Biological Will

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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No you can’t really. Because determinism is an argument that the past or external aspects to will must control the present moment, that we react based off of what has happened to us. This is called indoctrination. Indoctrination is the opposite of being self sufficient, aware, self thinking. So no, i don’t think so. You can argue that you’re a determinist right now but labels don’t mean shit to reality. That’s reality for you. You have a will of which is free and you use it under the false guise of being determined, but be my guest if you wish to throw away the only freedom you have, to be yourself. What’s innovation if all is external? Experience can happen internal with the will alone.

One discovering themself is not promised or determined in one’s life. And if many are lacking self discovery then the differentiation CAN be made between determinism and free will.

Think outside the box.

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This is what he’s counting on. Note the lack of quotations of either of our actual words, and the volume and repetition of specific accusations - of which the severity in language scales to the degree that he’s been intellectually humiliated by the person against whom he’s lashing out. The name of the fallacy is proof by assertion. You’ll recognise it in the current US president too, it successfully compels the credulous who are seeking comfort through the reinforcement of their own (their tribe’s) confirmation bias, and lures in the unsuspecting - a huckster’s techique.

Check this out:
Search for my name in his posts, which number 1490 at the time of my typing this (as are all figures henceforth, obviously). 123 matches. So I’m mentioned in an average of over 1/12 of his posts, but take into account his very first mention of me was on Jan 29th 2018, by which point he’d already written nearly 700 posts, so this goes up to about 1/7 - but this is only an average. To give an idea of the degree to which this has ramped up over time, he has mentioned my name 43 times in this thread alone. That’s in 53 posts: an average of over 80%.

Why? Well let’s check out what he has to say about me:
“Causes are presumptions, not facts. Science is always looking and searching for “Causes”, but that doesn’t mean they are fact-before-the-fact. This is something that Silhouette either doesn’t understand, or worse, overlooks and ignores intentionally.”
I’ve mentioned repeatedly how I acknowledge the problem of induction (at least 12 times in his own threads since late 2018 from a search I just did), and that I regard Determinism as a model of whatever reality is doing that holds up overwhelmingly consistently, and that relatively it’s faaar better than anything else - not that it’s fact in the black and white sense that he keeps saying I’m claiming, as if causes were “in” reality. On page 7 of this very thread I write the following: “Determinism is a description - a model of whatever reality appears to be doing. Even if nobody believed in it, it would still describe and predict reality with astounding fidelity, even if it could be confirmed that there was absolutely nothing essential to reality that was deterministic, and even if Determinism turned out to be necessarily “wrong” somehow in spite of this.”

So do I not understand/overlook/intentionally ignore this? I will let you make up your own mind.
To clarify, my position is that “Free Will” cannot suffice to “fill the gaps” as it contains contradictions and insurmountable problems: “both causatively influenced by the world in order to make an informed decision on how to causatively effect it, whilst simultaneously not being causatively influenced by it as a free agent” as I most recently said in the previous page on this thread. It requires Substance Dualism, which requires a resolution of the mind-body problem, and it conflates possibility with actuality: many considered choices will only ever result in one chosen choice according to the prior conditions of your preference and circumstance that are already set. This means that you can’t simultaneously choose differently in order to test and prove that you could have chosen otherwise: the essence of Free Will is unfalsifiable. If anything were to be able to fill the gaps, it would presumably be some kind of indeterminacy - though the work needed to prove the existence of such a thing has a mountain of empirical evidence to overcome, and a logical proof that it must be the case that no Determinism can better explain any phenomena.

