"Free will was given to man by god."

[Sculptor]

You are so funny sometimes.

Neuroscience is neuroscience.
You can bang on about creationism as much as you like but the facts are out there.
You can offer a geocentric hypothesis like most of your kind but the fact is that we go round the sun.
And the facts are out there for neuroscience. Your dualism has nothing to recommend it. Free will is a theory that does no work.
You offer Plato.
I offer science.
Take your pick!

Attaboy! Go wild with the nuttiness. Try to commit me to being antiscientific, or geocentric, or Platonic...hey, try for the Inquisition or the Crusades, while you're at it.

I was wrong: you're not funny sometimes, you're funny all the time.

Go Sculpy go.

Sadly, for you, Plato was all you offered.
LOL

[Immanuel Can]

Attaboy! Go wild with the nuttiness. Try to commit me to being antiscientific, or geocentric, or Platonic...hey, try for the Inquisition or the Crusades, while you're at it.

I was wrong: you're not funny sometimes, you're funny all the time.

Go Sculpy go.

Sadly, for you, Plato was all you offered.
LOL

"Flat earth." You forgot that one.

And "alchemy."

Also "conspiring with the Russians."

You're going to have to pick up your straw-man game, Sculpy.

[Belinda]

Immanuel Can replied to me:

Free Will is itself uncaused and is therefore random

.
Sorry: that's just a false dichotomy. The opposite of Deterministic is not "random." Randomness implies the absolute absence of any conditions contributing to the outcome; and no sensible person who believes in free will thinks that's an adequate description of what they're speaking about.

Randonmness implies outwith causation. The opposite of random is necessary. If there is a tiger outside my door it is necessarily outside my door. If I was a murderer I was necessarily a murderer. If I was a saint I was necessarily a saint. If my daffodils flower this spring it will be necessarily so. If I will that my daffodils flower this spring this would make no difference at all to the daffodils.However their flowering itself has causes. If I will it that I am saintly this makes a difference to the outcome as my volition would increase the probability for my future saintliness. But my willing myself to be saintly tomorrow has causes. One of the causes for the daffodils' flowering, or for my encreasing the probability of my being saintly tomorrow are not events which are free from causes. But this Free Will that you believe in is uncaused, and as such it is the only event, apart from God Almighty , which is cause of itself.

Either something is caused or it is cause of itself. It is blasphemous to attribute to men the ability to be cause of themselves, as God and God alone is cause of Himself.

[Immanuel Can]

Randonmness implies outwith causation.

Incorrect. If a roulette wheel can be said to yield random results, it does not mean it's not caused to rotate by anything, nor that no influences (like dishonest barkers) can be involved in the outcome it produces. It just means nobody knows in advance what number will appear.

Again, you're confusing epistemology with ontology there.

The opposite of random is necessary.

No. The opposite of "necessary" is "contingent." The opposite of "random" is "intentional" or "deliberate," perhaps.

Either something is caused or it is cause of itself.

The important question is "Can 'I chose to do it' be a causal explanation?" In other words, is human choice a causal factor in the world. I think it is, and at this moment both you and I are acting like it is...even while you seem to be insisting it's not.

One of the implications of the phrase "made in the image of God," (Genesis 1) may well be the ability to initiate actions. Human being certainly seem to have that capacity, in a way no other creature does. Unlike God, we are not the starting point in the causal chain...we did not make ourselves. But having been created, it seems we have the capacity to initiate and create. We are authors of our actions, and capable of deliberation and choice.

At least, that's how you're acting at the moment, even while you're insisting it can't be so.

[henry quirk]

I don't understand how my having an origin, a source, a cause (the union of my ma and pa) prohibits me from being a *causal agent (a free will).









*The decision(s) I make (are) no mere vector sum of internal and external forces acting upon me during the process of deliberation (if, indeed, I deliberate at all). Rather, I bring it about - directly, you might say - in response to various considerations: I am the source of my own activity, not merely in a relative sense as the most proximate and salient locus of an unbroken chain of causal transactions leading up to this event, but fundamentally, in a way not prefigured by what has gone before. from Agent Causation, Timothy O'Connor

[bahman]

"Free will was given to man by god." This I often hear from theists. I searched the bible and found no support for this from the word of the supposed god.

So this is inference? Or did I miss something.

Will Guffo or somebody else please tell me where the idea of "free will" emerged in christian thinking, and what Christians use as explanation to it in the bible?

Free will is an ability of mind. Mind cannot be created.

[RCSaunders]

Which is wholly deterministic.
Consciousness is driven by the antecedent qualities of the brain.
This is inescapable.

I'm sorry, I just cannot subscribe to the superstitious view that there can be no natural thing that cannot be described in terms of physical properties alone.

You can hardly expect me to take me seriously, when you are the one with the peri-christian superstition.

I'm not trying to convince you, Sculptor, because I'm sure that would not be possible. I think you have been thoroughly indoctrinated in irrational physicalist ideology which physicalists embrace with the same ferocity the religious embrace theirs.

