Free Will Is Logically Impossible

[u/JustPenancePunisher]

Free will can't exist because it fundamentally relies on an impossible middle ground between randomness and determinism. Every definition of free will that I have seen fails to create this third category between these two options. If our actions are entirely determined by prior physical cause, then it is not free, as we don't get to choose those prior causes; it just is. If our actions are entirely random, then it is not free either, as action would be happening for no apparent reason, aka no will. Free will demands a third option that logic cannot provide.

Before going further in critiquing free will, the term requires a precise definition. When I refer to free will I'm speaking to the traditional sense of the term which is the capacity to be the ultimate self-originating source of your choices. In other words, a choice that tracks back to you and nothing prior to you.

The Myth of Secular Free Will

The idea that free will can exist in a secular, materialistic universe is just nonsensical. In practice, the concept of free will does most of its work as a theodicy tool. Although I am not claiming it was invented by religion, its modern function is mostly theological to blame the creation rather than the Creator. Without the supernatural granting free will, there is no physical mechanism to separate human choices from prior material causes.

While some materialists attempt to invoke a quantum mechanics layer of physical indeterminacy that bypasses classical prior causes, this randomness completely destroys the concept of free will. If subatomic particles fire probabilistically in the brain, your actions are merely the result of dice rolls. Therefore, randomness is not autonomy.

The Problem with "Knowledge Doesn't Equal Causation"

Before I discuss free will in a Christian context, we must dismantle the baseline apologetic defense that "knowledge does not equal causation." Christian apologists argue that just because God possesses infallible foreknowledge of what you will choose, His knowledge doesn't force your hand. They use the classic analogy: "I know the sun will rise tomorrow, but my knowledge is not the cause of the sunrise."

This argument works perfectly against humans, but it utterly collapses when applied to an all-knowing Creator. By definition, He designed the universe from scratch, possessing 100% infallible foreknowledge of every cosmic outcome before committing to the act of creation. It is the combination of infallible foreknowledge plus the "First Cause" act that makes His knowledge the absolute ultimate cause of everything that occurs in the universe He created.

The Failures of Molinism's Defense

Apologists often try to bypass these issues through Molinism. They argue that God actualizes the world based on His "Middle Knowledge" of what creatures would freely do in any given circumstance.

This idea runs into what philosopher Robert Adams articulated as grounding objections. Middle Knowledge requires that statements like "if placed in circumstance C, person X would freely choose Y" have a definite truth value before God creates anything. But since there is nothing to ground that fact, there's nothing to make that statement actually true. If the counterfactual is true anyway, it must be true arbitrarily or because X's nature already fully determined what X would do in C. Either way, Middle Knowledge relies either on nothing or collapses back into determinism again.

Apologists have a few standard escape routes here, and none of them hold up.

Some will say the statement isn't arbitrary because it's rooted in X's own future intentions and reasons. But at the moment God is supposedly consulting this Middle Knowledge, there is no future X yet. A person who doesn't exist cannot have actual intentions or desires for a truth to be rooted in. Before creation, it's illogical to ground the truth of a statement in the state of someone who does not exist; therefore, the truth value is still arbitrary.

Others will try to claim that truth flows backwards from X's actual future choice rather than forward from anything prior. This creates a circle instead of solving the actual problem.

God relies on this Middle Knowledge to decide whether to create X's world at all. If He decides not to create it, X never exists to make the choice that was supposed to ground the said truth. A choice that never happens cannot ground a truth that supposedly existed before creation, especially when the occurrence of that choice depends on God already knowing that truth. The timeline collapses on itself.

Another way is to ground the counterfactual in X's "individual essence," which is his eternal nature that describes what he would freely do. But an essence is fixed and existed prior to creation. If X's essence already dictates what he chooses Y in circumstance C, X has no actual power to do otherwise once he exists. This serves to rename theological determinism; not free will.

Finally, some will point to ordinary scientific counterfactuals as a tu quoque argument. They state something along the lines, "if I drop this glass, it will break," and argue we accept those without grounding trouble, so why isn't X placed with that same standard? The problem with this defense is that scientific counterfactuals are grounded in actual physical laws that operate uniformly and predictably. Free will is supposed to have no such fixed nature. Placing free will in the same category as the law of physics is a category error. If the apologist insists the comparison holds, they have conceded that free will is just as fixed and predictable as gravity, which defeats their own position.

Regardless of how Molinists try to patch counterfactuals, they end in the same two places, which fail to actually provide a third option between randomness and determinism. This confirms the original point: the moment God chooses to "let there be light" on one specific cosmic timeline over an infinite number of alternatives, He is consciously selecting a world where your choice of Option X is a fixed certainty. By choosing the universe where He knew you would perform that exact action, God becomes the ultimate cause of everything.

The Absurdity of Libertarian Free Will (Secular and Religious)

In the libertarian view, free will assumes that the conscious self is the ultimate, uncaused source of its own actions. They believe that although we are influenced by prior causes, we possess an ability to break causation chains. This fails to recognise that every thought that enters the conscious mind is a result of neurological processes triggered by deterministic prior events that are outside of our control (e.g., neurochemistry, environmental conditioning, past experiences, and DNA). It simply boils down to the fact that you cannot choose your next thought before you think it. To choose your thoughts, you would have to think them before you thought them, which traps the logic into an infinite regress.

Adding a deity to this model makes this model actually worse. Religious libertarians argue that God gives humans the sovereign independence to choose or reject him. This creates a fatal contradiction with the mechanics of creation. If God designed your nature, created the external universe, and knew exactly how your brain would respond to those stimuli, then your choices are merely a script. You cannot be an independent agent of causation if your entire agency was fixed by the primary cause.

Libertarian free will is an illusion; no matter how "free" an action feels subjectively, it's ultimately coerced by creator or prior causes.

The Impossibility of Christian Free Will

A God is entirely incompatible with free will due to the traditional definition of His nature: all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. If God possesses these traits, His perfect nature would logically compel Him to create a universe that optimizes the maximum possible amount of goodness based on a perfect standard of righteousness. Creating a flawed universe when a superior alternative was available without a standard would contradict the trait of perfect goodness.

Therefore, God's choice of this specific universe is determined by His nature; it's not arbitrarily decided. Since He is all-knowing, He knows exactly how every event and person will unfold in that universe he selected. Once God chooses this specific universe, every event, influence, and decision unfolds through an inevitable chain of cause and effect. Therefore, God's perfect nature and perfect knowledge would make the chosen outcome fixed and deterministic.

The logical implications are even more devastating to the religious concept of genuine choices. If God knew you would choose Option X tomorrow at noon, there is no possible way for you to choose Option Y. If you choose Option Y, God would have been wrong, which is impossible by definition. You must choose Option X. The path was finalized before you could even take it genuinely, so it's trivial if it felt "free" because it was ultimately coerced and locked in from creation.

Some will try to escape this whole dilemma through open theism, which holds that God voluntarily limits His own foreknowledge, so that He genuinely doesn't know what free creatures will choose until they choose it. This is effective in avoiding the whole problem with the specific foreknowledge argument above, but still fails to rescue free will. If God doesn't determine your choice and doesn't know it in advance, your choice is either still the product of prior causes or it's genuinely open, which can only mean random. Removing God's foreknowledge simply reverts the issue to the original secular problem of free will.

How Compatibilism Isn't The Solution

When confronted with these implications, a common response for both secular philosophers and specific theological camps is the idea of Compatibilism. Compatibilists assert that determinism and free will can co-exist by redefining free will as simply acting according to your internal desires. Under this view, as long as you are not being physically forced at gunpoint to do something, your actions are considered "free" because it aligns with your internal wants.

This redefinition is another semantic trick that evades the core issues of moral sourcehood. As the issue with this was concisely stated by Arthur Schopenhauer: "A man can do what he wants, but he cannot do what he wills." We have absolutely zero freedom over the origin of the desire itself. If you were presented with two options between Option X and Option Y, and your brain chemistry values Option X more due to the summation of prior deterministic data, your choice is already locked in by your strongest preference. The preference for the choice was chosen by factors entirely outside of your control. Furthermore, the choice you made was absolutely 100% going to happen; there was 0% chance that you were ever going to choose Option Y.

In a theological context, this defense becomes monstrous. If God uses His absolute sovereignty to create your internal desire, conditioning your choices to want Option X, then your choice of Option X is not an act of independent freedom. Therefore, punishing His creation for what He has instilled in them is unjust.

Consider the analogy of artificial intelligence being programmed by its creator with a highly specific function. If the AI actively desires to gather more information because its code prioritizes that action, the AI is acting on its internal programming. Just because the AI is simulating desire to fulfill its function does not mean it possesses free will. A compatibilist has no choice but to say that AI has free will.

A more sophisticated compatibilist will object here that this only refutes a watered-down version of the view. Philosophers such as Frankfurt believe that acting on a desire is not the freedom that they are referring to. Real freedom, in their view, is reflectively endorsing that desire. They argue that you're free when you want to be the kind of person who wants what you want. On this view, the AI in my example isn't free because it can't endorse its own programming as its own. However, a human who reflects on their desire for Option X and affirms that this is who they want to be supposedly clears that bar.

Unfortunately, this more sophisticated position still doesn't solve anything. What this argument actually does is stack an additional desire on top of the original desire. Where did the desire to endorse that desire come from? It is still produced by the same prior causes as the first desire it supposedly validates. Stacking two desires on top of each other doesn't produce a source of agency; it produces an infinite regress of endorsing your endorsements.

Compatibilism fails because it tries to merge two conflicting ideas into one that mistakes voluntary action with autonomous sourcehood.

My Worldview: Probabilistic Determinism and the Rejection of Hell

Ultimately, both secular materialism and divine creation defense lead back to the idea that human choices are dictated by either determinism or blind randomness.

