

As for the reason it is one or the other, we may as well discuss the reason there is something instead of nothing. Or the reason there is or is not a God.

We just don't know. Either ontologically or teleologically.

Again, there is only the life that we lived precipitating a unique set of personal experiences, uniquely personal communications with others and uniquely personal things that we read or heard or became aware of.

In other words, necessarily excluding all of the experiences and relationships and information and knowledge that did not become a part of our profoundly problematic sense of reality. But that could given new experiences, relationships and access to information and knowledge.

Here for example.

Anyway, take your "intellectual contraption" above and imagine you are explaining it to Mary, grappling with whether to abort or not to abort her pregnancy. Strong emergence or not for her given how there are compatibilists who argue that she is both compelled to abort her pregnancy and morally responsible for doing so.

Are you a compatibilist? What is your position?

I was once a strong proponent of free will. Then over time the arguments of the determinists persuaded me to "switch sides". Then both "the gap" and "Rummy's Rule" cautioned me to accept that "I", an "infinitesimally tiny speck of existence in the vastness of all there is", almost certainly hasn't come up with the one and the only truly ontological assessment.

And then the far more profound mystery that is teleology.

Anyway, philosophically, my main interest revolves around this: "how ought one to live in a world awash in both conflicting goods and in contingency, chance and change?"

And, re this thread, the part where compatibilists seem able to make the claim that determinism is reconcilable with moral responsibility.

Now, as with your conjectures regarding something and nothing, you have "thought up" the conclusion here that "the mind intervenes and freely chooses one of the options."

And how exactly do you go about actually demonstrating it?

What do you want me to demonstrate? Are you able to choose? If yes, then you are not mere matter and have a mind that is free since I showed that the strong emergence is impossible.

Again, you noted how you think about it. You did not demonstrate that how you think about it necessarily establishes that human autonomy exists. Otherwise, you could take your conclusions to the folks at the American Philosophical Association or the American Physical Society [or their equivalent in other countries] and attempt to have them either verified or falsified.

And I suspect no one else has finally pinned it down because if they had, how would this not be the most discussed topic of all? In both the APA and the APS.

I am documenting my stuff. But for those who read this here, I can prove that free will is real.

Okay, presuming that "somehow" the human brain did acquire autonomy, why don't you take your conclusions to the folks at Philosophy Now magazine or Scientific American magazine, and seek to publish an article proving it to their readers.

Instead, in my view, you go back up into the clouds in order to and define and deduce your answer into existence:

There are two types of decisions: Conditional, and free. To elaborate, think of a situation with two options, A and B. Suppose that you like A more than B and you decide on A. This is the conditional decision. Free decision can happen in three different situations: When you equally like A and B and decide on one of the options, when the future outcome of A and B are not known and decide on one of the options, and when you like A more than B but unconditionally decide on B for no specific reason. It should be obvious that a non-free thing cannot for example decide on one option when the future outcome of A and B are not known.

How is this not a "general description intellectual contraption" such that if others agree with the meaning that you give to the words, they agree that it's true?

Or, again, take this to Mary, where A is she aborts, and B is she does not. See what is obvious to her.

[bahman]

In my view, you're still stuck though. Just like all the rest of us.

I am stuck in what? What is wrong with my argument?

But my point still revolves around you demonstrating that you made your argument of your own free will. In a wholly determined universe as some understand it, there are no right or wrong arguments...not if the arguments themselves were never not able to be made. That's the part we're all stuck in.

Thus...

There is no right or wrong argument?

Thinking up arguments regarding the existence of strong emergence is not the same thing as demonstrating experientially and experimentally that you thought this up freely.

Consciousness/free will can only be justified from the first-person perspective.

So what? First person, second person, third person. They're all intertwined in the only possible reality if human brains are themselves interchangeable with all other matter in nature.

Unless of course...

I mean you cannot build something and say it is conscious or not. So forget about justifying free will or consciousness experimentally.

Or, instead, that when non-conscious/non-living matter "somehow" evolved into conscious/living matter here on planet Earth, it included autonomy when matter "somehow" became human consciousness.

There are two problems here (if we focus on materialism): First, you need to prove that matter is not conscious, and second, you need to show how matter could become conscious.

