It is a definition of Free Will that satisfies the needs of Jurisprudence and Social interaction but has no place in the explanation of the world by scientific methods.
I suppose it is a bit like the concept of class- a social construct. Now being in a particular class may predict certain outcomes such as starvation and privation, but such a construct is an epiphenomonen- it runs alongside but does not cause the privation and starvation which are due to the practical lack of resources.
How does consciousness, a non physical process if separate from Brain States, interact with the brain to cause behavior?
I would say that behavior and awareness of Free Will (flase as it is) are both results of Brain States.
That is as taught in school but does not bear out in reality. No one has found anything in the brain but waves and electrical switches. The waves are consciousness and the electrical activity the result of consciousness controlling the body. This is simplified to be sure but a beginning. Otherwise you are a brain and nothing more. Strange how a brain can examine itself and not find will.
The “freedom to act according to one’s determined motives” and “freedom to act according to one’s determined motives without hindrance from other individuals” definitions also satisfy social and legal needs, and don’t violate any laws of physics or anything like that.
If I understand his spirituality, lekatt is a libertarian incompatibilist with a supernatural explanation, so I think you’ve found your debate partner on that front.
Here is a parsimonious scientifically justifiable model.
The Universe has developed from a state of singularity to one of great complexity as matter time and space were created at the big bang.
Strings, quarks, bosons, atoms, molecules, complex molecules, organic molecules have developed over billions of years.
Some of these complex molecules became self replicators, producing offspring that could develop new behaviors over many generations, and slime became sub cellular particles like prions and DNA, creating viruses and single celled organisms.
Single celled organisms started cooperating in massive arrays and became lichens and fungi and plants, first ferns and then sexual reproducers.
Plants became active and became lower animals, lower animals became higher lower animals, invertebrates and vertebrates, lizards and birds, then mammals.
Mammals became apes and other higher mammals.
Let us stop there- after 14 billion years there has been created a varied flora and fauna with nary a sign of free will- all behavior is determined.
The higher apes become chimpanzees, missing links, neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Even here there is an argument that Free Will is still obviously missing.
Homo Sapiens eventually becomes one of the only entities that is fully self conscious- not only a perceiver of the world but a perceiver of itself in the world.
Ah, it says, these internal states that I perceive are what cause my behavior, the amateur philosopher/scientist decides. I shall call that Free Will.
Despite that, nature continues its deterministic course with early (and later) mankind deluded about the nature of their nature and the real scientific explanation of the world.
Evolution wrought a complex decision maker, conscious and self conscious, capable of making behaviors that are not easily predictable, but determined all the same.
It is only when advanced Mankind with the tools of modern science and modern philosophy considers the nature of Free Will, that it becomes obvious that Free Will is a myth and that all behavior is determined despite what our perceptions and cognitions insist to be the case
Stranger how a brain can examine itself and find will!
I think you need to work on the terms that you are using if youare to understand the argument.
Awareness is different from consciousness which is different again from self consciousness. That is different again from the ability to abstract and reson in a complex manner. None of that requires or indicates Free Will- all of that is possible in a fuilly determined univers.
There are so few libertarian incompatibilists left, perhaps we should preserve them in amber!
I have never heard an explanation of libertarian incompatibilism that had any scientific basis, or was much different from people pointing to the obvious existence of God or gods, ineffable souls and such unscientific dogma. It may be the last refuge of the true believer.
Why?
I can still enjoy lots of experiences, it doesn’t mean I can’t do anything anymore. It doesn’t mean my actions don’t have consequences.
What you believe to be different is the same. Love gives us free will Hate takes it away.
You don’t understand me at all. I am certainly not a libertarian. Actually I am just spiritual which we all are but don’t know it yet.
I didn’t claim to understand you, I claimed to, perhaps, understand your spiritual doctrine.
Metaphysical libertarianism, which has nothing to do with the political philosophy, is the belief that free will and determinism are incompatible, and that determinism is false.
How exactly are you supposed to prove that you have Free Will? Your making a choice and you doing something because it was predetermined look exactly the same from our point of view. In order to be sure you would have to be able to look at the universe unconstrained by time so you could see the effects of choices, or the lack thereof. There is no way that we know of (right now anyway) to do this.
Claiming that you have free will or don’t have it is similar to someone claiming that something happened because of god’s will. Someone recovered from a disease, god did it. How do you prove that god actually did it, and it didn’t just happen on it’s own. Again, you would need to be able to see god actually affecting the system, or not, to be able to tell for sure.
Isn’t free will a doctrine that’s basically used to get around the idea that god is omniscient and knows what’s going to happen in the future (meaning that all our choices are already made including who goes to heaven and hell), so humans can believe that their choices actually matter? How is the concept of free will useful in a godless universe?
Wait, what was the question again?
I don’t do labels. They are meaningless for individuals. I follow the path of love. I have no doctrine.
You clearly have a doctine. Among its tenets are that labels are meaningless for individuals, that a path of love exists and should be pursued, and that all people are spiritual but many don’t know it yet.
That makes no sense. The concept of free will internalizes your decision making process while minimizing the importance of external influences. Either it exists or it does not, it could not be “taken away”, only the options (external factors) can be removed.
And “hate takes it away” flies entirely in the face of the concept. By that measure, Ted Bundy exercised his free will upon a number of women, violating and murdering them in a most loving way. :rolleyes:
It has already been demonstrated experimentally that the body prepares for an action before a person thinks he has made a conscious decision to do it. So thinking you made a free will decision (which we all do) is not much evidence for anything.
At very, very least, this is untrue: it is not “obvious” to several of us here. You make a lot of empty declarations, but, to date, you have failed to produce a convincing argument that “Free Will is a myth.”
We also have the secondary problem that you haven’t defined Free Will. In the other thread, on the social consequences, you accepted that volition and choice and personal decisions exist. If so…and if “Free Will” is something other than that…what the hell is “Free Will?”
QuickSilver asks, and I repeat: how is it that we sit and make decisions? Why would nature counterfeit the ability to make decisions? How is this model in any way parsimonious?
thicksantorum compares the deterministic model to solipsism, and I agree. If it’s true, we don’t have any “real” consciousness, only a false, empty, illusory consciousness. We’re really reading lines from a play that someone else wrote, and would not exist as actual minds. This notion needs a lot of proving. (Besides which, this notion cannot be proved, because proofs are operations of mind and thought, and, under determinism, we cannot think, only parrot mental operations.)
At very least, let’s get the terms defined, okay?
From post #177:
A little late in the game for such an uncommon definition to work from, in my opinion.
What you’re describing is based on “nondeterminism”, and for the purposes of this discussion, it’s only trivially different from determinism.
The kind of nondeterminism that’s inherent in quantum mechanics doesn’t help explain free will. It just means that there might be a dice thrown in the results. It doesn’t give our minds any more power over the hardware.
Now, if you think there’s yet another form of nondeterminism (other than QM) that free will might cause or exploit, that’s another matter, but it’s just speculation. Pulling in the Multiverse doesn’t make that any proposition simpler or easier to explain.
