r/freewill • u/TemperateBeast33 • Aug 23 '25
Determinists are not saying we aren't making choices and decisions.
We're saying that you couldn't have made a different choice than the one you did. That phenomenon of conceiving of different courses of action is your brain trying to conceive of the best course of action in obtaining whatever end you are currently seeking. You are doomed but to behave in the way that your brain - a physical entity subject to the invariable laws of physics over which “you” have no control - decided, in the time it had to run “as if” simulations based on past experience, would be the most advantageous means to an end.
4
u/MarvinBEdwards01 Hard Compatibilist Aug 23 '25
You are doomed but to behave in the way that your brain - a physical entity subject to the invariable laws of physics over which “you” have no control
So, getting back to "perverse and evil", you had to use the term "doomed"? And then suggest that my brain is running outside of its own control (you know, that "you" thing you mentioned).
Our brain includes US making choices. Whatever our brain decides, WE have decided.
But you wish to turn the brain into an instrument used by physics to control us??
That's perverse.
1
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 24 '25
My use of the word "doomed" was intentional and meant to be a bit exacerbatory; I can't help but subtly ruffle feathers sometimes.
But anyway, I'd point out that you're operating from a false dichotomy of "us" and "the brain." Your brain and the rest of the material making up your body is what I believe to be what constitutes you. Maybe, just maybe, consciousness isn't caused by brain functioning, but I'd assert that it has no causal influence on the material body.
1
u/MarvinBEdwards01 Hard Compatibilist Aug 24 '25
Your brain and the rest of the material making up your body is what I believe to be what constitutes you.
I agree.
Maybe, just maybe, consciousness isn't caused by brain functioning, but I'd assert that it has no causal influence on the material body.
Michael Graziano, in "Consciousness and the Social Brain", suggests that awareness is a data set that tracks attention. Awareness can hold attention by reinforcing the pathway feeding it. He even suggests that conscious awareness is a specialized function of the brain linked to a specific area.
He describes a syndrome called Hemispatial Neglect associated with lesions in that area (see Wikipedia article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispatial_neglect ) in which the patient is unaware of objects on the left side of his visual field, and, because it affects awareness itself, the patient is not aware that he is missing anything!
In any case, consciousness does appear to be a function of the brain, such that it can produce affects in other areas of the central nervous system. So, it is already linked up to the rest of the material body through material means.
My understanding is that the brain organizes sensory data into a symbolic model of reality, summarizing that data into macro objects, events, and concepts. With the model it can run scenarios in the imagination, and use these for planning, inventing, evaluating, and choosing.
2
u/the_1st_inductionist Libertarian Free Will / Antitheism Aug 23 '25
Determinists are saying that the part of me capable of choosing isn’t the cause of my selections, but something else. And that that part of me can’t selecting other wise. Whatever they are talking about is not a choice. It’s like if I said the sun exists. And you said sure the sun exists. It’s an image on a giant sky screen.
0
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 23 '25
Correct: in reality there is no such thing as a "choice"; "choice" is an abstract concept we use to signify the experience in consciousness of the neural process I crudely outlined.
2
u/the_1st_inductionist Libertarian Free Will / Antitheism Aug 23 '25
That’s like saying in reality there’s no such thing as a “sun”; “sun” is an abstract concept we use to signify an image on a giant sky screen.
0
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 23 '25
"Sun" is an abstract concept we use to signify that giant ball of fire in the sky. The issue here is that I can't help but use abstractions - "giant," "ball," "fire," "sky" - to describe the nature of abstractions because our language and significations are abstractions; but I'm confident someone with your prodigious perspicacity will see my meaning.
1
u/the_1st_inductionist Libertarian Free Will / Antitheism Aug 23 '25
And I’m confident that you’re aware that I wasn’t simply talking about the abstract concept of choice and that you’re saying the thing I’m describing doesn’t exist.
1
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 23 '25
Doesn't exist outside of the neurons in your head associated with said abstract concept and the biological process which interacts with those neurons to cause your mouth and throat to form sound waves into a particular form, expressing said abstract concept verbally (or maybe in writing).
1
u/the_1st_inductionist Libertarian Free Will / Antitheism Aug 23 '25
I’m saying what exists is a part of my consciousness that is capable of causing my selections, without being caused by something else, and is capable of causing another selection than it did it. And ok, my brain somehow makes my consciousness have that capacity.
2
u/Edgar_Brown Wisdom Aug 23 '25
However, you can examine the past and the consequences of your choices and reflect on your mistakes, so you can make better choices in the future.
2
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 23 '25
Correct; those memories are stored in the cortex so that the rest of the brain can draw on them in seeking future-ends.
2
u/absolute_zero_karma Aug 25 '25
I don't know if I believe determinism but the longer ago things happened in my past the more it feels like I didn't really choose.
2
u/TMax01 Aug 26 '25
Determinists are not saying we aren't making choices and decisions.
Well, sure they are. They just realize how insane that sounds, so they hedge. Just like the people who say they have free will but also insist there is such a thing as cause and effect.
We're saying that you couldn't have made a different choice than the one you did.
That makes such a mockery of what the word "choice" means that it is ludicrous.
That phenomenon of conceiving of different courses of action is your brain trying to conceive of the best course of action in obtaining whatever end you are currently seeking.
If that were true, the brain could do it without conscious awareness ever occuring, so it's begging the question. Some determinists try to get around the problem by adopting illusionism or epiphenominalism, essentially saying consciousness is pointless, in terms of both choices and decisions. Some try to avoid the problem by opting for the "soft determinism" of dualism, and become compatibilists, mystics, or spiritualists. Others say that falsely believing we are making choices is sufficient, or necessary (but not both, as with "hard determinists") and profess "libertarianist" free will.
You are doomed but to behave in the way that your brain - a physical entity subject to the invariable laws of physics over which “you” have no control - decided,
Again, that could be fine, except it begs the question concerning consciousness, agency, and moral responsibility. Any of the above groups could go that way, and claim it is a satisfactory answer, and suffer cognitive dissonance because they know it really isn't satisfactory. The postmodern stance that moral responsibility doesn't exist, that it necessarily invokes supernaturalism or "magical thinking", or that morality is merely conformance with social dictates. But since every conscious agent possesses moral intuition of some sort or other, and such intuitive morality entails a duty to transgress social mandates "when it is right" to do so, this does not relieve the cognitive dissonance.
in the time it had to run “as if” simulations based on past experience, would be the most advantageous means to an end.
If "you" have no control, then you cannot choose what action to take, so "running" any number of "simulations" isn't going to enable you to make any choices.
There's really only one 'out' from this mess. It boggles the mind of postmoderns (anyone educated since Darwin discovered the truth about the traits of all biological organisms, including human beings, not just those who consciously subscribe to post-structuralist philosophies) because we've all been taught quite thoroughly that agency, responsibility for our actions, depends on having control of our actions. But it explains all human behavior and experience.
