/lit/ - Literature

Please refer to this image if you see any of the following arguments in this thread:
>free will exists because quantum fisics lmao
>free will and determinism are compatible lmao
>dude it doesn't really matter anyway lmao

it was against

>>10282187
why does it matter if it exists or not ? do you feel this need that you have something to prove to yourself or others ?

>>10282187
>Again I will perhaps choose another venue to delve into extreme detail as to how free will is nonexistent, but to suffice, I will ask the reader to simply ask how he got to where he currently is. Your number one answer, to refute my doctrine, is to say you made the conscious choice to sit down and read this. And even that answer fails to prove your free will, because how did you come to make that decision? You sat and thought about it, you say (if you want to best argue your free choice, elsewise any option pales). Why did you sit and think about it? Because I wanted to sit and think about it. Why did you want to sit and think about it? No matter what you say to this answer, you do not prove your free will. I chose to sit and think about it, you say. Did you? Even if you define the exact moment where you suppose you made a choice, you cannot ever discount the countless number of influences that have occurred to you before that decision, from before the moment you were born, all the way up through your life until your current decision. So, let us assume that you make an entirely seemingly conscious decision to sit and think all day. What are some possible reasons you might do this, or make any seemingly conscious choice? “I wanted to” is a valid answer, or “I felt like it,” or “I needed to, because I needed a break,” or “I wanted to prove you wrong and show you I have free will.” Do you now see that any of these disprove free will? You might think I am setting you up in order to win an argument, but sincerely I am trying to get to the bottom of this question. So, I will fight for you too. The best answer you could give to my question of “Did you make a conscious choice out of your free will to sit here and think,” is: “I have no obligations, all the leisure in the world, and now I must decide what I need to do with my free time.” This is indeed the best case advocating for free will, where you have the position to make a decision. Okay, so now that you must make a decision (in this case what to do with free time, but applicable to any decision), you must decide. How do you decide? Well, at the core of any good decision, rationally or not, you weigh your options. We have and must agree that you arrived at this decision not by your own volition, but even your own thoughts and your ability to make a decision are not by your own volition. Because how did you learn to make a decision? How did you learn to weigh your options? How did you learn to think? Was it you that made a conscious decision as a child to intake the things you heard around you? When you “chose” to become a writer or a doctor or a lawyer, was it entirely you that made that leap? Was it even partially you? Even if you take Plato’s doctrine that we already knew things from since before we were born, then especially can we see that it was not by our own volition that we have come to know what we know.

from my diary the other day. I've written a couple free will dialogues

>>10282256
Sounds like the diary of an edgy teenager.

>>10282187
God is so merciful that he facilates our disobeidience if we should choose to be so. Likewise, if we should choose to obey, he brings us home in a purifying fire, whereupon our every action becomes a heavenly sacrament. I love Him more and more everyday

>>10282256
Don't even understand how free will is a problem in philosophy. Literally stand up sit on the chair then stand up again and don't sit on the chair. This proves free will.

>>10282287
That's deep Anon.

>>10282293
Shhhh don't shatter his world where he can fool himself into looking smart just by writing a paragraph.

>>10282293
"Why did you stand up and then sit down?"
"Because i wanted to."
"Why did you want to?"
"It doesn't matter. It was my choice."
"Was it? What prompted you to do it?"
"To prove to you that I have free will."
"Okay so even if we move past the fact that you wouldn't be doing this unless something had prompted you to do it, and we just focus on the exact moment when you made the decision, we will see that everything in your life leading up to that moment made that decision for you, to stand, and to sit."

>>10282300
:(

>>10282267
fair

>>10282303
If free will didn't exist you would not have to ask "why" to any of my actions. Even merely in your asking of "why" you admit free will, because only in a world where free will exists is the question "why" even possible. Therefore you are trying to refute a system with a tool that proves it. It would be like trying to prove no hammers exist by smashing someone with a hammer until he admits it.

>>10282319
You admit ignorance.

>>10282319
>As the blood cast its form on the stark white wall, Anon continued pounding the puddle of bloody yester-human with zeal.
>"Hammers. Dont. Exist." He cried, punctuating each sentence with another blow from his mallet.
>"This is a manual nail driver, not a hammer, respect my fucking tools."

