Free will is wholly deterministic

[Immanuel Can]

What leads to your choosing. I mean, in your own experience. You could listen to your conscience or you could, I don't know, yell at your wife and demean her. You make a choice. How?

Your own choice.

I think you're stuck on the idea that choice must be "caused," not voluntary. But that's just adopting one a priori assumption rather than another. And personally, I'd rather go with the a priori assumption that people manifestly use all the time, rather than the one with which people have never, in the entire history of the human race, been able to live out at all. That just makes sense.

So unless the Determinist can prove I should not, then he's out of luck. It's not my job to prove to him what's already the working principle of the entire human race -- especially, if he cannot do anything to prove his own or to live it out.

A determinist would argue that you make that choice based on values and emotions and desires. You love this person. You have been told to honor this person. You think it is good to not demean someone, especially a loved one. You want to reciprocate her kindness towards you. And so on and so on.

Are you saying something other than your values, desires, sense of the good, fear perhaps of her reactions and so on is causal and you call this will? I don't know what that word means.

Ironically, that "Determinists" is using free will language to try to make his explanation work. He's referred to my personal "desires" and "emotions," to "love," to "honour," to "good" and duties of "reciprocity" and "kindness." All these things are immaterial entities -- meaning that they're not physical in nature, and can't be measured in a beaker or heated up with a Bunsen burner, or spread out on a table and dissected -- they are factors in my will, but not the totality of it. "Will" itself is not easy to get ahold of. But neither is "self" or "personhood," and certainly not "morality" or "feeling." And yet these are realities with which we all live every day.

So again, the burden to prove is on the Determinist, not the believer in will.

[promethean75]

"Ironically, that "Determinists" is using free will language to try to make his explanation work. He's referred to my personal "desires" and "emotions," to "love," to "honour," to "good" and duties of "reciprocity" and "kindness." All these things are immaterial entities -- meaning that they're not physical in nature"

U have to use freewill language becuz our language is just a mobile army of metaphors anyway (as N called it) and we have to add a subject to our directive statements in order for them to make sense, so we use reflexive pronouns as our grammar subject. But remember your boy N when he said that when lightening strikes we separate the action from the subject, the doer from the deed, the lightening from the striking... but there is only the striking, only the action in which the subject and predicate are same event.

But anyway all those things u mention are concepts, yes, but they are meaningful only through and as, human behavior. They describe only human behaviors, not platonic categories or universal objects (Forms).

I believe it was skinner who said something like 'it isn't that there are no mental events, only that they're irrelevant', referring to the supremacy of purely empirical research in human behavior over psychology and philosophy.

[Age]

What leads to your choosing. I mean, in your own experience. You could listen to your conscience or you could, I don't know, yell at your wife and demean her. You make a choice. How?

Your own choice.

I think you're stuck on the idea that choice must be "caused," not voluntary. But that's just adopting one a priori assumption rather than another. And personally, I'd rather go with the a priori assumption that people manifestly use all the time, rather than the one with which people have never, in the entire history of the human race, been able to live out at all. That just makes sense.

So unless the Determinist can prove I should not, then he's out of luck. It's not my job to prove to him what's already the working principle of the entire human race -- especially, if he cannot do anything to prove his own or to live it out.

So, to 'this one' the "other side" HAVE TO PROVE 'their claims', while 'i' and "my side" do NOT have to prove 'our claims'.

A determinist would argue that you make that choice based on values and emotions and desires. You love this person. You have been told to honor this person. You think it is good to not demean someone, especially a loved one. You want to reciprocate her kindness towards you. And so on and so on.

Are you saying something other than your values, desires, sense of the good, fear perhaps of her reactions and so on is causal and you call this will? I don't know what that word means.

Ironically, that "Determinists" is using free will language to try to make his explanation work. He's referred to my personal "desires" and "emotions," to "love," to "honour," to "good" and duties of "reciprocity" and "kindness." All these things are immaterial entities -- meaning that they're not physical in nature, and can't be measured in a beaker or heated up with a Bunsen burner, or spread out on a table and dissected -- they are factors in my will, but not the totality of it. "Will" itself is not easy to get ahold of. But neither is "self" or "personhood," and certainly not "morality" or "feeling." And yet these are realities with which we all live every day.

So again, the burden to prove is on the Determinist, not the believer in will.

[Iwannaplato]

Your own choice.

That's not really saying anything. Do your choices not come out of your values, desires, goals...?

I think you're stuck on the idea that choice must be "caused," not voluntary.

See, here you are jumping to talking about me and my mind. You're not doing it in a particularly insulting way, but instead of explicating your position, you jump to talking about what you think mine is (and you're not correct) and then psychologizing me.

A determinist would argue that you make that choice based on values and emotions and desires. You love this person. You have been told to honor this person. You think it is good to not demean someone, especially a loved one. You want to reciprocate her kindness towards you. And so on and so on.

