Free will and determinism (serious thread).

[Anonymous No.16320227]

Ok anons I need to settle this (to the extent of our current knowledge) now, given the research of neuroscience and cognitive science accompanied by the previous body of philosophy works, what is the consensus on free will? Can you give me a reading list? Again, serious shit which means no Sam Harris nor Dennett.

[Anonymous No.16320276]

>>16320227
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/

Read the article and the whole bibliography /thread

[Anonymous No.16320291]

>>16320276

[Anonymous No.16320296]

>>16320276
/sage

[Anonymous No.16320301]

>>16320227
There are 2 things you have to distinguish
1) Free Will
2) The Phenomena of Free Will

It is impossible as of now to ascertain if Free Will exists or not, but we have long know that the phenomena of free will does exist, and this only comes about with responsibility/accountability

>Free will has three moments (the capacity to negate any inclination, the capacity to set oneself an end, and the capacity to still see the end as "mine" once it is realized in the external world). It can be actualized in three different shapes, the last of which is the full realization of the concept of will. The first two shapes, the "natural" and "arbitrary" wills are developmental stages towards the fully "rational" will -- they are not yet "for themselves" what they are "in themselves". Alznauer argues that arriving at the self-conception of oneself as free -- having a rational will -- is a necessary condition for responsibility

>The self-interpretations make a difference in the degree to which the essence or "concept" is actualized. It is only when we regard ourselves as free, rational beings, and as having objective reasons and necessary ends, that the concept of free will is fully actualized

To have free will (as phenomena) one must abide by ethical rules in order to bypass the constraint of bad habits. Only responsibility for something can give the person the sense of agency

[Anonymous No.16320311]

From a purely scientific perspective, determinists do have a strong case, but it's clearly very disconnected from reality in a number of ways.
Just because you *could* use science to predict the future, it's not an effective or useful way to do so.
Discarding concepts like free will is a generally bad idea because of the way we live in the world. We don't look at the world as a bunch of atoms and electrons, we look at the world as we see the things, ideas, and systems within it.

[Anonymous No.16320318]

understanding modern physics destroys any hope for determinism honestly

[Anonymous No.16320334]

>>16320318
How so?

[Anonymous No.16320336]

>>16320227
Reminder that hard determinists deserve the gas chamber and/or be regarded as subhuman slaves

[Anonymous No.16320405]

The whole thing comes down to how you define it. For me I think every action is influenced your environment and values which are themselves influenced. You still do things you set out to do, but the question then is why do you decide to do those things in the first place? It is impossible to do an action for no reason. Even specifically doing it for no reason is a reason. Doing something random is not under your control either. Your choices are controlled therefore you aren't free. If you understand that point then you realize even if you redefine "free" then that issue is still there. If you read the Stanford link this definition is called the complex syntactical position if I remember correctly. Freedom of action is not the same as freedom of will.

[Anonymous No.16320413]

>>16320318
Quantum fag detected

[Anonymous No.16320572]

it's a meaningless concept / distinction.

suppose a universe exists with "free will" and an alternate universe exists that is purely "deterministic"

both universes can behave in exactly the same way. e.g. if every person with "free will" behaves exactly as they do in the deterministic universe.

therefore, logically, there is no way to distinguish between these two universes and the free will / determinism distinction is unfalsifiable and thus meaningless from the outset.

[Anonymous No.16320684]

>>16320227
>donald trump

why fascists gotta bring politics into everything

[Anonymous No.16321764]

>>16320684
>everything i don't like is fascist

[Anonymous No.16321991]

>>16320227
Name something that doesn't have a cause.

[Anonymous No.16321996]

>>16321991
Pure sophistry

[Anonymous No.16322001]

>>16320227
Funny meme

[Anonymous No.16322393]

>>16320227

My theses:

1. Freedom of will is not freedom of action.

2. One chooses all aspects of one's life "before" birth so much so that it becomes paradoxically determined. It is functionally finished, Teleologically, before it even begins. One is then merely a passive observer to the technicality of the Phenomenal.

[Anonymous No.16322427]

>>16320334
Uncertainty principle.

[Anonymous No.16322434]

>>16320318
this.

[Anonymous No.16323586]

>>16320318
right because random things at the quantum level affect whether I order a mcdouble or a mcchicken.

Quantum fags are the worst

[Anonymous No.16323607]

[Anonymous No.16323662]

What about those studies on the effects of human cognition on random number generators? Those things freak me out.

>only a percent of a percent that the results could be the result of complete chance

[Anonymous No.16323703]

>>16323662
Proof Nietzsche was right and that we can bend the universe to our will. Sometimes wonder if this was the basis for prayer, the channeling of the will. The idea that praying to God was just primitive mans way of bending the world to the Will.

