compatibilism

So what's really going on?

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Flannel Jesus
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Re: compatibilism

Post by Flannel Jesus »

He makes these accusations against me. Just as iwannaplato does. I ask them to sustain a discussion with me that would allow them to note over and again just why their accusations are applicable.
iambiguous wrote: Wed May 17, 2023 5:38 pm
Flannel Jesus wrote: Wed May 17, 2023 5:29 pm Note to biggy: no one cares about your squabbles with other people. There's probably no "others" to whom your notes matter.
:lol:

No, seriously.
The accusations are clearly applicable. You just did it. I don't need to create a new conversation to justify the accusations, you're doing the thing without any extra prompting necessary
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

Post by iambiguous »

Yo, iwannaplato!

Click.

Here's another "post" from Satyr:
Lorikeet/satyr wrote:Translation
Karen wants me to leave.
That was in reference to a quote from William Gaddis on my Mundane Ironist thread at ILP
Merry Christmas! the man threatened.
Ah, Satyr at ILP once upon a time. Now, however, he suspected, it's Christmas there 12 months a years. :lol:
Here's the thing...

Every December Satyr would come back to ILP to post as Lorikeet. This was possible because ILP had long since stopped being a respectable philosophy forum under Carleas, Only_Humean, Faust, Uccisore and others. Back then Satyr was banned from posting because he was simply unable to stop himself from leveling vicious personal attacks on all those who dared not to agree with him. If only about everything.

Once Dan took over as moderator he could post any damn thing he pleased again. Now, however, Flannel Jesus prohibits him from splattering the opposition with declamatory ad homs.

In fact, what I am really curious about is why on Earth he started posting again in the "off-season". My best guess is that his name started popping up here at PN in my exchanges with AJ. I was pummeling him as usual and it so infuriated him that his teeny tiny audience of sycophants at KT just wasn't enough for him. So he started posting again to the teeny tiny audience at ILP.

On the other hand, why doesn't he post here? Or does he? Is he AJ? Did he once post here but got banned for being, well, himself? Does he contain himself and post as another member here?

Anyway, he claims that I want him gone at ILP. When, of course, I couldn't care less where he posts. In fact, back in the old days at ILP, I was always suggesting that ILP ought to create the equivalent of the dungeon there. That way members only could read his stuff. And, of course, allow me another venue to make a complete fool of him as well.
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

Post by iambiguous »

Flannel Jesus wrote: Wed May 17, 2023 5:43 pm
He makes these accusations against me. Just as iwannaplato does. I ask them to sustain a discussion with me that would allow them to note over and again just why their accusations are applicable.
iambiguous wrote: Wed May 17, 2023 5:38 pm
Flannel Jesus wrote: Wed May 17, 2023 5:29 pm Note to biggy: no one cares about your squabbles with other people. There's probably no "others" to whom your notes matter.
:lol:

No, seriously.
The accusations are clearly applicable. You just did it. I don't need to create a new conversation to justify the accusations, you're doing the thing without any extra prompting necessary
Pick one:

:shock: 8) :lol: :oops: :wink: :roll:

Then really really, really seriously.

Oh, yeah, almost forgot:

Click
Iwannaplato
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Re: compatibilism

Post by Iwannaplato »

It's an awkward position having to thank someone for unintentionally (?) confirming what you've said about them.
Flannel Jesus
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Re: compatibilism

Post by Flannel Jesus »

I've never let awkwardness stop me from anything, so biggy, thank you
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

Post by iambiguous »

Daniel Dennett is Wrong About Free Will
by Daniel Miessler
Transparency is key

Harris:

If you don’t know what your soul is going to do, you are not in control.

Dennett:

Really? When you drive a car, are you not in control? You know “your soul” is going to do the right thing, whatever in the instant it turns out to be, and that suffices to demonstrate to you, and the rest of us, that you are in control. Control doesn’t get any more real than that.

I am stunned that he calls this an argument.
How on earth does one even begin to intertwine the "soul" here into free will, determinism and compatibilism? Unless one speaks of a soul in a No God world, wouldn't it always come back to God? And thus beyond our ever grasping until and unless God Himself chooses to reveal Himself.

I suppose for some philosophers the "soul" is just the word they use to describe that aspect of a mere mortal's Being in a No God world that the Self itself can be reduced down to. The Real Me.