As you can see I have both logical argument and scientific evidence to offer against Free Will, and in favour of Determinism - I have no emotional investment in the idea, I simply offer the facts and I am repeatedly accused as follows: “they cannot think outside the common boundaries and limits, like Silhouette. God’s Slaves, God’s Children, Eternally.” & “Because others (Silhouette and Promethean) want to deny you your freedom.” & “Silhouette is the resentful type, full of Resentiment, “if I can’t be free–then NOBODY CAN ever!!!”” as though I have an agenda and an emotional drive as reflective of my personality. Simultaneously an “Intentionality Fallacy” (Authorial Intent) and an “Ad Hominem” fallacy - more specifically “Poisoning the Well”. This accounts for the majority of the unreasonable amount of times he has mentioned my name in his posts for over a year.

To give you an idea of the kinds of things he’s asking in order to support my point: “I asked them, multiple times, several times, then a dozen times, give me on example of an act of freedom” (from the previous page on this thread). Thereby the fact that Determinism explains everything better than freedom does is somehow evidence against Determinism according to this point. What I did do was to explain how Determinism is falsifiable if evidence of its absence were to be observed, rather than just absence of evidence when it comes to more complex phenomena. Here I explain that “it’s still potentially possible to falsify instances of supposedly deterministic causation from occurring in specific situations” - in line with what I said in the previous sentence to this one. I am more than willing to explore models of reality that explain it potentially better than Determinism, even if they replace it and Falsify it - as consistent with Karl Popper’s notion of Falsificationism as clearly described in the link.

You will note that this criticism of the mechanism necessary for Free Will has nothing to do with the fact that “some humans are more capable than others”, a sentence in which he inserted the word “Freer” in parentheses on the previous page to clarify what he means by “free”. Obviously people can be more or less capable perfectly in line with Deterministic explanations of reality. This is the sense in which he has routinely been committing the “Motte and Bailey” fallacy, with his argument that some humans are more capable than others as “the Motte”, which nobody disagrees with and “Free Will” as his “Bailey”. The fallacy works in such a way that my disagreement with the “Bailey” translates to him as a disagreement with the much more defensible “Motte”, which translates through the afore-mentioned ad hominem and intentionality fallacies into I “want to deny you your freedom.”

The above has been continuously reiterated for a long time now, should you ever wish to take a look or at least skim our previous exchanges, which I have minimised to almost nothing for a few months now after repeated requests for him to cease his crusade to slander and misrepresent me. Unfleeting persistence and never backing down, even in the face of direct and repeated contradiction is how the uneducated and unintellectual perceive victory, which interestingly is why the US has its current Populist figurehead. The intellectual and educated with whom they cannot contend are distrusted as are magicians and thieves who similarly catch them off their guard in their own ways - so I can’t blame him for incessantly fighting back as hard as he can in the only way he knows how. You will recognise the Dunning–Kruger effect in everything he says about me - compare the standard of his posts to this one, with everything I’m saying backed clearly explained (as opposed to merely claimed) and with references and statistics that you can check yourself to back it all up: yet he still perceives the obvious and huge disparity as the opposite way around. What he will normally do at this point is reiterate his same campaign against me in around 3 consecutive posts and weakly try to immitate something I’ve used against him - let’s watch. It may be the case that he’s simply trolling for attention, but either way you will understand my reservation against engaging him any further. I put a lot of effort into trying to bridge the gap, but the only thing I appear to have achieved is to gain evidence for the Backfire Effect.

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Not uncommon on philosophy fora, especially for those in closed circles or cliques of perceived friends/admirers. It is absolutely imperative to prevent one’s friends from thinking they have ‘lost’ a debate and/or are wrong. So rather than ever publicly admit losing, one will ‘ride it out’ and hold firmly to their position… now more than ever before. At this point the battle isn’t over the truth, but over the audience. One wants at any cost to reassure those whom one perceives as being trusting and in good confidence for so long.

Imagine the devastation of discovering that after losing a debate with a superior intellect, your circle of friends lose interest in you.

No fuckin’ way will a fella let that happen. He’ll panic and increase the volume of his posts, hoping to draw attention away from the threat.