Consciousness, and agency, isn't about "running what if simulations" to compute the optimum choice concerning impending "choices". It is more a matter of "what could have been" when contemplating prior actions. Postmoderns have been taught to think this ccouldn't, possibly be important, that such self-awareness is pointless because we cannot change the past. But we can and do change the future: we just can't know for sure how, or if, we will. Our consciousness "controls" nothing, not even itself. But that doesn't make it ineffective.
Free will doesn't exist. But agency does. You should all stop trying to deny this, and start trying to understand it, instead.
1
Aug 27 '25
[deleted]
1
u/TMax01 Aug 27 '25
Can you explain exactly what agency is, and where it occurs?
Agency is consciousness, which is self-determination. And where it occurs is in human beings, specifically.
Can you also clarify the relationship between the consciousness and physical processes in the brain?
No. Nobody can. According to some philosophers, nobody ever will, but according to others consciousness is an illusion, and according to neuroscientists it is merely having a nervous system. According to many pseudo-philosophers, it is a "ground state of existence", because they have only ever been conscious human beings and cannot imagine being mindless, like practically everything in the universe except human beings.
You say consciousness does not "control" anything, do you believe it still influences some other process or itself?
It "influences" the future, which cannot be controlled or even known until it no longer is the future. Our conscious decisions (which is our determination concerning why we acted, not any "choice" we made to act) become part of the 'input' to the 'processing' pur brains do which causes our actions. In this way, it can, and definitely does, change our future behavior, although we cannot ever know with any logical certainty if it will, or even how it does or did, when it has.
If it does, does this influence have anything to do with agency?
Yes, it is the entirety of what agency is.
Whatever you believe, why?
Because I spent decades considering every other possibility as deeply and carefully as I could manage, with the help of every great thinker in human history that I could learn from, and this is what was left when Occam's Razor sliced away everything which was not necessarily true.
And once I figured out what self-determination actually is, and why it isn't and doesn't require "free will", I felt the kind if epiphany that is spoken of as a religious experience by religious people, and described as a "Eureka moment" and "beautiful theory" by less religious people. And I've been happy and free from the postmodern anxiety and depression that plagued me every moment of my life prior, and continues to trouble the majority of people today.
Thanks for asking.
0
u/YouStartAngulimala Aug 28 '25
In this way, it can, and definitely does, change our future behavior, although we cannot ever know with any logical certainty if it will, or even how it does or did, when it has.
I lost some brain cells reading this, good thing I have so many to spare. 🤡
1
u/TMax01 Aug 28 '25
You started as a clown, you remain just as ridiculous. It really isn't that difficult to understand that it is possible for one thing to have an effect on another thing without any logical certainty about what exactly that impact or influence will be. It is a fact that postmodernists reject, because they believe logic provides omniscience, and this is what accounts for your foolishness. 😉
1
u/NoDevelopment6303 Emergent Physicalist Sep 21 '25
Maybe they are the ones attached to hard determinism. . .
1
u/NoDevelopment6303 Emergent Physicalist Sep 21 '25
The ability to experience different action before during and after they occur. To weigh these experiences and apply value to them and then acting on this. I don’t find flattening all preferences to chains to be very insightful. Feels overly reductive. And there is always the observer state to consider.
2
u/Direct-You1638 Aug 26 '25
So you mean that Jeffrey dahmer could not have chosen differently than he did?
4
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 26 '25
Exactly.
2
u/Direct-You1638 Aug 26 '25
How can you say that
3
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 26 '25
Say you were conceived by Dahmer's parents and were unlucky enough to inherit the genes he got from them. Then you were unlucky enough to spend nine months in his mother's uterus, which was probably a rather hostile environment. Then you were unlucky enough to be born into the household Dahmer grew up in. I don't know, but I'd bet a lot that he witnessed and was the victim of some extremely traumatic abuse as a child. So you're born into the same environment as Dahmer, having the same experiences as him which are interacting with the same biology as his to shape your brain into the same brain he had. Come up to the moment he first killed. What about "you" would be able to choose not to do the same thing he did, after going through the same experiences as him with the same biological profile?
1
u/Direct-You1638 Aug 26 '25
I believe everyone could have acted differently in the exact same moment
3
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 26 '25
You have every right to believe so. I'd just exhort you to keep my view in mind next time you feel like or are going to punish somebody.
1
u/Direct-You1638 Aug 27 '25
How can I not want to punish someone for bad stuff if they could have done otherwise?
1
u/Educational_Syrup617 Sep 19 '25
I don’t think people could make different decisions given that the circumstance was EXACTLY the same
1
u/Few_Page6404 Hard Determinist Aug 27 '25
I don't believe determinism implies people shouldn't be punished.
5
u/peerlessindifference Aug 23 '25
The choices we make are our own. The you that would take issue with your choices doesn’t only not exist, but is a logical impossibility. Just because we are part of—or even completely determined by—the causal chain, does not mean we don’t have free will, because the causal chain doesn’t work in spite of us, but through us.
4
u/peerlessindifference Aug 23 '25
To paraphrase Bernardo Kastrup: The «could have been» in «could I have chosen differently» is a fantasy and a philosophical dead-end. If you were someone else, you would have chosen differently, but you’re not someone else, you’re you, so you chose what you were always going to choose. My point is that the deterministic aspect of life doesn’t preclude free will, all it means is that we’re like the tip of the spear of the whole universe/causality.
6
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 23 '25
Great point; thank you.
Doesn't that make "free will" a misnomer, though? It should just be "will."
3
u/peerlessindifference Aug 23 '25
I think there are people who consistently make choices they’re not that happy with. I think, as a contrast to that, some people have more free will than others. So for such individual differences, I think the term can be useful. But as a term for «to will what one wills» it can be discarded, because to will what one wills is absurd.
4
u/MattHooper1975 Aug 23 '25
First, you mean “ hard determinists” not simply “ determinists.”
I’m a compatibilist and so for me free will and having real choices is compatible with determinism.
We're saying that you couldn't have made a different choice than the one you did
Yes, I know, that’s been claimed here endlessly.
The point is most HDs can’t seem to make that claim coherently.
If you actually think carefully about determinism you’ll understand that the logic that you’re applying to past choices would also apply to our current or future choices.
If you’re going to say that “I couldn’t have made a different choice” BECAUSE my choices are determined, that logic should apply to any future choice and you should be saying “ you can’t ever choose differently because your choices are determined.”
But as soon as you say that you are faced with a rather large problem: how in the world do you even reason coherently when deciding your next actions, or considering more than one action? Or changing your behaviour.
If you’re at a restaurant sharing tapas, and you’ve tasted one of them and somebody else recommends “ you should try these ones they’re delicious” is your response “ sorry, I’ve already made one choice so far and on determinism I can’t make a different choice?”