But that inevitably gets tricky because if this core Self does exist where does the part about autonomy fit in?

Though even with God it can all get problematic:
Let’s try this with feeling God.

Really? When you pray, are you not feeling God? You know “your soul” is going to do the right thing, whatever in the instant it turns out to be, and that suffices to demonstrate to you, and the rest of us, that you are feeling God. Feeling God doesn’t get any more real than that.
Only here we're back to "somehow" reconciling an omniscient God with feeling Him. How, if God knows all, does that not include what you did, do or ever will feel about Him? You pray for only that which an all-knowing God already knew that you would pray for. So, how, for all practical purposes, does that unfold exactly? Nothing is not always real in a world where either an omniscient God or the immutable laws of matter prevail.
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

Post by iambiguous »

Free Will Is Real and Materialism Is Wrong
Michael Egnor
Particulars are specific things in nature that are presented to the mind by our senses — an apple sitting on my desk, or a wedding ring on a finger, or a friend walking into an office. Universals, on the other hand, are concepts that do not have physical instantiation in nature. The beauty of the red color of an apple, love for a spouse symbolized by a wedding ring, musings about the nature of humanity occasioned by a friend in an office are all examples of universals. Goodness, truth, and justice are universals.
First of all, last light on a PBS Nova documentary, the extraordinary relationship between the human brain, the human mind and human senses aired: https://youtu.be/HU6LfXNeQM4

Above all else, in my view, it explored just how large [or small] the gap might be between what we think and feel and sense about the reality of the world around us and the role the brain does play in making all of this in part an illusion.

And while the apple and the ring and musings of a friend might be particular instances of reality, to speak of color and love and the nature of humanity in terms of "goodness, truth, and justice"? The documentary above made it clear that the color of the apple itself is something that is created in the brain. As for love and the nature of humanity, scientists don't even know yet if we possess the free will necessary to opt for our personal assessments, let alone whether given particular contexts an understanding of love and humanity can be pinned down.
Our senses present us with particulars. We see and smell the apple, we feel a ring on a finger, we hear a friend. Particulars grasped through sensation and perception, as well as imagination and memory, have an obvious composition with matter.
Okay, but does this "composition with matter" pertaining to the apple, the ring and humanity entail autonomy? Given the gap between what we think matter encompasses here and now and all that would need to be known about matter going back to what or who created it in the first place? And what we take in with our senses is in part particular to each of us alone. Even in regard to the either/or world the documentary above made note of how with respect to what we see and hear, different people literally see and hear different things.

The Dress for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress

And then the part where some argue that men should be free to wear dresses just as women are free to wear pants. Even in a free will world where is the universal goodness, truth, and justice here?
We use our eyes to see, our skin to feel, our ears to hear. There are well-defined regions in the brain whose activity seems to be necessary for the exercise of these sense-perception powers by which we grasp particulars. In that sense, the grasp of particulars is material, or at least depends on matter in a necessary way.
Exactly.

But: How far back to take this?

All the way? All the way to the point that everything we think, feel, say and do is entirely embedded in a brain that is wholly in sync with the laws of matter? What if the wide-awake world is just another manifestation of the dream world? Just in a way that the mere mortals we call scientists and philosophers have not been compelled by nature to grasp going back to grasping why and how existence itself came to be.
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

Post by iambiguous »

Free Will’s Absurdist Paradox
How Camus’ Absurdism unifies Compatibilism and Incompatibilism
Daniel Miessler
Compatibilists have a number of powerful arguments on their side.

1] We experience choice, therefore we have it
We experience choice in our dreams as well but don't have it then. And then all of the other components of our bodies -- those 100 trillion cells -- that function entirely on automatic pilot. "Somehow" the brain is different?
2] The kind of free will that we experience is the only kind that’s possible, so we should stop thinking about the kinds that are impossible due to Determinism (Daniel Dennett)
Like anyone can establish this [empirically or otherwise] going all the way back to how we fit into the existence of existence itself.
3] We cannot, as humans, practically live as if we don’t have free will
Or we live for all practical purposes in the only possible manner in which the laws of matter compel us to.
4] Believing we have free will is useful to us as a society because if we told people they didn’t have free will they would stop behaving morally
This one in particular always baffles me. We find free will useful, so this in and of itself establishes that we have it? Well, what if we are compelled by our brains to find it useful? My thinking here always starts with the assumption that if the human brain is just more matter and, like all other matter, is in thrall to the laws of matter, then nothing that we think or feel or say or do is anything other than what we could never not think and feel and say and do.