But that's my point. The brain scientists working with actual functioning brains are hard at work trying to come up with answers to questions like this. The physicists and chemists and others are working on the nature of matter/energy itself.

On the other hand, how are philosophers here not merely defining and deducing their own answers into existence? A bunch of words defending the meaning of another bunch of words.

What, your own "world of words" here is somehow different?

In what way?

Consequently...

Again, that is the duty of metaphysics rather than physics or chemistry.

As for the reason it is one or the other, we may as well discuss the reason there is something instead of nothing. Or the reason there is or is not a God.

We just don't know. Either ontologically or teleologically.

Again, there is only the life that we lived precipitating a unique set of personal experiences, uniquely personal communications with others and uniquely personal things that we read or heard or became aware of.

In other words, necessarily excluding all of the experiences and relationships and information and knowledge that did not become a part of our profoundly problematic sense of reality. But that could given new experiences, relationships and access to information and knowledge.

Here for example.

Anyway, take your "intellectual contraption" above and imagine you are explaining it to Mary, grappling with whether to abort or not to abort her pregnancy. Strong emergence or not for her given how there are compatibilists who argue that she is both compelled to abort her pregnancy and morally responsible for doing so.

Are you a compatibilist? What is your position?

I was once a strong proponent of free will. Then over time the arguments of the determinists persuaded me to "switch sides". Then both "the gap" and "Rummy's Rule" cautioned me to accept that "I", an "infinitesimally tiny speck of existence in the vastness of all there is", almost certainly hasn't come up with the one and the only truly ontological assessment.

And then the far more profound mystery that is teleology.

Anyway, philosophically, my main interest revolves around this: "how ought one to live in a world awash in both conflicting goods and in contingency, chance and change?"

And, re this thread, the part where compatibilists seem able to make the claim that determinism is reconcilable with moral responsibility.

People believe in all sorts of wrong and strange things, such as compatibilism.

Now, as with your conjectures regarding something and nothing, you have "thought up" the conclusion here that "the mind intervenes and freely chooses one of the options."

And how exactly do you go about actually demonstrating it?

What do you want me to demonstrate? Are you able to choose? If yes, then you are not mere matter and have a mind that is free since I showed that the strong emergence is impossible.

Again, you noted how you think about it. You did not demonstrate that how you think about it necessarily establishes that human autonomy exists. Otherwise, you could take your conclusions to the folks at the American Philosophical Association or the American Physical Society [or their equivalent in other countries] and attempt to have them either verified or falsified.

And I suspect no one else has finally pinned it down because if they had, how would this not be the most discussed topic of all? In both the APA and the APS.

I am documenting my stuff. But for those who read this here, I can prove that free will is real.

Okay, presuming that "somehow" the human brain did acquire autonomy, why don't you take your conclusions to the folks at Philosophy Now magazine or Scientific American magazine, and seek to publish an article proving it to their readers.

Instead, in my view, you go back up into the clouds in order to and define and deduce your answer into existence:

Let's wait for it.

There are two types of decisions: Conditional, and free. To elaborate, think of a situation with two options, A and B. Suppose that you like A more than B and you decide on A. This is the conditional decision. Free decision can happen in three different situations: When you equally like A and B and decide on one of the options, when the future outcome of A and B are not known and decide on one of the options, and when you like A more than B but unconditionally decide on B for no specific reason. It should be obvious that a non-free thing cannot for example decide on one option when the future outcome of A and B are not known.

How is this not a "general description intellectual contraption" such that if others agree with the meaning that you give to the words, they agree that it's true?

Or, again, take this to Mary, where A is she aborts, and B is she does not. See what is obvious to her.

Have you ever had options in your life?

[iambiguous]

I am stuck in what? What is wrong with my argument?

But my point still revolves around you demonstrating that you made your argument of your own free will. In a wholly determined universe as some understand it, there are no right or wrong arguments...not if the arguments themselves were never not able to be made. That's the part we're all stuck in.

Thus...

There is no right or wrong argument?

Not in the manner which most who embrace free will think of it. Why? Because we are able to freely think of one argument rather than another. And we are free to demonstrate why one argument is right and another argument is wrong. But if we are not able to argue other than as our brains compel us to what does it really mean to call one argument right and another argument wrong when we are never free, in turn, to call it other than as our brains compel us to?