>>10282319
I don't know. Did I consciously choose to ask "why?" Idk why I got on this free will train a couple months ago, but latching on to it and it having an interest on me--why did it? I know it sounds like I'm running in circles, but I think it revolves around that question. Was it my conscious choice?

itt: guys covering up their fallacious reasonings with fancy prose
>inb4 brainlet

>>10282330
Yes.

>>10282293
>>10282256
>Free will exists because I FEEL like I have it
Wow anons you're really smart, I'm sure nobody has ever thought of that before
>>10282203
Kill me Pete

Free will is simple to justify.

Get up, go look in the mirror and tell me what you see. The description of yourself is subjective, and in that subjectivity you freely describe traits that you subjectively find significant. This is because you're free to interpret your own face subjectively, and the same reason someone else may describe you differently.

Alternatively, go look in the mirror, you filthy NEET bastard. Only something with free will could choose to be so horrible.

>be biomechanical meat machine
>personality and IQ based on environment, heredity, upbringing, and genes
>outer stimuli processed by nervous system to create what we call thoughts, emotions, and actions
>some part of our brains makes us think it's "us" doing it freely, when really it's just mechanical reaction to outer stimuli
>we cannot create or do anything original or out of line with the data formed in us by life

>>10282345
but why do you think about yourself that way? Are you seriously throwing aside everything that we have accumulated in our years that affects our judgment? Are we really describing ourselves by our own free will? Was it my choice to think I look fucking sexy because the confidence instilled in me by hitting the gym, knowing who I am, having a girlfriend, watching my fair share of Sam Hyde, and reading my fair of Shakespeare?

>>10282345
The argument against free will doesn't state that everyone would have the same answer to the description of themselves.

>>10282345
>Only something with free will could choose to be so horrible.
Ouch.

If everything leading up to the moment of our action made the action for us and it was not our free will, then what made the first action?

>>10282359
Prime Mover.

>>10282330
Don't waste time on debating with these people. If you're interested in free will just read arguments for and against it. A non-empirical account that first got me interested was Mark Twain's "What Is Man?" https://www.gutenberg.org/files/70/70-h/70-h.htm#link2H_4_0003

>>10282353
>look at me, 20 question McGee over here passive aggressively asserting my proposition through logical fallacy.
And now we wait.

>>10282355
No, but by virtue of your subjectivity your capacity to describe yourself is self-determined. That is to say, in the instance of observance, your free will freely allows you to choose what you find significant and articulate it in a way of your choosing. This is why you may have different answers on different days; it's not the accumulation of collaborative experience, rather a subjective interpretation of the self, the question, and the form of your answer.

>>10282359
But was there a "first action" at all?

>>10282366
Thanks, man.

>>10282367
Subjectivity isn't necessarily self-determined. You as a human have a cocktail of biological makeup and experiences that I don't have. This is where subjectivity can possibly come from. You aren't a specter unbound to the material world.

>>10282374
The link I gave went directly to the second essay. Here's the correct one https://www.gutenberg.org/files/70/70-h/70-h.htm#link2H_4_0001

>>10282381
>You as a human have a cocktail of biological makeup and experiences that I don't have. This is where subjectivity can possibly come from.
And you've fallen into my trap.

Yes, it can possibly come from there, but this is the logical equivalent to saying "fucking magic, ain't gotta explain shit", with a gloss of pseudo-science in the background. What I presented was something uniquely human: understanding a question was posed to describe the self, viewing the self, describing what you found significant about your "selfness", and communicating it to another through the perspective of yourself. If all this was determined, you would consistently have one answer relative to each interval that it's asked. Because free will exists, you can describe yourself however you interpret the question, as well as yourself, and the form of the answer. A logically derived answer about the nature of the self is determined, and some people may answer like that, but you know there's one shithead out there who would write something elaborate, nonsensical, and generally disruptive. Why? It's not that they were determined to act like that, because even though they may be conditioned relative to the stimulus to make that statement, the extrapolation and interpretation of each element procedurally assigns free will to the description, allowing them to answer like that.

In short, layering a question with subjective metacognition demonstrates free will, because it provides infinite capacities for self-determined answers. You could argue it was biologically blah blah blah, and may or may not be right, but it's more simple and accurate to assume each person has stewardship over their answer, and thus takes responsibility for it freely.

>>10282421
I mean it's seems to me that thinking that your actions are independent from the natural world and that humans are exceptional in tapping into this metaphysical realm seems to be magical thinking to me.