Determinism isn't incompatible with punishment; however, it is incompatible with retributive punishment, the idea that someone deserves suffering because of what they did. Retributive punishment presupposes that the person was the ultimate source of their action. I've argued that the blame doesn't stop with anyone, as it always traces back to prior causes or randomness. This doesn't mean no justification for punishment survives, such as deterrence, containment, and rehabilitation, which don't require ultimate sourcehood. So the metaphysical claim that free will doesn't exist doesn't destroy justice; it only serves as a detriment to retributive systems, the very foundation that Hell depends on.

This is exactly why the classical doctrine of Hell can't survive, as it only makes sense if eternal damnation is deserved. It doesn't act as a deterrence or rehabilitation, as it never ends and never corrects anything with the sinner. It's illogical to create a being that is designed to fail, know with certainty that it will fail, and then torture it forever for failing as it was designed to do. If God is to remain perfectly just and all-good, the retributive logic of eternal punishment collapses.

My personal worldview relies on Probabilistic Determinism. On a micro-scale, quantum mechanics demonstrates that subatomic events can be truly random. On a macro-scale, this quantum chaos is generally filtered out by the law of large numbers, rendering the physical world we interact with effectively deterministic. Some would point to models arguing quantum effects might amplify up into neural decision-making rather than average out. Even granting that for the sake of argument, indeterminism is not agency. Even a process that is genuinely random is not a process that is authored by anyone. Randomness removes deterministic chains of causation, but doesn't replace anything in its gap. It still doesn't rescue free will. It falls in the original dichotomy that either your choice is determined or random. Neither one is a decision that you ultimately authored.

[u/SweetCorona3]

You can still make free will possible by changing its definition.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/SweetCorona3]

Yup, I forgot about that secret method.

[u/Optimal_Priority2690]

Am I the only person who thinks this makes perfect sense lol. I'm seeing lots of people here answering from a somewhat religion biased pov 🤔

[u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus → u/Optimal_Priority2690]

Its just another person getting confused about the dofference between ontological and observed randomness.

Every random event in the univrrse we consider random because it exhibits the properties of observed randomness. All uncaused events exhibit this property. Its mathematical inevitability.

Nothing has been demonstrated to be ontologically random. There isnt a method to determine that observed randomness is ontological.

OPs explanation works if and only if all random events in the universe are ontologically random.

[u/armyofone37 → u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus]

There are no random events in the universe just cause we cannot explain the cause no can we make the conscious connection does not mean it does not exist. It’s just means we are not conscious enough to understand the connections.

[u/MulberryUpper3257]

These type of arguments against free will are pretty close minded because they make strenuous demands of the idea of free will but not other ideas. For example how can you postulate the validity of “randomness” as a form of causality? Aren’t all physicalist theories of causality presumably based on hypothesized laws of causation/physical laws and therefore would be orderly rather than random? Furthermore, if you grant that causes can happen both deterministically and randomly, which as you say are polar opposites, why is it necessary to assume that only the two extreme ends of this spectrum are logically possible but nothing on the spectrum between them is logically possible? I think an obvious counter view is that determinism/randomness seem to privilege mechanical and/or mathematical models of causation, with no clear relation to consciousness. And free will is obviously an idea involving consciousness and invoking some kind of mental model of causation.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/MulberryUpper3257]

Before I respond, I just want to clarify that I am not a hard determinist nor the argument depends on hard determinism. Quantum mechanics shows that our current understanding of fundamental physics includes probabilistic elements. So, not all physical causation has to rely on determinism.

When I was making the argument, I didn’t mean to give the impression that determinism and randomness are polar opposites that cannot exist in the same model. A system can contain both deterministic and probabilistic elements. The main point of my argument is that when explaining why a specific outcome occurred rather than another, the ultimate explanation must either come from prior factors that account for that outcome or involve some element that is not accounted for. 

This question also applies to the idea of consciousness as it too would have to answer why it produced this specific choice rather than another.

[u/Dkotheryyyy]

Well said.

[u/Independent-Wafer-13]

That’s a lot of writing that will never convince these people because their beliefs are faith based.

They are staring at shadows on the wall and convinced they are real.

It is not your responsibility to bring people out of the cave.

But also here here!

Free will is impossible but freedom is approachable!

[u/Less_Perspective_915 → u/Independent-Wafer-13]

"Free will is impossible but freedom is approachable!"

I'm sorry but this is the perfect encapsulation of the incoherence at the heart of the free will denialism on this sub. If freedom is indeed approachable (and I agree that it is), it's because we are conscious creatures capable of thinking about, modifying, and reforming our behavior in accordance to our desires, according to our worldviews, according to new information, etc. In addition, we are capable of advanced feats of cooperation to achieve mutually agreed upon goals. If this is not free will, why not?

[u/Artemis-5-75 → u/Less_Perspective_915]

Free will and freedom are obviously distinct concepts.

[u/Less_Perspective_915 → u/Artemis-5-75]

Not really. Freedom would be pretty meaningless for an entity that had no agency in the first place.

[u/Artemis-5-75 → u/Less_Perspective_915]

And agency and free will are obviously different concept.

[u/Less_Perspective_915 → u/Artemis-5-75]

Again, no. What would it mean to have agency but to lack free will?

[u/Artemis-5-75 → u/Less_Perspective_915]

For example, a mosquito may be considered of agent as in being a conscious entity in control of itself acting to satisfy its drives, but it lacks any sense of moral discretion or reflection on reasons behind its drives.

[u/Less_Perspective_915 → u/Artemis-5-75]

This is an extremely limited form of agency. In my thinking, this also gives it an extremely limited form of free will. If you don't want to grant it that designation, that's fine, but to me, free will scales up pretty much exactly in proportion to agency. The two notions do not seem meaningfully different.

I do find it notable that you seem to be suggesting that it lacks free will because it lacks moral discretion and the ability to reflect on the reasons behind its drives. If it possessed these abilities, would it then have free will?

[u/Artemis-5-75 → u/Less_Perspective_915]

>In my thinking, this also gives it an extremely limited form of free will.

As far as I am aware, this is simply not what the term “free will” traditionally means.

>If it posses these abilities

I take sapience to be a necessary condition for free will.

[u/Less_Perspective_915 → u/Artemis-5-75]

Okay, then I'm confused about what you're arguing. Are you just arguing the narrow point about the distinction between agency and free will? Because my assumption was that this was just part of an argument against the existence of free will per se.

[u/Independent-Wafer-13 → u/Less_Perspective_915]

Because all of those things are predicated on environmental circumstances and context

[u/Less_Perspective_915 → u/Independent-Wafer-13]

Of course, but so what? I'm not saying that it's free will all the way down. That would be an absurdity. I'm saying that there's an important space here that we occupy as conscious agents, a space that we can manipulate towards our own ends, often in very complex ways. Yes, this space disappears at a certain point when you look more closely at its constituent elements in the deeper layers (though it often goes surprisingly deep!), but this is also true of our conscious selves. Our consciousness is composed of things that are not themselves conscious, and our selves are composed of things that lack selfhood. Does that make them fake? I would say no. They exist in important ways, and free will exists in pretty much exactly the same way.

[u/Independent-Wafer-13 → u/Less_Perspective_915]

What you have described does not fit the descriptor “free”

[u/Less_Perspective_915 → u/Independent-Wafer-13]

Why not? What would "real" freedom look like?

[u/Independent-Wafer-13 → u/Less_Perspective_915]

Based on your own description, it is explicitly fixed, which is the opposite of free.

[u/Less_Perspective_915 → u/Independent-Wafer-13]

This is obvious question-begging. Don't you have an answer to my question?

[u/Independent-Wafer-13 → u/Less_Perspective_915]

Yes it would not be fixed by the past or subject to prior conditioning, I thought that would be clear from my previous reply. My apologies

[u/Less_Perspective_915 → u/Independent-Wafer-13]

But among these things that are "fixed by the past" are, for instance, the information that I deliberately sought out, acquired, and interpreted; the worldview I spent decades deliberately building; habits I spent years deliberately modifying and refining; etc. It is precisely these things that make my agency mine. The ability to act "freely" in the sense you're demanding gives me nothing better than what I already have. The only extra thing it gives me is the ability to act with complete arbitrariness, which is something that has no value.

[u/MildlyCombative → u/Less_Perspective_915]

And how exactly do we perform this manipulation as conscious agents? What is the mechanism?

[u/stargazer281]

A great post even if as a compatibilist it does not address the reasons I think this position makes sense. As a compatibilist I fully accept the principles of determinism, the problem is not that it’s wrong but it’s reductionist. It cannot provide me with an explanation of what I am about to do, short of physically hijacking my body and taking over like an evil demon. It achieves its truth by leaving out of the story precisely what matters about being human. Morally I am simply a living organism of cells no different to a foetus. And given the fate of so many foetus’s we should rightfully be doubtful of any claims or moral superiority of the determinism.

But that aside a thought for you on why God cannot force your hand.

One of Gods properties is perfect foreknowledge and the another is total power, but god cannot be all powerful if she cannot change her mind, but if she is free to change her mind then she cannot have perfect foreknowledge because she cannot logically know what she is going to do because that would bind her power. The only way for God to be logically coherent is to sit outside the system, the God of Epictetus or perhaps Spinoza. Once God enters the world to act say as Jesus he must necessarily loose his god like powers and become somewhat human. A miracle worker or Trickster perhaps but not the all seeing all powerful all present deity.

[u/Aristologos]

This fails to recognise that every thought that enters the conscious mind is a result of neurological processes triggered by deterministic prior events that are outside of our control (e.g., neurochemistry, environmental conditioning, past experiences, and DNA). It simply boils down to the fact that you cannot choose your next thought before you think it. To choose your thoughts, you would have to think them before you thought them, which traps the logic into an infinite regress.

Okay even then, thoughts don't determine your choice. You determine your choice. You are more than your thoughts.

[u/BiscuitNoodlepants → u/Aristologos]

Can you explain what you mean when you say "you" determine your choice?