I merely suggest that, even given free will, in the absence of God, there do not appear to be right and wrong philosophical/ethical arguments in regard to moral conflicts.

Thinking up arguments regarding the existence of strong emergence is not the same thing as demonstrating experientially and experimentally that you thought this up freely.

Consciousness/free will can only be justified from the first-person perspective.

So what? First person, second person, third person. They're all intertwined in the only possible reality if human brains are themselves interchangeable with all other matter in nature.

I mean you cannot build something and say it is conscious or not. So forget about justifying free will or consciousness experimentally.

In a wholly determined universe as some understand it, you cannot not build anything at all other than as your brain compels you to. Human consciousness derived from human brains being interchangeable with all other matter. That's their point.

We just don't know how to explain how nature managed to create self-conscious matter in the first place. Unless of course someone here can link me to the definitive explanation.

And if they insist it all goes back to God, a demonstration that He Himself does in fact exist.

Or, instead, that when non-conscious/non-living matter "somehow" evolved into conscious/living matter here on planet Earth, it included autonomy when matter "somehow" became human consciousness.

There are two problems here (if we focus on materialism): First, you need to prove that matter is not conscious, and second, you need to show how matter could become conscious.

But that's my point. The brain scientists working with actual functioning brains are hard at work trying to come up with answers to questions like this. The physicists and chemists and others are working on the nature of matter/energy itself.

On the other hand, how are philosophers here not merely defining and deducing their own answers into existence? A bunch of words defending the meaning of another bunch of words.

What, your own "world of words" here is somehow different?

In what way?

Again, that is the duty of metaphysics rather than physics or chemistry.

And how is this relevant to the point I make here? As far as I am concerned in a free will world the duty of the metaphysician is to demonstrate that what he or she believes is not merely encompassed in a "world of words".

And, so far, if you have succeeded in accomplishing that here I missed it.

On the other hand, who is to say that human brain matter is even capable of accomplishing it? We may well be the equivalent of the Flatlanders. Never really able to grasp that third dimension as we in the third dimension do.

Then this part:

"According to string theory, one of the leading physics model of the last half century, the universe operates with 10 dimensions." Smithsonian Magazine

All 10 wholly determined?

As for the reason it is one or the other, we may as well discuss the reason there is something instead of nothing. Or the reason there is or is not a God.

We just don't know. Either ontologically or teleologically.

Again, there is only the life that we lived precipitating a unique set of personal experiences, uniquely personal communications with others and uniquely personal things that we read or heard or became aware of.

In other words, necessarily excluding all of the experiences and relationships and information and knowledge that did not become a part of our profoundly problematic sense of reality. But that could given new experiences, relationships and access to information and knowledge.

Here for example.

Anyway, take your "intellectual contraption" above and imagine you are explaining it to Mary, grappling with whether to abort or not to abort her pregnancy. Strong emergence or not for her given how there are compatibilists who argue that she is both compelled to abort her pregnancy and morally responsible for doing so.

Are you a compatibilist? What is your position?

I was once a strong proponent of free will. Then over time the arguments of the determinists persuaded me to "switch sides". Then both "the gap" and "Rummy's Rule" cautioned me to accept that "I", an "infinitesimally tiny speck of existence in the vastness of all there is", almost certainly hasn't come up with the one and the only truly ontological assessment.

And then the far more profound mystery that is teleology.

Anyway, philosophically, my main interest revolves around this: "how ought one to live in a world awash in both conflicting goods and in contingency, chance and change?"

And, re this thread, the part where compatibilists seem able to make the claim that determinism is reconcilable with moral responsibility.

People believe in all sorts of wrong and strange things, such as compatibilism.

Yes, but in regard to human brain matter itself and anything that we believe, were we ever able to opt not to believe it...to believe something else instead? That's the mind-boggling quandary here. We just don't know. Or, perhaps, many different people claim to know many different conflicting things.

Then what?

Again, you noted how you think about it. You did not demonstrate that how you think about it necessarily establishes that human autonomy exists. Otherwise, you could take your conclusions to the folks at the American Philosophical Association or the American Physical Society [or their equivalent in other countries] and attempt to have them either verified or falsified.

And I suspect no one else has finally pinned it down because if they had, how would this not be the most discussed topic of all? In both the APA and the APS.