[Anonymous No.16323708]

>>16320684
That's literally the opposite of what happens. They bring the memes (Trump) into politics

[Anonymous No.16323781]

>>16320227
There is more to proving free will than just falsifying determinism.

[Anonymous No.16323794]

>>16320318
cope

[Anonymous No.16323800]

>>16323586
It does.
I roll a quantum random number generator and depending on if it's a 0 or a 1, I pick the mcdouble or the mcchicken.
Now just apply this to the evolution of electromagnetic radiation in your head that constitutes your thoughts and behavior.

[Anonymous No.16323802]

If you believe in the existence of anything metaphysical at all you are basically committed to being a hard determinist because time is a physical property of our universe

[Anonymous No.16323836]

>>16320227
It's sad to say it, but it's really important and necessary:
Define free will.
(You'd be amazed how much trouble this statement brings to even state of the art discussions of the topic).

[Anonymous No.16324205]

>>16323662
What studies? Gib link anon

[Anonymous No.16324269]

Free will is best defined as the ability to have chosen to have done otherwise. That is why you think you have free will. You think you could easily go and do something but it has to be in your nature to do it.
If it’s in your nature to lie, it’d be natural to continue laying. A person incapable of expressing emotions can easily tell that they don’t want to explain to you his or her emotions, simply because they don’t want to. In reality, they are just incapable.
We’re all kantian persons. You can’t just say we don’t have free will because that would give you the whole “we don’t bear responsibility for our actions,” argument. An action is a predetermined decision.
If I throw a grenade at the pope, he’d be quick to throw it somewhere else.
If I throw a grenade at Captain America, he would drop to the floor and cover the grenade with his body. These two people had about the same time to react, but they are vastly different actions that show what they truly value.
Sam Harris’ point is retarded because the person who is ill is not a kantian person and therefore cannot be judged accordingly. We all know what morality is, and the moral person acts on it.
The nature of the person affects the perception of the action, but it does not mean that it could be justified.

[Anonymous No.16325232]

>>16324205
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

[Anonymous No.16325356]

>>16323836
Not OP, but free will would be when one's actions are neither random, nor determined by anything physical; they come from outside the physical probability system, from the spirit.

[Anonymous No.16325368]

>>16320227
Free will is not real because of quantum physics and the uncertainty principle and the quantum eraser effect in conjunction with biological determinism and holonomic brain theory however this requires a degree of analysis that is not functional and you can therefore continue to be entertained by what you think you're doing for yourself

[Anonymous No.16325371]

>>16320318
>>16320413
literally wrong

quantum physics is what establishes determinism

[Anonymous No.16325419]

>>16320318
>>16322427
>>16323800
Uncertainty Principle doesn't mean true random dice rolls it just means we can't predict events on a subatomic level through observation.

[Anonymous No.16325580]

>>16323800
Even if you were to do this as a point it wouldn't matter if it was quantum generators or a simple coin flip. Even then it's not your will, and you also have to decide which output corresponds with what result. Randomness isn't freedom. If randomness is even actually possible on a macro level.

[Anonymous No.16326507]

>>16320227
IMO, the mere existence of difference in personalities between individuals is enough to shatter free will. What I think, is that we all have "free will" within the confines of our own nature.

[Anonymous No.16326554]

I have a will, but it is not free.

[Anonymous No.16326929]

>>16326554
Based

[Anonymous No.16326938]

>>16320276
/thread retards.

[Anonymous No.16327014]

>>16320227
Plato already proved it anon.

From the wikipedia on Phaedrus
>A soul is always in motion and as a self-mover has no beginning. A self-mover is itself the source of everything else that moves. So, by the same token, it cannot be destroyed. Bodily objects moved from the outside have no soul, while those that move from within have a soul. Moving from within, all souls are self-movers, and hence their immortality is necessary.

[Anonymous No.16327018]

>>16323800
>>16323800
That means you just have no free will on a random scale.

How does it actually prove I have free will? And furthermore, I still doubt whether such "quantum randomness" affects anything on a greater scale beyond the quantum. Our reality is stable.

[Anonymous No.16327049]

Reading list for an undergrad course which I took:

- Paul Holbach, Hard Determinism: The Case for Determinism and Its Incompatibility with Any Important Sense of Free Will
- Galen Strawson, The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility
- Chisholm, Human Freedom and the Self
- Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature Part 3: Of the will and direct passions
- Harry Frankfurt, Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person
- P.F. Strawson, Freedom and Resentment
- Benjamin Libet, Do We Have Free Will?
- Daniel Wegner, Self is Magic
- Kant, Critique of Practical Reason 5:90-5:100
- Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals AK 4:421-449
- Helen Steward, Moral Responsibility and the Concept of Agency
- Robert Kane, Reflections on Free Will, Determinism and Indeterminism

and a general overview book: Robert Kane, A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will.