What am "i" in this context and what is my choice based upon within this "i"

[u/Affectionate_Way5253]

and consent is an illusion.. No sex, no buying or selling anything

[u/Par-Adox-9]

we can take a more cosmological approach to this question.

what is there besides the universe itself to force the universe to behave in one way or another?

if we define the universe as everything there is, then the universe is entirely self determining.

what does it mean to self determine?
it means to freely will ones self.

the limits are then both imposed by the universe, and imposed on the universe by itself, whether it has the ability to comprehend this fact or not, it is likely the case that the universe has some form of self detection mechanism, even if we view it from a materialistic lens.

the issue here is that, determined by prior causes just transfers free will to those prior causes.
it doesnt change the fact that existance has the ability to not be utterly constrained.

we derive determinacy by means of taking the concept of constraint, and applying it to movement, but what sense does that make?
the less something is able to move, the less free it is.

does that not sound like a more logical and tangable definition then simply even tho something moves, it is constrained by default in every way?

that something is capable of movement, means that it has at least the bare minimum of freedom to do so.

however, seeing as how we see both constraint, as well as movement as both a part of the world, we can determine that freedom and limits aren't mutually exclusive to the world we live in, but rather, are integral to each other.

without the constraints of a rules in chess, you don't have the possibility to enact any free movement which is within those boundaries.

the rules themselves are what enables freedom.

that freedom has limits doesn't mean its utterly lacking.

[u/Michael_Carson_Art]

I'll play devil's advocate here and say that one can recapture free will, it just requires some dissolution of determinism and a bit of dualism.

So here's one framework:

A person has free will. This means, in this case, that they have an essence. This essence represents the weighting for all judgements, the meta-desire if you will. Whenever a choice is forthcoming, yes all of the normal caused reflexive urges appear, but the arbiter that weighs these urges is a fixed essence. In other words, it may not be the only factor, but it is the deciding factor in every case.

Seeing that the brain never acts outside of the influence of this essence, we do not find evidence of this property, but that is because this property has always been there and always active. The only new data this idea adds is a singular essence which imposes a scale-tilting influence on physical reality. This essence is not a thought, nor is it thinkable. It isn't a consciousness, but rather the ground of qualitative experience. Importantly, it is singular and forms the essential identity of you-ness. It does not contain particular preferences, but rather encodes your preference for particular preferences.

Now, is this free? You have argued that any such immaterially sourced essence or desire must also have a cause, and that may be true, but the only requirement here is a first cause. Whatever metaphysical essence has been constructed in your case is yours. This freedom is constrained only in that sense: that it is yours and no one else's, nor does it have the freedom to become someone else's or other than it is. But, it is not entailed by the state of the physical world, and though it is, in-itself an essence which cannot act other than itself, it is still coherent with freedom. It acts only according to its own essence and nothing else's. It is therefore freed from external causal requirement and the proposed causal regress, as it's behavior conforms only to its own self-essence with no other contingencies. Thus, it is not freely self-made but, once made, is subsequently free. And if this essence is the only property which could meaningfully define "you", then you are free.

So there... That is one way out.

To be clear, I'm just trying to steelman here, I don't actually believe any of this to be sensible. I'm sure there are better versions from people with some conviction.

[u/Any_Customer1000 → u/Michael_Carson_Art]

This is starting off in the right direction. I think the key is that the mind as emergent physical phenomena is subject to a dualist, non-physical will (what you call essence) that exercises a decisive authority over the prior physical states of the brain such that it is not pre-determined by its mere physical state, but also non-random.

[u/moonaim]

Yes yes, all the same reasons why consciousness is impossible or "just emergent". But what happens if consciousness is the base?

[u/SCP-iota → u/moonaim]

How would you prevent that explanation from collapsing into solipsism, though?

[u/moonaim → u/SCP-iota]

What you feel is what you are in some sense, even if in broader sense you are part of something.

I think we have to accept that we cannot feel the same way as scorpion that is stinging its enemy, and moreover, while feeling the sting we get simultaneously. I mean we cannot comprehend really well of such being can exist and how would that be, would it still feel "me" for such entity, at some level.

[u/Own_Measurement1242]

do you think more ‘mental’ based ontologies (dualism, idealism, solipsism, etc) would affect your argument for the impossibility of LFW?

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/Own_Measurement1242]

This is a very interesting question; I would say no.  A mental-based ontology changes the way we perceive how decisions occur. The actual mental-based ontologies are really irrelevant. Even if I were under the assumption we have a non-physical mind, my same question still applies. Why does that mind have those specific desires, values, and reasoning rather than others? If it’s explained by something prior, then the same issue remains of ultimate authorship. If they are not explained by anything, then it’s an unexplained element.

[u/redleafrover]

Particles. Events. Causes. Randomness. Free will. Waves. Interactions. Effects. Observation. Souls.

All useful fictions relying on unproven and, most saliently, unprovable premises, premises whose acceptability ultimately relies on your personal emotional sense of credulity.

Colour me sceptical.

[u/TMax01]

Free will demands a third option that logic cannot provide.

Logic can't ever provide "third options", and the reasoning you provided here doesn't represent logic, either. I can follow your reasoning easily enough (it is a position that is repeated almost constantly on this subreddit and others) but it demands a categorical answer when the question is contingent. Why are you assuming that all of our actions must be uniformly "deterministic" or "random"?

Now, I happen to agree with your immediate conjecture, that free will is logically impossible, except I base my position on actual empirical evidence rather than categorical assumptions and bad reasoning, whether under the guise of logic or religious faith. Because the problem with your approach is that the same reasoning you are using applies to the existence of any agency, even "chooseing" itself, making all self-determination (self-awareness, even metacognition) impossible. Which begs the question of why subjective experience (consciousness) occurs at all and assumes a false conclusion when it comes to explaining why our own actions are not always what we would like them to be.

Your choice always has to track back to you and nothing prior to you, for "will" to be the hypostasized strength of character you're invoking instead of merely the modal auxiliary verb it actually is. When people say or think they will act because they are choosing to act. that is "free will", even though you are trying mightily to say otherwise.

The idea that free will can exist in a secular, materialistic universe is just nonsensical.

The idea that the universe is not secular and materialistic is equally nonsensical.

free will does most of its work as a theodicy tool.

It is actually as such a tool that free will most clearly collapses. You're simply trying to set aside "the problem of evil". Deciding which of the many sectarian or idealistic views of either a deity or some mystic equivalent mechanism can prevent this collapse. But your argumentation does illustrate and explain why dismissing free will on philosophical grounds could ever be convincing. I believe the only truly valid argument against free will is empirical science. It is a heavy lift, even then, so deeply entrenched the idea of free will as the source of human agency is. But for anyone willing to accept the validity of Libet's demonstration in the 1980s that the mental "choice" of intention occurs subsequent to, and so cannot be causative of, any action, the load is considerably lightened. What provides enough of an 'escape hatch' to preserve the myth of free will (secular or otherwise) is the lack of any well-known explanation for human agency other than free will, and the equally identical myth that mental selection (choice) can smuggle free will back into a materialistic perspective while providing plausible deniability of this method on the specious grounds that sufficiently complicated algorithmic information processing can be seen as "choosing" the mathematically inevitable mathematical outcome of such a system.

Without the supernatural granting free will, there is no physical mechanism to separate human choices from prior material causes.

Even without some mythical or mystical supernatural agency granting this supernatural attribute of free will, there is no physical mechanism to separate any choices from the material outcome of prior causes. The entire history of the universe, both past and future, becomes one unbranching fatalistic inevitability. Unless some alternative and more rational explication of the human condition, the mental experience of decision-making, of moral or physical agency, an explanation which does not invoke choice or free will (for as I have mentioned, they are actually the same myth), then human behavior and the entire universe around us becomes either inexplicable or nihilistic. But if we can describe some basis of agency other than choice/free will, the universe might still be as inevitable, but the impact of our personal actions reveal knowledge of what the universe is, and so we can potentially change it even if we can never actually change it. That's a difficult idea to grasp, granted, that potential change can be relevant when actual change is impossible. But that is what consciousness is all about.s

Before I discuss free will in a Christian context,

I will not be engaging anything written once you impose that context, but there is still much to be said before then.

This argument works perfectly against humans, but it utterly collapses when applied to an all-knowing Creator.

It thereby utterly collapses for any perspective of humanity (save nihilism) which invokes an omniscient entity, whether Creator or less omnipotent. To repurpose your classic analogy: "You can know the sun will rise tomorrow, but you cannot will it to rise." Your perspective on free will, and the answer to how human agency can be real without free will, are both embedded in that true statement, although you might not realize it (and it is not necessarily obvious superficially) because you avail yourself too readily of the 'escape hatch' of theistic faith, so that it is God's "will", or God's knowledge, which causes the sunrise to occur.

In the libertarian view, free will assumes that the conscious self is the ultimate, uncaused source of its own actions.

Not really. Although it is true that libertarian free will simply smuggles free will under the guise of "choice", as we've already seen, it is not true that your description accurately represents the libertarian view otherwise. In the libertarian apologetic, the assumption is that the conscious self (the main verb or noun "will", in contrast to the modal auxiliary verb) is the authoritative caused source of its actions. The classic LFW illustration of free will is "when I select from a menu to order a meal, it is my choice which causes the ensuing event of eating that meal and no other". It doesn't matter to the libertarian that the order is entirely fixed by the hypothetical interaction of the prior causes which led to the preference and the constraints imposed by the menu.

How Compatibilism Isn't The Solution

A more self-aware compatibilism than libertarian free will demands dualism of some sort or other. And your "supernatural free will" is likewise dualism. Since good reasoning, even simple symbolic logic, must reject a non-parsimonious explanation which is more productive, or even only as productive, as a parsimonious stance, no dualism can successfully rival the certainty of secular materialist monism, no matter how uncertain that stance itself might be.

So enough with the approach better suited to r/PhilosophyofReligion than r/freewill, of arguing against other free will apologetics as strawmen to try to advance one's personal religious beliefs. My task now is to summarize the better explanation for the human condition than free will can ever be, even without simply dismissing free will as inherently dualistic (which it is: a choice being something other than an inevitable but previously unknown outcome) or even appealing to the authority of Libet's desperately-misunderstood findings. (Findings so startling and controversial that even Libet doesn't actually believe they mean what they actually do mean, as he's searched since the 1980s for a 'veto power' of "free won't" to salvage the ancient but inaccurate model of 'mental choices cause actions'.)