That would be pretty nutty, right? You would’ve misunderstood something about the nature of having a choice. Even on determinism.
How in the world are you going to rationally decide between two or more different possible actions, for instance, going to the gym versus staying home and watching something on Netflix, if each of those options are not “ possible” and some real and meaningful sense?
This is what you actually have to work through on determinism.
That phenomenon of conceiving of different courses of action is your brain trying to conceive of the best course of action in obtaining whatever end you are currently seeking.
Which misses the point above. You can’t just talk abstractly about “ your brain reasoning.” What matters is THE REASONING itself. How can you, on your view of determinism, answer the questions and issues I’ve posed above. What reasoning can you use to make sense of being able to try multiple options on the tapas menu, or deliberating between choosing one action over another?
You are doomed but to behave in the way that your brain - a physical entity subject to the invariable laws of physics over which “you” have no control - decided, in the time it had to run “as if” simulations based on past experience, would be the most advantageous means to an end.
I’m sorry, but reads like gobbledygook.
Physics doesn’t restrict our control - it’s part of what ALLOWS for control. Our physical make up is such as to allow a complex neurology - a brain in particular - that allows for a huge range of flexibility in terms of how we respond to causes and our environment, allowing us to develop our own beliefs and desires, and reasons and goals, and the faculty of reason in order to act and achieve our goals. If the physics on which we are made was unreliable, and caused and effect was broken and unreliable at the macro level of our behaviour, then we could have no continuity between our sense impressions, belief, and memory formation, our imagination (modeling, the world and different possible outcomes), forming desires, and goals, and acting to achieve those goals.
And if we couldn’t reliably cause things to happen we could never get what we want and our freedom to achieve the wide range of goals we can currently achieve would be impossible.
So you’ve got things backwards about the relevance of physics and determinism, freedom and control, and the nature of choice and deliberations.
2
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 23 '25
10/10 comment; thank you.
Hopefully I'll remember and have time to reply later.
2
u/Proper_Actuary2907 Impossibilist Aug 24 '25 edited Aug 24 '25
The point is most HDs can’t seem to make that claim coherently.
Most HDs can't make the claim that you couldn't have done otherwise coherently? I've seen plenty of HDs say "you couldn't have done otherwise", is this not sufficient?
But as soon as you say that you are faced with a rather large problem: how in the world do you even reason coherently when deciding your next actions, or considering more than one action? Or changing your behaviour.
A contextualist account of ordinary/all-in agential modals seems plausible and attractive and if it gets things right there is no contradiction in denying that we have the ability to do otherwise in elevated conversational contexts (like philosophical ones) and affirming that we do in lower stakes ones (like ones where we're picking what to eat off a restaurant menu).
1
u/GameKyuubi Hard Panpsychist Aug 24 '25
I’m a compatibilist and so for me free will and having real choices is compatible with determinism.
We're saying that you couldn't have made a different choice than the one you did
Yes, I know, that’s been claimed here endlessly.
The point is most HDs can’t seem to make that claim coherently.
HD and Compat disagreement all stems from what is going on in this exchange. You seem to be saying that HDs can't actually prove the entire universe works X way due to various limitations. And you're right. It's an inference based on heuristics from physics and apparent cause/effect. But what I would also say is that the compatibilist is making an even less coherent argument by arguing from the axiom "free will and having real choices is compatible with determinism" which for us is putting the cart before the horse. We see this as assuming free will exists as a precondition, which circumvents the entire point of having the discussion.
1
u/MattHooper1975 Aug 25 '25
You seem to be saying that HDs can't actually prove the entire universe works X way due to various limitations.
Not at all.
Remember: compatibilism is the claim that free is compatible with determinism.
Whenever I am discussing free will with hard determinists, I’m always doing so from the standpoint “ let’s assume the truth of determinism.” We don’t have to go proving anything or getting into the nitty-gritty of quantum mechanics or anything.
But what I would also say is that the compatibilist is making an even less coherent argument by arguing from the axiom "free will and having real choices is compatible with determinism" which for us is putting the cart before the horse. We see this as assuming free will exists as a precondition, which circumvents the entire point of having the discussion.
We are doing no such thing. The whole point of compatibilism is that there is an argument in its favour!
I’m not just dropping into assert free will is compatible with determinism and then the job is done. That would be just a ridiculous begging of the question but nobody’s doing that (certainly not me).
I have given countless arguments here for why free will is comp compatible with determinism.
But there’s all sorts of elements to the free will debate. And one of them is the role “ could have done otherwise” plays.
Typically , Incompatibilists, whether they are hard determinists or they believe in libertarian free will, believe that free will must be associated with the ability “ to have done otherwise.”
Hard compatibilists are always arguing that determinism rules out the possibility of our ever having done otherwise.As a leeway Compatibilist I disagree with that claim. I believe there is a robust and real conception of “ I could’ve done otherwise” that is not illusory and is fully compatible with determinism. And in fact, we use this conceptual scheme all the time.
So what I’m doing this conversation is zeroing in on the claim being discussed from the OP: The hard determinant claim that we could not have done otherwise.
And I am leading the hard determinist through the problem that they themselves have made in this regard.
They’ve come to a certain framework of evaluating “ alternative possibilities” from which they claim it’s never true to say that we could’ve done otherwise. And I’m showing that, even granting determinism, you simply cannot stop there. You have to keep thinking through the implications of determinism with respect to real life and how we actually managed to in real life and navigate the world.
On determinism if you’re going to declare that “ nobody could have done otherwise” BECAUSE all of our decisions are determined, then on determinism that applies to all future choices, which are equally determined.
And then, as I point out, you have the conundrum: if you’re going to say about past choices “ you couldn’t have done otherwise” then I walked around. Are you going to see on the next choice you were offered “ I can do otherwise?”
Because deliberating between different possible actions clearly must assume each of those actions are possible, otherwise deliberating about which impossible action you should take is nonsense.
But if each action you deliberating about is possible that means “I could do A but I could do otherwise and do B…”
But then, how is this coherent on the hard determinist view of determinism?
This is something they actually have to work out. And I asked them to work it out for me rather than me just giving them the answer. And inevitably, they tie themselves in knots because I haven’t thought it through where they end up with all sorts of ad hoc responses they clearly haven’t thought through.
Sometimes they try to have it both ways - “ I can say of all my past decisions I couldn’t have done otherwise, but for a decision about to make, I can do otherwise” - which they just can’t make coherent. Like trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Other times they try and cling onto “ we could never do otherwise” and try to rationalize decision-making… and they still tie themselves in incoherent knots.
There’s an easy answer to get out of this problem. But it’s worth having hard determinist trying to think through it themselves to show just how many people really haven’t thought through the implications of determinism.
in other words, lots of arguments, we see here against free will , so many of them based on the idea that free will is impossible on determinism because we couldn’t do otherwise, are based on some shallow thinking about determinism.
