The free will argument

[9-10ths_Penguin]

As I said before, I would appeal to personal experience, it feels as if I have free will it feels as if I could have chosen otherwise, and there is not an argument against it.


Therefore I am justified in believing in free will.

For a logical proof, "I am justified in believing it" isn't enough. You need to show that not only is your premise a reasonable premise; you need to show that it's the only ooption that could possibly be true.

This is the same type of logic that you would use if I ask you "how do you know that you are in a real physical world, and not in the Matrix?"

It's not, and we don't. Not with absolute certainty, anyhow.

But for argument's sake, let's take it as given for the time being that free will exists; what would this have to do with God?

 

[leroy]

I am just contesting that this entails the existence of a God. Whether we have (libertarian) free will or not, is the second premise, not the first. I am still at the first, even though I agree that it is easier, and therefore less fun, to kill the second.

For instance, even if I do not believe it for a second, it is theoretically possible that consciousness transcends physics as we know it today. That would make it possible, at least in principle, since we know not a lot of how brains create conscious thought, to define true freedom of choice, but yet still in the context of a godless Universe.

So, again, let us assume that my choices are not determined by the laws of nature as we know them today, whatever they are, how do you go from that to the existence of a God? Does natural indetermination of my choice of food entails the existence of a conscious creator of the Universe? How so?

Ciao

- viole

1 If the natural laws that control the electric impulses in your brain are deterministic (or random)

2 And your choices are fully determined by these electrical impulses

3 Then it follows that your choices are deterministic (or random)

4 If you claim that choices are free then you would have to belive in a metaphysical reality that exists independently of the deterministic (or random) laws of nature..... I call this metaphysical reality "God" atleast in a broad sence (feel free to give it an other name)


So do you grant 1,2,3 and 4? If not, why not? Which point would you deny?

@9-10ths_Penguin

But for argument's sake, let's take it as given for the time being that free will exists; what would this have to do with God?

The answer is above

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

1 If the natural laws that control the electric impulses in your brain are deterministic (or random)

2 And your choices are fully determined by these electrical impulses

3 Then it follows that your choices are deterministic (or random)

4 If you claim that choices are free then you would have to belive in a metaphysical reality that exists independently of the deterministic (or random) laws of nature..... I call this metaphysical reality "God" atleast in a broad sence (feel free to give it an other name)


So do you grant 1,2,3 and 4? If not, why not? Which point would you deny?

What in your definition of free will implies that "free will" decisions can't be deterministic or random?

 

[`mud]

`will` equals `response` equals `action`
`God` knows all motions of every person.
`God` knows every thought in one's mind.
Once one releases the trigger,
throw the `god`damned grenade !

 

[ratiocinator]

4 If you claim that choices are free then you would have to belive in a metaphysical reality that exists independently of the deterministic (or random) laws of nature..... I call this metaphysical reality "God" atleast in a broad sence (feel free to give it an other name)

But the determinism versus random is simply a logical constraint that applies to anything that changes its state over time (as anything that makes choices must do). It has nothing to do with the constraints of the laws of nature. Unless your "God" can decorate its walls with triangular circles, i.e. do the logically self-contradictory, free will (being able to have done differently without any randomness) is impossible regardless of any metaphysical reality you might make up.

What's more, if you could resolve the logical contradiction, unless you're going to claim to know everything about the physical world (be omniscient at least with regard to physical reality), then we couldn't rule out a natural explanation involving some, as yet unknown, aspect of nature, so your argument still wouldn't work.

 

[Thief]

Why does science needs to investigate them? It is a automatic memory reorganization exercise, very much akin to defragmentation of a computer disk, which the brain has determined by your usage of it - something like what Google bots do to provide you a better search result.

but you don't control your dreams......doooooo you

 

[Thief]

`will` equals `response` equals `action`
`God` knows all motions of every person.
`God` knows every thought in one's mind.
Once one releases the trigger,
throw the `god`damned grenade !

not sure what you meant by this

but I like the way you said it

 

[Aupmanyav]

but you don't control your dreams......doooooo you

They are not supposed to be controlled. Dreams are doodles of mind. Come morning, and they should be forgotten. As I said memory defragmentation is an automatic process based on what my mind has in its hard-disk according to my needs over the last 77 years.