It's as though some, however, accept determinism...but not really. This "internal"/"external" distinction between the "in my head" components of choice and all that is outside my head "in the world". The "someone puts a gun to my head" and says "do it else" example. As though they themselves were not in turn wholly compelled to put the gun to my head and say do it or else. And that what I do [gun or no gun] isn't but another inherent/necessary manifestation of the only possible world.

Though as always -- click -- I'm the first to admit the problem here is me not being able to grasp the compatibilism arguments correctly.
5] The model of humans making choices is the most useful way to describe what happens in the real world on a day to day basis
Same thing. Something being useful to us doesn't necessarily make it any less compelled.
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

Post by iambiguous »

Free Will’s Absurdist Paradox
How Camus’ Absurdism unifies Compatibilism and Incompatibilism
Daniel Miessler
Incompatibilists have their points as well.

1] If we agree that Determinism is true, and that we don’t control the universe or the laws of physics, then it’s not possible to control any higher-level phenomenon either
On the other hand, how exactly do we pin down that anything we do agree on either is or is not determined? Instead, given this...
All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was "somehow" able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter "somehow" became living matter "somehow" became conscious matter "somehow" became self-conscious matter.
...we either are or are not compelled to agree or disagree about everything in the only possible world.
2] If you could not have done otherwise for any previous decision (because Determinism is true) then you also cannot do otherwise for your next decision
Exactly: If.
3] Just because we experience making choices doesn’t mean that’s happening. We also experience the color red, or being filled with the Holy Spirit, and these things don’t exist independently from being experienced by someone
That's the particularly tricky part. Even if we are wholly determined to choose something we are still choosing it. That's why I imagine those aliens inhabiting a free will segment of the universe observing us "choosing" things in a determined segment. They note that we are choosing things. But they note that we choose things only what our brains compel us to choose.

It would be like someone being able to videotape our dreams. They play back the dream and we see ourselves choosing things. But then we acknowledge that it was only our brains "somehow" choosing for us instead. Or we watch a movie and note the actors choosing things. But only because they are being directed to choose them based on a writer's script.
4] We have already shown in numerous studies that humans can be made to think that they made a decision on their own when the outcome was externally generated, and the human can’t tell the difference
The determinists then just take it all back a step further. Suggesting that the studies themselves are but another inherent manifestation of the only possible reality. You can't really win with them. Why? Because even when you are convinced that you have won that too is just another necessary component of this only possible world.

Thus...
5] Believing in free will justifies the concepts of reward, blame, and punishment, and negates any requirement to explore the physical, biological, and environmental causes of undesirable behavior
Believe only what you must, right?
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Re: compatibilism

Post by iambiguous »

Free Will Is Real and Materialism Is Wrong
Michael Egnor
The same [above post] is not true of intellect and will. There is not the same intimate link between intellect and will with matter that there is between perception and imagination, etc., and matter. Through our intellect we grasp and comprehend universals, not particulars, and our will carries out decisions made by our intellect. For example, we see (perceive) a picture of Nelson Mandela (particular), we ponder (intellect) injustice (universal) done to political prisoners, and we donate (will) to Amnesty International.
Over and over and over those who champion free will make note of things like this. Yes, we clearly do lots and lots of things of this sort all the time. And we "just know" deep, deep, deep, deep down inside that we did them of our own volition. Some just take it further and insist not only can we opt to choose these things freely but if we do choose things of this sort rationally and virtuously, we will ponder Nelson Mandela and political prisoners so as to be in sync with one or another rendition of objective morality.
So the fundamental question is this: Are intellect and will material powers, like sensation and perception are material powers?
No, some suggest, the more fundamental question is this: that, given how human brains are but more matter, how and why [chemically, neurologically] is intellect intertwined with will intertwined with sensation and perception going back to how and why matter was able to configure into biological/living entities about 3.7 billion years ago.

Or sooner if you start with God. Though, if you start with God, your answers become Divine.