Personally I would also suggest reading some of Derk Pereboom's work, which I thought was really interesting.

[Anonymous No.16327070]

>>16320227
Doesn't matter /thread

[Anonymous No.16327235]

>>16320318
>Uncertainty principle does not mean randomness
>quantum mechanics is incomplete and poorly understood
>randomnes is means no free will

[Anonymous No.16327272]

>>16320311
That's a wise pragmatic argument for the notion of healthy illusions in the population at large (which I agree with), but I think OP is asking for the ontological analysis.

[Anonymous No.16327378]

>>16324269
"So freedom is only an idea of reason, whose objective reality in itself is doubtful..."
-Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals - Chapter 3

You seem to be struggling hard for some kind of compatibilism here... Why? There being no free will doesn't mean that people aren't 'responsible' for their actions (as a locus of whatever nature led to those actions), only from a kind of cosmic 'blame' (i.e. one does not have meta-control over their nature). We still need to deal with murderers and assorted scum because they are a threat to the rest of us... I don't see why free will must be assumed to justify intervention. On the other hand, admitting that there is no free will may spur us to wisely focus more attention on the forces that shape our natures, both genetic and environmental (an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure).

[Anonymous No.16327556]

>>16320276
Maybe put your own conception of the crucial points at play into a post it a aesthectically /lit/.
tldr; use your own words brainlet

[Anonymous No.16327829]

>>16320227
Why would you own the free will side when it's supposed to be represented by Chad?

[Anonymous No.16327853]

Free will exists because God would not have made his children mere slaves.

[Anonymous No.16328199]

>>16326554
>https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill

I agree with this, I also believe that any phenomenon that stands in the way of our will makes us suffer to some extent.

[Anonymous No.16328240]

>>16327853
Highly based reply. But I feel fear from your gigachad image, that is no God, but an unfathomable beast-- no God does he make that!

>AFTER recognising the necessity of a regeneration of the human race, if we follow up the possibilities of its ennoblement we light on little else than obstacles.... We cannot withhold our acknowledgment that the human family consists of irremediably disparate races, whereof the noblest well might rule the more ignoble, yet never raise them to their level by commixture, but simply sink to theirs. Indeed this one relation might suffice to explain our fall; even its cheerlessness should not blind us to it: if it is reasonable to assume that the dissolution of our earthly globe is purely a question of time, we probably shall have to accustom ourselves to the idea of the human species dying out. On the other hand there is such a matter as life beyond all time and space, and the question whether the world has a moral meaning we here will try to answer by asking ourselves if we mean to go to ground as beasts or gods.

[Anonymous No.16328375]

>>16320227

[Anonymous No.16328394]

>>16320572
The only worthwhile post.

[Anonymous No.16328425]

>>16328375
Free will baby and Compatibilism must mix together and create the truth.

[Anonymous No.16328483]

>>16328375
I don't get how determinism mixes with little ambition, unless you are complete retard thinking you could actually predict stuff.

Just because one could technically predict every outcome if one had all of the possible information … doesn't mean YOU can or that it's even going to be feasible in the distant future.

In practice it's more about denying that humans are some sort of magic blackboxes and closer to "who cares" and "who knows".

[Anonymous No.16328492]

>>16328483
I think its more that you feel that if something negative happened, it was bound to happen no matter how hard you tried, so improving yourself will have limited value

[Anonymous No.16328514]

>>16328492
But maybe it was determined for me to improve myself, so that won't happen again? Or maybe something great is bound to happen to me if I improve? How could I know?

[Anonymous No.16328528]

>>16328514
Indeed, so because you dont know, and what will be will be, you accept what happens to you as inevitable. I guess you can translate to a lack of ambition, at least compared to people who think they have to be the best absolutely all the time because their life is entirely in their hands alone

[Anonymous No.16328539]

>>16320572

It is not a meaningless question when discussing matters of justice and morality.

[Anonymous No.16328603]

>>16328528
Even if I don't know the potential result, knowing the goal is enough to work towards it with 110%, since I still want to achieve it, and without knowing whether I will, giving my best is the logical choice.

[Anonymous No.16328629]

>>16328603
This is fair, it all depends on how you perceive the idea of determinism I suppose. Indeed, the pic does say "tend to have little ambition" not "always have little ambition"

[Anonymous No.16328633]

>>16325419
>Uncertainty Principle doesn't mean true random dice rolls it
Yes, it does, and the only people who say otherwise don't actually understand the math of QM and why it can't be deterministic

[Anonymous No.16328665]

>>16328629
Fair enuff. Guess I was determined to respond to it anyway.

[Anonymous No.16328674]

>>16325371
Absolutely false, QM can not be rectified with determinism without postulating untestable multiverses or a magical field that sends information faster than light, both of which are false.