I am documenting my stuff. But for those who read this here, I can prove that free will is real.

Okay, presuming that "somehow" the human brain did acquire autonomy, why don't you take your conclusions to the folks at Philosophy Now magazine or Scientific American magazine, and seek to publish an article proving it to their readers.

Instead, in my view, you go back up into the clouds in order to and define and deduce your answer into existence:

Let's wait for it.

And, with any luck, the wait will be on our own terms.

There are two types of decisions: Conditional, and free. To elaborate, think of a situation with two options, A and B. Suppose that you like A more than B and you decide on A. This is the conditional decision. Free decision can happen in three different situations: When you equally like A and B and decide on one of the options, when the future outcome of A and B are not known and decide on one of the options, and when you like A more than B but unconditionally decide on B for no specific reason. It should be obvious that a non-free thing cannot for example decide on one option when the future outcome of A and B are not known.

How is this not a "general description intellectual contraption" such that if others agree with the meaning that you give to the words, they agree that it's true?

Or, again, take this to Mary, where A is she aborts, and B is she does not. See what is obvious to her.

Have you ever had options in your life?

Again, however, the spooky mystery here -- going all the way back to why there is something and not nothing, and why it is this something and not something else -- is whether Mary's conscious option to abort is no less wholly determined, and thus a mere psychological illusion, than a volcano's nonconscious option to erupt.

Sure, a part of me scoffs at the idea that they are the same. I "just know" it's ridiculous. But another part of me can't explain how the matter that became human brains did acquire autonomy.

If it is truly extraordinary matter, how and why did it get that way? Some say God of course but others [scientists and philosophers] are grappling to unearth other possible explanations.

But then back around to the mystery of whether they themselves are pursuing this of their own volition. And isn't it the sheer mind-boggling reality of reality itself that led those like Einstein to grapple with something akin to religion?

[Belinda]

Iambiguous wrote:

Again, however, the spooky mystery here -- going all the way back to why there is something and not nothing, and why it is this something and not something else -- is whether Mary's conscious option to abort is no less wholly determined, and thus a mere psychological illusion, than a volcano's nonconscious option to erupt.

There is something rather than nothing because nothing depends upon something to pre-exist it so that its absence is nothing. This dictum can be and is applied to all experiences from the sublime notion that 'evil is absence of good' to the banal "I thought I bought eggs but now I find there are none in the house". Or "You said you'd make the coffee but you have done nothing about it."

In all cases when people think of nothing there is an imaginary something that is not there after all. This imaginary something was always a possibility. It's not impossible that evil is absence of ambient good. It's not impossible that I had bought eggs or that she did make the coffee. What would be impossible is that there be no good at all, or that she waved a magic wand and the coffee appeared.

Therefor the idea of nothing depends upon some possibility . True, there are a myriad possibilities that may or may not be actualised but impossibilities are nothing.

Volcanos that erupt or not as the case may be are possibililities . Mary's decision was a possibility but Mary, unlike the volcano, had an active view to her future and various factors determined her decision , and it was those factors that caused Mary to decide an abortion was probably her best course of action

[bahman]

But my point still revolves around you demonstrating that you made your argument of your own free will. In a wholly determined universe as some understand it, there are no right or wrong arguments...not if the arguments themselves were never not able to be made. That's the part we're all stuck in.

Thus...

There is no right or wrong argument?

Not in the manner which most who embrace free will think of it. Why? Because we are able to freely think of one argument rather than another. And we are free to demonstrate why one argument is right and another argument is wrong.

No. We are not free to say that an argument is right or wrong. An argument is either right or wrong.

But if we are not able to argue other than as our brains compel us to what does it really mean to call one argument right and another argument wrong when we are never free, in turn, to call it other than as our brains compel us to?

First, thinking is the ability of the mind and not the brain. Second, we can agree on the trueness of an argument through discussion.

I merely suggest that, even given free will, in the absence of God, there do not appear to be right and wrong philosophical/ethical arguments in regard to moral conflicts.

First, how does the existence of a God resolve moral conflicts? Second, could we please focus on the problem of compatibilism?

Thinking up arguments regarding the existence of strong emergence is not the same thing as demonstrating experientially and experimentally that you thought this up freely.

Consciousness/free will can only be justified from the first-person perspective.

