It seems as we were set up to become embroiled until the skeptics including Descartes played that well rehearsed play of the evil genius , then the set ups were set down, and now they are just sets, sets within which ultimately all game players will again reattain (retain)lfreedom of choice.
That entails an undeniable fallacy, if not blatant contradiction.
Hi, Mags sent me this. What are you asking? If I’m to give you an answer from my own life and experiences I need to know exactly what the question is.
I could be added to the list probably. But I don’t not believe determinism exists, I just think freewill comes of it and that things only grow more free inevitably, determinism has determined itself free by its own mechanism/existence of functioning.
So freewill and determinism kinda both exist like two sides of a single plane that’s looping around itself. Holy shit that’s like a mobius strip, dude.
You just gave me a breakthrough, art. Both are possible in euclidean space because it’s impossible for there to be a surface normal vector at every point!
We’re going to co-publish a paper bro, so get your shit together quick. We’re about to make history.
It wasn’t me, it was another poster…
I assume you were on the list he posted of people who had posted on the topic.
I think that she was referring to my question.
I can see that I would make a lousy pollster.
Maia, if you could just state your favorite number between 0 and 30, inclusive, you will give the closest thing to an answer so far.
I checked my suspicions about what “determinism” means. The American Heritage dictionary (the first one to come up) agrees that if a person believes that even one event anywhere throughout the entire universe was not caused by other events, having absolutely no casual associations, then that person does not believe in determinism. That person would be a “non-determinist”.
American Heritage dictionary says (if I can make this quote thing work right):
In addition, non-determinists don’t believe in science either because one of the most, if not the very most fundamental principle in the physical sciences is that energy cannot be created or destroyed. And so far I have read up to the point where James Saint explains that for anything to exist, it must have affect upon something. I can’t argue with that and what that means is that if something suddenly, without being caused, affects something else, energy has been created from nowhere.
So the conservation of energy rule requires that any and every event must stem only from other events in order to get its energy to have any affect and thus to exist.
I really had no intention of entering this debate or discussion. Honestly, I just wanted to get a quick idea of about how many of the current posters are non-determinists - what kind of audience has been here at this board. I’m learning as I go.
At this point, due to the responses to my question, it appears that from 90 to 100% of the posters here are non-determinists and thus don’t actually believe in science either.
The average internet board sock-puppet population used to be around 15% so if he is the only one out of 30 (about 7%) this board is better than average. But then perhaps over the last decade the internet average has dropped.
Ok, the first number that popped into my head was 7, so that’s my answer for what my favourite number is.
Maia, the question being asked is, do you believe in determinism?
No, I don’t. I think a lot of stuff is purely random.
Thank you Maia. I wasn’t asking anyone what they believed. I was just asking for how many, a number.
“Defending Free Will & The Self”
Frank S. Robinson in Philosophy Now magazine
Here though we always come back to the same predicament. Drawing conclusions based only on what science has been able to disclose so far regarding what it thinks is happening in the brain when we come to want something while in turn wanting something else. Where is the definitive evidence that clearly discloses if “I” here is unequivocally free or unequivocally compelled to opt for one set of actual behaviors rather than another?
Nothing, to my knowledge, has been decisively pinned down. Or, to your knowledge, has it been. Yes? Okay, link us to it.
Dennett says, Frankfurt writes. So, what can we, with all certainty, come to conclude about me typing these words and you reading them given the arguments posed by both the hard determinists and the libertarians.
In other words, Schopenhauer just takes it all back another step: “You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing.”
I’m only pointing out the obvious: there may well be more steps.
Eventually, everything has to be taken back to an understanding of existence itself. And we don’t even know for certain if that is not as well but another manifestation of nature unfolding only as it must. Or, if “I” does have some measure of freedom not yet explained by science, whether it is even capable of understanding something like this at all.
MagsJy,
What came after the above, I had no idea about except for the first two but my question under the circumstances is: Did most people know this? Did he care, either way, that they knew it?
I suppose my real question here is whether or not it was okay with him that YOU revealed something like that insofar as the last username is concerned.
If Jakob does/did not really care one way or the other about it and you knew this, then I will not let it rub me the wrong way.
I have seen incidents/posts in here where people do this, for whatever reason, call people’s other usernames out and I think it is always a crappy thing.
Er… ok.
