THREAD 1
COMMENT: "Lol. The question assumes the very negation of the implied position. How can anyone change the mind of someone who doesn't believe that free will exists? They don't believe the mind rationally relates to the world but is only causally related so doesn't it inherently not make sense to try to rationally relate to this person?"
RESPONSE: "Magic isn't required to change minds. Information absorbed via sensory data is enough to kick off a chain of chemical reactions suitable for deterministically changing a mind."
COMMENT: "Well, no. Minds rationally relate to things they don't causally relate to things except perhaps when they malfunction. If we did believe things for causal reasons then it would be ridiculous to expect someone to change another's mind. It would make just as much sense and be just as epistemologically justified to manipulate or coerce another to believe something as it would to reason with them. So to even posit this question implies that one assumes minds behave differently - rationally not causally."
RESPONSE: "The science makes it quite clear how our minds are not based on rationality, but rather causation. Judges are more likely to give harsh punishments when they are hungry, and softer punishments when they are satiated. There is no rationality there. Mere causation as food alters the brain state leading to different decisions. Just one small example in a vast ocean of empirical evidence that maintains the material nature of minds."
COMMENT: "So why are you trying to convince me then using rational argumentation? Aren't you assuming folk psychology and the principle of charity by even attempting to?
RESPONSE: "Because material brains respond to rational argumentation. There is absolutely nothing contradictory about determinism and rationality working together. They are not mutually exclusive. Rationality isn't the foundation of our minds. But rationality is one factor that plays a role in the causation within our minds, just like emotional state, hormone state, and sensory state also play causal roles."
COMMENT: "Material things are causal and minds are rational. We don't tend to talk of minds as causal except - as you pointed out - in how they malfunction. But where minds relate rationally philosophers have pointed out it becomes harder and harder to consider these rational relations (intention, beliefs) to be causal relations (material/atomic relations in brains)."
RESPONSE: "The judge "malfunctions" during the performance of his attempt at rationality (judgement). This is evidence that the foundation of the mind is not rationality, but rather rationality is just one of many casual factors."
COMMENT: "no, it's supposed that that is the case by people who might believe that the mind is an emergent property of matter. Really that is just as much a "just so" story as any other. I would maintain that we behave rationally when we do and irrationally when we don't. But then I'm something of a naive phenomenologist and I'm not committed to metaphysical materialism."
RESPONSE: "So the brain magically switches between rationality and irrationality based on noncausal factors??"
COMMENT: "I didn't bring up magic, I brought up the way minds relate (rationally) and that when they relate causally they're said to malfunction. Do you casually misrepresent what people say or just in ways to make it easier to disagree with them?"
RESPONSE: "Your points don't make any sense without bringing magic into the equation. What phenomenon is happening to the judge when he becomes more or less rational based on environmental factors? You claim nothing "causal" (like food) is involved in these transitions. How can you explain a transition then?? If you accept causation, then you must also accept that there is no free will."
COMMENT: "You're entirely misrepresenting what I said. Why? I was really very blatant when I said it: minds behave rationally when they do and irrationally when they don't. I didn't disagree that non-rational factors can influence a judge's decision in a court case at all. My point was simply that rational relations still exist. To suppose that they are "ackchuwally" causal relations is a massive confusion of terms. If you accept that rational relations aren't causal relations and that they exist - what seems to be self-evidently true and seems also to be the very reason why you might think you can convince people of your beliefs - then it lends strong credence that there is free will."
RESPONSE: "Rational relations are absolutely causal. How can something NOT be causal? To imply that anything produced without a cause is to appeal to something as extraordinary as magic.
"No free will" does not equal "unable to change." "No free will" means change doesn't occur magically, it occurs based on causal forces (like data received via conversation and mechanical processing of said data in the brain)."
COMMENT: "See this is where I suggested you might end up confusing terms. Causal relations have quite a specific meaning in natural sciences. We don't tend to mean "person A talks to person B and explains to them why they believe x,y,z, person B finds person A's explanation convincing and changes his mind" to be causal, we might think of it as a rational relation though. And we don't tend to think of causal relations as rational. No one thinks "why did the volcano erupt?" can adequately be answered with "it was upset". There are massive gaps between these relations conceptually.