So what? First person, second person, third person. They're all intertwined in the only possible reality if human brains are themselves interchangeable with all other matter in nature.

I mean you cannot build something and say it is conscious or not. So forget about justifying free will or consciousness experimentally.

In a wholly determined universe as some understand it, you cannot not build anything at all other than as your brain compels you to. Human consciousness derived from human brains being interchangeable with all other matter. That's their point.

But they are wrong. There is no such a thing as strong emergence.

We just don't know how to explain how nature managed to create self-conscious matter in the first place. Unless of course someone here can link me to the definitive explanation.

There will never be a link that can answer the hard problem of consciousness.

Or, instead, that when non-conscious/non-living matter "somehow" evolved into conscious/living matter here on planet Earth, it included autonomy when matter "somehow" became human consciousness.

There are two problems here (if we focus on materialism): First, you need to prove that matter is not conscious, and second, you need to show how matter could become conscious.

But that's my point. The brain scientists working with actual functioning brains are hard at work trying to come up with answers to questions like this. The physicists and chemists and others are working on the nature of matter/energy itself.

On the other hand, how are philosophers here not merely defining and deducing their own answers into existence? A bunch of words defending the meaning of another bunch of words.

What, your own "world of words" here is somehow different?

In what way?

Again, that is the duty of metaphysics rather than physics or chemistry.

And how is this relevant to the point I make here? As far as I am concerned in a free will world the duty of the metaphysician is to demonstrate that what he or she believes is not merely encompassed in a "world of words".

It is not the world of words, it is called arguments that human beings can understand and agree upon.

And, so far, if you have succeeded in accomplishing that here I missed it.

Yes, you are missing my argument against strong emergence. Matter cannot become free no matter how you wire it.

On the other hand, who is to say that human brain matter is even capable of accomplishing it? We may well be the equivalent of the Flatlanders. Never really able to grasp that third dimension as we in the third dimension do.

And what is the thing we cannot accomplish?

Then this part:

"According to string theory, one of the leading physics model of the last half century, the universe operates with 10 dimensions." Smithsonian Magazine

All 10 wholly determined?

Yes, to the best of our knowledge matter seems to behave deterministically. We still don't have a theory for quantum gravity.

As for the reason it is one or the other, we may as well discuss the reason there is something instead of nothing. Or the reason there is or is not a God.

We just don't know. Either ontologically or teleologically.

Again, there is only the life that we lived precipitating a unique set of personal experiences, uniquely personal communications with others and uniquely personal things that we read or heard or became aware of.

In other words, necessarily excluding all of the experiences and relationships and information and knowledge that did not become a part of our profoundly problematic sense of reality. But that could given new experiences, relationships and access to information and knowledge.

Here for example.

Anyway, take your "intellectual contraption" above and imagine you are explaining it to Mary, grappling with whether to abort or not to abort her pregnancy. Strong emergence or not for her given how there are compatibilists who argue that she is both compelled to abort her pregnancy and morally responsible for doing so.

Are you a compatibilist? What is your position?

I was once a strong proponent of free will. Then over time the arguments of the determinists persuaded me to "switch sides". Then both "the gap" and "Rummy's Rule" cautioned me to accept that "I", an "infinitesimally tiny speck of existence in the vastness of all there is", almost certainly hasn't come up with the one and the only truly ontological assessment.

And then the far more profound mystery that is teleology.

Anyway, philosophically, my main interest revolves around this: "how ought one to live in a world awash in both conflicting goods and in contingency, chance and change?"

And, re this thread, the part where compatibilists seem able to make the claim that determinism is reconcilable with moral responsibility.

People believe in all sorts of wrong and strange things, such as compatibilism.

Yes, but in regard to human brain matter itself and anything that we believe, were we ever able to opt not to believe it...to believe something else instead? That's the mind-boggling quandary here. We just don't know. Or, perhaps, many different people claim to know many different conflicting things.

It is not matter believing. We can realize what is right or wrong through critical thinking.

Then what?

They are simply wrong. I argued against strong emergence.

Again, you noted how you think about it. You did not demonstrate that how you think about it necessarily establishes that human autonomy exists. Otherwise, you could take your conclusions to the folks at the American Philosophical Association or the American Physical Society [or their equivalent in other countries] and attempt to have them either verified or falsified.