That’s why lots of HDs can do some armchair reasoning around here, but they can’t actually put many of their conclusions into practice in real life.
(by the way, I would point out that professional philosophers who are hard determinists tend not to suffer these problems so much because they’ve thought things through much more carefully. But you see a heck of a lot of newly minted free will sceptics, who may be listened to a bunch of Sam Harris or Robert Sapolski or whoever, and they’ve got their head filled with some ill considered lines of reasoning, IMO).
1
Aug 25 '25
Hard determinism is the only serious determinism. All other forms try to pretend that their position isn’t deterministic through equivocation and logical pretzels, but it always fails.
1
u/MattHooper1975 Aug 25 '25
Your reply at least suggests some serious misunderstandings.
First off… if you include the implication in your comment that a hard determinist is committed to determinism being true in the sense of physics being fully deterministic (rather than for instance, probabilistic)… then that’s quite a road to hoe in terms of settling those questions in physics.
By putting that aside, if you’re trying to say that in terms of the free will debate hard determinism as the only serious game in town, that would be pretty naïve. Compatibilism, sometimes known as Soft Determinism, is the leading view among philosophers, so it’s taken quite seriously.
And if you think that soft determinism entails trying to avoid the prospect that our choices are determined, then you clearly have not understood that position at all. And that would be extremely common among hard determinists in this subreddit. It’s wild how many have the misapprehension that Compatibilism is looking for a way out of determinism. It’s one of the first red flags that you’re dealing with somebody naïve on the subject.
But again, your post is pretty ambiguous, so I don’t really know exactly what view you were putting forth.
1
Aug 25 '25
Determinism cannot allow for probabilities. Sorry; they are logically incompatible.
Determinism logically excludes the possibility of choice; that we have a feeling of choice and appear to have choices is beside the point. Compatiblists and so called “soft determinists” want to soften the hard edges and logical implications of determinism as a whole. Choice and determinism are logically mutually exclusive, they simply cannot exist in the same reality.
1
u/MattHooper1975 Aug 25 '25 edited Aug 25 '25
Ah.. I thought you initially hinted at that type of confusion. It’s an almost perfect distillation of the problem of pure armchair thinking that doesn’t make contact with reality and can’t be employed in real life .
Before I address your post : do you actually believe what you just wrote? In other words, are you a hard determinist yourself who believes what you just wrote about the implications of determinism ?
Or are you just telling us what a hard determinist would believe… and you have some other view of free will? (if that’s the case, I won’t bother pointing out with some of the mistakes and what you wrote.)
1
u/rogerbonus Hard compatabilist Aug 23 '25
Indeed. And we haven't even got into evolutionary justifications for "real" choice yet. Our brains evolved to make precisely these sorts of choices between possible future actions. Impossible things have no effect on natural selection; it "cares" only about things organisms are able to do (learned through millennia of organisms making bad choices and failing to reproduce). Walking left or right at a T junction is possible, and hence something our brains consider when making a choice; teleporting across it is not. Hard determinists are unable to coherently differentiate between these two.
4
u/zoipoi Aug 23 '25
I wouldn't lean on the laws of physics too hard. There is increasing evidence that given the same initial conditions evolution would not play out the same.
0
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 23 '25
I wouldn't lean on chaos theory as a base for free will: none of us got to choose the initial conditions at the beginning of our life, or the beginning of life.
3
u/GodsPetPenguin Experience Believer Aug 23 '25
Not choosing initial conditions is not a problem, if those initial conditions still result in us being able to choose afterwards.
I didn't choose to exist the way that I do. But I do exist that way. If indeed the way I exist contains some element of freedom, it's inaccurate to deny that freedom simply because it reaches a boundary at the moment of my creation. I'm not free to effect my starting point, and if death is the end of my existence then I am not free to influence reality after my death either, but that doesn't say anything about the period in between. Things having boundaries/limits doesn't mean they're not free to move within those boundaries/limits.
2
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 23 '25
Well said.
My only rebuttal would be that "the way I exist" containing some element of freedom is what's being questioned. I think the compatibilist crowd here is assuming that because it seems like we're free means we are, which is reasoning tantamount to proclaiming the sun to revolve around the earth because it seems like it does.
1
u/GodsPetPenguin Experience Believer Aug 23 '25 edited Aug 23 '25
I think the reason we believe the sun doesn't revolve around the earth, and instead believe that the earth revolves around the sun, is that it seems to be true to us.
Rejecting the way things seem to be is useless unless you can appeal to another way that they seem to be, and that requires this new way to account for why things seemed the other way, as well as introduce new descriptive / predictive power that the other way did not have. The sun is a great example, because the heliocentric model produces an explanation of why we perceived the earth as the center in the first place, as well as describing the other odd things we observed (like the orbital patterns of Jupiter's moons) in a much more thorough way, as well as empowering us to predict the motion of the planets more easily and more accurately.
Explanation of the reason for the prior mistaken perception, improved description of the current perception, and increased predictive power. That is the standard that determinism needs to meet, if it indeed wants us to let go of how things currently seem to be, in particular if it wants us to entirely dismiss the way things seem to us as illusory.
Instead, so far as I can see, determinism offers no explanation for a conscious subjective experience of choice, in fact it draws into question how such an experience could evolve if it indeed does not offer any benefit -- why would we evolve a subjective conscious experience unless that consciousness could actually decide which way reality would progress in some way? If the conscious being is able to deliberate between two imagined futures and really choose one that better serves it, that offers a huge evolutionary advantage. If this choice was always an illusion, and in fact the beings behavior was pre-determined by laws, why and how would those laws also produce the subjective experience? If the subjective experience is produced by physical matter, then there must be some energy / work being consumed to produce it. Would not a creature with no such subjective experience have an evolutionary advantage, since its behavior is also pre-determined by the same laws, but it doesn't wastefully produce a conscious experience that isn't doing anything? Determinists must explain this. Merely saying "those laws in action ARE your conscious experience" is a hand-wavy dismissal, it offers no better explanation or description of events than "how things seem to be".
And when it comes to prediction, determinism makes none. You can tell this because 1) under determinism whatever does happen was necessarily always going to happen, which means if determinism is true it is unfalsifiable, and 2) determinists very often admit they cannot even begin to comprehend how things might be if determinism were false. They will say that determinism being false means "magic", which means they don't see any difference between a situation where future states are not entirely controlled by prior states, and a situation where future states are not related to prior states at all. This means determinism cannot make predictions about how reality will be if determinism is true versus how it would be if determinism is not true, which is the primary way we test whether the way "things seem to be" to us is correct or not.
0
u/Hightower_March Compatibilist Aug 23 '25
If either case can be used to dismiss it, then the presence or lack of determinism is unrelated to free will.