I had never heard of retro-causation before. I googled it and it is more than kind of complicated reading for me. So, no, I did not really mean retro-causation.
I raised the question because I saw PH as the effect of the bombing of H and N though I may be wrong.
It boggles my mind to think that future event which have not yet occurred could influence and lead to events happening sometime in the past. I find that difficult to believe but I do wish to keep an open mind since it is a fascinating question albeit probably one which will never be answered. But it is sometimes the questions which really feed us…
The only place I believe that I have encountered such a thing is Star Trek, The Next Generation and that was quite fascinating.
Past events can cause future (present) events to occur but how does something which has not yet occurred send a ripple into the future? Can our intuitive/psychic minds stretch way into the future at times and determine and create it beforehand?
Fascinating but not much of an answer, right? 
“Neuroscience vs philosophy: Taking aim at free will”
Scientists think they can prove that free will is an illusion. Philosophers are urging them to think again.
Kerri Smith in Nature magazine.
Forget the results for a moment.
What is of fundamental significance/importance to me here is that these folks are not just exploring/examining the determinism/free will debate in a world of words. Which is basically what you and I are engaged in here.
Instead, they are using sophisticated technology coupled with the scientific method to explore actual brains making actual choices.
And, I suspect, one day this sophisticated technology will be reduced down to a device that can be held in one’s hand. That way decisions made in the course of actually interacting with others from day to day can be probed “in real time” to explore the extent to which the choices are more likely to be compelled than free.
Bottom line: Telling us here what you believe about the behaviors that you choose is not the same as demonstrating that what you believe proves that you either chose them of your own volition or were in fact not able to not choose them.
Uh-oh?
That’s why I asked you about retro-causation.
Pearl Harbor started the Pacific war between the Allies and Japan.
H and N ended it.
Obviously, I do not need to say it but you are right of course. I have no idea what I was thinking unless I simply forgot the dates which I do know and realize that PH brought us into the war. Can I blame it on the extreme heat and humidity perhaps? 
You were quick-minded to think of retro-causation but even then I didn’t “get it”.
Anyway, retro-causation is fascinating.
“Defending Free Will & The Self”
Frank S. Robinson in Philosophy Now magazine
The difficulty most have with an assessment like this is rather obvious: It’s one thing to describe what is going on in the brain figuratively and another thing altogether to note how step by step the chemical and neurological interactions involved in making a choice translate into a literal understanding of how the brain “I” and the mind “I” become intertwined from moment to moment such that the choice being made is clearly shown to be either volitional or compelled.
After all, it’s not like “I” am inside my brain with a baton conducting this tangle of biological interactions to insure that the choice that I really and true want prevails. Thus “I” itself here remains no less enigmatic.
Of course it may well be that what makes you feel is no less compelled than what makes you think. Just as the brain is autonomically intertwined with the rest of the body organs such that “I” merely goes along for the ride. You may be having a heart attack but it’s not like you actually chose to. The body does its thing in so many ways that are beyond your control.
But: Do you have some measure of control in choosing to eat healthy foods and exercise and practice stress reduction techniques aimed at reducing the possibility of a heart attack? Is that an actual autonomous contribution of “I”?
The construction of the “I” is not a point of contention here, as the nerveous system manifests various parts corresponding to various functions. I don’t think Dennett’s definition makes much difference in terms of describing the functional derivitive.
Meaning, that primary derives such as hunger.are not determined by a unified nerveous system, there are various systems within the brain which are autonomous. The nutrition is regulated by the enteric nervous system.
The enteric nerveous system can make decisions , as it used to be part of the autonomic system. And the reactions are based on what is in the bowels. That is why they call it the 2nd brain. The gut feelings we get when making decisions are related to this systemic structure.
As such , the depleted chemicals in the body can direct systemic choices of nutrients
However this stage of physiological development have minimal connection to memory and subsequent learning, leaving that.to higher brain centered functions. This partiality of brain centers can not derive absolutely the function that neurons play in determining freedom of choice.
So although a neurological process may be partially responsible for determening conscious choices, there is problems with the idea of.defining 'conansciousness- thus, especially with the Ayer type of behaviorist model that literal explanations tend to cover.
That I think is a weakness with Dennett. That is entirely credible with a positivist model of.denoting nihilistic meaning structures.
Iambigious, this is not to say that such are complete and vigorous results either way.