And I suspect no one else has finally pinned it down because if they had, how would this not be the most discussed topic of all? In both the APA and the APS.

I am documenting my stuff. But for those who read this here, I can prove that free will is real.

Okay, presuming that "somehow" the human brain did acquire autonomy, why don't you take your conclusions to the folks at Philosophy Now magazine or Scientific American magazine, and seek to publish an article proving it to their readers.

Instead, in my view, you go back up into the clouds in order to and define and deduce your answer into existence:

Let's wait for it.

And, with any luck, the wait will be on our own terms.

Let's wish that they understand my arguments.

There are two types of decisions: Conditional, and free. To elaborate, think of a situation with two options, A and B. Suppose that you like A more than B and you decide on A. This is the conditional decision. Free decision can happen in three different situations: When you equally like A and B and decide on one of the options, when the future outcome of A and B are not known and decide on one of the options, and when you like A more than B but unconditionally decide on B for no specific reason. It should be obvious that a non-free thing cannot for example decide on one option when the future outcome of A and B are not known.

How is this not a "general description intellectual contraption" such that if others agree with the meaning that you give to the words, they agree that it's true?

Or, again, take this to Mary, where A is she aborts, and B is she does not. See what is obvious to her.

Have you ever had options in your life?

Again, however, the spooky mystery here -- going all the way back to why there is something and not nothing, and why it is this something and not something else -- is whether Mary's conscious option to abort is no less wholly determined, and thus a mere psychological illusion, than a volcano's nonconscious option to erupt.

Sure, a part of me scoffs at the idea that they are the same. I "just know" it's ridiculous. But another part of me can't explain how the matter that became human brains did acquire autonomy.

If matter is determined then it cannot become free. I think that is quite clear. I provided my argument against strong emergence.

If it is truly extraordinary matter, how and why did it get that way? Some say God of course but others [scientists and philosophers] are grappling to unearth other possible explanations.

Neither God nor evolution cannot make non-free matter free.

But then back around to the mystery of whether they themselves are pursuing this of their own volition. And isn't it the sheer mind-boggling reality of reality itself that led those like Einstein to grapple with something akin to religion?

Have you ever had an option in your life?

[iambiguous]

There is no right or wrong argument?

Not in the manner which most who embrace free will think of it. Why? Because we are able to freely think of one argument rather than another. And we are free to demonstrate why one argument is right and another argument is wrong.

No. We are not free to say that an argument is right or wrong. An argument is either right or wrong.

Huh? If we are not free to say that an argument is right or wrong...if, instead, we are compelled by our brains wholly in sync with the laws of matter to say only that which we could never not say, then both the arguments and our reaction to them are a manifestation of the only possible reality in the only possible world.

It's like in a dream we argue one thing or another and then wake up to realize we didn't really argue anything at all; it was all our brain, chemically and neurologically, creating the entire context.

Then we are compelled to argue that the waking brain is "somehow" different from the dreaming brain.

But if we are not able to argue other than as our brains compel us to what does it really mean to call one argument right and another argument wrong when we are never free, in turn, to call it other than as our brains compel us to?

First, thinking is the ability of the mind and not the brain. Second, we can agree on the trueness of an argument through discussion.

Right, and both the scientific and the philosophical communities are there to back you up 100% about where the brain ends and the mind begins.

And even assuming we do possess free will, when will we all agree on the trueness of the conflicting arguments that revolve around, say, the rationality of the recent Supreme Court ruling on Roe?

Thus...

I merely suggest that, even given free will, in the absence of God, there do not appear to be right and wrong philosophical/ethical arguments in regard to moral conflicts.

First, how does the existence of a God resolve moral conflicts? Second, could we please focus on the problem of compatibilism?

Well, if someone's God is said to be both omniscient and omnipotent, and able to send you up or down on Judgment Day, that would seem to encompass a resolution for many.

As for compatibilism, are there any compatibilists here? If so, how would you reconcile determinism and moral responsibility? Mary cannot not abort her fetus but she is still morally responsible for doing it.

In a wholly determined universe as some understand it, you cannot not build anything at all other than as your brain compels you to. Human consciousness derived from human brains being interchangeable with all other matter. That's their point.

But they are wrong. There is no such a thing as strong emergence.