But I'll give you a better example: say I'm holding a cup of coffee near a table and as I reach to the table to put it down I drop it. Do we describe the event as a causal chain of muscles, bones, tissue, blood, nerves, neurons, chemicals and atoms? Or do we think we have much more explanatory power by thinking of the event in terms thus: I intended to put my cup down and made a mistake where the table was?
Theories of mind which try to eliminate things like folk psychology and the principle of charity don't actually seem to have as much explanatory power as what we would very normally and naively use in normal life with our normal categories (intention, desire, belief, want)."
RESPONSE: "Rational relations are based on chemical processes in the brain, which are absolutely causal. Whether or not a person's brain is convinced of a proposition is based on a domino effect of causes in the architecture of their brain as it processes information. Just because the brain is being logical as opposed to emotional doesn't mean that it is no longer based on causal factors within the chemistry of the brain."
"I intended to put my cup down and made a mistake where the table was" - this is still based on causal factors. Causality is always operating, regardless of how we want to frame phenomena for explanatory power."
COMMENT: "Your description of rational relations as though they are in fact causal relations is just not something I would accept. I see it as self-evidently wrong. Attempts to get rid of folk psychology have always failed whether the attempts have been scientific theories or philosophies."
RESPONSE: "Then how do you explain how intentions within the brain work without appealing to magic or causation?
A humble review of neuroscience would show you how obvious it is that the causal factors within the brain determine everything the brain does. You get a tumor in a certain part of the brain, and you become a pedophile. Damage a different part of the brain and you lose a sense of self. Damage a different part and you lose vision. Damage a different part and you lose language, or memory, etc. Similarly, if you stimulate different parts of the brain, you produce phenomenon typical of that area of the brain's duty or role. It doesn't get more causal than that.
Based on skull dimorphism scientists can tell which gender within an animal species is more likely to sexually cheat on its partner. Based on quantity of vasopressin in a mole rat we can tell if the males will be polygynous or monogamous. Based on hormone levels we can predict human behavior. Based on electronic signals in the body we can predict human decisions before they are even aware that they have made the decision. There is so much evidence for determinism. It makes way more sense than the magic of free will that makes things happen without causes."
COMMENT: "Pointing out that there are fundamental problems with materialistic ideas of the mind is one thing. Pointing out that folk psychology has nowhere near been replaced with any causal explanations of mind is also one thing. Claiming that this implies magic is something else entirely. Perhaps mechanistic ideas about matter are themselves wrong as medieval metaphysicians claimed, perhaps matter was always already informed by indwelling rational causes and thus directed itself towards mind. The classic metaphysical tradition certainly does begin with the supposition that "τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι" (for as it is with thinking so it is with being) after all."
RESPONSE: "I see no explanation from you for brain function that avoids causation and magic. When you say - "perhaps matter was always already informed by indwelling rational causes and thus directed itself towards mind" - I interpret that as someone who wants to believe in a magically rational soul that manages the brain. Yet, you have no functional explanation for this. Where does this rational soul (indwelling rational causes) reside? How can it be measured? How can we build falsifiable predictions from this hypothesis and then test them? Every single test of this sort fails because it isn't true.
You can't find the location of the soul. You can't find an example of a brain doing something that the laws of physics didn't want it to do in the first place. You can't find levers within the brain that exist for the purposes of a rational soul to tug and pull on.
Even if this rational soul existed, it wouldn't have free will because free will is a contradiction in terms. The law of contradictions makes it quite clear that within a contradiction there must be some falsehood. Even a rational soul would need to have causal variables (value systems) to generate decisions from. A soul would not be free to violate the value system that it was given upon creation.
It seems like you have a fear of determinism? Or perhaps you really like the idea of a rational soul that is in charge of things? But philosophers should never let their biases obstruct their pathway to truth."