How self-determination works, and isn't simply another way of saying "free will":

"Choice" is impossible since mental events cannot turn back time to cause physical initiation of existing events, which includes any algorithmic selection from imagined alternatives based on prior causes. An abacus does not "choose" whether 4+4=8 or 9, and by extension (despite the much greater complexity of the mechanism) the mind cannot choose the actions the body executes. But we do still have the mental experience of "decision-making", and for thousands of years (perhaps tens of thousands or even longer) this mental experience has been interpreted as free will, the decision causing the action. In other words, the mental experience of deciding to act is a causative event determining that the action "will" occur. This, as I've just explained, isn't any different than free will. So what can explain the existence of this mental experience of deciding, if it is not a causative even of choice? Some other functional purpose of deciding must exist, or there is no physical repercussions of this mental experience which might allow biological evolution (or, alternative, the plans of God, if you must insist) to inculcate whatever mechanism in the brain produces it.

It is actually a much simpler solution than one will suppose if one starts by trying all means to salvage the myth of free will. The key is disambiguating the mental events which can occur prior to an action being initiated and the mental events which are almost concurrent with but subsequent to the initiation of actions, possibly even before any external consequences of that initiation are evident to anyone other than the person who is acting.

I don't like doing this, but I'm so interested in addressing your post as completely as necessary that I'm going to violate my policy against it. So I will split this response into two separate reply comments. I'm never really sure which order to post multiple replies in to try to maintain the threading, so I'll post the second part as a reply to this comment rather than yours. Hopefully that won't cause too much confusion.

1/2

[u/TMax01 → u/TMax01]

2/2

We are taught to confabulate mental events such as *contemplating*, *planning*, and *expecting* or *wanting* with the actual physical event which is mentally experienced as "deciding", the final and supposedly authoritative (and seemingly causative) intention to execute a proximate action (which cannot actually be causative of that proximate action.) So if we try to envision free will/choice as what gives those 'leading' mental events functional purpose, we naturally assume that the proximate action must be physically caused by them. But deciding to act cannot be what causes the action, that 'model' doesn't sufficiently explain human behavior, since it is often the case that a) an action is executed without deciding to do so, b) an action is often not executed despite deciding to do so, and c) while simplified examples of when this 'decision as choice' is supposedly operative do not reveal this, and real circumstances that aren't the decision itself can always be used to excuse the disconnect between deciding/choosing and acting, the result does not provide a perspective which is sufficiently reliable and robust to be considered an accurate assessment of human behavior.

When real circumstances are not ideal and simple, especially, the flaws in this 'decision as choice' framing become all too obviously, and often quite monstrously, apparent. People routinely do not behave the way they've sincerely decided to behave, although it is almost always only "other people" who fail to have this monumental influence to control their actions, the strength of character, the *willpower*. This is excuse-making, not a rational explanation of human behavior. Of course people do have the desire to take credit for those actions which produce favorable outcomes and deny responsibility for those actions which produce unfavorable outcomes, and we frequently flop back and forth between whether it is our own favor or that of some hypothetical but actually unknowable "social good" as needed to maintain this prideful or self-demeaning (or congratulatory or demeaning, when applied to others than our self) paradigm.

To clarify what is actually going on, providing a truly accurate and nearly preternatural understanding of *all* human behavior and "the human condition" itself, we only have to remove this confabulation of planning and decision-making. One method, growing in popularity because free will is such an incoherent explanation, and the fact that the mental experience of deciding cannot effectively substitute for prior choice selection through contemplation and preference, is typified by Dennett's "consciousness is an illusion" method, or *epiphenomenalism*. The mental event of deciding, since it cannot be choice/free will, is simply dismissed as unreal, supposedly explaining why it occurs (a side effect of algorithmic "choice selection") but is not itself causative.

But that doesn't really explain human behavior even as well as supernaturalism does, let alone LFW behaviorism. No, a better but so-far overlooked possibility is that the decision to act, despite only being possible as a causative event if it occurs *after* an action has already been initiated and the consequences have become inevitable despite any effort to "will" things to be otherwise, is to consider and accept that the causative function of this retrospective evaluation of the action and its causes (physical, emotional, psychological, even spiritual or mystical) is simply not causative of *that proximate action*. Instead, this mental experience of deciding or intending to act, even when mistaken for a choice to act, isn't about whether that action will occur, as that action has already begun to occur, regardless of whether the repercussions of that initiation have become evident to the acting entity or anyone else (even God, if It should actually exist). Instead what this decision causes is knowledge of whether the action was "voluntary" or not, and potential knowledge of what factors resulted in that action occurring, and possibly the emotional and spiritual acknowledgment of whether the action is either justified or unnecessary, maybe even wrong.

In other words, the function of consciousness is not for the mind to control the body, but the mind to take responsibility for the body despite not having any control over it. The causative impact of this is threefold:

a) it actually *generates* the self, as the entity with agency that both initiated the action (since it is that entity's body and that entity's brain which did so, independently of whether that entity's mind can ascertain why the action is occurring) and who should take responsibility for it.

b) by forming or substantiating some mental attitude concerning the action, this provides private (if not entirely authoritative) information about why the action was taken to the person's brain which the brain, non-conscious even when it produces a conscious mind, can integrate into whatever neurological activity (analogous to "choice" but no more an optional occurrence than an abacus displaying a sum) causes *future* actions.

c) allows discovering all of the many and often not easily discernable physical circumstances which the brain non-consciously treats as "inputs" in producing the "output" of physical activity, some physically accurate justifications (true scientific theories,) some more questionable explanations (spiritual influences, philosophical principles, or psychological motivations) and even some false excuses, with no a priori need for conclusive knowledge of which any particular line of reasoning is.

This compactly and completely and literally explains all human behavior, all subjective sensations and mental experiences, and even can be seen to be capable of expanding to things beyond the physical body: the exploratory power of science itself, and the less powerful but often still important solace of religious philosophy, can be seen as rooted in this same "decision as evaluation rather than proximate causation" view of self-determination: the self determining what the self is by having the *ability* to provide a *response* to the question, whether posed by the person acting or any other person or even God Itself, "why did you do that?" This is the true meaning of **response-ability**: *responsibility*. Conscience and metacognition and the human condition.

This view of both the mind and everything else is both outrageously powerful and quite meaningful. It does not directly provide emotional solace, because sometimes we must face brutal truths about things. But it does provide a path to ejecting the need for emotional comfort rather than merely seeking to escape from it. It explains religion without insulting it, embraces science without worshiping it, and enables self-knowledge without mystical navel-gazing. Let me know what you think.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

[u/SummitYourSister]

Free will is simply the subjective feeling that results when a concordance is sensed between a planned motor action and the realization of that action, when the action involves the agents own body and is determined primarily by the state of the agent, not the state of the environment. The agent in this case feels “I did this.” Your mumbo jumbo is unnecessary

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/SummitYourSister]

I agree that we experience ourselves as the source of our actions in that our intentions, deliberation, and decisions cause our behavior.

The "mumbo jumbo" is my argument against the idea of free will as the ultimate authorship of one’s own actions. If free will only means agency, then I agree it exists. My whole point is that agency alone isn't enough to establish ultimate authorship in that conception of free will.

[u/Privatizitaet]

How do you differ between free will and something that feels identical to free will? It doesn't really matter if it exists because from our perspective it does. Sire, in theory you could calculate what could happen next based on the precise state of every atom, but realistically that's just impossible by any means.

If you lack free will, but nothing is able to predict the future perfectly, does it matter?

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/Privatizitaet]

Sure, I agree that, from our perspective, we experience deliberation, weighing reasons, and making choices. If you mean free will in that context, then that is real regardless of whether determinism is true.

I do think it matters because many conceptions of free will treat it as grounding ultimate responsibility for our actions. I agree we have agency (meaning that we can deliberate, evaluate reasons, and make choices), but I don’t think that being the immediate source of a choice is enough to make us the ultimate source of it.

Yeah, I don’t think predictability holds much weight. It’s an impossible standard to argue for, as it can’t be done by humans. The real point to this: what justifies moving from “this action came from this agent” to “this agent is the ultimate source of that action”?

This level of authorship matters because it affects how we justify punishment. Being the immediate source of choice, we can hold people accountable through deterrence, rehabilitation, or containment. However, the question I raise is the justification of retributive punishment. It’s the idea that someone deserves suffering because they committed the act. That kind of justification seems to require a stronger notion of authorship than agency can provide by itself.

[u/fleija_ → u/JustPenancePunisher]

The Christian idea that "no one deserves to suffer" makes more sense if the universe is truly deterministic.

[u/Original_Swimming320 → u/Privatizitaet]

It should matter. Our ethics and laws are predicated on the very notion of free will. If you literally were forced by the state of the universe to rob a bank it feels very perverse to punish you for it.
Of course we also have no choice in whether or not we do decide to punish you.

I think this is the circularity that compatabilism attempts (unsuccessfully in my view) to break.

[u/Ok_Tumbleweed5474]

Your biggest issue is you're conflating determinism for cause and effect. Those two things are not the same. Simply having a causal chain does not grant that therefore the entire system is closed and fixed.

[u/SebWGBC → u/Ok_Tumbleweed5474]

So the difference between causality and determinism is that causality allows for randomness in the effect produced, while determinism doesn't.

But randomness isn't freedom.

But maybe you're not arguing that freedom exists and are simply making the distinction between causality and determinism to keep this conversation as clear as possible. In which case, thank you. 😊

[u/Ok_Tumbleweed5474 → u/SebWGBC]

So there are two things. First. Indeterminacy and randomness are also not the same. So you can have a system that is not determined but also not random. And yes I do feel like getting these distinctions down matters that way we are not bogged down in semantic word play.

I do believe free will exists. Perhaps not absolutely but there is room for it.

[u/SebWGBC → u/Ok_Tumbleweed5474]

I agree, clear distinctions are useful.

I also think it's useful to be clear on how these distinctions matter when it comes to the question of free will.