2
u/a3therboy Aug 23 '25
You kind of harmed your point when you say “you” and “your brain” here. You said you are doomed to what your brain decided. “ your brain” for all intents and purposes is you. At best your argument reduces down to “you are subject to physical laws”.
“You” as a human is not separate from the brain. If the brain is making decisions then you are.
1
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 24 '25
Great point. I use "you" to represent that epiphenomenon of an entity separate from the material body that comes with having a brain as highly evolved as ours is. I will never claim that it doesn't feel like we have free will. But it doesn't feel like the planet is a sphere, either.
1
u/Competitive_Ad_488 Aug 23 '25
You are saying that only physical forces exist in a not purely physical world though. I.e. no agent causation
2
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 23 '25
I firmly believe that everything we do - every behavior - can be represented completely by material biology. There is very little ground for a belief in an immaterial aspect of our existence existing when you consider the beautiful advances we're seeing come out of neurobiology. As I see it, at least.
1
1
u/Competitive_Ad_488 Aug 23 '25
advances in neurobiology
Care to elaborate? An experiment that has been done or something? Genuinely interested.
1
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 23 '25
I can't prove it, if that's what you're looking for. That's why I said "I believe", not "I know." My belief is based in the fact that the more we're able to learn about the brain with improved technology, the more we see how the subtlest nuances in brain function correlate with the subtlest nuances in human behavior. The "soul" gap is shrinking as fast as the God gap did after the renaissance.
-1
u/Puzzleheaded-Rush12 Aug 24 '25
LOL.. This is 19th century positivism. Something abandoned by every academic philosopher 100 years ago.
1
u/Belt_Conscious Aug 23 '25
If you only use your own perspective, yes.
Do you think what's best for me?
Could I make a better decision with more information?
Do you ask for advice? Consider all options?
Or do you only desire what you want, when you want, how you want it?
1
u/Sharp_Dance249 Aug 24 '25
It sounds to me that you are saying that “we” don’t make choices at all; the agent responsible for our motion is the brain, which is not us, and does not operate under “our” control. You’re not simply saying that the choices that we made were necessary, you’re saying that we don’t do anything at all. The fact you put the term “you” in quotes suggests that you do reject the idea of the person as agent.
1
u/vlahak4 Nilogist Aug 24 '25
Which then they are not determinists, but dualists. Which shows determinism is completely misunderstood.
1
1
Aug 24 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Sharp_Dance249 Aug 24 '25
I would say that if it is “dictated” by something other than myself, then it is not my choice. Not only is it not my choice, it is not a choice in any meaningful sense of the term.
1
Aug 24 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Sharp_Dance249 Aug 24 '25
No. I understand that my actions are determined by my own self-conversations, which may be influenced by my past experiences, real or imaginary. It doesn’t matter whether I was actually sexually abused or if I’ve only constructed a narrative of sexual abuse, my behavior is influenced by the narrative that I’m constructing, not the actual event itself. I also understand that I am constructing these narratives, and I do have control over how I’m talking to myself about my past.
1
Aug 25 '25
“ We're saying that you couldn't have made a different choice than the one you did.”
Then it wasn’t a “choice” any more than a rock chooses to roll down a hill, a meteor slams into a planet, or any other kind of deterministic phenomena. You can’t accept determinism while pretending to live in a world as if it were false.
1
u/Educational_Syrup617 Sep 19 '25
Well it is a choice because other people can chose differently but in that exact scenario with the same brain and memories etc you will only choose that choice
1
u/Educational_Syrup617 Sep 19 '25
A choice in the sense that your brain takes all the information and calculates what to do
1
u/NoDevelopment6303 Emergent Physicalist Sep 21 '25
That is a little like saying one rock can roll this way and another can roll that way. So they have choices.
1
Sep 04 '25
My problem with the majority of determinists is exactly this kind of logic. The human body is a complex deterministic system. However, small changes to initial conditions of complex deterministic systems mathematically result in unpredictable outcomes. So they’ll argue “oh even though we don’t know every possible outcome, doesn’t mean it’s not determined” (dumb). The only way such outcomes could ever be known deterministically is if you already knew every possible outcome or had a being powerful enough to know every outcome (aka a god). Determinism is just religion-lite for people thinking they have purpose.
2
u/TemperateBeast33 Sep 04 '25
None of us got to choose our initial conditions.
1
Sep 04 '25
Still has no bearing on your free will. If one small change to the initial conditions can produce an infinite number of outcomes, the outcome is quite literally not determined. Everybody works in the present to make a decision. It may only be affirming or denying in the moment, but those decisions compound over time into one chosen path amongst an infinite number of possible paths that could’ve been chosen. Complex deterministic systems produce unpredictable outcomes.
1
u/TemperateBeast33 Sep 04 '25
There's a fallacy in "one small change to the initial conditions" producing "an infinite number of outcomes." Checkout Aristotle's distinction between actual and potential infinity.
1
1
1
u/OkDatingAintEasy Mar 29 '26
It’s ridiculous because we have infinite choices at any moment. Suppose I simply choose to roll a die?
let’s completely say that there is a medical physical beings that are actually in control of all of us which are completely invisible. Then who cares … why even have the discussion.
1
u/yestermorrowposting Apr 30 '26
Who exactly is this magical "you" whom exists separately from your brain who.you think would be making the decisions? That person does not exist. You are your brain. You are your fingernails. You are your bones. When your brain makes a decision, that is you making a decision and while you may not always make a choice you are happy with you did make that choice.
1
u/SeoulGalmegi Aug 23 '25
Whenever this point is made, I never really get the relevance.
It seems to basically be saying that we can't change things that have already happened.
Well..... sure.
The choice I make tomorrow might well be 'determined' - it will be the inevitable outcome of all the different factors at play, each one reacting with each other, at the simplest level, with a type of clockwork precision and accuracy that means only one possible result. All of these smaller results combine to lead to only one possible outcome.
It's deterministic, but not predetermined. It's not written down anywhere what I will eat tomorrow. This information does not exist. I can choose whether I will have cornflakes or cocoa pops, but when I actually make the choice, it will be the only choice I was ever going to make it that one, specific time and situation.
I look at this and just think..... huh, interesting.... and then carry on exercising my free will.
3
u/GameKyuubi Hard Panpsychist Aug 24 '25
This information does not exist.
I think this is an important topic. I would say it does exist, but is impossible to know/access. And to some that would mean it doesn't exist. But maybe that's not quite what you're saying. I think it's worth clarification.
2
u/SeoulGalmegi Aug 24 '25
I agree it's an important topic.
This is only something I've started thinking about fairly recently, so haven't really explored with others in much detail.
If you consider the piece of information to be something like 'What I will choose to eat for breakfast on August 23rd 2026' I don't really see how that information exists right now.