Ad hominems won't help you either.

What ad hominem? If you aren't a physicalist, I apologize. I sincerely believed you thought everything could ultimately be described in terms of the physical.

But I think physicalism really is a mistaken idiology that accepts a specific doctrine (the physical is all there can be) by faith. There is no reason, based on evidence, that doctrine must be so. What, "law," says there cannot be other real attributes to existence beyond the physical attributes. Life and consciousness and the human mind are all real, all evident to all human beings, and cannot be explained in terms of the physical properties alone. I know physicalists believe that they can and will be explained by the physical, "somehow, someday," but they are not explained now, and blindly asserting something based solely on what might be done someday is just credulity.

We all make choices. The fact is that they are meaningless unless determined.
Ask yourself this question.

Imagine a parallel world in which everything was the same.

In each of those worlds there is a copy of you who has been asked to make a choice between coffee or tea.

Which applies.
1) you make the same choice in both worlds
2) you make a different choice in both worlds

If you answered 2, how was that achieved and what does it say about the value of any decision you care to make?

What can you learn about your answer?

Sorry, Sculptor. There are no parallel worlds or other realities. There is only the existence there is. Reason cannot be based on fictional hypotheses. These, "other world," speculations are just secular versions of the dreams of supernatural existences.

[Immanuel Can]

Ad hominems won't help you either.

What ad hominem? If you aren't a physicalist, I apologize.

Don't worry, RC. He doesn't know what a fallacy is. He throws accusations of them around totally out of relevant context.

[Belinda]

I don't understand how my having an origin, a source, a cause (the union of my ma and pa) prohibits me from being a *causal agent (a free will).









*The decision(s) I make (are) no mere vector sum of internal and external forces acting upon me during the process of deliberation (if, indeed, I deliberate at all). Rather, I bring it about - directly, you might say - in response to various considerations: I am the source of my own activity, not merely in a relative sense as the most proximate and salient locus of an unbroken chain of causal transactions leading up to this event, but fundamentally, in a way not prefigured by what has gone before. from Agent Causation, Timothy O'Connor

I see Timothy O'Connor agrees with you.

I don't understand his "fundamentally, in a way not prefigured by what has gone before". I do understand and agree with
" in a way not prefigured by what has gone before." I understand it because each action is unique. Take someone talking, for instance, unless they are doing nothing but quoting or repeating formulas such as public prayers each utterance is unique.
Nobody in the entire history of the world has ever said or written what you wrote above.You are unique because what you do and say is unique. Unless , as I said ,you are repeating formulas . In this regard everyday talk, and poetry, are more likely to deliver unique utterances than the formulaic utterances and platitudes of politicians or priests.


I'd agree it can be hard to hear a unique poem or study a unique work of art and not think the maker is an uncaused creator. Indeed one of the criteria for a great work of art is it's not derived from others' ideas. Whether one is a determinist or a Free Will believer is a matter of faith not reason. I want to believe nature is an ordered affair therefore my bias is towards causal determinism.

The theistic explanation for man's having Free Will and no other animal or plant's having it is human Free Will is a special gift directly from God. This is the only explanation for Free Will. If I believed God intervenes in his plans for the natural world in this way then I could believe in Free Will. But I don't believe God intervenes in nature or history.

[Immanuel Can]

Whether one is a determinist or a Free Will believer is a matter of faith not reason.

That's quite right, actually. But that's because of Determinism. Determinism is so reductive, and so unscientific, that there simply is no test that could possibly either verify or falsify its hypothesis. There's always another way to say, "Well, you only said/did that because X and Y caused you to say/do it."

For example, you'll find it's impossible to disprove my claim if I insist there's no "Belinda," just a collection of atoms assembled by prior accidents that happens to sit in a "Belinda" configuration at the moment, crowned with the "epiphenomenon" of a subjective delusion of Belindaness. Since "Belindaness" is incapable of verification (or falsification) by empirical test, you'll find it impossible to disprove me.

I still might well be wrong, for all that. Maybe there is a real "Belinda." But you can't prove there is. That's the problem with Determinism. It seems to "answer" every objection, not by proving itself right, but by being so broad a hypothesis as to be beyond disproof.

I want to believe nature is an ordered affair therefore my bias is towards causal determinism.

I get that. But "order" isn't an all-or-nothing choice, as in "either everything is programmed, or nothing ever is." You can have a highly ordered environment, but elements of openness to alternatives within it -- especially in regard to the volition of humans.

The theistic explanation for man's having Free Will and no other animal or plant's having it is human Free Will is a special gift directly from God. This is the only explanation for Free Will. If I believed God intervenes in his plans for the natural world in this way then I could believe in Free Will. But I don't believe God intervenes in nature or history.