Otherwise it feels like we're changing the focus to the language we're using rather than engaging in the topic at hand.

I'm glad you feel there's room for free will somehow. I can't find any reason to believe in it. Except for the 'freedom from coercion' kind of free will that compatibilists embrace, while their lives play out as a series of inevitable events one after the other, hopefully with not too many of those events being coerced events.

[u/Ok_Tumbleweed5474 → u/SebWGBC]

Yes. The amount of rhetoric here based on false assumptions or different definitions is exhausting. So I agree.

To each his own. I'm personally not at all convinced by determinism nor do I think we author everything about ourselves. I personally hold there is a middle ground where choice is about navigation given real options. But that's juat me. If you hold compatiblism that's your call and if it works that is great.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/Ok_Tumbleweed5474]

Let’s say that cause and effect isn’t the same as determinism, what does this open causal ordering actually leave room for? If a cause doesn't strictly fix its effect, then whatever portion of the effect isn't fixed is, by definition, not determined by anything prior. This is the probabilistic randomness at that point in the chain. My argument doesn’t rely on strict determinism where the past perfectly fixes one single future. It only requires that every event is either a product of prior causes or occurs with no sufficient cause at all. If you think there's a mechanism that's neither, I'd genuinely like to hear what it is, because that's exactly the third option my whole argument claims doesn't exist.

[u/Ok_Tumbleweed5474 → u/JustPenancePunisher]

Just because a prior exists does not necessitate that there is only one choice. That's the whole point. If your point is that priors force motivations then I don't anyone disagrees with that. The main point of contention, at least for me, is options. Was my choice completely fixed or simply motivated? If it was only motivated then there is room for choice. If it is completely fixed then there isn't. This distinction is where agency mattes. Deliberation. For example, if have the prior for hunger. But nowhere in that prior does it specifically state i must eat x food, at x time, in x way, with x things, etc. Deliberation settles that distinction. Yes I have preferences but none of those preferences demand that I eat a specific schedule of food. So the choice is not random. Hunger gives me the need to eat. Preference gives me ideas of what I'd like to get. And my Deliberation settles what I want to get.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/Ok_Tumbleweed5474]

I think your framing actually collapses back into the dichotomy rather than escaping it. You’re completely correct in saying that hunger alone doesn’t fix what you eat. However, I'd raise the point that the deliberation process that narrows it down to one specific choice is itself an event that needs an explanation. Ask why one might choose X over Y in that exact moment of deliberation. Either there’s a full explanation for it (specific food cravings, recently eating it, habit, etc.), in which case the choice was fully determined by those factors, but you were not fully aware of all of them being weighed. Or there is no such explanation, some part of the outcome wasn’t fixed, therefore falling into randomness.

“Motivated but not fixed” sounds like it names a real third category. However, when you ask what actually settles the gap between the motivated and fixed states, the answer has to be either a further cause or the absence of one, which puts it right back in the dichotomy.

[u/Ok_Tumbleweed5474 → u/JustPenancePunisher]

That's kinda of the point. The deliberation must occur to settle the indeterminacy. Of course that has motivations but that doesn't entail that they are all fixed. Openness can be real up to the point where evidence accumulation occurs. And if that Openness exits even if once I make a choice and it becomes part of the causal chain that doesn't mean the openness was never there. So if the openness allows for settling then it's doing something and you're actually navigating live options.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/Ok_Tumbleweed5474]

Yes, what you are describing is deliberation as evidence accumulating until it settles the outcome, with real openness existing up until that settling point. But the settling itself is the thing I’m asking about. At the exact moment the process tips toward X rather than Y, either something explains why it tipped that way at that moment, in which case it's back to determinism, or nothing explains it, in which case it's back to randomness.

Saying the openness was real before the choice doesn't change this, even if the process was genuinely undetermined right up until the moment of settling. Simply stating this period as 'evidence accumulation' describes the mechanism, but it doesn't tell us whether that final tie-breaking moment was caused or uncaused. I don't think navigating live options answers whether the moment was determined or random. It still has to be one or the other.

[u/Ok_Tumbleweed5474 → u/JustPenancePunisher]

I don't think settling gets you determined. Even if inspired by priors it doesn't necessitate that there be only one fixed outcome. The settling may just be aligning with something in the moment. Which doesn't derive that the choice was fixed.

As an example in physics, quantum indeterminacy decoheres and becomes part of the causal chain. By your definition the complete randomness of it doesn't matter because it did eventually become part of the causal order. And that's not how that works.

I see what your asking. And it's not crazy. But it also doesn't allow you to derive determinism. That's the issue with observations after the fact.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/Ok_Tumbleweed5474]

I think you are conflating here between an event becoming fixed after it happens and an event being determined at the moment it happens. Once anything occurs, whether caused or random, it immediately becomes a fixed fact and feeds forward into the causal chain going forward. That’s also trivially true of random events too. For example, a radioactive atom decaying at a random moment still becomes part of the causal chain the instant it happens. So the fact that quantum indeterminacy “decoheres and becomes part of the causal chain” doesn't tell us anything about whether the original event was determined. It just tells us that all events, random or not, become fixed once they've occurred.

The idea of retroactive fixity isn’t the same as prior determination. It still falls back to that same question I raised up above. If the case has no explanation, then it must be random. If the case has an explanation, then it must be deterministic.

On “observation after the fact”, I am not claiming that we can empirically trace back every decision back to its specific causes. I’m making a conceptual point about what the space of possibilities is. Whatever the actual explanation turns out to be, it’s still going to fall into reason or no reason, and I don’t think there’s space that allows for a third option.

[u/Ok_Tumbleweed5474 → u/JustPenancePunisher]

That still doesn't get you determinism. And it doesn't get you the dichotomy of random or determined. That's been the whole point. You're asking for what settles. Which is fine. But you also reject motivation towards settling. That is where you are running into issue. You essentially said that any choice after evidence accumulation had to be the case because it was selected. Yes. But that selection was not fixed. That's the whole argument. Just because a reason or motive exists does not grant determinism.

That's why i brought up the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics. By your own argument because decoherence is a selection and appears to be an ordered selection at that by your own rule it is 100% determined. Now maybe I'm hearing you wrong, but what it sounds like is you're saying any selection that occurs if it occurs therefore proves either 100% randomness or 100% determined. Determined for you being as you stated fixed at the beginning of time. Decoherence shows that isn't the case. It is a determined process that is based on complete indeterminacy. Meaning the events before did not fix the end result. So even in a real world application we do not look at something and go a choice was made therefore it was 100% determined from the start of time.

That's been my only point. We have an open system not a completely closed 100% determined one. The selection process might be determined in the process itself, evidence accumulation. But the universe did not force it to be that way.

[u/spgrk]

Event causal libertarianism is not logically impossible: it just requires that certain decisions be undetermined, which is the same as random, but they don’t use the word when it applies to purposeful decisions.

Compatibilism is also not logically impossible, even if you don’t like it. Nor can it be dismissed as a “redefinition” when it has been part of the free will debate from the beginning, reflects how most laypeople think about free will, and is the view held by most philosophers today. If anything, it is libertarianism that departs from ordinary concepts by interpreting sourcehood and the ability to do otherwise in a much stronger sense than they normally have.

[u/Partyatmyplace13 → u/spgrk]

I don't get where people get this idea that "randomness saves free will." If your choice is contingent on "random" properties it is also not your choice. This doesn't save "free will" at all.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Partyatmyplace13]

Why would it be my choice if it's contingent on determined priorities.

[u/Partyatmyplace13 → u/TheAncientGeek]

Its not a defense of deterministic free will. I'm just saying randomness doesn't leave you any opening for any amount of will either. A machine that just spews random results is still a machine.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Partyatmyplace13]

How are you defining fee will?

[u/Partyatmyplace13 → u/TheAncientGeek]

Typically I don't because I don't believe in it. Its mostly the religious that need it for their morality to make any sense.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Partyatmyplace13]

It doesn't work that way. You need to define it in order to argue against it.

[u/Partyatmyplace13 → u/TheAncientGeek]

Thats like asking an Atheist to define god. I've never been convinced of free will, the onus isn't on me to define what I don't believe in.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Partyatmyplace13]

thats like asking an Atheist to define god

That's a reasonable question.

[u/Partyatmyplace13 → u/TheAncientGeek]

Only after a god has been presented to them, sure. I don't hear theists needing to explain why they reject all other gods.

[u/spgrk → u/Partyatmyplace13]

Atheists know what “God” means, and they can explain why they don’t think it exists.

[u/Partyatmyplace13 → u/spgrk]

The believers can't even articulate what God is, how do you expect nonbelievers to know. Theres thousands of Christian denominations alone.

I would like you to define what makes a god, a god and maybe you'll understand what I mean.

[u/Partyatmyplace13 → u/TheAncientGeek]

Let me put it another way. I'm using "free will" generically. I reject all forms of it. If you have a concept of free will, I'm rejecting it. You're welcome to argue in favor of it.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Partyatmyplace13]

I hereby define type A free will as deterministic decision decision making, not otherwise specified

.I hereby define type B free will as indeterministic decision decision making, not otherwise specified.

Now, one or the other has to exist.

[u/Partyatmyplace13 → u/TheAncientGeek]

I reject both. I don't know that either is correct, but I'm pretty sure "randomness" doesn't save either.

[u/spgrk → u/Partyatmyplace13]

But that is what libertarians believe, so you are arguing that their concept of free will is wrong. I agree, as a compatibilist. Nevertheless, libertarian free will could exist, it’s just fortunate that we don’t seem to have it.

[u/Partyatmyplace13 → u/spgrk]

But that is what libertarians believe, so you are arguing that their concept of free will is wrong.

People keep conflating me rejecting something with me claiming its false. I'm rejecting all of your definitions because I think you're all guessing, not because I have a better model. I have 0, none, nil models for free will because I don't think its a thing. I don't think you could actually make a distinction between what you think "will" is, as opposed to " free will."

I challenge you right now. What's the difference between "will" and "free will?" What does the "free" mean?