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@Artimas

I could just as easily say freewill is Christian indoctrination, or globalist, the idea that our biology, race, sex and upbringing have little-no bearing on who we are and our behavior, the notion that the past has next to nothing to do with our identity.

Here it sounds like you’re admitting determinists are still exercising their freewill subconsciously.
Behaviorally does it really matter whether one believes they have it or not?

Determinism is a descriptive position, not prescriptive.
Determinists don’t necessarily believe we should try to align our behavior with what we believe about our neuropsychological nature, they only necessarily believe that our behavior is the result of our nature reacting, or responding situationally, and that our nature was formed by our past biological and psychosocial conditioning, nurturing, whether we’re conscious of it or not.
It’s an explanation for why they think, feel and do what they do, not them trying to act in accordance with some psychoanalytic construct of themselves they’ve accepted.

Determinists aren’t necessarily anymore rigid than indeterminists.
Determinists permit deviation.
If determinists diverge from what they believe to be their norm, this too they will chalk up to their nature, which they recognize can be complex, dynamic, fluid and so at times ambiguous, but still causal, whereas indeterminists will (tend to) attribute it to freewill, metaphysical spontaneity, partly or fully acting independently of one’s nature, that is if they admit they have a nature at all.

Determinism isn’t anti-deviation from one’s beliefs about oneself, it is just an explanation for how we came to be as we are, whether one is or isn’t presently conforming with their norm, or whether the determinist believes what they believe to be their norm needs to be reassessed in light of compounding aberrations.

For me the freewill vs determinist debate is a lot like two guys watching this dancer:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RSsoTJA6cA[/youtube]

One guy declares she’s twirling clockwise, the other insists she’s twirling anticlockwise.
So which one is it?
The reality is: it can validly be interpreted either way.
She’s turning both/neither, it’s ambiguous, yet our brain normally compels us to interpret it as wholly one or the other at a time.

Well, a lot of reality works like that, perhaps especially the dimensions of reality philosophers have tasked themselves with exploring and making sense of: the meta.
It’s why the philosophical community rarely arrives at widespread consensus on anything, even after millennia of discourse on the same subjects, by and large these riddles remain unresolved, which’s not to say everything the scientific community says is set in stone either, but I digress.

Absolute vs relative, objective vs. subjective…freewill vs. determinism, nearly every regular on these boards has an opinion, and they remain just that, an opinion.
And everyone has an argument and sometimes it can be said one has gotten the better of it, but fundamentally these disputes remain unsettled, and probably always will be for the foreseeable future as long as man is man.

Really they’re humbling, or they ought be, because we’re coming to the limits of what we can know.
If anything they ought to make us all the more empathetic, openminded, tolerant of a broader array of perspectives, but instead as so often happens on these boards, they only serve to make us even more stubborn and unwavering, and in my opinion, that is real a shame.
We don’t know it all, not even close, but isn’t that the source of all true philosophy and science, it’s been said, that sense, that feeling of wonder?

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I am more openminded and tolerant of a broader array of perspectives simply because I do not possess a monopoly on wisdom and only have limited knowledge
I may not agree with every alternative view as that would quickly become invalidated by contradiction but I can accept many without dismissing them entirely

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Do you know Guide? He spoke of such a working relationship as this, but one couldn’t get anymore out of him than what he allowed of himself. :-$

I really miss that guy! :icon-rolleyes:

Such questioning is dependent on schooling, education, sociotel background etc. so such a discussion would not have been had by the majority. When one is born into a well-oiled system (say Socialism) one is born into indoctrination, but a much more lassiez faire society would breed a much more freer will… biological or otherwise.

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Can’t say that I do.

