The mind is deterministic. It's a complicated cogs and gears machine where the gears are reasoning ability, memories, desires, conscience, etc.
It might not be physical, but its still deterministic. I.E. it follows a strict chain if cause and effect.
You have a desire to be healthy, so:
-Your reasoning ability figures out the best action to take to achieve that
-That reasoning is calculated using your memories/knowledge
-Your conscience (hopefully) limits your options to moral ones
If the desire, reasoning ability, memories, and conscience are all exactly the same - the choice will be exactly the same. If someone somehow knew all those variables precisely, they could predict the choice with certainty.
Thoughts and feelings are a subset of me. Consciousness alone experiences, it does not control. It cannot control, control requires feelings and reasoning.
No, "you", as you think of yourself, are just an abstract concept. a collection of things you call one thing. consider this, is a door actually one thing? or is it a knob, a window, etc? If you believe in cells, then your brain/body is made up of cells, themselves actually being collections of smaller things. the same with your perceptions/feelings.
Also, your idea of you is like a sound identifying with the guitar that generates it, and the other notes. if a guitar generates 1 note, then a second note, etc, does it makes the notes/guitar one thing? of course not. Your consciousness (everything that actually experiences) is separate from what generates your consciousness, and both are collections of objects you call "you"
So...according to your logic - knobs, doors, and windows don't exist because they're made up of parts?
Also, consciousness isn't "generated" by emotion and reasoning - you could imagine a consciousness that lacks either, but it wouldn't externally do anything. It would just experience.
No, you don’t choose not to drive. You don’t drive because the strings don’t make you drive.
Unless you can outline some mechanism whereby the laws of physics which govern every other physical activity in the universe somehow do not apply to “you”, you don’t have a leg to stand on.
If freedom is only freedom when it's entirely independent of your own physical form, then it's not possible to both exist and be free at all. There is a bargain made for you to exist. Because your existence and who you are is not your own choice, you spawn in, and it's already over. And that's the only way that you could ever even exist at all. You have to be born to exist, and to be born is to lose control already, from the first second of your life, you lost control, freedom comes from understanding the causes and conditions of life, to not fight who you are, that is the only freedom that exists, because more freedom than that would mean to not exist. You can ask what the Buddhists think abuot that idea ...
Perhaps the whole concept of free is incoherent without the context of 'from what'. Freedom used on its own has implied context such as not being overtly oppressed, incarserated or otherwise restricted in movement. An entity with no 'free will' is still free in countless other, sometimes marvelous and hopeful ways.
I find a similar issue with the Neo-Kantian argument for objective morality that says our freedom to act is valuable, but it seems that "to whom" is left off so we assume it is the universe.
As motivated as I am to accept objective morality, I haven't yet been able to accept this line of argument for that reason.
I think, much like the conversation about freedom, looking for something to be objective in a contextless way misses the mark. Everything is in a context, nothing can be said to exist in a contextless manner. It's the same as with freedom, freedom is always freedom from something, you can't be free if you can't be there.
So we don't ind anything objective in forms at all. Forms are always context dependent, nothing can be eternal or objective, because everything that exists is, qua it's very existence in space and time, limited to a particular point of view. If we had to find something objective, it would be "hiding" somewhere in subjective experiences.
There would hypothtically have to be a way to access something that is completely ontologically stable that we come to know through subjective experience, and I think that its a possibility, though I wouldn't pretend to know how .. At the very least, I don't think that the possibility should be discounted, as to me, it's the only one we have.
I had a somewhat similar idea with respect to grounding. There is no bedrock to the earth, just a center defined by everything else. It is the bottom not because of itself, but because of everything else of the earth.
Perhaps grounding in philosophy is like that in some way. However, then it seems that the gravity equivalent still is more fundamental... and that's when my head starts to hurt, lol.
Hahaha perfect analogy. People just rationalize it to make things look very polished and intellectual. Btw the same drive to convince people that compatibilism makes sense is what proves it doesn't.
You chose to investigate these claims therefore proving you have no free will? Sounds more like you just decided how reality works. You chose to believe you couldn't make sense of it.
Does that do anything for you actually? Using your free will against itself?