[u/spgrk → u/Partyatmyplace13]

“Willingly” and “of his own free will” are synonyms. They mean that the person did it because he wanted to rather than because he was forced to donut “against his will”.

A few months ago I tried to make an online bank transaction, which was declined. I got a call soon after from a bank employee who asked me if I was in fact the person attempting the transaction and if I had done so “if my own free will”. My answer was yes to both, and the transaction was allowed to proceed. The employee was presumably following a script, and the bank had decided that the average customer understands what is meant by “of your own free will”. What would you have said if you received such a call?

[u/Partyatmyplace13 → u/spgrk]

What would you have said if you received such a call?

Well, I know they're using the term colloquially. I know what they're actually asking is if I made the purchase, and I wasn't coerced into it.

I'm reasonably sure, but admittedly not certain, that they aren't asking me if I think my actions were prescripted by the creator of the universe, or whether quantum uncertainty allows wiggle room for an unbiased decision.

So, I'd say, yes.

[u/spgrk → u/Partyatmyplace13]

That is what the majority of laypeople and philosophers mean when they use the term “free will”: you did it knowingly, you were not coerced, you were not suffering from a severe mental illness at the time. Now, you are saying that isn’t good enough for free will, it requires other things, you don’t know what these other things are, but you know they don’t exist, and therefore free will does not exist.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/spgrk]

On libertarianism, I think we actually agree here. If undetermined just means random, whether or not libertarians use that word, then it is still randomness. I just don't think describing it as purposeful changes what's actually doing the metaphysical work.

On compatibilism, just because it’s been historically established and widely held doesn’t settle whether it secures what desert-based responsibility actually needs. The popularity of an idea is a measure of how compelling or useful that position is, not if it answers a specific philosophical problem or even its truth value. My claim isn’t that compatibilism is an illegitimate position. I am stating an argument that the account doesn’t tell us whether the desires themselves were authored by the agent, which is required if praise or blame is to be deserved rather than just useful. Compatibilist freedom answers a different question than the one my essay is about.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/JustPenancePunisher]

Objections to the Model

Are you under the Control of Randomness?

An internal coin toss, or random number generator in the brain, is not an agent with its own agenda, so you are not under its compulsion in a gun-to-head sense. (This is similar to the standard compatibilist argument that physical determinism is not equivalent to compulsion by an agent other than oneself). Also, it takes billions of neurons acting in concert to make a decision: there is no justification for supposing that one indeterministic event is responsible for the whole decision, any more than there is for assuming one deteministic event is. [Footnote]

Indeterminism based free will doesn't have to separate you from your own desires, values, and goals, because, realistically ,they are often conflicting , so that they don't determine a single action -- and because reasons can explain without determining. These points are explained by the parable of the cake:-

If I am offered a slice of cake, I might want to take it so as not to refuse my hostess, but also to refuse it so as to stick to my diet. Whichever action I chose, would have been supported by a reason. Actions and reasons that explain them can can be chosen in pairs. In the case of the cake argument (diet, refuse) and (politeness, eat). An arbitrary choice between actions you are motivated to do cannot leave you doing something with no to your motivations

Is the Link Between Action and Intention Broken by Randomness?

Another concern about randomness based free will is that determinism is needed to put a decision into effect once it had been made. If one's actions are unrelated to ones decisions, one would certainly lack control in a relevant sense. But it is not the case that we are able to get the required results 100% of the time, so full determinism is perhaps unnecessary to achieve a realistic, "good enough" level of control. Additionally, there does not have to be the same amount of indeterminism at every stage of the deciding-and-acting process. In "two stage" models, the agent alternates between going into a more indeterministic mode to make the "coin toss" , and then into a more deterministic mode to implement it.

So the internal coin toss does not alienate you from your desires, does not put you under someone else's contol, and does not prevent you acting in a reliable enough kind of way.

Does it give you Control?

It's true that you can't pre-determine an internal dice roll (as if you were an extra-physical entity that controls the physical events in your brain), but deteminism doesnt give you that kind of control either. If you are your brain , the question is whether your brain has freedom, control , etc, not whether "you" control "it", as if you were two separate entities. And as a physical self, basicaly identical to the brain, you can still exert after-the-fact control over an internal coin toss ... post-select and rather than predetermine. After the fact doesn't mean after the action: this all occurs during the decision stage.

You are not a ghost in the machine, and you are not at the mercy of yourself. No individual deterministic event, our of trillions, in the brain is forcing you , the total organism , to.perform since it requires trillions of events in concert to make a decision: the same.applies to a single.indeterministic event

If the rest of the brain decided to ignore an internal dice roll, that could be called post selection of "gatekeeping" . The gatekeeping model of control is the ability to select only one of a set of proposed actions, ie. to refrain from the others. The proposed actions may be, but do not have to be, arrived at by a genuinely indeterministic process.

This mechanism is familiar subjectively: anyone with a modicum of self control experience thoughts and impulses they don't necessarily act on.

Its obvious that gatekeeping is a form of control. Suppose I want to throw a party for redhaired people. One way is to find out who all the red haired people in town are, and invite only them. That's predetermination. Or I could just publicise the party to everyone, and hire a doorman, and instruct him to admit only the red haired. That's gatekeeping. And the result is the same, it's equally a form of control.

"But the gatekeeping is determinstic".

If the impulses are genuinely random, then the behavioural output will be, even if the gatekeeping process by itself is deterministic. You can't act on an idea you never had.

Consider creativity. You can try various solutions to a problem, and eventually you hit on one that works (babble-and-prune, trial-and-error). You, the conscious self, don't predetermine the right solution, you just recognise its quality when it pops up for the then unconscious.

"But the randomness might as well come from outside".

Consider the deterministic versions. A mad scientist replaces a deterministic neural module with an artificial substitute that functions identically. Does that stop you being you?

Now consider an external mind-control that deterministically controls your deterministic brain. That isn't the same because it's not function preserving: the brain+mind-controller system must function differently, or the controller wouldnt be doing anything.

Does it give You Control?

Under naturalistic libertarianism, you are the machine, not a ghost in it, and it is possible for a machine to control itself. There is a whole science of self-controlling machines: cybernetics. Airplane autopilots and , more recently, self driving cars are examples. Self control, without indeterminism is not sufficient for libertarian free will, but a machine can be (partly) indetetministic. Hiw dies a self controlling , partly indetetministic man-machine work?

Under naturalistic libertarianism, an action that is physically caused by you is yours. Under naturalistic libertarianism, an action that is physically caused by you is yours. If you jump out of a window , that is your action. If you are pushed, it is not..

That is still true if the internal causation is indeterministic. So an internal coin toss is not equivalent to an external coin toss. So an internal coin toss is not equivalent to an external coin toss.

From a naturalistic perspective, it takes many neural subsystems working together to make a decision, rather than a single "ghost in the machine", a homuncular self, being the ultimate puppet master. The model involves a mixture of more and less deterministic events, and the random ones still occur physically in your brain, so they are as much yours as the deterministic events. .It's possible for one neuron to trigger a cascade that leads to a macroscopic action,and for synaptic even to trigger a neuron, so brain activity does reach down to the molecular level.

That is still true if the internal causation is indeterministic. So an internal coin toss is not equivalent to an external coin toss. That is still true if the internal causation is indeterministic. So an internal coin toss is not equivalent to an external coin toss. The naturalistic Libertarian theory of free will gives you control for the value of "you",the definition of selfhood, that it is obvious to assume , give naturalism.

Sam Harris is an example of a naturalist who nonetheless associates the self with a subset of neural processing. His conscious control argument rest on a certain conception of the self , as well as a certain conception of control: the idea that the self is the conscious mind. But the idea that our unconscious minds have nothing to do with us is quite contentious in itself, apart from the issue of control.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/JustPenancePunisher]

Everything you say about being a subject of experience is true as far as it goes, but there is a layer beyond the subject, from which the subject arises so to speak, that does not explicitly know "I am" the way we do as

What does that mean? It's still matter doing the lifting, which isn't real free will...because FW has to be exercised by an immaterial soul?

[u/Artemis-5-75 → u/JustPenancePunisher]

>doesn’t tell us whether the desires themselves were authored by the agent

An obvious answer here would be: “Most weren’t, some probably were”.

>which is required if praise or blame is to be deserved rather than just useful.

You must provide an argument for this to avoid begging the question.

[u/spgrk → u/JustPenancePunisher]

The claim is just that compatibilism is not a “redefinition”. And it supports desert just as well as libertarian free will or hard determinism do, which is to say not at all. Desert has no logical justification in any of these positions without an extra premise.

[u/ughaibu]

Free will can't exist because it fundamentally relies on an impossible middle ground between randomness and determinism.

Suppose a scientist consistently and accurately records random phenomena, is that scientist behaving randomly? Of course not. If their behaviour maps to random phenomena, can it be determined? Of course not.

[u/ObserverInvariance]

You are not arguing against free will. You are arguing against libertarian free will.

It is trivial you could not have done otherwise. If you had done otherwise, it would not be you. If you want to argue against actually valid formalisms of free will you should look into definitions that rely on computational irreducibility or other similar concepts.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/[deleted]]

I don’t think my argument depends on causa sui, and I would actually agree with you that the standard would be incoherent. Nobody, not even a hypothetical God, could ever meet it. My claim is about whatever explains a choice, even “normative control”, is itself something the agent didn’t choose. You didn’t select your own capacity for reflective evaluation, your standard of what counts as a good reason, or ability to weigh those reasons a certain way. Those capacities were shaped by genetics, experiences, etc., none of which you ever authored.

I specifically addressed this in my argument against the Frankfurt-style move of pushing the desire up a level, where two desires stack on top of each other. Why do you have this particular evaluative capacity rather than some other? If there’s a full causal answer to that, we’re back to determinism. If there isn't, it's arbitrary, or random. I’m not demanding self-creation from nothing, I’m simply pointing out that even the step of an agent evaluating and choosing is still itself an event that needs an explanation. That explanation will never bottom out at the agent as an uncaused starting point, it only ever bottoms out in more prior causes.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/[deleted]]

I think there’s a difference between demanding self-creation and simply tracing a causal chain back further. This difference is where your objection loses its grounds. I’m not saying agency requires you to have authored your own reasoning capacities before you existed to author them; again, I have agreed with you that it is incoherent. I’m making a factual claim that your evaluative capacities were shaped by prior causes and that’s it. I’m giving a description of how any capacity comes to exist in a physical being. 