Only some will take a leap of faith from science here and examine these relationships more theoretically in a world of words. What we call philosophy.
The answer is no. Intellect and will are immaterial powers, and obviously so. Here’s why.

Let us imagine, as a counterfactual, that the intellect is a material power of the mind. As such, the judgment that a course of action is good, which is the basis on which an act of the will would be done, would entail "Good" having a material representation in the brain. But how exactly could Good be represented in the brain? The concept of Good is certainly not a particular thing — a Good apple, or a Good car — that might have some sort of material manifestation in the brain. Good is a universal, not a particular. In fact the judgment that a particular thing is Good presupposes a concept of Good, so it couldn’t explain the concept of Good. Good, again, is a universal, not a particular.
Got that? Are you basically in agreement with what you think the author means in defining and defending the words as he does?

Okay, fine. Now, in regard to Mary aborting Jane, what do you tell her given this assessment if she asks you 1] if choosing an abortion is something she is able to opt for freely and 2] if it is, is choosing an abortion moral or immoral?
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

Post by iambiguous »

Just for the record...

For many years I have been posting on the Determinism thread over at ILP. Sometimes responding to other posters and sometimes browsing the internet for articles and blogs relating to determinism, free will and compatibilism.

In particular pertaining to the subject that is of most interest to me philosophically: the existential relationship between identity, value judgments, conflicting goods and political economy.

I've easily posted hundreds and hundreds of times there. Then on Wednesday I find this...
peacegirl wrote:iambiguous, I've asked you before and I'm asking you again to please create a new thread that compares different ideas on the free will/determinism debate. I am sure that my thread will die because there seems to be no interest, but that is better to me than having you take advantage of a thread that was meant to share a discovery. I know you don't care but I am asking you kindly to lay off. I hope Flannel Jesus recognizes how unfair this is to me.
Flannel Jesus wrote:Well, it's borderline spam that he takes this text that he's written and pastes it across multiple forums without it being a discussion with another person, BUT I don't mind that the spam is here at ILP since it's at least relevant to a philosophy forum and written by a member.

I don't want to ban it entirely but since it's spam that is negatively impacting another poster because of a thread derailing, I think it's reasonable enough to have these posts be relegated to another thread.

Iambiguous, it has been requested that you not put your personal journal of determinism and free will readings in this thread. Please create a new thread for your personal journal, and use this thread for having discussions with the human beings who are here.
To which I responded as follows...
Note to others:

How preposterous is this?!!!!

You decide what is really going on here.

Well, assuming of course that in deciding you are actually in possession of free will.

Look, down through the years objectivists of peacegirl's ilk have reacted to me in this manner. My own thoughts on determinism are so threateninhg to them they want me muzzled. Or it might revolve around religion or morality.

As for FJ, again, you decide what his own motivations are. He actually calls my contributions to this thread spam!!!

Also, FJ brought to my attention a time when I posted something peacegirl had posted here over at PN. Not only did I acknowledge he/she had a point but I deleted the post that included peacegirl.

Now the things I post at both ILP and PN involve articles I come across relating to determinism/free will/compatibilism.

Anyway, now that I've established my presence over at the Philosophy Now forum, I'll continue to post on the subject here: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=34247

If you're not threatened by my arguments follow them there.

Again: simply unbelievable!!

The New ILP has actually come to this!!!
Also...
iambiguous wrote:Peacegirl...

Click.

One final thought:

Just out of curiosity, when was the first time you asked me to stop posting in this thread? In fact, if you go back to our first exchanges [as I recall them] they went on and on and on and on and on, page after page after page for months. Why? Because at first mine was just another point of view for you and your author to challenge. But, in my view, over time, my arguments began to sink in, discomfitting you.

That's when I suspect [consciously or not, autonomously or not] you felt the need to get me out of your head. And now, with FJ, you will.

Anyway, I'm through with you too.
Finally....
This all reminds me of the first time I encountered something of this sort. Way back in the old Yahoo Groups days I became a member of an Ayn Rand Objectivism forum. Now, in my introduction I noted that I was once an Objectivist myself. Though, I told them, more like Howard Roark in The Fountainhead than John Galt in Atlas Shrugged. Now, however, I told them, I was a moral nihilist. By way of existentialism. I literally asked their permission to post there. Sure, several members said, welcome aboard. They clearly relished the opportunity to "set me straight".