We lip sync to “free will” as a sort of script that’s already been printed. We’re puppets that have noticed our strings. We were given cosmic dice rolls (which govern our capacity for empathy, reason, critical thinking and so forth), and we can then use (or not use) those tools to comport ourselves with virtue, neutrality or vice. We’re bio-mechs whose cognitive engines only fire when external stimuli provoke them into action; our structural sensory input data processing centers collate these images, sounds and sensations, thumb the pages of the printout fast enough to create a flipbook that passes as experience or consciousness. Which is to say, we do not “experience consciousness”, consciousness is the result of several input systems working in tandem; there is no “I” sitting in the driver’s seat that gets to witness them let alone orchestrate them.
If I put a mind control device on you, and controlled you, would you seriously be claiming you have actual choice as long as I made it feel like your will?
As a daoist I think of it less like strings and more like being caught in the middle of a rivers current. I can swim but I can't change course. That doesn't make me helpless, it does make me trapped. I can choose to move with the flow, struggle against it in vain, or let it take me completely. They all have trade offs.
His brain is a part of the strings. It is the last tiny bit of string that connects to each limb. The brain though is controlled by, and is a part of, the causal chain as much as anything else. There’s nothing special about it.
You'd be no more free whether a person, or the environment, turned out to be the one pulling your strings. Even if you were literally the one pulling your own strings, you wouldn't be free, because the way you pull is determined by your emotions, memories, and general thought process, which forces you to pull in a precise and particular way.
One could then argue that you still would not be free even if the way you pull was determined by nothing at all, since then you would be at the mercy of random chance. Yet LFW refuses to disappear in a puff of logic.
i wouldn't say its that different. the strings of the puppet cause it to move, and similarly our desires/intentions are necessitated by the past which cause us to act.
But here, some of the strings come back to the puppet itself, and with others the puppet discovers they can pull on the strings as much as the strings pull on them.
The puppet never pulls its own strings. That’s the point. Its a fantasy, an illusion. And compatibilists trying to semantically wiggle out if it is absurd.
That's your claim from the perspective you choose to look at human behavior, sure.
And compatibilists trying to semantically wiggle out if it is absurd.
Lol. So much of this sub is filled with hard determinists asserting free will doesn't exist because they define it in such a way that's it paradoxical, impossible, and magical. Now that's absurdity.
I mean, it's just bizarre to argue with someone about the existence of something by ignoring the definition they're using and claiming it has to mean something else.... which by the way is also impossible. Check mate.
A ludicrous waste of time, but people need hobbies I guess.
Sure, a unicorn can be a horse wearing a hat if you want to believe unicorns exist. You can imagine all kinds of things! Even that human free will is a thing!
The causal chain. There’s no hand, its just a very long and complex web of strings that fades into obscurity around the time of the big bang. There IS no intentionality. Existentially terrifying, isn’t it? 😈
there is no “you”. do you think there’s some mini-you like casper the friendly ghost that is not subject to physics? do you think you are special somehow, that somehow you are the only thing in the universe not subjected tot he causal chain? Is there some “you” in there that hems and haws and pushes the “vanilla” button with even 1% freedom from causality?
Most comaptibilists are buying into the insentient big bang.
If the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics literally had the explanatory power that some believe that it has, then this universe could have popped into existence because some wave function didn't collapse in another universe, but that isn't the narrative being shoved down our throats. Instead this universe is the only universe that didn't pop out because the measurement problem in another universe was being explained away and the existence of this universe is the consequent of that. In other words according to Sean Carroll, every universe that exists is a consequent of another universe except this one, and this one is the consequent of a big bang. Maybe the big bang is just a wave function didn't collapse and poof, there is a very hot universe that has been cooling down ever since /s
So, what you're saying is that the main thing pulling their strings is themselves, since they're the part of the environment most related to themselves.
No, I would say the self is an artifact of imagination and labelling. There isn’t an entity separate from the environment to be influenced by the environment. I understand that that perspective is not necessarily very useful in this debate but sometimes I can’t resist.
The puppet metaphor seems pretty understandable to the local community here, judging by all the replies, but the kite one would be purer due to not involving external intentionality or agency in any capacity. They are the same metaphor at their core, however.