Ah, another one of your conclusions that revolve entirely around a world of words, such that it is true if others agree entirely with the definitions that you give to words...words that, to the best of my knowledge, are never connected to, say, a mathematical confirmation or to experimental data that can be replicated by others.

We just don't know how to explain how nature managed to create self-conscious matter in the first place. Unless of course someone here can link me to the definitive explanation.

There will never be a link that can answer the hard problem of consciousness.

When it comes to the staggering mystery that is existence itself, never say never. And if the "hard problem of consciousness" can never be answered, why on Earth should others accept that you assessments here, what, come the closest to one?

The brain scientists working with actual functioning brains are hard at work trying to come up with answers to questions like [these]. The physicists and chemists and others are working on the nature of matter/energy itself.

On the other hand, how are philosophers here not merely defining and deducing their own answers into existence? A bunch of words defending the meaning of another bunch of words.

What, your own "world of words" here is somehow different?

In what way?

Again, that is the duty of metaphysics rather than physics or chemistry.

And how is this relevant to the point I make here? As far as I am concerned in a free will world the duty of the metaphysician is to demonstrate that what he or she believes is not merely encompassed in a "world of words".

It is not the world of words, it is called arguments that human beings can understand and agree upon.

Then show us where your own arguments are in fact linked to mathematical proofs and/or to experimental data and can make predictions about human behavior and/or be replicated by others in the scientific community working with actual functioning brains.

And, so far, if you have succeeded in accomplishing that here I missed it.

Yes, you are missing my argument against strong emergence. Matter cannot become free no matter how you wire it.

Again, given free will, I'm not qualified to not miss it. You need to take your arguments [and demonstrative proof] to those who are better qualified. In particular to the scientific community...those who are not just exchanging arguments alone.

It's not for nothing that...

"'Hard' sciences include things like physics, math, and chemistry, while 'soft' sciences include things like sociology and philosophy."

On the other hand, who is to say that human brain matter is even capable of accomplishing it? We may well be the equivalent of the Flatlanders. Never really able to grasp that third dimension as we in the third dimension do.

And what is the thing we cannot accomplish?

Connecting the dots between what we think we know about determinism and free will and all that would need to be known about them going back to all that would need to be known about existence itself.

Given that each of us is but "an infinitesimally tiny speck of existence in the simply mind-boggling vastness of all there is."

They sent the Webb telescope up there to explore just how staggerling vast "all there is" might actually be.

People believe in all sorts of wrong and strange things, such as compatibilism.

Yes, but in regard to human brain matter itself and anything that we believe, were we ever able to opt not to believe it...to believe something else instead? That's the mind-boggling quandary here. We just don't know. Or, perhaps, many different people claim to know many different conflicting things.

It is not matter believing. We can realize what is right or wrong through critical thinking.

No, for me it is always about the gap between what we claim to believe about determinism and free will and compatibilism and what we can actually demonstrate empirically, experientially, experimentally that all rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn.

Again, however, the spooky mystery here -- going all the way back to why there is something and not nothing, and why it is this something and not something else -- is whether Mary's conscious option to abort is no less wholly determined, and thus a mere psychological illusion, than a volcano's nonconscious option to erupt.

Sure, a part of me scoffs at the idea that they are the same. I "just know" it's ridiculous. But another part of me can't explain how the matter that became human brains did acquire autonomy.

If matter is determined then it cannot become free. I think that is quite clear. I provided my argument against strong emergence.

Right, your argument. Your own "world of words".

Challenge...

Google "strong emergence":

https://www.google.com/search?q=strong+ ... nt=gws-wiz

Try to note the arguments that best connect to the world of actual human interactions. Note in turn which arguments are particalary relevant to the subject of compatibilism and moral responsibilty. My own main interest here.

But then back around to the mystery of whether they themselves are pursuing this of their own volition. And isn't it the sheer mind-boggling reality of reality itself that led those like Einstein to grapple with something akin to religion?

Have you ever had an option in your life?

Who among us hasn't? This thread however explores the extent to which it can be demonstrated "beyond a world of words" whether these options were real or only a psychological illusion sustained by human brains that function wholly in accordance with the laws of matter precipitating the only possible reality in the only possible world.

That, in other words, when we exercise options in our dreams that is not the same as exercising them in the waking world.