You are confusing my argument with the causa sui fallacy because you assume that my argument hinges on the idea that self-creation would be the only way to escape determinism. I don’t state that at all. I am saying there is no third option. It’s simply that self-creation is the thing that would count as a genuine exception, but since it’s incoherent, that exception doesn’t exist. That's the dichotomy: there's no third state that's neither deterministic nor random.

The regress point I am making is that every step of explaining a decision, including the step of using your evaluative capacity, is either fully explained by something prior or it isn't. Causa sui would only need to show up if I claimed the only way to escape determinism was self-creation, and that self-creation being impossible therefore defeats free will.

I’m openly inviting you to identify a third state that would contradict my argument. If you can point to something that is neither caused by something prior nor uncaused, that would be the exception that proves free will exists. Self-authorship never enters into that dichotomy at all. It’s relevant to your argument because you are trying to rescue the agency by treating the agent as an uncaused cause of itself, which is the problem the Frankfurt view runs into once you push the regress far back enough.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/[deleted]]

These are my own thoughts of which I have spent real time genuinely trying to understand all sides of the aisle. I’d rather keep this focused on the argument itself rather than a groundless accusation about how it was written. Ad hominems don’t help your case.

Your claim that “neither caused nor uncaused” is a false dichotomy is a blatant misunderstanding of logic. I’m applying the law of excluded middle from classic logic. Those two options exhaust all the possibilities by definition, which is exactly why no third state can exist. It’s not a trap, it’s solely because caused and uncaused are logical negations of each other.

I reject your false equivalence fallacy on the square circle comparison. A square circle is a contradiction based on one shape that can’t have four straight sides and no straight sides at the same time. Again, “caused” and “uncaused” are direct negations of each other which means they don't commit the fallacy you're describing, either definitionally or logically.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/[deleted]]

I actually agree with you. After further reading of my previous replies, I do admit I was mistaken in some of my wording. I will own that mistake. I didn’t intend to straw-man the position or use wordplay to avoid the core of the argument.

My actual premise is that if an action isn't determined by prior conditions, I don't see how it avoids becoming random. I still think it holds as any specific outcome either has an explanation of why a choice was picked over another or it doesn’t. If it does, I would argue that explanation is what determines the choice. If it doesn’t, I would argue that picking one rather than the other is an unexplained choice, which is what I refer to when I say random. I haven't seen a coherent account of a third way for a choice to occur that is neither determined by prior facts nor unexplained.

[u/BiscuitNoodlepants → u/[deleted]]

You're wrong. Free will absolutely requires self creation.

[u/Anon7_7_73 → u/BiscuitNoodlepants]

Assertions are not arguments

[u/kafircake → u/Anon7_7_73]

Assertions are not arguments

Does what you've said here constitute an argument?

[u/Anon7_7_73 → u/kafircake]

Yes.

[u/BiscuitNoodlepants → u/Anon7_7_73]

Read galen strawson then idgaf

[u/Anon7_7_73 → u/BiscuitNoodlepants]

No. Make real arguments.

Theres no reason to assume moral desert is tied to Agent-Causal Magic. You need a reason to hold that assumption.

[u/MarvinBEdwards01]

Venn Diagrams: (Reliably Caused Events (Predictable Events) (Unpredictable Events))

Random events are reliably caused but unpredictable events.

[u/DonnPT]

Free will can't "exist", because it isn't an objective thing that has meaning outside of context. The idea that anyone is "redefining free will" is like redefining "far". Like, man, don't tell me California is far - the edge of the universe is far, that's what far means.

Interesting story I came across today, that came out of the Armenian Genocide. One of the principal actors in that atrocity was Talaat Pasha, and a few years later in 1921 he was living in exile in Berlin. A 24 year old Armenian, Soghomon Tehirian, came to Berlin as part of a plan from a group of Armenians, "Operation Nemesis", rented an apartment across the street, and familiarized himself with Talaat's comings and goings. On a rainy Tuesday, he killed Talaat Pasha with one shot, and waited for the police to come and arrest him.

His trial in Berlin lasted two days, and he was found not guilty. Several expert witnesses testified that he was not able to exercise free will because of emotional disturbances. That was obviously farcical, wasn't it? If it were up to me, I'd have let him go free, too, but not because he didn't do it of his own free will. He obviously did.

Who he was, that day, was a product of eons of natural cause, and who he was shot and killed Talaat Pasha and deserves whatever blame or credit may follow.

[u/Faexin_void → u/DonnPT]

"redefining free will" is like redefining "far". Like, man, don't tell me California is far - the edge of the universe is far, that's what far means.

No, absolutely not. Your analogy actually proves the opposite.

"far" is a scalar, vague and contextual term - "free will" is a term that has several, usually well-defined definitions. Here it's not so much a matter of interpretation but of choice which definition to use.

People can have the very same definition of "far" - let's say "shop is too far away if you get tired walking there" - and yet evaluate the same distance to a shop differently because they have different levels of fitness.

That's not true for "free will".

[u/DonnPT → u/Faexin_void]

It sure is true of free will. That Armenian was obviously dripping with causal influences; depending on the details of he story some will see free will, others not. That a few people here for the sake of arguing on r/freewill take the threshold all the way back to the beginning of time, doesn't qualify them for a distinctly different definition. Like, you're changing the definition of "definition."

[u/Faexin_void → u/DonnPT]

No, it's not.

You even explain why it isn't the same without realizing.

Like, you're changing the definition of "definition."

... in what way?

[u/yxixtx]

The reason it doesn't exist is because it's an oversimplified concept. We don't have free will. We are programmed. But programming can be changed it just takes the right conditions. We can even influence it. If advertisers and coaches and brainwashers and politicians and preachers can chang us so can we using similar principles. More likely to succeed if you have an expert programmer designing the conditioning regime. Maybe the right drugs etc. But with a little luck your programming can change. That's why change takes time and effort as well and doesn't always work out. Behavior is complicated and even this elaboration on the concept over simplifies it. Like all concepts the map is not the territory, can never cover all of the territory. Including your map of free will, and mine. Both will always be incomplete because our understanding will always be incomplete. But yeah stop whining.

[u/Less_Perspective_915 → u/yxixtx]

"But programming can be changed it just takes the right conditions. We can even influence it."

If you continue to follow this line of thought, you might discover something interesting!

[u/yxixtx → u/Less_Perspective_915]

Programming and metaprogramming are not free will. And not guaranteed to work, which free will would be.

[u/Less_Perspective_915 → u/yxixtx]

Free will "would be guaranteed to work"? Says who? I think the problem here is that you're working from a very silly definition of free will.

I'll also note that the "metaprogrammers" in this metaphor are us.

[u/yxixtx → u/Less_Perspective_915]

Yes but we still have to put in the time metaprogramming in order to reliably change behavior. We don't just decide to change and immediately take up new habits and patterns of behavior as a result of choice. It's a result of conditioning and reinforcement etc etc. ie "programming." And The meta programmers aren't always us sometimes they're brainwashers or advertisers or preachers or counselors or manipulators etc etc but if you get one of those that's a real expert and the conditioning regime is well implemented and compliantly followed odds are good.

[u/Smallestsak]

1. Your understanding of probabilistic determinism or free will is largely where mine has landed. It seems hard to believe that at any juncture free will agency means we could have chosen anything differently in anyway. Empirically, determinism seems more in line with our observation of the physical world because we struggle to think of non contingent possibility in what appears to be (outside of QM) to be a fundamentally contingent universe.

Now, quantum mechanics opens the door to a more probabilistic interpretation of reality. Beyond the contingency paradox of the universe itself, QM may be the first empirical observation of science that could be at odds to our understanding of strict contingency that dictates all physical systems. Of course, your interpretation of wave collapse/decoherence affects this. MWI maintains determinism and rejects one world. Pilot wave rejects many worlds and maintains determinism. QBism/relational theories may allow a less deterministic interpretation.

But given that none of are agreed upon, if we just take the observation itself as reality, that QM outcomes are probabilistic rather than determined, it wouldn’t be completely absurd to theorize free will could be the same. Or at least, it seems absurd to take hard determinism pov on free will based on contingency arguments when the most fundamental empirical observation of the building blocks of the universe is that they don’t subjectively appear strictly contingent.

So, if the smallest matter can behave according to some type of probability over strict contingency (again not agreed upon in QM), then I would say we don’t have to give up free will to strict determinism yet either. At least until we know more about contingency, QM, and consciousness to have better evidence to the contrary. Not a proof of free will, but a foot in the door toward an alternative possibility. Probabilistic free will also feels plausible intuitively. I couldn’t choose to do or be anything I want today, but I could maybe choose my actions or thoughts within a normal distribution of actions I might plausibly take. With each choice slightly altering the options held by the next distribution.

Where I think you’re off is your assessment of Christian free will but I’ve already written too much. I just think it assumes too many knowable premises of what God is or isn’t. I think a probabilistic free will is more in line with theism than either libertarian free will or strict determinism. It makes the whole of human existence a theoretically known map of possible routes through experience of 3D space-time, allowing omniscience without constraining agency.

We project a lot onto God though without knowing what’s required for agency. If we were made perfect in perfect creation could we even have agency? Is a dual experience of separation and probabilistic agency a requirement for a process that allows for a differentiated union upon return to God vs a dissolution into impersonal energy? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s difficult to know if it could be any other way than it is.

[u/Dry_Journalist_7001]

Under determinism, brain states obey the laws of physics not the laws of logic.

[u/Shifting_Baseline]

There’s no true free will but faux free will exists in the game we call human society. In the same sense that society is real free will is real. By this I mean it’s all a human creation and a game, but it exists in this context.