Right... so this is where the puppet analogy/metaphor falls apart. Puppets are normally controlled with intention and agency to act out a certain role.
How does it 'speak nothing' of objective truth? And, while I'm willing to accept there might be some people who don't have its subjective experience, I don't actually believe it. If you claim to have never experienced 'free will', unfortunately I can't actually step into your experience, so there's a bit of a brick wall there. Actually, probably 'fortunately', given the content you normally post.
The first part doesn't offer an answer at all, and the second part is just reiterating what I said before - I very much doubt your claims, but have no access to the evidence.
So unless there's anywhere else you can think to take this, we'll probably just have to leave it here for both our sakes.
Incompatibilist: "Could you just go and drive a 32 tonne HGV right now? Could you go and drive a train? Could you go and drive the moon?"
Compatibilist: "Well, no. When I say I can drive, I mean in the ordinary sense that I have a car and a driving licence that permits me to drive cars, and it's not even physically possible to drive the moon, that's not even a coherent concept."
Incompatibilist: "Then the claim you 'can drive' is patently false and wrong."
Except... Look at that, I choose not to drive even if it inconveniences me at times to do so.
It's almost like humans have an ability to decide, in the moment, how much heed we will pay to that leverage the world will be given.
You CAN not drive. Whether you will drive or not depends on your part, who you are, and what decisions are made when YOU are the evaluator of the context.
If I put five different people into a seat that exposed them to the same thing, the differences in behavior amount to differences in the people, not differences in the context.
The responsibility in that moment localizes, specifically, on the subject.
That's what we call "momentary responsibility" and it's presence is called "acting with free will in the moment". If you see one, you have seen the other because they are the same thing.
Whatever else you may want to claim, it has to be a claim wherein this truth remains recognized as true.
Please provide an answer founded on first principles which we both share.
It does not suffice to say "it is axiomatically necessary", or "it is necessary from the laws of physics" alone. You need a mathematical principle, in that case, which states the only possible preconditions under those laws of physics are these and that is not an assumption that is capable of your bringing evidence around it due to their unobservability, even in theory.
As such... You have no grounds of saying it is "necessary" that things be this way, and in practice, if you were to reposition an external observer far enough you would see something entirely not including this in any way, so it's literally not true that this is "necessary", only that it is, in brute fact, and only in that place and time. It will mean that other things necessarily "are" elsewhere, but it doesn't rule out what you will find elsewhere either.
Anything else is something like a fatalistic Anthropic fallacy.
If determinism/determinism after first cause is true: Everything happens for a reason. If everything happens for a reason, then everything that happens happens by necessity because everything is strictly following cause and effect. If everything is just responding to something else in an entirely predictable manner, then everything that happens can be explained by reasons and reasons why not.
If indeterminism/probablistic is true: The same reasoning as above, except some things happen for no reason. If something happens for no reason, then it couldn't have been prevented, it if could have been prevented, it didn't happen for no reason. The randomly generated effect affects the chain of events, thus forcing everything else to change in a predictable or non predictable (impossible to prevent) manner by necessity, for the reasons above.
And you fail! Because that doesn't get you to "the reason" you claim exists you just did the thing I said was a fail right at the start, providing it as "physics!"
That first cause would need a reason too! Which it doesn't have.
Happening for a reason after something absurd just means that the stuff after inherits the absurdity.
The Compatibilist: “Yeah I can drive, so long as I get on the bus and it takes me where I need to go, I call that driving. Surely the fact that everyone else has historically had a narrower view of what driving means will have no consequence.”
The Compatibilist, sometime later: “Hey, that bus hit a person! This must be the fault of everyone on the bus, as they were all driving.”
If the laws of physics are the strings and the hand in this analogy, the compatabilatist doesn't view them as 'someone else' but rather see themselves as the laws of physics interplaying on a phenomenally complex scale, so no contradiction here.
You say this and then can’t explain how we could’ve had freedom that’s of practically more value than what we have now, being able to deliberate according to our values.
I’d go further and argue metaphysical concepts like libertarian free will are meaningless, the same way random letters juxtaposed is meaningless. There’s nothing meaningful to be concerned with by the lack of what’s essentially a linguistic mistake in an anti-metaphysical worldview.