COMMENT: "I don't have a fear of determinism, I just think that if it's true then there's actually no reason to believe it. I don't have an explanation for what the mind is, I only pointed out that thinking about it materialistically seems to be quite problematic. I do think that the metaphysics of medieval and classical philosophers are probably more internally consistent than the metaphysics of contemporary materialists but that's secondary to the fact that contemporary metaphysical materialists are internally inconsistent. Perhaps you have a fear of metaphysical materialism being false? If it were demonstrably true rather than internally inconsistent and irrational then I would honestly not have a problem with it.
I think that if we explored the classical metaphysical tradition we would very probably not come to believe that a rational soul could not possibly have free will. Rather we would come to believe that the entelechia of a rational choice is the erotic pull of the transcendentals (good, true, beautiful) and that any talk of free will must exist within this context. But that's another metaphysical discussion to the one we are currently having: determinism is a contradiction in terms and believing it implies its falsehood."
RESPONSE: "In order to make a decision, I assume you would agree that you must 1) identify options, 2) evaluate each option based on your innate value systems, 3) choose the option that maximizes your values. Step 2 violates free will, because the decision process becomes governed by a value system that you didn't have control over. The idea of the "good, true, and beautiful" are all based on innate value systems that no one can freely choose. We are slaves to our innate values of what we think is good, true, or beautiful. It doesn't matter if you are flesh or spirit. This decision process violates free will every time. I find this negation of free will to not only be extremely clear, but also self-evident.
I don't see anything with explanatory power in your answers. You even admit your explanations can't explain the mind. If determinism CAN explain the mind; if determinism has tons of evidence, explanatory power, and predictive power; if you don't have a bias against determinism, why is it not persuasive to you? You mention that materialism seems problematic to you, but I haven't noticed a specification of any problems."
COMMENT: "I agree with 1, 2 and 3. You're absolutely right. I just don't see this as a problem given what I highlighted as free will earlier: it is that which orientates the soul towards the transcendentals (good, true, beautiful). I'll give an example to illustrate what I mean and to distinguish it from what might popularly (and mistakenly) be viewed as "free will" in this day and age: suppose a man is captured and imprisoned, he is placed in a coloseum and given an obscure punishment in which he is given a choice between two doors, behind one door is freedom and the other is a hungry lion. We can imagine this as a spontaneous and arbitrary "free" decision. Now suppose he's in the same situation but is made aware of precisely which door is which. Do we instinctively feel that he has now more or less freedom? I'd incline to say more freedom actually, and I would imagine that it would be perfectly obvious which door he would select. I think the idea of freedom as some sort of spontaneous, non-rational and arbitrary "choice" is an obvious mistake. I think that when we talk about freedom we always assume that it is that which orientates the human soul towards the horizons of the classic transcendentals (good, true, beauty). Just as we cannot imagine someone "choosing" to believe something despite it not being rational, so we cannot imagine someone "choosing" something that is not chosen as good or true or beautiful."
RESPONSE: "Great example! In the first scenario he is ignorant of what is behind the doors; and in the second scenario he is aware of what is behind the doors.
In the first scenario he 1) identifies two doors, 2) compares the doors against his value system and finds them basically equal in value, 3) randomly chooses a door.
In the second scenario he 1) identifies two doors, 2) compares freedom with death by lion against his value system and finds freedom to be much greater in value, 3) chooses the door for freedom.
In neither scenario did he have free will. He had value-governed will. The accuracy of value-governed will is obviously harmed by a lack of information. It's much easier to satisfy your values when you understand your options better. But understanding your options doesn't give you more freedom. It gives you more accuracy in maximizing your values.
It is not impossible to imagine a scenario where someone is depressed to the point of suicide, and they think that feeding themselves to the lions maximizes their values. Does the depressed person have the freedom to not feel bad? Do they have the freedom to not feel like suicide is their best option? Based on a series of causes in their brains, that is the value system they have landed on. The only way out is to undo that value system with a different set of causal factors."