Are you saying something other than your values, desires, sense of the good, fear perhaps of her reactions and so on is causal and you call this will? I don't know what that word means.

Ironically, that "Determinists" is using free will language to try to make his explanation work. He's referred to my personal "desires" and "emotions," to "love," to "honour," to "good" and duties of "reciprocity" and "kindness." All these things are immaterial entities -- meaning that they're not physical in nature, and can't be measured in a beaker or heated up with a Bunsen burner, or spread out on a table and dissected -- they are factors in my will, but not the totality of it. "Will" itself is not easy to get ahold of. But neither is "self" or "personhood," and certainly not "morality" or "feeling." And yet these are realities with which we all live every day.

That's not answering the question. Again, you focus on problems you perceive on the other side, rather than explaining or answering in relation to your position. Here you conflate physicalism with determinism. You could have a dualist or idealist or other determinism.

So again, the burden to prove is on the Determinist, not the believer in will.

OK, you didn't answer. You followed a common pattern on line. Attack what you see as the opposing or only different possible position, rather than explain your own position.

You did give a kind of ad populum arguement which is an odd argument to choose given that you are a Christian and most people are not Christians and further you don't consider most people identifying as Christians to be real Christians.

But the main problem is you have no explanation or won't share it or think for some strange reason there's no need because it's popular. Of course, you don't need to, as a person. You have no motivation to justify your belief. Which leads to not responding directly to what I wrote, but rather going off on tangents.

I'll leave it here.

[Wizard22]

What is "Non-deterministic" to the Determinists? Things and phenomena which we cannot predict? Which is beyond our knowledge and science?

So how is it then, that only in our small degree of knowledge, can we then say that Humans are 'determined'? Only by what we know, right now?

And if we ever learn any new knowledge, insights granted which reveal patterns underneath phenomena, then those are 'determined' too?

So all that humans know, or ever could know, will always be determined...why? Why is it 'determined' that what we know, is what is determined?

[Wizard22]

And how could humans possibly 'know' differently from one-another?

To know otherwise, would not be Determined, would it?

[Wizard22]

And how do "Soft Determinists" reconcile Free-Will with Determinism?

You have Free-Will...but only when you're "not coerced" (by others)?

When are people ever not coerced??? When you live alone in the woods? Then, and only then, do you have Free-Will, and are Not Determined?



I suspect Iwanna and Flannel will jump here and say "but muh Compatiblism!"

So how is Free-Will compatible with Determinism? Selective-reasoning? See with one eye open at a time? Then the other?

Sometimes Free-Will, Sometimes Determinism, pick & choose philosophical Buffet style? Do you want some shrimp with your steak?

[Iwannaplato]

And how could humans possibly 'know' differently from one-another?

Yeah, if there's determinism then everything has to be the same.

[Iwannaplato]

I suspect Iwanna and Flannel will jump here and say "but muh Compatiblism!"

Your suspicion is ungrounded.

[Iwannaplato]

What is "Non-deterministic" to the Determinists? Things and phenomena which we cannot predict? Which is beyond our knowledge and science?

There is no determinist who thinks that everything can be predicted. Humans have limited knowledge.

[Wizard22]

Yeah, if there's determinism then everything has to be the same.

That's not what I meant, and you know it.

Your suspicion is ungrounded.

But you didn't say I was wrong...

[Wizard22]

There is no determinist who thinks that everything can be predicted. Humans have limited knowledge.

It doesn't matter, because everything that is known is determined/deterministic, isn't it???

[Wizard22]

Let's cut to the chase, shall we, Iwanna...

To Determinists, the only things which can be Non-Determined, are things which humanity either does not know, or cannot possibly know?

And in that, infinite ignorance, that we can never hope to cure, there is hypothetically a "Free-Will", right?!



So Free-Will is not based upon what people know, but what they don't know... according to the Determinists.

[Immanuel Can]

Your own choice.

That's not really saying anything. Do your choices not come out of your values, desires, goals...?

"Come out of"? No, that's not the right wording.

What we can safely say is that values, goals and desires are considerations within a cognitive process that eventually ends in a personal decision. They are contributory factors to the landscape within which decision takes place. But the personal decision itself is not the sum of them.

You can tell, because it's quite normal for a person to be able to choose contrary to a personal desire, value or even goal, -- even if afterward, feeling bad for doing it. If Determinism were true, we could only ever capitulate to the sum or our desires, values and goals...which we wouldn't even really have, because "desire," "value" and "goal" are personal words, not physical words, and not descriptions of nodes in a simple causal chain, as your question would suppose. These apparently mental phenomena would actually be no more than physical ones.