 

[Thief]

They are not supposed to be controlled. Dreams are doodles of mind. Come morning, and they should be forgotten. As I said memory defragmentation is an automatic process based on what my mind has in its hard-disk according to my needs over the last 77 years.

well.....no

science is not yet sure what dreams are made of.....BUT

if you DON'T
you will be nearly crazy by the end of the week

 

[`mud]

hey @Thief
Isn't `will` the action needed ?
Isn't `God` the grenade ?
Who controls who
I know...godidit

 

[Thief]

hey @Thief
Isn't `will` the action needed ?
Isn't `God` the grenade ?
Who controls who
I know...godidit

well yeah

Someone had to be First

BANG!

 

[viole]

1 If the natural laws that control the electric impulses in your brain are deterministic (or random)

2 And your choices are fully determined by these electrical impulses

3 Then it follows that your choices are deterministic (or random)

4 If you claim that choices are free then you would have to belive in a metaphysical reality that exists independently of the deterministic (or random) laws of nature..... I call this metaphysical reality "God" atleast in a broad sence (feel free to give it an other name)


So do you grant 1,2,3 and 4? If not, why not? Which point would you deny?

@9-10ths_Penguin

The answer is above

Well, even if that was the case, metaphysical reality does not entail a God. How do you infer that? You would be surprised how many atheists believe in a metaphysical reality. Many here left God to believe now in some sort of spiritual, albeit unconscious force, whatever that means. I guess something in the line of Star Wars metaphysics. The point is that metaphysics per se, entails a god as much as physics does.

And again, even though I tend to agree that the alternative to naturalism/materialism is metaphysics, I cannot possibly prove that the dichotomy is correct. It could be that there are phenomena, we currently don't know about, that intervene when consciousness arises and they are not reducible to the physical events you mentioned.

I mean, even if I am definetely on the side of naturalism, and of the reduction of my behaviour/choices to natural deterministic mechanisms, the debate about the true mechanisms involved in consciousness (a necessary condition for free choices) is still raging, and I expect it will rage until we know more about the subject. I am an irreducible reductionist, but that is me, and I definitely cannot be sure until we know more.

Are we Turing machines, for instance? Or are other mechanisms at play that makes our mind not reducible to a machine, or to anything else physical we know about? Is that reducible, in the same way this web site is reducible to some transistors, or is it holistic, and therefore not reducible to its constituents? Until we answer that, we cannot really know what mechanisms determine the choices we do, if any. And therefore, the inference of metaphysics, even in the absence of the physical mechanisms you mentioned, might be premature.

Now, all of this is irrelevant if the basic principles of physics are true, since they entail clearly that true libertarian free will does not exist. IOW: any physical change of the state of the universe, like me driving a car today or not, must be already contained in the physical information available before my existence. So, the principle has the power of making it irrelevant what mechanisms control our choices, holistic or whatever, by already dictating what our choices will be.

Which would move us to the dismantling of the second premise.

Ciao

- viole

 

[Thief]

Many here left God to believe now in some sort of spiritual, albeit unconscious force, whatever that means. I guess something in the line of Star Wars metaphysics.

exactly....

May the Force be with you

but I believe in a Spirit of mind and heart
and we are born without Him

gotta find the way back

 

[Aupmanyav]

Many here left God to believe now in some sort of spiritual, albeit unconscious force, whatever that means. I guess something in the line of Star Wars metaphysics.

The force that I believe in is not at all spiritual, it is totally physical. It is what we may have started with at the time of Big Bang, a ball of energy that exploded. Which means whatever exists in the universe now including humans, animals, vegetation, non-living objects, is constituted by that alone. That is 'Advaita' philosophy of Hinduism (non-duality). Which also means no deities, since that will be duality.

 

[viole]

exactly....

May the Force be with you

but I believe in a Spirit of mind and heart
and we are born without Him

gotta find the way back

May the Farce be with you, too

Ciao

- viole

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

The force that I believe in is not at all spiritual, it is totally physical. It is what we may have started with at the time of Big Bang, a ball of energy that exploded. Which means whatever exists in the universe now including humans, animals, vegetation, non-living objects, is constituted by that alone. That is 'Advaita' philosophy of Hinduism (non-duality). Which also means no deities, since that will be duality.