COMMENT: "What you're calling a "value governed will" is probably similar to what I was thinking about as "free will" and I was precisely trying to position the issue as a correction to the idea that free will is a spontaneous, arbitrary and non-rational decision. It is precisely rational. And it is precisely directed towards and dragged by the classic transcendentals. This is precisely the classical understanding of free will inherited from the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions. Perhaps we can think of this as "rational freedom" but it is exactly how we behave in our day-to-day life and I think we can add it to the list of what is assumed in folk psychology.
To your example about the depressed person this again is what I mean by a malfunction of the mind. We expect minds to behave rationally and when they don't (through whatever causal reasons they might not do so) we think of this as malfunction. We can think of this using the classical categories too: one who suffers from depression mistakes the bad for the good in their rational faculties and considers suicide to be a good choice. In this way evil can be seen as a contagion or infection or enslavement much as it is in contemporary psychological and neurological categories."
RESPONSE: "Why do you still feel that the words "free" or "freedom" are appropriately paired to this idea of a rational value-governed will?
Depression was probably a bad example for me to bring up. Let's do chronic pain instead. We all innately value our wellbeing. Suffering harms that wellbeing. To the extent our suffering is greater than our pleasure/joy, our life is of negative value. If we are prioritizing our value of wellbeing, suicide can actually the most rational choice. Continued existence in pain harms wellbeing, failing to maximize it. So, suicide could be less of a malfunction and more of a rational decision. Within the situation of chronic pain, the "good" might be synonymous with suicide. I don't see any freedom there. It's just a calculation based on the causal inputs of pain and the innate value of wellbeing.
COMMENT: "I use the words freedom because that is what they mean in the classical metaphysical tradition here. Looking at outlying situations wherein we might be able to imagine situations within which we might choose to end it all because of suffering notwithstanding I'm really just using the term in the classical way and in what I suspect I think is still meaningful for contemporary life. I don't see why you're so averse to using the term freedom or think that you've somehow described reality more accurately by abandoning it. It seems much more like you've ignored the reality of our mind's existence and accepted unconditionally a rather mechanistic materialism."
RESPONSE: "For thousands of years people have been deluded by superstitions of souls. We have so much scientific understanding of how the world and mind work, it doesn't make sense to keep feeding the old traditional superstitions by using words that make them think their mythologies are still valid. It's about time people realized how mechanical we actually are. Only by understanding reality accurately can we navigate it properly.
There are plenty of modern people who, for example, think that pedophiles have evil souls, instead of understanding that they have a warped genetic structure, no fault of their own. How can we make the world better if people are still clinging to their penchant for witch-hunts?"
THREAD 2
COMMENT: "Given that human behavior is sometimes inexplicable, it [free will] is true.
Freewill is far better than determinism."
RESPONSE: "Does a pair of dice have free will? Of course not. Unpredictability (randomness) and inexplicability are not evidence of free will."
THREAD 3
COMMENT: "What's the argument? What kind of incoherency does the concept of free will exhibit—logical inconsistency?"
RESPONSE: "It's an incoherent concept. It's as self-contradictory and impossible as a square circle. There is no definition of free will that both makes sense, reflects our intuitions, maintains freedom, and is coherent."
COMMENT: "You've pretty much just restated the original claim. Both questions still stand."
RESPONSE: "Freedom implies the magical ability to defy the laws of physics and make decisions that your spirit-self desires, uncoerced by any factor (even value systems). Will implies the ability to make decisions, which require a value system upon which to compare variables and determine which path maximizes your values.
Since "free" requires "no value system" and "will" requires a "value system", it becomes self-contradictory and impossible. Any effort to redefine "free will" away from these factors makes it not free or not a will, violates collective intuitions, and is a dishonest attempt to redefine the idea until it works because the bad faithed actor cares more about maintaining the existence of their happy fantasy of free will than facing the truth."
COMMENT: "That's a little better :D"
THREAD 4
COMMENT: Free will is the philosophical doctrine that the individual has the freedom to choose, without coercion, some actions consistent with his or her particular morals and ideals. Determinism is the opposing doctrine that everything, even the individual’s course of action, is determined by conditions outside one’s will.
