Cite that such a person would be correct?
I don’t think it’s a logical impossibility in itself, but you’re surely right that it’s not very coherent and inconsistent when used to excuse an all-powerful deity from responsibility (which is the original reason for the concept in the first place).
This is pretty much the exact opposite of what “existential” means. “Existential” means focusing attention on existence (i.e. material reality) over essence (i.e. invisible universals). The end result of “an increasingly existential lifestyle” is … materialism!
This seems a bit contradictory to me. I can understand and appreciate your idea of not believing in something until it is proven as with, for instance, non-materialism or religious belief. Free will, however, seems different to me in that, while cannot observe non-physical things or the super natural, most of us experience something that we describe as free will. Of course, it may be nothing more than an illusion, but as this flies in the face of our everyday experience, it would seem to me that it makes more sense as a default position, in holding with what I understand to be the spirit of that position. Or maybe I’m missing some subtleties.
More at the OP, I do tend to agree with this view of Materialism. It seems to add unnecessary complexity to what is, or should be, the default view.
“Existential” means focusing attention on experiences.
Bah, okay, I missed this, and by the time I respond I won’t be able to edit anyway. Wouldn’t believing free will not to exist require belief in a deterministic or at least a causal link for every action?
Ok then, please define “spiritual” as well.
There’s quite a bit of research that casts serious doubt on what I’d roughly call our rational and emotional freedom of action and belief.
ETA: and non-determinism or even break downs of causality do not automatically give us “free will” in the typical sense either.
Got a cite?
Well of course your spiritual part is that amount by which you are greater than the sum of your individual material parts.
Wouldn’t that be “experiential”?
Aha … by “spiritual” you mean “emergent behavior”.
I like it when AI’s in videogames are spiritual. It makes them much more interesting to play against.
Hey, look! Superfluous parentheses!
I think the problem that the idea of “free will” runs into, is that you can’t even define it coherently. People have this gut feeling that they have it, but as soon as they try to define what it is exactly that they think they have, it’s nonsensical.
That’s why we can say that we don’t think it exists, in spite of not having evidence of its non-existence.
I’m grabbing some stuff from “The Moral Landscape” by Sam Harris:
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It’s quite obvious that physical damage (tumors, wounds) to, or chemical alterations (certain drugs, recreational or medicinal) of the brain can cause very clear changes in our behavior and thought. And these changes are not “voluntary” in the usual sense.
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TIME OF CONSCIOUS INTENTION TO ACT IN RELATION TO ONSET OF CEREBRAL ACTIVITY: “The recordable cerebral activity (readiness-potential, RP) that precedes a freely voluntary, fully endogenous motor act was directly compared with the reportable time (W) for appearance of the subjective experience of ‘wanting’ or intending to act. The onset of cerebral activity clearly preceded by at least several hundred milliseconds the reported time of conscious intention to act.”
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Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain: “There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively ‘free’ decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.” [note: these “control areas” are areas that encode physical acting on the decision]
[emphases mine].
The term spiritual now has dimensions to diminish which give to it breadth and width, a certain reality beyond the material. Just as that river you mentioned and even for the matter of a Mayonnaise jar lid.
It might feel like we have free will, but the concept, when fully examined, does not make sense. Something has to cause the will. The will can’t cause itself, that leads to an infinite regression of “deciders.” The will therefore has to either be externally determined or random. Either way it’s not free.
Yes, well put.
It annoys me to hear things like “Since the universe is deterministic, we have no free will” because what is free will and how would the situation be different in an indeterministic universe?
It also annoys me when people confuse determinism and fatalism, as often happens in discussions of free will.
No, a random generator would work as well, but it’s not a belief anyway, it’s a necessary logical conclusion.
Cite that any such thing exists? I say we are exactly the sum of our physical parts. What is your evidence that there is anything more?
Incidentally, a river is just a river too.