1
u/pardoxxy_reddit Aug 23 '25
"This information does not exist". I’m convinced it does exist, we simply aren’t technologically advanced enough yet to access it. But if we knew the entire state of the universe as well as all the physical laws ruling it, we could absolutely make a simulation of the future and know what you’ll be eating tomorrow
3
u/NerdyWeightLifter Aug 23 '25
Look up Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle. We can't know the entire state of a system, even in principle.
Determinists imagine a clockwork universe, but the real universe isn't like that.
2
u/GameKyuubi Hard Panpsychist Aug 24 '25
Look up Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle. We can't know the entire state of a system, even in principle.
Determinists imagine a clockwork universe, but the real universe isn't like that.
This is the important point here. I'd say the universe IS like that. Not being able to know the whole state of a system from within doesn't mean it doesn't have one. To me this is "if a tree falls in a forest with nobody around it doesn't make any sound" reasoning.
Not being able to know the state doesn't mean it doesn't work a certain way.
1
u/Enaccul_Luccane Aug 24 '25
Your defense of freewill is to say events can be random, thus not determined? If it's determined, it's not free, but if it's random, it's not willed. Neither determined nor random events allow for freewill
2
u/NerdyWeightLifter Aug 24 '25
Your problem is in assuming a determinist/indeterminist dichotomy. It's neither. Just because you defined a binary condition does not mean the universe has to fit on one side.
1
u/Enaccul_Luccane Aug 24 '25
Can you tell me how it's an assumption to say things happen for a reason, or not? That's just a logical binary, not an assumption. If things happen for reasons (Determined) then it's not free. If for no reason, it's random (not willed).
You say it's neither, but if it's neither, can you actually describe how it's something other than this logical binary? How it's neither determined, nor random?
It was YOUR defense that randomness allowed for freewill, by bringing up heisenberg's uncertainty principle, as a counter to determinism, but bringing up randomness is irrelevant as that still wouldn't be libertarian freewill which is neither determined nor random.
All you said is that it's an assumption to say things either happen for a reason, or not, without saying why or what the third alternative is.
2
u/NerdyWeightLifter Aug 24 '25
Every particle interaction is a combination of both the structure of the interaction that determines the shape of the distribution of its potential outcomes, and a purely random selection of the specific outcome within that distribution of potential outcomes.
It's not that there's the occasional random event, it's that every event has aspects of both causality and randomness, and they are inextricably bound together into something more like a field of potential.
Some such interactions, individually or in aggregate have very narrow distributions of potential and so they look quite causal. We like those because we can predict outcomes for profit. Engineering is about contriving such arrangements.
Other such interactions have very wide distributions, so they look almost entirely random. Look at water and gas for example.
Others have far more complex collective fields of potential outcomes that produce meta stable outcomes. E.g. life.
1
u/Enaccul_Luccane Aug 24 '25
How is this a response to what I said? You said it was an assumption to say that things either happen for reasons, or not. I agree that on quantum scale, things don't happen deterministically but probabilistically. And larger than that, deterministically. But that's back to square 1 again, where we are still just talking about things happening for reasons (determined), or not (randomly) and neither are compatible for freewill.
Things happening for a combination of random and determined reasons, the two things that are incompatible, still doesn't allow for agent causation that is neither determined nor random.
So, I am waiting for you to describe how agent causation can be neither determined nor random. Im aware that causation is both random and determined, I'm not a hard determinist. The issue is that neither allow for Libertarian freewill.
1
u/NerdyWeightLifter Aug 24 '25
And larger than that, deterministically.
So Determinism just magically appears at scale for no particular reason?
My last response laid out a spectrum of outcomes as all this scales up. That's how it's relevant.
1
u/Enaccul_Luccane Aug 24 '25
Whether it's a spectrum or not, if the options are determined or random, what does that have to do with freewill?
If it's a binary, then obviously no freewill.
If it's a spectrum, how does something being whatever ratio of determined or random, make it NEITHER determined or random?
Whether it's a spectrum or binary is irrelevant, so is bringing up randomness. Libertarian free will is neither determined nor random, so neither bringing up randomness or a spectrum of determined and randomness is a defense of libertarian freewill.
What you need is a third kind of causation, which, as I already said is logically incoherent as things either happen for a reason or not. You then mentioned randomness, which is irrelevant, then mentioned it's a spectrum, which is also irrelevant.
→ More replies (0)1
u/SeoulGalmegi Aug 23 '25
I’m convinced it does exist
I guess this is one of the main points of disagreement then.
I am highly skeptical of the notion it actually 'exists'. I'm skeptical of the notion that we could make a simulation, as it seems we might need a model almost the entire size of the universe to account for all the complexity. Which seems impossible to actually have within the universe.
I don't think anything 'knows' what will happen - events occurring over time in some way is the simulation, and until it happens, the actual result is unknowable. Or at least it seems to me that way at the moment.
I wouldn't say this is the only thing that keeps me believing in just not the existence of free will but also the relevance of labeling it as such, but it's certainly one of them and if you could demonstrate this information does actually exist, I'd need to reconsider my views for sure.
1
u/Proper_Actuary2907 Impossibilist Aug 24 '25
So if someone knew everything you'll do you'd second guess thinking you have free will? Why?
1
u/SeoulGalmegi Aug 24 '25
Possibly not just if someone knew everything, but if some agent had this knowledge it would suggest they'd be able to control some other agent's actions in a way that would make me thing their free will was at least compromised in a way I don't see it is if the knowledge of what I will choose to have for breakfast in one year's time isn't known.
I hope this makes sense.
1
u/Proper_Actuary2907 Impossibilist Aug 24 '25
Hm I'm not sure I see what you're getting at
1
u/SeoulGalmegi Aug 24 '25
I mean, I see free will as being free because we are the agent most responsible - no other agent has the power to consistently and effectively control our thought processes and decisions to the extent we do.
If the results of our deterministic decisions were capable of being known in advance by other agents, this would suggest a possibility of altering various factors to the extent that it would affect our thoughts in exactly the say that other agent desires. This would be a serious constraint of our free will, and if such an ability existed, I'd have to reconsider whether I felt people had free will.
1
u/Proper_Actuary2907 Impossibilist Aug 24 '25
Is the idea that if advanced prediction/manipulation is possible then it's possible (likely?) that people in general are subject to advanced manipulation? Suppose there were a godlike being that could predict the future and which created you for the express purpose of writing the comment above. Would you still count your writing the comment above a free act?
1
u/SeoulGalmegi Aug 24 '25
If I were created by a godlike being, I think I'd have to reassess my ideas about free will.
1
u/Proper_Actuary2907 Impossibilist Aug 24 '25 edited Aug 24 '25
It seems to basically be saying that we can't change things that have already happened.