You reason out your position. Otherwise your free will would have no meaning in a physical framework, for the number of choices available would be so multitudinous that you could not make up your mind to act within time. With all the opportunities of creativity, and with your own greater knowledge instantly available, you would be swamped by so many stimuli that you literally could not physically respond, and so your particular kinds of civilization and science and art could not have been accomplished—and regardless of their flaws they are magnificent accomplishments, unique products of the reasoning mind.
Other creatures have their own kinds of mental activity, however. They also have different kinds of immediate perceptions of reality. All species are united by their participation in emotional states, however. It is not just that all species of life have feeling, but that all participate in dimensions of emotional reality. It has been said that only men have a moral sense, that only men have free will—if indeed free will is possible at all. The word “moral” has endless connotations, of course. Yet animals have their own “morality,” their own codes of honor, their own impeccable senses of balance with all other creatures. They have loving emotional relationships, complicated societies,3 and in a certain sense at least—an important one—they also have their arts and sciences. But those “arts and sciences” are not based upon reasoning, as you understand it.
Animals also possess independent volition, and while I am emphasizing animals here, the same applies to any creature, large or small: insect, bird, fish, or worm; to plant life; to cells, atoms, or electrons. They possess free will in relationship to the conditions of their existence.
The conditions of existence are largely determined by genetic structure. Free will must then of course function in accordance with genetic integrity. Genetic structure makes possible physical organisms through which life is to be experienced, and to a large extent that structure must determine the kind of action possible in the world, and the way or ways in which volition can be effectively expressed.
The beaver is not free to make a spider web. In human beings the genetic structure largely determines physical characteristics such as height, color of eyes, color of hair, color of skin—and, of course, more importantly, the number of fingers and toes, and the other specific physical attributes of your specieshood. So physically, and on his physical attributes alone, a man cannot use his free will to fly like a bird, or to perform physical acts for which the human body is not equipped.
RESPONSE: "Every instance of your use of the phrase "free will" would be better replaced by the word "will", since none of the instances of will described are actually free.
According to your definition of determinism, if determinism is true, your free will is not true, as stated by you yourself.
'Determinism is the opposing doctrine that everything, even the individual’s course of action, is determined by conditions outside one’s will.'
What determines one's will? Genetic factors, biological factors, random factors, environmental factors, and nurture factors determine ones will. These factors are outside of one's will. Hence determinism is true, at the expense of free will."
COMMENT: "Freedom is the inner realization that you are an individual. That you do create your reality, that you do have the freedom and the joy and the responsibility of forming the physical reality in which you live."
RESPONSE: "In my opinion, you have described philosophic 'agency'. This would be 'agential will' not 'free will' in my book. I think the average person's perspective of 'freeness' is as you say, uncoerced will - the ability to have done differently. But we are coerced. It's impossible for an uncoerced will to exist. Just as impossible as 'hot coldness' or a 'square circle'."
Imagine a serial killer. They have a value system that promotes murder. Their will follows their value system. This value system comes from their genetics if they are a psychopath, and their upbringing if they are a sociopath. These factors gave them a murderous value system which their will is now a slave to.
Someone who lacks a murderous value system is similarly a slave to a value system that forbids them to commit murder.
If someone wants to have "free will" they must be able to freely change their value system so as to not be a slave to it.
But the only way to change your value system is to appeal to a deeper meta-value system that allows one to change the more superficial value system.
But then their ability to change their value system is a slave to the meta-value system. If they want free will, they need to be able to freely change their meta-value system.
But the only way to change a meta-value system is to appeal to a meta-meta-value system. Hence, an infinite regress. Reductio ad absurdum.
Eventually you run out of ways to freely alter things, and you are forced to accept that your ability to change all your value systems is a slave to your material make-up.
Under this paradigm, not even a magical soul can possess free will, because even a soul must appeal to its immaterial value systems to make decisions. Even a soul is a slave to its value systems. For example, either Satan was created with the innate value system to rebel against God's authority, or he was created with a meta-value system (of pride?) that would guide him to develop in a way that leads to rebelling against God's authority. It's impossible for souls to truly be free in the same way, because they also face an infinite regress of changes to their value system that eventually lands on their "spiritual DNA" as the root cause.
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