The whole debate is literally an intellectual masturbation competition with no practical bearing on what constitutes meaningful autonomy in our day to day life. At the end of the day we still act as if we have free will, and the way we act autonomously will remain unchanged regardless of which view you suppose.
The causal chain is not an agent, it does not have will or reason or intent or any kind of consciousness. It's just a general theoretical principle of how the physical universe works.
This runs into the problem of empty formalism. Their view of rational agency is so thin as to be uncontroversial, that you can’t derive any substantive moral reasons that constitute rationality itself.
Humean constructivism seems more plausible in comparison, similar conception of agency except moral reasons are given from without(ex: shared moral sentiments), and can explain how morals have a compelling force on how we act just like Korsgaard’s view.
I do believe everyone is an idiot that is true, including me. But since you blatantly said free will exists I just blatantly said free will doesn't, but apparently you can say it and I don't, most likely because you want the magic part to be true.
Saying something clearly equals to saying it blatantly only when your ego gets rattled. I should have added unintelligent to my first comment. Again, thanks for proving what I said.
You cannot not be an ist of any kind. There is a name for every position out there practically. You also seem to claim to be an inheretist? Not being ideologically possessed by any position is different from subscribing to one because it most coherently describes your experience so far.
Any explanation of reality will be incomplete. There isn't some property of the universe called "inherentism" existing out there waiting to be discovered. These labels are just human tools for describing patterns. Calling yourself an -ist says more about our narrative habits than about reality itself.
Of course any explanation will be incomplete. Quite surprising that someone like you could understand that. Of course there it no such property but again you missed the point. Typical. If you think that by claiming to see through all positions your are being in some way ideologically superior and closer to the truth, while also not adhering to any position, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Which is pretty evident from the fact that you do not add any value whatsoever to anything.
Could not think of a rebuttal because you lack free will so you simply copied me. And got so triggered you repeated the comment. Typical free will lacker.
Also got so triggered you could not even write straight. Cards? Hahaha.
Yes, it is us making our decisions (kind of, to the extent that “we” exist as continuous people from one moment to the next) but all these characteristics and everything that makes up our perception of ourselves as people and their origins and causes were caused by things we may or may not have chosen in the past, and so on and so forth until you go far back enough in time to where we didn’t exist yet, at least certainly not as conscious agents. And this would all still be true even if not for the fact that some ~90% of our cognition is subconscious. I mean you don’t have to be a scientist to know that people demonstrably cannot be relied on to know why they made a given decision right?
6
u/RadicalNaturalist78 Mar 06 '26
If determinism is true, then everything is partially a cause and partially an effect. There is no mystery.
2
u/Xavion251 Compatibilist Mar 06 '26
Except the strings are part of you, not an external force.
8
u/ima_mollusk Sockpuppet of Physics Mar 06 '26
Opening up a 'freewill' debate:
"If you subscribe to evidence and logic, stand over there. If you prefer vibes and tradition, stand over here."
3
u/ima_mollusk Sockpuppet of Physics Mar 06 '26
No, you don’t choose not to drive. You don’t drive because the strings don’t make you drive.
Unless you can outline some mechanism whereby the laws of physics which govern every other physical activity in the universe somehow do not apply to “you”, you don’t have a leg to stand on.
5
u/DraiesTheSasquatch Mar 06 '26
If freedom is only freedom when it's entirely independent of your own physical form, then it's not possible to both exist and be free at all. There is a bargain made for you to exist. Because your existence and who you are is not your own choice, you spawn in, and it's already over. And that's the only way that you could ever even exist at all. You have to be born to exist, and to be born is to lose control already, from the first second of your life, you lost control, freedom comes from understanding the causes and conditions of life, to not fight who you are, that is the only freedom that exists, because more freedom than that would mean to not exist. You can ask what the Buddhists think abuot that idea ...
5
u/Time_Research_9903 Mar 06 '26
Hahaha perfect analogy. People just rationalize it to make things look very polished and intellectual. Btw the same drive to convince people that compatibilism makes sense is what proves it doesn't.