>>10282427
No, your actions are intrinsically bound to the natural world in terms of a container for potential, but it's simpler to say each person takes responsibility for how they act in the nature of their infinite number of answers, rather than there are a finite number of answers so astronomically huge that we just haven't advanced enough to predict them all. The first way assigns moral responsibility to the individual for the nature of their metacognition, the second says "here's some math on possible outcomes to your question".

>>10282437
To elaborate, the only reason you have an astronomically huge number of answers in the first place is because Billy Shithead could say anything out of spite, and you need to account for that. Is it Billy Shithead's responsibility for acting like a douche, or is it the universe's disposition to create Billy Shithead just to piss everyone off and make numbers really big?

Let's say there are 120 characters available. There are fifty-one characters on my keyboard including capital letters, numbers, and spaces, but not including console commands or elaborate faggotry. That means there are 51 > 1 > 10 > 50 > 120 possible answers. That's 51 times itself 51 times, repeated 120 times. Think about that, just to account for Billy Shithead who decided he wanted to describe himself as "8==D" with a fuckload of equal signs.

>>10282203
Kill me, Pete

>>10282187
>implying it matters whether our will is free or not
>implying it's even a real philosophical problem

Schopenhauer put it best: "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills."

>>10282203
ffuck you devil cat

>>10282187
It's not like I had a choice or anything.

>>10282203
Kill me, Pete

doesn't your personality determine what decisions you make though? Doesn't the environment determine who you become? I would argue that this is all just a chain reaction and have an illusion of choice.

>>10282564
*mic drop*

Everyone in this thread is correct. Prove me wrong.

>>10282658
But you're wrong, therefore not everyone in this thread is correct and you've been proven wrong.

>>10282664
This is what's called begging the question. Not how it's commonly used but the true definition.

>>10282670
I created a paradox.

If you're right, then I'm right which makes you wrong, thus you're double wrong.

If I'm right, then you're wrong, which makes me double right, and you single wrong

If I'm double right, then you're double wrong, which means in either situation I have two rightness, and you have zero rightness.

How do you win now?

>tfw you'll never live in a prehistoric schizotheocracry before the devolution into conscious thought
>tfw the gods are lost forever

>>10282203
Kill me, Pete

also free and determinism are compatible because they operate in different scopes. Determinism is the ultimate nature of the universe, but free will as a human-constructed concept exists on the level of human perception.

Saying that determinism precludes free will is like saying the fact that the brain is formed of atoms precludes the existence of any concept forming in the brain besides atoms.

>>10282203
Kill me Pete

>>10282421
>the extrapolation and interpretation of each element procedurally assigns free will to the description

Please stop writing English.

>>10282333
Winner

Question of whether free will exists is unanswerable, what is answerable is its application as a rule

>>10284175
You could say that about any question in metaphysics

>>10284182
No

>>10284184
Yes.

>>10282187
To believe free will doesn't exist is to simultaneously admit that mankind is too weak to master itself and its actions. This is a sad path, do not follow it.

>>10284187
Hmm

>>10284197
mmh

Free will exists but it's heavily confined to a set number of outcomes.

>>10284233
It's a illusion, your personality already determines which outcome you choose

>>10282696
That analogy is only valid if you're a materialist
Although free will exists on the level of human perception its very concept involves the notion of control over one's future which is not compatible with determinism

>>10282203
kill me pete

>>10282203
Kill me, Pete

>>10282203
Kill me pete

>>10282187
Relative to the scope of your perception, your freedom or lack thereof is. To level the playing field and consider themselves at the height of the noble-born, do the fatalists who say free will does not exist secretly desire.

>>10284401
this

>>10282187

How can free will exist when we are destined to do one thing, that by virtue of our existence cannot be stopped: Accrue knowledge?

We as a species are obsessed with the concept of God, yet we will inevitably become God. The universe and all of its concepts are waiting to be unveiled, once all possible variables as well as all processes to manipulate them have been discovered, will we become God.

And God said: "LET THERE BE LIGHT!" And so, trillions upon trillions of years later, the heat death of the Universe was reversed and it was born anew. We are telling a story that has yet to be played out.

>>10284401
indeed

>>10284193
>too weak
Why do people who argue for free will come up with such pathetic arguments?

>>10284542
How can free will not exist when I am the universe? Is the universe nothing?

>>10284618
Salvation will come from the people

>>10284764
Universe is everything nigga

>>10284801
No, it comes from Jesus Christ.

>>10284854
That's correct. And?