Regarding a freely-minded person, a Free-Man, let’s start with the obvious. When an individual goes through life, and most people and the Determinists here (Sil and Prom), say “You can’t do X. You can’t do Y. You can’t do Z. It’s impossible!” Then this individual keeps proving them wrong. He keeps doing what others say cannot be done. He will begin to laugh at “Determinism”. Reduced, it’s a matter of ability/power. Some people can do what others can’t. And the most exceptional, make it look easy. A great athlete surprises his competitors and the audience, which is why Professional sports have millions and millions of fans who watch daily, the Spectacle. That very spectacle is as I say it is. Some individuals, Excellent and Noble, keep proving everybody wrong and denying expectations.

Denying the Determinists. But I don’t want anybody here to presume that any power or authority is in the hands of the Determinists. Because it’s not about living up to their expectations. It’s about denying and laughing at them. You live up to your own expectations, which are vastly higher and “out-of-bounds” of everybody else. That’s what makes somebody an Individual, and Free.

That’s what makes the rare types Un-determined. Because your rules, your limits, your expectations, do not necessarily apply to others. They apply to yourself, yes, but not everybody and everything.

Again, most people are negative-minded, Nihilistic, wanting to pull others down instead of raise themselves up. It’s easy to be dominated by Limitations, Failure, and Apathy. You give up. You gave up, long ago. But the Free-Man never gave up. It’s not in his vocabulary or method of thought. He keeps striving to individual goals, which are higher than everybody else. A higher standard, set of rules, laws.

A Higher Order.

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Citations and references, please.

Where did either of us say that?

Quotations and context please.

Which individual in particular? What did they keep doing?

Sources and specifics please.

209

Prove to me, yourself, or anyone, that you were determined to say what you said.

You could have said something else.

210

it’s a miserable friday night. i’m so lonely, and nobody’ll give me a ride to the grateful dead concert. aw rats.

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Ultimately it’s your choice…no wait, it isn’t, is it?

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I don’t think freewill requires substance dualism…not that I have anything against substance dualism (I mean just because you can’t explain exactly how the mind substance interacts with the brain/body substance, doesn’t mean you don’t have evidence they’re different substances capable of interacting, we may experience the mind as being more acausal than the brain/body, and until modernity at least mechanistically we couldn’t begin to explain how we were able to move our arms or how babies were conceived, yet that didn’t mean we didn’t have ample evidence for our locomotive and procreative capabilities).

While the behavior of some forms of matter may be more predictable than others, no form of matter is perfectly predictable.
There are two explanations I can think of for why no form of matter is perfectly predictable pertinent here.

The determinist explanation: while all forms of matter are causal, some forms of matter are more complex and dynamic than others, and so harder for our limited minds to predict.
The indeterminist explanation: matter is not entirely causal.

Now if matter isn’t entirely causal, meaning sometimes it’s impossible to predict, even for say a God, even if it were possible to ascertain every single variable, then that means the brain, which’s composed of matter, isn’t entirely causal either, nor the mind, for the mind is just the brain’s perception of itself, not a separate entity from the brain.

Now the determinist could always maintain that if we knew every variable, we’d be able to predict what matter is going to do with 100% accuracy, and experience seems to indicate that the more variables we know, the more accurate our predictions are.
This’s true to some extent, but still there are some processes in the cosmos where, despite uncovering more variables for a phenomenon, we’re no closer to explaining why it came to be and what it’ll do next, and what’s worse there’re other processes where learning more about them has only added to our confusion.
We can never ascertain all the variables, nor perfectly predict what matter is going to do, so there’s no way we can know that some of matters unpredictability isn’t due to matter being partly acausal, including the brain/mind.

Furthermore, at the quantum level at least, scientists have had to admit matter is probably not entirely causal, and visible matter is made up of quantum matter, so we could perhaps make the leap that visible matter is unlikely to be entirely causal as well.
Lastly, what the brain/mind experiences as its thoughts and feelings, well, they may not entirely correspond with visible matter and its relatively causal nature, our thoughts and feelings may better correspond with quantum matter and its acausal nature instead.