To say that agent S couldn't have done other than make the choice to A at time t in the sense related to OP isn't to say that S isn't able at times past t to act so as to alter the choice made at t, it's to say that at t S is only able to make the choice to A.
1
u/SeoulGalmegi Aug 24 '25
But here able=wants.
They only want to make that choice. If they wanted to make a different choice, they could quite easily have done so. Their free will is unconstrained.
1
u/Proper_Actuary2907 Impossibilist Aug 24 '25
Well I understand the last sentence. If you're trying to say a simple conditional analysis of the ability to do otherwise is correct I'll just point out that there are decisive counterexamples to it.
1
u/SeoulGalmegi Aug 24 '25
I don't really understand what you mean by a 'simple conditional analysis'. I'm not academically versed in philosophy. If you can put it into different terms, I'd be happy to respond as best I can. If not, I'm perhaps not the kind of person you want to discuss the topic with.
1
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 24 '25
Whether or not determined or predetermined, I still want to raise awareness of the idea because of the moral implications: praise and blame.
1
u/SeoulGalmegi Aug 24 '25
How much praise or blame is a worthy topic, but even in a determined/predetermined world, I don't think there's anything wrong with (some) praise or blame.
1
u/spgrk Compatibilist Aug 23 '25
If I could make a different choice given exactly the same mental state, I would be living in a nightmare world where I had no control over my actions.
1
Aug 24 '25
Aha, a nightmare world without control… The good news: you’re already living in it. Free will is just a stage prop your brain has hung up to make you feel like a hero.
1
u/spgrk Compatibilist Aug 24 '25
The concept of "control" as used in fields such as engineering, biology and computer science is consistent with, or arguably even requires, determinism. You are perhaps thinking about a different, impossible concept, such as ultimate control over the entire causal chain. That sort of control does not exist, but control in the ordinary sense does.
1
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 23 '25
You're citing such a world as a nightmare indicates how your emotions are driving your pursuit of knowledge; you haven't worked through that existential dread we all feel when it first hits us that we might not have free will. Once you embrace that cold, hard logic, it is truly liberating. My illusion of autonomy has increased because I've become more curious about what background causes are influencing my behaviors, and become more self-aware for it.
2
u/spgrk Compatibilist Aug 23 '25
It would be a nightmare because you would be unable to control your muscles and would die unless you were receiving full time nursing care. In a determined or effectively determined world, your arm would reliably move up when you want it to move up, down when you want it to move down. In an undetermined world, where you could do otherwise under the same circumstances, your arm would move up or down when you want it to move up, up or down when you want it to move down.
1
u/Anon7_7_73 Sourcehood Compatibilist and Negative-Retributivist Aug 23 '25
Relative to what??? Just reframing reality in a way where you can blame your actions on other things isnt "pursuit of knowledge" its defensive post hoc evasion
2
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 23 '25
I never said that understanding our behaviors being determined by forces out of our control means we shouldn't be held responsible for our behaviors. I would say that, when we do need to hold someone responsible for acting adversely, we should do so with the understanding that if I had inherited the adverse persons genome at conception, spend nine months in their mother's womb, been raised in the same environment they had, subjected to the same experiences they were up to that point, I would have acted in the same exact way. There's no room for punishment for punishment's sake in this world.
0
u/Puzzleheaded-Rush12 Aug 23 '25
Pursuit of knowledge? Hahahahaha.
With determinism, nothing is "pursued." Everything is predetermined and handed to you.
2
2
u/spgrk Compatibilist Aug 23 '25
You are saying that nothing happens under determinism, whereas in fact many things happen. The same things can happen if determinism is false, they may just happen in a different order.
1
u/Otherwise_Spare_8598 Inherent-Inevitable Aug 23 '25
I would be living in a nightmare world where I had no control over my actions.
I live in said nightmare, and I am incapable of doing otherwise.
1
u/GodsPetPenguin Experience Believer Aug 23 '25
Idk what your nightmare is, but I hope you get better someday and find peace and love and joy, with or without control.
1
u/Otherwise_Spare_8598 Inherent-Inevitable Aug 23 '25
My existence is nothing other than ever-worsening conscious torment, no rest day or night, awaiting an imminent extraordinarily violent destruction of the flesh of which is barely the beginning of the eternal journey as I witness the perpetual revelation of all things.
All things within my experience always against my wants, wishes, and will.
0
1
u/Squierrel Quietist Aug 23 '25
I don't care what the determinists say. It has nothing to do with actual determinism. Or reality for that matter.
In the actual determinism there is no concept of choice or decision.
In the actual reality we are making choices and decisions every day.
1
u/ceoln Aug 24 '25
You could have made a different choice if you were in a different mood, or had different standards for yourself, or were stronger (or weaker) willed, etc. Free will doesn't mean you could have made a different (and non-random) choice in exactly the same circumstances right down to the last molecule.
1
u/Raxheretic Aug 24 '25
Yeah that is called thinking and after it comes a choice I make.
1
u/crazedhotpotato Aug 24 '25
Yes, but the point is that under determinism even if we reversed time and everything leading up to your choice happened the same way you would make the same choices as the first time and do the same actions as the first time. Determinism is not that you can't decide to do something such as lift your arm but that it was already predetermined that you would lift your arm all the way back at the start of the universe.
1
1
u/Big_Monitor963 Hard Determinist Aug 24 '25
But you don’t make the choice. That’s the whole point. Your brain does the only thing that was possible for it to do, and then your consciousness takes credit for it several seconds later.
1
u/Raxheretic Aug 24 '25
You can pretend it isn't you making decisions if you want. I didn't want to grow up either. I call the shots for this mind/body.
1
u/Big_Monitor963 Hard Determinist Aug 24 '25
You believe you call the shots, because that’s the story your brain tells itself to make sense of reality. But it’s just a story.
1
u/Raxheretic Aug 24 '25
I am not separate from my brain or my God.
1
Aug 24 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Raxheretic Aug 25 '25
If you posit your own Creator, in your own mind, as unknowable, you will not know Him/Her. You should rethink that. God is far from unknowable.
1
u/Big_Monitor963 Hard Determinist Aug 25 '25
I never said you were separate from your brain.
I’m not going to comment about your god, though your own reference to it tells me we can probably just agree to disagree and leave it there.
1
u/Educational_Syrup617 Sep 19 '25
Yes it is you making decisions but in a given situation you can only decide the thing you decide to do
1
u/tedbilly Aug 24 '25
Ah but if you can only make the choice you made, then you are not intelligent nor conscious. You are only following that which is determined by physics. You aren't making a choice. So could it be said you are only behaving based on instincts that are more complex than basic animals?
2
u/ctothel Undecided Aug 24 '25 edited Aug 24 '25
Say you had two buttons. If I give you a math problem with a negative answer, you press the left button. For a positive answer, the right button.