>>10284871
From their faith and their meekness

>>10282203
Kill me, Pete

>>10282203
>free will and determinism aren't compatible
"dude I'm sorry, I wish I could make it to the party tonight but I'm afraid the laws of physics are keeping me from going"

free will exists because free will exists. whether or not we go through with anything is influenced by society, needs, wants, etc. there has never and will never be a plausible argument for free will not existing. seriously, you and i both know this is true. god this shit is stupid

>>10285054
>yeah bro it obviously exists because there aren't arguments for it not existing
I hate to be that faggot who mentions the teapot, but that's not how proof works

>he believes the debate between free will fags and determinists is not 90% semantics

>>10285096
Yeah, after the first argument I had with a friend on this subject I realized that the way he defined free will was what I would define as determinism.

>>10285096
I mean, human rights and legal systems are "just semantics", doesn't mean the conversation is not worth having. Incompatibilists usually have a case for how the notions of self-authorship, agency, moral responsibility etc are at odds with what we know about the universe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrS1NCvG1b4

>>10282187
If free will existed, op would be able to stop repeating this thread.

>>10285136
If free will existed I wouldn't have chose to be born.

>>10282187
lmao how can free will not exist nigga just step away from your computer like wtf hahaha

>>10282203
But it doesn't matter.

>>10282256
Your diary needs some proofing

We are all finite state machines morons. We do what we are accustomed to doing. We don't do what we are unaccustomed to doing.

There is less 'free will' than you think there is.

How can an atheist believe in determinism? Wouldn't there have to be a "determiner?"

>implying adequate determinism isn't necessary for free will

>>10286054
dude natural laws lmao

>daily reminder sciencefags have zero evidence that all phenomena can be reduced to lower-level phenomena, zero evidence for the uniformity of laws and process across the universe and time, and zero evidence for pure naturalism besides their methodological utility

>>10282345
>Only something with free will could choose to be so horrible.
This is unironically my argument for free will

There's no such thing as free will in the sense of a ghost in the machine

>>10282203
kill me pete

>Against determinism and teleology.— From the fact that something ensues regularly and ensues calculably, it does not follow that it ensues necessarily. That a quantum of force determines and conducts itself in every particular case in one way and manner does not make it into an "unfree will." "Mechanical necessity" is not a fact: it is we who first interpreted it into events. We have interpreted the formulatable character of events as the consequence of a necessity that rules over events. But from the fact that I do a certain thing, it by no means follows that I am compelled to do it. Compulsion in things certainly cannot be demonstrated: the rule proves only that one and the same event is not another event as well. Only because we have introduced subjects, "doers," into things does it appear that all events are the consequences of compulsion exerted upon subjects— exerted by whom? again by a "doer." Cause and effect— a dangerous concept so long as one thinks of something that causes and something upon which an effect is produced. Necessity is not a fact but an interpretation.

Determinists

B T F O
T
F
O

In the ‘Author’s Note to the Second Edition’ in Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor writes:

>Does one’s integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man.

All I know, regardless of everything else, I make choices. Perhaps these choices are predetermined, perhaps I don't "really" make these choices.

But at the end of the day, we all make choices, and they have consequences.

>>10286402
Thank you for pointing out the obvious, I'm sure no one here knew that already

>>10286402
REDDIT

>>10282187
If I have free will why don't I act in my interest? Why do I instead do today what I did yesterday which amounts to the slow disintegration of my life and my soul?

>>10282187
>tfw will is the only thing that exists and every single thing in this world has a defined teleological purpose and meaning
I love being born into a nihilistic age because otherwise I wouldn't have the motivation to rebel against it.

>>10286435
"There is no better time to have been born in than the present, when we have lost everything."

>>10286435
The will serves itself, humans do not have a purpose for everyday life other then to serve the will.

>>10286428
You have free will, it's just that god hates you.

>>10282187
None of you hacks have even read Kane

>>10285084
not him, but what is the teapot argument

>>10286555
It's just an example of the burden of proof.
The previous poster was stating that free will exists simply because it does and that the arguments agaisnt it are invalid. Even if they were this wouldn't be sufficient proof of the existence of free will, thus his argument still faces the burden of proof he hasn't answered.

In case you're unaware of it look up bertrand russell teapot

>>10282287
It really is amazing

>>10286440
>this was written in the 30s
what a dumb bitch

This thread was moved to >>>/his/3708919