And no way would I argue that they must be the same. Only that the scientific community to the best of my current knowledge has not demonstrated how and why they are different.

[phyllo]

As for compatibilism, are there any compatibilists here? If so, how would you reconcile determinism and moral responsibility? Mary cannot not abort her fetus but she is still morally responsible for doing it.

If Mary cannot not abort, then other people cannot not hold her responsible for doing it.

[Iwannaplato]

As for compatibilism, are there any compatibilists here? If so, how would you reconcile determinism and moral responsibility? Mary cannot not abort her fetus but she is still morally responsible for doing it.

If Mary cannot not abort, then other people cannot not hold her responsible for doing it.

They can always say they cannot not hold her responsible. (Though I've noticed few determinists who are willing to go this far, to deny their own rationality, rationally)

[phyllo]

As for compatibilism, are there any compatibilists here? If so, how would you reconcile determinism and moral responsibility? Mary cannot not abort her fetus but she is still morally responsible for doing it.

If Mary cannot not abort, then other people cannot not hold her responsible for doing it.

They can always say they cannot not hold her responsible. (Though I've noticed few determinists who are willing to go this far, to deny their own rationality, rationally)

That's a particular version/interpretation of determinism ... nobody has any control over anything. The actor can't prevent the action and the judge can't prevent the judgement. What is there to discuss ?

But that's the version that Iambiguous keeps presenting to us.

What is 'responsibility' anyways?

If a serial killer can't stop himself from killing then he has to be restrained. Is that holding him morally responsible or is it accepting that he is irresponsible and therefore he must be externally controlled?

[Iwannaplato]

That's a particular version/interpretation of determinism ... nobody has any control over anything. The actor can't prevent the action and the judge can't prevent the judgement. What is there to discuss ?

But that's the version that Iambiguous keeps presenting to us.

So, you were sort of parodying him?

What is 'responsibility' anyways?

If a serial killer can't stop himself from killing then he has to be restrained. Is that holding him morally responsible or is it accepting that he is irresponsible and therefore he must be externally controlled?

Sure, I see no reason that believing in determinism means one cannot, for example, put people in prison. 'cannot' in the sense that it would be somehow hypocritical. I don't see that it would be. And of course one can fall back on the excuse that someone else makes for the punished person. If someone says 'But he couldn't help but do what he did.' One can respond and I can't help wanting that person off the streets so my family is safer. No hypocrisy nor a morality precluded by an ontology.

[phyllo]

So, you were sort of parodying him?

No. I'm still trying to get him to recognize the error of this ways.

If Mary has no control, then nobody has any control.

Yet he posts as if somebody should be doing something differently ... the people judging Mary, for example.

[iambiguous]

As for compatibilism, are there any compatibilists here? If so, how would you reconcile determinism and moral responsibility? Mary cannot not abort her fetus but she is still morally responsible for doing it.

If Mary cannot not abort, then other people cannot not hold her responsible for doing it.

Yep, that's my point too. Nothing in a universe that is wholly determined is exempt from the immutable laws of matter.

Except [so far] there is not a definitive conclusion/consensus that has been reached among scientists, philosophers and theologians to confirm that our universe is in fact wholly determined.

We don't even know if attempts to reach one was or was not inevitably set into motion at the Big Bang. Let alone before it.

Maybe the Webb telescope will find God and He will explain it.

And, with any luck at all, it's your God.

[iambiguous]

But that's the version that Iambiguous keeps presenting to us.

Okay, here's the challenge:

Experientially and experimentally, come up with hard evidence that you freely came up with hard evidence in order to demonstrate that iambiguous freely presented his version or was never able to not present his version.

What is 'responsibility' anyways?

Same thing.

Experientially and experimentally, come up with hard evidence that you freely came up with hard evidence in order to demonstrate what responsibility is...and not just whatever the laws of nature compel your brain to compel you to claim it is.

Bringing it all back around to Mary and Jane.

If a serial killer can't stop himself from killing then he has to be restrained. Is that holding him morally responsible or is it accepting that he is irresponsible and therefore he must be externally controlled?

Right, like those who restrain him were not in turn never able not to restrain him. Again, back to this...

"A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants." Schopenhauer.

The killer wants to kill
You want to restrain him