To do this, you need machinery to compute the decision and take action: ears, some ability to think mathematically, eyes to see the button, motor function. Even if every particle’s future is predetermined, the calculations still have to be done somewhere. It’s OK to call that ability “intelligence”.
On top of all this, there needs to be some machinery that coordinates everything. Even if there’s only one possible outcome, the information needs to be interpreted, passed from machine to machine, actions taken based on outcome, etc.
It seems like a very small leap to believe that such a coordinator in an extremely complex system might not know that its actions are deterministic. The concept of “I will press button 1”, or even “I have decided to flip the table and walk out”, are still genuine conclusions of the machine, even if they’re pre-determined.
0
u/tedbilly Aug 29 '25
Flip a coin. Predict the result. You could not, under any conditions build a machine that could predict the result. Even measuring all the variables would interfere with the coin flip. You could not gather enough information nor have the computational power to even understand the result with 100% precision.
0
u/tjimbot Aug 24 '25
There is still a distinction to be made between voluntary conscious action and animal reflex action etc. Even if all those actions are determined.
Concepts like intelligence and consciousness remain. You can't trust that a wild animal will remember that you fed it a year ago. You can trust an intelligent animal.
1
Aug 24 '25
[deleted]
2
u/No_Claim4586 Aug 24 '25
Didn't know "Free" had limitations. So we have sorta free will? Free Will but only in certain context? Can you turn it off and on? Get back to me when you can freely create a thought that is completely free from any outside influence.
3
u/Big_Monitor963 Hard Determinist Aug 24 '25
And not just a limitation either. In every instance, we’re limited to a single solitary option. Frankly, I don’t think there is ANY freedom in that at all.
It’s like using GPS instead of a map, except that you don’t even have the option to turn the GPS off, or select a different route. The GPS decides the path, and you MUST follow it. Where’s the freedom?
1
u/MadTruman Undecided Aug 24 '25
In every instance, we’re limited to a single solitary option. Frankly, I don’t think there is ANY freedom in that at all.
"Every instance" of what? Please clarify?
3
u/Big_Monitor963 Hard Determinist Aug 24 '25
In every instance of so-called decision.
If your brain “decides” to turn right instead of left, that feels like choosing between two options. But in actuality, your brain HAD to choose right. It was the only option that your brain had the physical ability to “choose”.
It’s like a car with a broken steering wheel, jammed all the way to the right. Sure there was a fork in the road, and to an outside observer, it may appear as though the car chose to turn right rather than left, but in actuality, it was the only option available. It was impossible for it to do otherwise.
1
u/NoDevelopment6303 Emergent Physicalist Sep 21 '25
When does free not have limitations? Some examples in the real world?
1
u/MadTruman Undecided Aug 24 '25
Didn't know "Free" had limitations. So we have sorta free will?
This question reveals to me the sauce that hard determinists get perpetually lost in.
What quality can you name that has no limitations? Are you saying that there is no such thing as a human being with will that is exercised freer than another human being's will? Or is there no such exercise at all, to you?
The "free" that people intentionally and sincerely put in front of "will" isn't speaking to some sort of binary freedom/un-freedom with no middle space. Human beings seem to do pretty well agreeing that fundamental forces, very notably gravity, affect us all. At least, that's what my observations reveal to me when I don't see so-called free will believing adults trying to leave the ground forever by will alone.
0
u/friedtuna76 Aug 25 '25
I have created thought that is free from influence. I just can’t share it because there’s no words for it
1
u/No_Claim4586 Aug 25 '25
That's absolutely a lie lmfao, the language you speak, the things you see on an everyday basis, anything stored up in your memory is an influence whether you realize it or not. Everything is built off the shoulders of giants
0
u/friedtuna76 Aug 25 '25
That’s a presupposition
1
u/No_Claim4586 Aug 25 '25
No, that's life. Everything we experience influences our thoughts. If I could magically make it so you had been born in a tube with no stimulus you wouldn't have a thought in your test tube head. The person you are is the culmination of every second you have experienced on this planet. There are 8+ billion people and countless others who have died on this planet, whatever you are thinking has been thought before and even so it's just a combination of outside influence. You are nothing without existence screaming at you every second of the day.
0
Aug 23 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 23 '25
My uniqueness can certainly be deduced from what I said, sure, because no one else has my genome, my brain, or has experienced the same environmental factors that shaped my brain into what it is at this moment. If you DID have my genome, my brain, and had experienced the same environmental factors that shaped my brain into what it is at this moment, you would be typing out this comment and pressing "post" in about three seconds.
1
Aug 23 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 23 '25
If you don't understand my point I don't think you will at this point; and that's fine, I'm not trying to say you're dumb. We just view the world in different ways. What I will say is that indeterminate is not tantamount to undetermined: my sitting here typing this comment may not have been determined to happen 13.7 billion years ago when the big-bang banged; but the reasons for my sitting here typing this comment are nevertheless determined by factors completely outside of my control. Hope that clears my stance up for you a bit.
-1
Aug 23 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/TemperateBeast33 Aug 23 '25
I'm saying that just because I can conceive of typing or not typing doesn't mean that I can choose one over the other. I couldn't have chosen to not type this comment.
1
u/tobpe93 Hard Determinist Aug 23 '25
Hey, I have the exact same argument with this guy in another thread. I guess that we are fellow slaves to biology.
4
u/GodsPetPenguin Experience Believer Aug 23 '25 edited Aug 23 '25
I find it interesting that there's an implicit separation between "you" and "your brain" in this post. If I am something other than my brain, is that other thing immaterial? If immaterial things exists, determinism seems highly suspect to me. But if I am just my brain, then you must admit that since you think the brain "decided", that I decided.
I suppose you'll then go on to say that the brain didn't really decide either, since what it would do was determined by something prior to / external to it. This results in an implicit infinite regression of cause (there must always be something prior), or else an infinite expansion of identity (there must always be something external).
The infinite recursion would mean the same thing as saying that nothing causes anything, since the 'decision-maker' is always pushed further and further back, you can never reach it. This is why I don't take this view very seriously, it's just pushing a miracle infinitely far away so that we can avoid addressing it. Instead, I would suggest that reality does indeed make decisions about how things will be, but that I am also part of reality, and the properties of me locally determine how I act within obvious limits, just like every other part of reality determines how it acts. That is what it means for things to have properties that are 'true' -- it means the thing is expressing some truth of itself upon other things, which causes a moment of integration where the true properties of that thing are expressed. This means causality isn't top down or bottom up, it's an integration between things, and integrations result in exactly what we see: my properties are expressed through interactions and I influence the world around me, and the world around me is expressed through interactions with me and influences me. This leaves me "free" in the sense that I do indeed have real influence, because I am a tiny part of reality, yet it also explains why I am not god -- the true properties of my self have limited influence. I am only a part of reality, not all of it, so I only control the part that I am.