You believe and don't believe, because you have truth. So here is the duality for you - I don't believe in your truth and I can do it, because you are looking at it. So your model doesn't work because you can't account for false, wrong, unreal, nonsense and what not. Or indeed individual humans.
I believe in the Wrong One.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Perfectly OK with us. We are familiar with not just two options (yes or no) but seven options of Jainism (Anekantavada/Syadavada):

"Syādvāda is a theory of qualified predication, states Koller. It states that all knowledge claims must be qualified in many ways, because reality is many-sided. It is done so systematically in later Jain texts through saptibhaṅgīnaya or "the theory of sevenfold scheme". These saptibhaṅgī seem to be have been first formulated in Jainism by the 5th or 6th century CE Svetambara scholar Mallavadin, and they are:

Affirmation: syād-asti—in some ways, it is,
Denial: syān-nāsti—in some ways, it is not,
Joint but successive affirmation and denial: syād-asti-nāsti—in some ways, it is, and it is not,
Joint and simultaneous affirmation and denial: syād-asti-avaktavyaḥ—in some ways, it is, and it is indescribable,
Joint and simultaneous affirmation and denial: syān-nāsti-avaktavyaḥ—in some ways, it is not, and it is indescribable,
Joint and simultaneous affirmation and denial: syād-asti-nāsti-avaktavyaḥ—in some ways, it is, it is not, and it is indescribable,
Joint and simultaneous affirmation and denial: syād-avaktavyaḥ—in some ways, it is indescribable."
Anekantavada - Wikipedia

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Perfectly OK with us. We are familiar with not just two options (yes or no) but seven options of Jainism (Anekantavada/Syadavada):

"Syādvāda is a theory of qualified predication, states Koller. It states that all knowledge claims must be qualified in many ways, because reality is many-sided. It is done so systematically in later Jain texts through saptibhaṅgīnaya or "the theory of sevenfold scheme". These saptibhaṅgī seem to be have been first formulated in Jainism by the 5th or 6th century CE Svetambara scholar Mallavadin, and they are:

Affirmation: syād-asti—in some ways, it is,
Denial: syān-nāsti—in some ways, it is not,
Joint but successive affirmation and denial: syād-asti-nāsti—in some ways, it is, and it is not,
Joint and simultaneous affirmation and denial: syād-asti-avaktavyaḥ—in some ways, it is, and it is indescribable,
Joint and simultaneous affirmation and denial: syān-nāsti-avaktavyaḥ—in some ways, it is not, and it is indescribable,
Joint and simultaneous affirmation and denial: syād-asti-nāsti-avaktavyaḥ—in some ways, it is, it is not, and it is indescribable,
Joint and simultaneous affirmation and denial: syād-avaktavyaḥ—in some ways, it is indescribable."
Anekantavada - Wikipedia

Now make all that just one as really just one.

 

[Aupmanyav]

'Maya'. All additional things, dualities, multiplicities disappear.

 

[leroy]

Well, even if that was the case, metaphysical reality does not entail a God. How do you infer that? You would be surprised how many atheists believe in a metaphysical reality. Many here left God to believe now in some sort of spiritual, albeit unconscious force, whatever that means. I guess something in the line of Star Wars metaphysics. The point is that metaphysics per se, entails a god as much as physics does.

Fare point, I should have used “metaphysical reality” instead of God in the argument.

And again, even though I tend to agree that the alternative to naturalism/materialism is metaphysics, I cannot possibly prove that the dichotomy is correct.

Sure, “Prove” is a very strong word but based on what we know “electric impulses in your brain” are deterministic (or random) therefore materialism leads to the conclusion that probably* there is no free will…. Sure there is always a possibility that maybe there is something material that we yet don’t understand but even flat earthers or YEC can use the same excuse “maybe there is an unknown mechanism that made radioactive decay faster 6,000 years ago making the earth look old, when is young.

Now, all of this is irrelevant if the basic principles of physics are true, since they entail clearly that true libertarian free will does not exist.

- viole

grated that is my point, so should we move to premise 2?