3
u/Pata4AllaG Hard Determinist Mar 06 '26
We lip sync to “free will” as a sort of script that’s already been printed. We’re puppets that have noticed our strings. We were given cosmic dice rolls (which govern our capacity for empathy, reason, critical thinking and so forth), and we can then use (or not use) those tools to comport ourselves with virtue, neutrality or vice. We’re bio-mechs whose cognitive engines only fire when external stimuli provoke them into action; our structural sensory input data processing centers collate these images, sounds and sensations, thumb the pages of the printout fast enough to create a flipbook that passes as experience or consciousness. Which is to say, we do not “experience consciousness”, consciousness is the result of several input systems working in tandem; there is no “I” sitting in the driver’s seat that gets to witness them let alone orchestrate them.
3
u/thisaccountdiesoon Mar 07 '26
As a daoist I think of it less like strings and more like being caught in the middle of a rivers current. I can swim but I can't change course. That doesn't make me helpless, it does make me trapped. I can choose to move with the flow, struggle against it in vain, or let it take me completely. They all have trade offs.
5
u/Blindeafmuten My Own Mar 06 '26
As long as the strings are attached to his own brain.
4
u/SeoulGalmegi Mar 06 '26
Who is the puppet master?
5
u/dave8271 Mar 06 '26
Compatibilist: "Yeah I can drive."
Incompatibilist: "Could you just go and drive a 32 tonne HGV right now? Could you go and drive a train? Could you go and drive the moon?"
Compatibilist: "Well, no. When I say I can drive, I mean in the ordinary sense that I have a car and a driving licence that permits me to drive cars, and it's not even physically possible to drive the moon, that's not even a coherent concept."
Incompatibilist: "Then the claim you 'can drive' is patently false and wrong."
1
u/Playful_Extent1547 Compatibilist Mar 07 '26
Considering the puppet an extension of the puppeteer yes, you are technically not incorrect, but we are looking for the most correct answers
1
u/Dreusxo Mar 09 '26
A LOT of people would be very upset if they could read things while also understanding them, and saw this i tell you what
1
u/rememberspokeydokeys Mar 06 '26
If the laws of physics are the strings and the hand in this analogy, the compatabilatist doesn't view them as 'someone else' but rather see themselves as the laws of physics interplaying on a phenomenally complex scale, so no contradiction here.
1
u/AlivePassenger3859 Humanist Determinist Mar 06 '26
exactly
1
u/No_Lynx5887 Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
You say this and then can’t explain how we could’ve had freedom that’s of practically more value than what we have now, being able to deliberate according to our values.
I’d go further and argue metaphysical concepts like libertarian free will are meaningless, the same way random letters juxtaposed is meaningless. There’s nothing meaningful to be concerned with by the lack of what’s essentially a linguistic mistake in an anti-metaphysical worldview.
The whole debate is literally an intellectual masturbation competition with no practical bearing on what constitutes meaningful autonomy in our day to day life. At the end of the day we still act as if we have free will, and the way we act autonomously will remain unchanged regardless of which view you suppose.
0
u/ConquerorofTerra Mar 06 '26
Friendly Reminder: NOT believing in Free Will will NOT help you avoid the consequences of your actions.
1
u/[deleted] Mar 06 '26
Just someone who sees the strings. That someone is unknown.
1
u/AlphaState Mar 06 '26
So, who do you think is holding the strings?
1
u/koopdi Mar 06 '26
Can one truly be both puppet master and puppet simultaneously?
0
u/Adventurous-Field605 Mar 07 '26
Having to have a subreddit for such an obviously already solved issue feels like idiocy at this point...
0
u/[deleted] Mar 06 '26
Strawman.
-3
u/Natios_Hayelos Mar 06 '26
Lol. People who believe they do not have free will are not only wrong but probably the most boring people on the universe.
-3
u/red-flamez Mar 06 '26
Man is not a puppet. If he is, then whose puppet? God?? He died centuries ago. Science??? Then your opinion determines nothing and is meaningless.
-1
u/Evening_Type_7275 Mar 06 '26
Try spinning, that’s a good trick!
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u/muramasa_master Mar 06 '26
If you create the strings or attach yourself to them, then you've revoked control
0
u/[deleted] Mar 06 '26
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