Well, we don't call it "a special gift." What we say is that the Creator constituted mankind with a will. And we do say that the Supreme Being, if He chooses to do so, can intervene to do something in the material world -- a miracle, if you will. However, we also say that such events are extremely rare historically, and most regularly, the world is allowed to proceed by its own rules and natural laws. (Indeed, that's why we call such interventions "miracles": they're recognized as such by their extreme unusualness, and by the fact that the world does not constantly manifest itself to us in miraculous interventions. "Miracle" is a practical synonym for "extremely rare and contrary-to-expectation event, requiring actual divine involvement).

So there's the order you've been looking for.

[henry quirk]

I don't understand how my having an origin, a source, a cause (the union of my ma and pa) prohibits me from being a *causal agent (a free will).

*The decision(s) I make (are) no mere vector sum of internal and external forces acting upon me during the process of deliberation (if, indeed, I deliberate at all). Rather, I bring it about - directly, you might say - in response to various considerations: I am the source of my own activity, not merely in a relative sense as the most proximate and salient locus of an unbroken chain of causal transactions leading up to this event, but fundamentally, in a way not prefigured by what has gone before. from Agent Causation, Timothy O'Connor

I see Timothy O'Connor agrees with you.

I don't understand his "fundamentally, in a way not prefigured by what has gone before". I do understand and agree with
" in a way not prefigured by what has gone before." I understand it because each action is unique. Take someone talking, for instance, unless they are doing nothing but quoting or repeating formulas such as public prayers each utterance is unique.
Nobody in the entire history of the world has ever said or written what you wrote above.You are unique because what you do and say is unique. Unless , as I said ,you are repeating formulas . In this regard everyday talk, and poetry, are more likely to deliver unique utterances than the formulaic utterances and platitudes of politicians or priests.

I'd agree it can be hard to hear a unique poem or study a unique work of art and not think the maker is an uncaused creator. Indeed one of the criteria for a great work of art is it's not derived from others' ideas. Whether one is a determinist or a Free Will believer is a matter of faith not reason. I want to believe nature is an ordered affair therefore my bias is towards causal determinism.

The theistic explanation for man's having Free Will and no other animal or plant's having it is human Free Will is a special gift directly from God. This is the only explanation for Free Will. If I believed God intervenes in his plans for the natural world in this way then I could believe in Free Will. But I don't believe God intervenes in nature or history.

Again: I don't understand how my having an origin, a source, a cause (the union of my ma and pa) prohibits me from being a causal agent (a free will).

[RCSaunders]

Ad hominems won't help you either.

What ad hominem? If you aren't a physicalist, I apologize.

Don't worry, RC. He doesn't know what a fallacy is. He throws accusations of them around totally out of relevant context.

It's not a bad technique. When in danger of losing an argument because you don't have one, stamp your foot and scream accusations at your opponent. As Heinlein once said, "when in danger or in doubt, run in circles scream and shout." I see a lot of that here.

[Immanuel Can]

What ad hominem? If you aren't a physicalist, I apologize.

Don't worry, RC. He doesn't know what a fallacy is. He throws accusations of them around totally out of relevant context.

It's not a bad technique. When in danger of losing an argument because you don't have one, stamp your foot and scream accusations at your opponent. As Heinlein once said, "when in danger or in doubt, run in circles scream and shout." I see a lot of that here.

"When reason fails us, we must resort to cream pies."

[Sculptor]

I'm sorry, I just cannot subscribe to the superstitious view that there can be no natural thing that cannot be described in terms of physical properties alone.

You can hardly expect me to take me seriously, when you are the one with the peri-christian superstition.

I'm not trying to convince you, Sculptor, because I'm sure that would not be possible. I think you have been thoroughly indoctrinated in irrational physicalist ideology which physicalists embrace with the same ferocity the religious embrace theirs.

Ad hominems won't help you either.

What ad hominem? If you aren't a physicalist, I apologize. I sincerely believed you thought everything could ultimately be described in terms of the physical.

But I think physicalism really is a mistaken idiology that accepts a specific doctrine (the physical is all there can be) by faith. There is no reason, based on evidence, that doctrine must be so. What, "law," says there cannot be other real attributes to existence beyond the physical attributes. Life and consciousness and the human mind are all real, all evident to all human beings, and cannot be explained in terms of the physical properties alone. I know physicalists believe that they can and will be explained by the physical, "somehow, someday," but they are not explained now, and blindly asserting something based solely on what might be done someday is just credulity.

We all make choices. The fact is that they are meaningless unless determined.
Ask yourself this question.

Imagine a parallel world in which everything was the same.

In each of those worlds there is a copy of you who has been asked to make a choice between coffee or tea.

Which applies.
1) you make the same choice in both worlds
2) you make a different choice in both worlds

If you answered 2, how was that achieved and what does it say about the value of any decision you care to make?

What can you learn about your answer?

Sorry, Sculptor. There are no parallel worlds or other realities. There is only the existence there is. Reason cannot be based on fictional hypotheses. These, "other world," speculations are just secular versions of the dreams of supernatural existences.

You need to take responsibility for what you type.

[RCSaunders]

You need to take responsibility for what you type.

Good advice! I'll pass it on.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

--Oscar Wilde