if you didn’t have free will you couldn’t deny it’s existence? ok, well, no. but you couldn’t put any stock in your own thought process either.
you do have a choice, right? cheerios, corn flakes, raisin bran. if i tell you to eat cheerios and you eat corn flakes, that is a mechanism, right? a choice.
I was basically agreeing with you, but taking it a step further by arguing that the perception of randomness really just reflects insufficient understanding of the underlying determinism. I completely agree with the last sentence, except that again I would argue that “random processes” are in the final analysis really deterministic. In any case, whether one chooses to include randomness or not, that assertion must be correct, because otherwise one has to believe in the causality of magic, or the whims of a supernatural being, or the idea that our own brains are somehow supernatural and are immune to the laws of physics.
What you’re not understanding is that to a conscious self-aware being, causal determinism looks exactly like free will. It’s clearly and intrinsically impossible to tell the difference, yet you’re making all kinds of arguments for how you, personally, can definitely tell that you have free will!
Because every single organism feels an overwhelming compulsion to live.
I have felt depressed and hopeless before. And I didn’t feel a strong compulsion to live. But I felt enough of one. Every time I’ve felt a tinge of appetite or thirst during my bouts with depression, my brain is communicating, “I know you don’t want to live, but I want you to live. And you know you always do my bidding, so quit your whining and go get something to eat already. That’s my girl.”
Do you think a bacterium has free will? An amoeba? A lion? Do you think these organisms are routinely committing suicide? It’s pretty apparent to me that the urge to live is something that doesn’t require conscious intent, volition, or any other word you want to substitute for “free will”. In fact, the fact that we automatically assume that people who are suicidal are mentally ill (their brain be broke) indicates that even free-will believers know, fundamentally, that free will has nothing to do with whether we “choose” to live or die. If they truly believed in free will, they wouldn’t offer up mental illness as an excuse for the strange things people do. But all of us do this, because we’ve all had brief but memorable encounters with insanity. Whether due to internal causes (mental illness) or external ones (drugs and alcohol).
do you agree that your position is incredibly pessimistic?
so, in order to make your case you have to reduce the intellectual capacity of humans to that of lions and bacteria. i find it amusing that you think this helps your argument.
so why bother getting out of bed in the morning, if it is all predetermined???
“Wrong” depends on the context. We have determined that shooting up a roomful of movie-goers is wrong. But society will allow for someone to shoot up another roomful of people if society deems them bad enough. A person is a evil demon in one scenario, and a brave warrior in another. Hence, morality has no place in this discussion.
I created a thread in the Pit about the Santa Barbara shooter. You will see me cursing blue blazes about that fuckface. But my anger and sense of self-righteous is irrelevant to the discussion of why that jerk did what he did. If it is possible to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening again, then it would be in society’s best interest to figure out the factors that go into creating such a person. I’m all for condemning the guy AND determining why he was so nuts, because I think both can be useful. Recreational outrage makes us feel better, and perhaps shames those who are thinking of following suit. And talking about the causes will maybe help us to come up with solutions. It’s not an either/or thing, at least for me.
how can you call it a tragedy. the guy had no choice but to do it. the people had no choice but to be there at that exact time and place. everything happened exactly the way it was supposed to. you can say it makes you sad but please don’t call it a tragedy.
It’s not any more pessimistic than “You choose to be a bad guy or a good guy, and if you choose to do X, then you choose the consequences that follow. So quit your whining and face your judgment like a man, sinner!”
As a scientist, I’m more attracted to reason than warm fuzzies.
so it sounds like you DO think people have a choice.
hmmm… i’m not that harsh or judgmental. there are factors that go into every action or inaction. there is also a choice.
Once again failing to grasp the point. If your wants and needs and all your thought processes were deterministic and predetermined, how could you tell?
The question involves an externality about a system that is not observable from within the system. So all the subjective arguments in the world about how we “know” we have free will are worthless right from their basic flawed premise.
A more reasonable and objectively meaningful question is whether our minds are governed by physical laws, and of course they are. I would argue that makes them as deterministic as the rest of the world.
Why not get up?
Determinism isn’t the same thing as “no choice”; it just means that choice is a mechanistic thing and not a magical one.
And for that matter, a natural disaster is a tragedy too; the fact that a volcano doesn’t choose to erupt doesn’t make it any less tragic for the people killed in the eruption.
I find it amusing that I’m supposed to just assume human beings are fundamentally different from the bacterium, the amoeba, and the lion just because human beings say they are. Where is your evidence that human beings are not just a bacteria on steroids? On the basis of cell number, we are more bacteria than we are “human”. An alien from another planet might see us as a collection of semi-organized unicellular organisms. How could we convince them they are wrong when the physical evidence supports this observation quite well?
There is no “supposed to” in any of my argumentation.
It is natural to react all kinds of ways to a tornado strike. Including rage and sadness. The devastation they bring is often tragic, even though you can predict when they are going to happen. The two things–the emotional fall-out of an event and its predictability–are totally independent of one another. It is your straw man that people who don’t believe in free will are supposed to be non-emotional robots. Please don’t project your crazy notions onto others. It isn’t grounded in reality.
Why do you think that?
Let me put it to you that the experts paid to research this field disagree totally with your common sense beliefs. Over 90% of philosophers and almost 100% of neuroscientists believe that determinism is true.
You are holding on to a tail of a myth, the equivalent of a creationist.
I do not deny its existence; I doubt it.
No. It is possible to be very ‘intellectual’ with no sense of personhood. See the works of Temple Grandin.
Once again, will you explain the mechanism of this free will thing you assert. How does it work on the real world?
simple
i am talking to you
i could be outside walking in the sunshine
or cooking diner
or talking on the phone
i dont see why it is so complicated that you need it explained