Yep, you guessed it...

Some weeks later in focusing less on what they believed and more on how, like all the rest of us, their value judgments were rooted existentially in dasein, there were increasing calls for me to get booted. And I was.

The same thing when I was a member of Friends of Brainstorm, The Ponderer's Guild and The Philosophy Forum. FB and PG went defunct but Postmodern Beatnik "banned me for life" from The Philosophy Forum. Just as Satyr did over at KT.

So, this is nothing new for me from the objectivists.

Over and out forevermore on this thread.
So, what I did was to go from page to page and C/P all of my contributions to the thread which involved my reacting to other philosophers on the internet in regard to determinism.



I created a new thread there: https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=198472
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

Post by iambiguous »

Free Will’s Absurdist Paradox
How Camus’ Absurdism unifies Compatibilism and Incompatibilism
Daniel Miessler
What I’ve come to learn is that the problem with Incompatibilism is not that it’s wrong, but that it’s incomplete. It insists on prioritizing the abstracted world of quarks, atoms, and molecules, instead of the human world we actually live in.
Again, when you Google "incompatibilism" you get this link right at the top:

"Incompatibilism is the thesis that free will is incompatible with the truth of determinism. Incompatibilists divide into libertarianians, who deny that determinism is true and hard determinists who deny that we have free will." from the PhilPapers site.

So...you can call yourself an incompatibilist and be at completely opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum?

As for whatever it is that someone prioritizes here, we are still confronted with the fact that [as of now], even in presuming human autonomy that presumption remains entangled in all that we do not know regarding this:

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was "somehow" able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter "somehow" became living matter "somehow" became conscious matter "somehow" became self-conscious matter.

And you tell me where the world of the really, really small ends and the world of the really, really big begins. Quarks, atoms and molecules pertaining to Mary aborting Jane?
Compatibilism would be more correct if they were just saying that we should behave as if we have free will even though we don’t. But that’s not what they’re saying.

What they’re saying is that free will is compatible with determinism. It’s the actual definition of Compatibilism. They’re saying we actually have free will.
And here, admittedly, I become particularly perplexed. In regard to what I sometimes call the "free will determinists". They embrace determinism...but not really? They argue that they have no free will...but others who don't think about not having free will as they do are still wrong?

It just seems ridiculous to argue that we should behave as though we do have free will when, in a determined universe as I understand it [compelled to or not]...one that encompasses the human brain...everything that we think and feel and say and do reflects the only possible reality.

Same with those who come back time and again to how we define determinism. How do we not define it only as we must?


Start here: https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=198472
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iambiguous
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Re: compatibilism

Post by iambiguous »

Free Will Is Real and Materialism Is Wrong
Michael Egnor
So how could a universal concept such as Good be manifested materially in the brain?
Or:

1] how could single cell biological matter evolve into human brains on planet Earth?
2] how could lifeless/mindless matter evolve into biological matter itself on planet Earth?
3] how could matter itself come into existence at all?

Also: Why?

As for a universal concept of Good, given what set of circumstances? And then "for all practical purposes" how to resolve countless instances whereby our Good comes into conflict with their Good.
The only answer possible from the materialist perspective, it would seem, is that the concept of Good must be an engram, coded in some fashion in the brain. Perhaps Good is a particular assembly of proteins, or dendrites, or a specific electrochemical gradient in a specific location in the brain.
Again, to grasp just how numbingly complex all of this really is back to Nova:
https://www.pbs.org/video/your-brain-pe ... on-0mqxyc/
https://www.pbs.org/video/your-brain-wh ... ol-q6suyy/

The only possible answer? Right.

Yes, perhaps Good is just "a particular assembly of proteins, or dendrites, or a specific electrochemical gradient in a specific location in the brain."

Or perhaps it is derived from one or another God. Your own maybe?

Speculate...speculate...speculate:
But the materialist is not home yet. Because in order for Good to be an engram in the brain, the Good engram must be coded in some fashion. How could Good be coded? A clump of protein of a specific shape two mm from the tip of the left hippocampus? Obviously there’s nothing that actually means Good about that particular protein in that particular location — one engram would be as Good as another — so we would require another engram to decode the hippocampal engram for Good, so it would mean Good, and not just be a clump of protein. Yet that engram for the code for the engram of Good would itself have to have some representation of Good in order for it to mean that it signifies the code for the Good engram, which would require another engram for the engram for the Good engram, ad nauseam.
Got that?