The key differentiator between presumptive Determinism and the concept of free will is simply this: can a human being's own volition arbitrate among the "antecedent conditions" and produce the initiation of a causal chain. That is, can only material preconditions commence such a chain, or can a decision by a human being commence such a chain?

And since neither hypothesis can be absolutely eliminated, we have to go with arguments for the highest probability answer to that, if we limit ourselves to purely secular tests.

The highest probability is clearly the theory that best describes how ordinary human beings act every day, as we observe them and ourselves. The weaker theory is the one that no person has ever been able to practice. So the burden-to-prove lands on the weaker theory, which is Determinism, obviously.

I think you're stuck on the idea that choice must be "caused," not voluntary.

See, here you are jumping to talking about me and my mind. You're not doing it in a particularly insulting way, but instead of explicating your position, you jump to talking about what you think mine is (and you're not correct) and then psychologizing me.

I wasn't "psychologizing" at all, actually. I was trying to make a statement based on your own claim of Determinism. A Determinist logically HAS to believe that. If he doesn't, he's betrayed his own Determinism, because he's admitted that human beings are not mere products of Deterministic "antecedent conditions," but is an initiator of causal chains.

Are you with me, yet?

A determinist would argue that you make that choice based on values and emotions and desires. You love this person. You have been told to honor this person. You think it is good to not demean someone, especially a loved one. You want to reciprocate her kindness towards you. And so on and so on.

Here you conflate physicalism with determinism. You could have a dualist or idealist or other determinism.

I'm not familiar with Idealist Determinism. Maybe you can spell out for me how that would work, if "ideas" are all there is, but there's no "personhood" to explain the "having of ideas." Is that some form of Panpsychism? I would think that would be very hard to make coherent...but I'm prepared to hear it, if you can explain it.

OK, you didn't answer. You followed a common pattern on line. Attack what you see as the opposing or only different possible position, rather than explain your own position.

I'm merely showing that the Determinist is wrong to suppose his theory is the default. It's not. The default would be belief in free will. So the free will person is under no obligation to mount a defense until the Determinist offers a challenge to what is clearly the normal default supposition.

Remember: we're attempting a probabilistic analysis here. We both realize we can't get an absolute one. So the whole debate will hinge on which one is the most probable, not which is absolutely certain. And at present, "most probable" clearly describes the assumption by which we all live, every day, not the theory nobody lives by.

But the main problem is you have no explanation or won't share it

I am attempting to share it. But I understand the problem.

If one's suppositions are already Deterministic, then the opponents refusal to concede those assumptions can seem obdurate and evasive: "Why won't he talk about "causes" when I ask him what "causes" volition," for example. But it's because I cannot accept the term "cause" as a proper descriptor of the process of will. It's a category error: and to concede it would not only be to capitulate to Determinism before beginning, but would be misleading and false, as well.

So what I'm asking you to do is a bit tougher: I'm asking you to temporarily shelve your Deterministic thought patterns, and to cognitively position yourself to see free will the way I can see Determinism...from the inside, not as a pre-committed Determinist. And I'm not saying you have to agree with me, but I am hoping you can get a chance to understand the view from inside...and I think you might even want to, just for your own information's sake, if for no better reason.

[henry quirk]

What does?

I do. I'm an active player in the arena history and circumstance form. I choose what aspects of either are worth my consideration. Both can press on me; neither can dictate to me.

That's not a direct response to what I wrote. I didn't write about obligations to have a certain reaction to a traumatic event.

You wrote: Given that you have roots, values, temperment, desires, what you choose is caused by what has gone before/what is before in you.

I responded: I am not obligated by biology, psychology, or the laws of physics to fear dogs becuz I was bitten by one. The event informed me, it didn't, necessarily, infirm me. I choose where I stand when it comes to dogs. Not the unfortunate event.

Seems clear to me: what has gone before (a dog bite) is not the cause of what I choose today when it comes to dogs. I am the cause. I can choose to be afraid (to give way to fear of dogs); I can choose not to be afraid (to recognize the fear of dogs as unwarranted).

you are not responding to my point about what a determinist needs or does not need to believe.

I wrote: A necessitarian, if necessitarianism is true, doesn't actually believe anything anymore than the free will, if neccessitarianism is true, is actually free.

The necessitarian doesn't need to, or not need to, believe anything, becuz, if necessitarianism is true, he literally has no choice in the matter. He will (appear to) believe whatever he is determined to, by cause and effect, reaching all the way back to the Beginning. If necessitarianism is true the necessitarian believes in necessitarianism only becuz he is caused to.

As I say: if necessitarianism is true, we're all utterly mired in causal chains. Our thoughts, which seem original to us, couldn't be anything other than what they are. Our choices aren't choices at all. They're events issuing forth from events.

On the other hand: if the necessitarian is actually a libertarian free will then he is the cause of his foolish belief that he is not the cause of his foolish belief.