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Human beings are quantum beings and the quantum world is non causal so determinism cannot be true [ at least not absolutely so ]

We separate reality into the classical and the quantum but the classical world is simply the quantum world but on a much larger scale
Logically therefore any attempt at trying to understand reality at its most fundamental level has to be from the quantum perspective

So free will and determinism and indeed all aspects of human psychology can only be understood when the brain is treated as a quantum system

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Right, well put.

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Same here.
I wish we could have more conversations on here that don’t devolve into egotism.
If you hit a wall with someone, and you think they’re talking passed you or you’re talking passed each other, then it’s time to drop it and move on.
We’re all entitled to our opinion, and while some positions may have a few more proofs for them than others, again most of the issues we deal with are very far from conclusive.
I think it’s great there’re all these schools of thought out there and divergent ideas, it’d be boring and philosophy would be impossible if there weren’t.
So much ultimately comes down to intuition and preferences as we’re dealing with very challenging issues that’ve confounded the best and brightest since the dawn of discourse.

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yeah but what the phrase ‘freewill’ means, and whether or not it is real, is not a matter of opinion.

egotism is never a danger. either one is right, and therefore deserving of the pride they have in their intelligence… or one is wrong, and the spectacle of self assurance and certainty is then only harmless and amusing. in either case one should never be offended by the egotism of another.

it should also be mentioned that the relatively recent trend of using quantum physics to defend freewill is also played out. again, predictions and probabilities are observational problems and have nothing to do with what, that, and how, causation works.

it has always seemed to me that those who endorse the theory of freewill are secretly harboring a very profound sense of multifaceted existential anxiety and ressentiment about/toward the world. i’ve already described and explained the hidden psychological machinery behind the wanting to believe in freewill, and we’ve (sil more so than me) thoroughly worked out the epistemological problems with the theory several times already. so it comes down to two final verdicts; either one just can’t understand that it’s nonsense, or one doesn’t have the grit and innovation to create a workable world view without it. the lack of freewill doesn’t make ‘everything purposeless and meaningless’. it in fact enriches and enhances a philosophers prospects in understanding the world, how it works, and what can be done with it. some of the most important thinkers (e.g., spinoza, nietzsche, wittgenstein) spent all of five minutes examining the theory, discovered it was nonsense, and then moved on to create consistent, workable philosophies without it. it’s difficult, like playing in thirteen, but it can be done.

i have faith though that if you guys keep working at it, you’ll finally get that level-up and move on to bigger and better things. until then, you’ll still enjoy the game… but you’ll be in beginner mode… and there’s far less action and bad guys in beginner mode.

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You’re right. Free-Will is a true, objective, Scientific fact.

You can’t argue against it. I mean, you and Sil both tried, but failed.

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I find the notion that we have to look for evidence of freewill in the brain, and not the mind, which may very well be partly separate from the brain, to be an unnecessarily limiting one.
The brain may not be able to account for everything happening in the mind, just as the contrary is presumed.
Why should all evidence have to come through the five senses?
We all have a mind, and we may directly experience it as being in part, free.
Ultimately whatever data is presented to our senses is at least in part contained within the mind too.
You can’t bypass it, so why not examine thoughts, feelings, choices and decisions themselves?

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this is actually correct, but in a way you’re not aware of. the thesis of freewill is so nonsensical that it can’t even be wrong. so you’re right when you say we can’t argue against it. all we can do is examine the language and concepts used in its formulation and scrutinize that use as confused, inconsistent, metaphorical, analogical, and even (usually) poetic. granted, these uses can be considered under the general rubric of ‘philosophy’, sure, but analytical approaches are far more rigorous and concerned with what can be sensible and clearly stated. the purpose is to expose gobbledygook when it appears, and the gobbledygooker through whom it appears.

but this is good. you actually said something correct this time, bro.

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Right and wrong are merely points on a spectrum with varying shades of grey in between and so answers are not always easy and simple
With something as fundamentally complex as the debate between free will and determinism the answer is anything but easy and simple