Of course, most of is here are "just philosophers". We grapple with free will, determinism and compatibilism in a "world of words". We think up definitions for words and attach them to the definitions we give to other words to form deductions about all of this. Arguments we call them.

Or -- click -- we embrace the definitions and the deductions and the arguments of others.

Some even write books about it. Like this guy: https://www.amazon.com/Decline-Fall-All ... 1553953304

Go ahead, investigate it.


Start here: https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=198472
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Re: compatibilism

Post by iambiguous »

Free Will Is Real and Materialism Is Wrong
Michael Egnor
In short, any engram in the brain that coded for Good would presuppose the concept of Good in order to establish the code for Good. So Good, from a materialist perspective on the mind, must be an infinite regress of Good engrams. Engrams all the way down, so to speak, which of course is no engrams at all.
In short?

Translation: "The manner in which I assess the brain here...given my own particular 'world of words'...is now the default argument."

Then all we need is a follow-up. He takes this world of words to the brain scientists. They confirm that the materialists as he understands them are flat out wrong.

Or perhaps someone here can link us to this definitive conclusion.
The engram theory of intellect and will presupposes that which it purports to explain.
Right. Like his own analysis here does not in turn presuppose the meaning he gives to the words [that he'll insist he chose of his own volition] isn't just another example of circular logic. Of course his premises and his conclusion match. He defines the meaning of all the words in both.

But how are his definitions and his deductions then established to be true experientially, experimentally, empirically? Does he connect the dots between the words and the actual chemical, neurological, electrical interactions in the brain itself?
Concepts such as Good can’t be material manifestations in the brain. The intellectual grasp of concepts and acts of will based on universals are inherently immaterial.
What's next, connecting our "intellectual grasp" to...the soul?

The irony being that without our material brain we would not even be able to imagine something being "immaterial".

From the dictionary:

Immaterial: 2] Philosophy: spiritual, rather than physical.

And, sure, if it's a spiritual font that explains free will, how exactly do the non-believers go about demonstrating that the religionists and the pantheists are wrong?


Start here: https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=198472
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Re: compatibilism

Post by iambiguous »

Free Will’s Absurdist Paradox
How Camus’ Absurdism unifies Compatibilism and Incompatibilism
Daniel Miessler
Examples from human experience

The best way to see this is to imagine all the real-world situations that break either the Compatibilist or Incompatibilist narratives, and demand a new model in their place.
Unless of course the best way to see anything is always the only way that you were ever able to see it. And, thus, entirely interchangeable with the worst way to see anything. Just as all the models are interchangeable.

We're always stuck here because we still have no way in which to pin down how the human brain itself might be able to understand everything that can be understood about the human brain; and how that fits into everything that can be known about the existence of existence itself.

Of course [compelled to or not] when I bring that up here many [compelled to or not] start to groan: that again!

Like there could possibly be something that actually is more important than that?

Anyway...
You feel like you haven’t been trying hard enough to improve yourself, and while laying in bed you make a personal vow to get back into your projects and actively pursue your goals.
True enough. There's no getting around the fact that we do live our lives from day to day truly, truly convinced that if we did try harder we could of our own volition improve ourselves. Even if in doing so that involves choosing behaviors that make things considerably worse for others. Like, for example, someone at work improving his situation there by firing someone else. Or someone who in pursuing her goals improves the chances of accomplishing them by aborting her unborn baby. The existential quagmire that free will can entail.

The uncertainties embedded in the Benjamin Button Syndrome given free will.
A man who’s tortured and killed multiple people in his life is shown in 2027 to have a set of genes that are associated with psychopathy, and he’s in the courtroom facing a judge and some of the victim’s families.

You tell a friend, or a colleague, that they should do x or y, instead of z.

In the first case, if you’re an Incompatibilist, why are you having an internal dialogue with yourself about improving your life? Who is talking to who? And since there is no free will, what exactly are you trying to change?
Exactly?

This may well be one of the things a hardcore determinist can fall back on. Everything that anyone ever thinks, feels, says or does is "naturally" "beyond their control". And even if others blame them, well, they were never really able to not blame them, right?

Start here: https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=198472
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