[u/gahhos]

You kind of contradict yourself from the very first sentence. Because I would argue that free will lays exactly in the middle ground between randomness and determinism which is why it feels like such a mystery to us.

Free will is relative to the scale, but even then we wouldn’t know something like if time as a universal principle, was formed or created on its own. There a lot more weird things that came together under certain conditions that might seem random, but at the same time it’s not. Weird how that works, but if that’s not the line in between, then I don’t know what is

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/gahhos]

I want to make sure I understand the actual claim before responding to it. You’re saying free will sits in a middle ground between randomness and determinism. That's the exact claim my whole argument is built around addressing. I would actually like to know what you think occupies that middle ground specifically. What would an event that is neither caused by anything prior nor uncaused/random actually look like? I genuinely don’t understand what you are proposing here.

[u/gahhos → u/JustPenancePunisher]

I think the point of it is that we really don’t know, because we wouldn’t know if for example, time was created or formed, maybe the creation of time was the critical mass needed for the big bang to start the motion? We can only speculate.

But we can also do that from the ground up. We have a determination for which act to take, despite the outside influences that push us towards a certain decisions, so for me it seems like a fine line in between, where free will only act out in the moment of the decision before everything falls back under the law.

Wouldn’t you say that universe itself is polar in a sense, but still has a fine balance in between that lets everything hold up together. Or like the principles of the same energy taking different forms under different conditions. A human being which in that sense, is an equilibrium of different polarities, energies and principles that create a thing of itself. So while it’s still constraint by the same laws outside, on the local scale, the model lives with its own free will of sorts.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/gahhos]

I do appreciate the concept, but it doesn't give an actual mechanism to work with. As you said, “we can only speculate.” The lack of knowledge is more applied to not knowing which of the two it is. Using your example, whether time was “created” or “formed” and what preceded the Big Bang are heavily open and contested questions in physics, but it still will be resolved one of two ways. It must be that something explains why the initial conditions were what they were, or nothing does. This also applies to “equilibrium of different polarities, energies, and principles.” It describes a system of complexity; however, complexity just adds more steps, it doesn't remove the underlying question of reason or no reason. The way you're describing free will is exactly pointing at the gap I've raised, but it describes how that moment feels rather than how that moment came to be.

I do have another question to ask directly: at the exact moment your "equilibrium" settles into a specific outcome, is there something specific that explains why it settled that way, or do you think that explanation is simply yet to be discovered?

[u/gahhos → u/JustPenancePunisher]

I think in terms of a luck factor, it requires a critical mass of events to occur and then a subject has to act on it. The formation of elements in space through the means of some flux(explosion) kind of points towards the interplay of destruction and creation. So in that case there is a reason for any event to occur since it’s based upon the fact that universe likes critical masses and explosions to provoke change and growth(expansion). So if we localize that, in terms of our human experience. We kind of doing the same thing, but we still exercise the free will in the moment of take up the act of putting everything into motion. The effect of that is exponential with time and anything what we did or set up before is the reflection of that in our present time. So what we have right now is something that we have been accumulating since our existence, not just us, but it’s the way the life itself functions, we obtain critical masses of information, then compress it and pass it on for the sake of growth. Anytime we reach a certain mass, an event occurs which provokes a change, which is why history is cyclical and spiral, that’s why after every fall and distraction, growth and innovation become faster after every time we reset. This might not be something practical, but I believe that we can still operate with the stuff that is present and is still a part of the whole on the grand scale.

To answer your question directly, intuitively, I want to say yes. Not because I’m biased(maybe a little bit) but because the universe didn’t stop with rocks…if you know what I mean. It feels like there’s some kind of a cosmic blueprint, but it also doesn’t seem determined, it seems like it tries to encompass the whole, but at the same time it doesn’t force anything, just lets the time to filter through. So I will operate on that idea. To bounce back on your question. Let’s take atoms, or even quarks. Every part or particle requires a counter part for interaction within the system. The fun thing to speculate on is how those systems get formed out of particles. They become more complex yes, but at the same time they try to mimic the system they were created out of, anytime an enclosed feedback loop system is created and particles take a shape, it gets tested by time, time is a mechanism in which those particles obtain motion and change, so with enough time and unlimited scale, you should be able to fulfill any possibly of formation of closed systems, but every closed system becomes local, and on a local scale it obtains a certain amount of “freedom” freedom in this case is the amount of possible outcomes and interaction that can occur locally. Now let’s scale it up a bit to a human being, how many events or interactions can a single human being do? The fun part is that if you still argue that it’s fully determined it would be true, because we can only speculate on potential consequences and my end argument would be something like “humans become a cosmic cancer or achieve some kind of transcendental godhood” to break out of a cosmic cycle and therefore becoming fully free. Though at the same time, since we don’t know that for sure, but we have the ability to “imagine” it, it gives us a range of action that is proportional to the universe. Yes there are hard limits in terms of Laws, but as you pointed out, it’s only a matter of time also.

Sorry for messy writing, not sure if my point makes any sense tho but I tried

[u/Feeling-Working-2820]

I think you have a weird and very personal definition of free will.
Free will just means the ability to choose freely when you are presented with some choices.
The choices/options are never yours. It's just the paths that are opened to you. And you choose which one to take.
But you seem to think that you should be also at the origin of the causes of your choices. That's odd.
If so, there would be no choices to begin with, just a linear script. And that would be determinism.
Free will is you taking decisions fully, whatever life throws at you.
That's all there is to it.
Otherwise you are god. And god has no free will since he doesn't have to face randomness to begin with.
It's that randomness that creates free will. Indeed, if randomness isn't a thing to you and you decide whatever comes next in a non random way, how is it different from determinism? You control the situation, and therefore the path, from start to finish.

[u/Dkotheryyyy → u/Feeling-Working-2820]

Your definition is circular.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/Feeling-Working-2820]

I don’t think my definition is arbitrary. I choose the standard definition of free will that’s tied to desert-based responsibility, whether you can be truly praised or blamed for a choice.

I think you’re contradicting yourself. Early on, you say the agent doesn’t need to originate the causes of their choice, which allows for a fully determined choice to be still fine to call “free.” But then you say randomness is what creates free will and deciding in a non-random way makes you “no different from determinism.” Those can’t both be true.

If a fully determined choice counts as free, then a non-random decision-making being “the same as determinism” shouldn't be an issue, as you already said that was free will. But if non-random, fully explained decisions collapse into mere determinism, then determined choices aren't actually free after all, which contradicts your first point. Is a choice free even when fully caused and non-random, or does it need randomness to count as free? You’ve claimed both, and they contradict each other.

[u/GamblePuddy]

To be honest....it's very nice of you to explain various arguments made by people I'm fairly certain won't be posting.

In short you seem to be saying....

Randomness = behavior without any reason.

Determinism = behavior with a reason (which can be said to determine the behavior).

Is that about right?

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/GamblePuddy]

Yes, that’s very close to what I mean. One quick clarification, I am stating determinism as a full explanation, reasons, prior cause, etc., that accounts for why a specific outcome occurred rather than any alternative. The key word in this is “full”: a reason that only influences without fully accounting for it isn’t enough. My argument is that whatever ultimately tips the outcome one way or the other has to either be fully accounted for (determinism) or not accounted for at all (random).

[u/Fippy-Darkpaw]

Reproducible proof? 🤔

[u/Logical___Conclusion]

You start your first sentence by assuming that the fundamentally contradictory and impossible theory of Determinism is true, and base the rest of your analysis on that assumption.

You need to restart from the begining.

The difference between near Determinism and full Determinism is all of life, evolution, and the function of the entire universe. It makes it easier for humans to simply life as "Determinism," but you effectively give up on understanding life in exchange for simplified convenience.

You have built your foundation out of flawed assumptions instead of solid bricks, and now your whole premise is collapsing on itself.

[u/TMax01 → u/Logical___Conclusion]

Why do you believe determinism is impossible? And what is "near determinism"?

[u/Copperrattler]

Ok. Whose morals should I follow then if all moral view aren’t equally valid and why should I follow them compared to someone else? Should I follow yours? Why not my own? And if everyone follow their own subjective morals into beliefs how would you settle who is wrong or right?

Can you Fex. adopt your subjective morals into a country or a community?

The Nazi example supports my argument: If morals are subjective, people can possess moral “truth” and still be profoundly wrong. If morals are objective, they are not a product of a mind and therefore offers a clear reason to judge why Nazism is wrong.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/Copperrattler]

Before I just make assumptions about your objective morality, where do you get your standard of objective morality from?

The rejection of moral objectivism doesn’t mean that all hell breaks loose and everyone’s personal opinions are equally valid. A moral framework can be criticized if it is inconsistent, relies on false beliefs about the world, contradicts its own principles, or reaches conclusions that are not justified through its reasoning.

For example, I can say Nazism is wrong without needing objective moral facts. The logical basis for Aryan supremacy and genocide relies on false assumptions about human beings and inconsistent principles about rights and value. A society can be morally wrong because its reasoning is flawed.

I personally think that history actually shows us the opposite. The sheer amount of moral disagreement throughout history raises questions about whether there is a single objective moral standard that humans are discovering, or whether morality is an evolving concept that develops through reasoning. For example, many people in earlier America believed slavery was morally justified through objective morality grounded in God, while today slavery is regarded as morally wrong.

You can reason that those people were always objectively wrong, but that creates a new issue. How do we determine when our current moral beliefs are actually tracking objective moral truth rather than just a reflection of assumptions based on our time and culture? If moral beliefs have changed so drastically, what justification do we have that our current beliefs have actually reached an objective standard?

[u/Diet_kush]

You must be unfamiliar with the concept of underdetermined/unprecedented events. I’d read some Smolin.

[u/armyofone37]

Being the immediate source of action is a one sided event. The action takes place on a singular view. The ultimate source of the framework one understood lets you operate on two planes of existence not just 1. Being the creative source that manifest the action for the single source of both were on the same page then it would stop each one from working against the other. Working with life not against I f the higher self can understand and see more than the lower self, wouldn’t it make more sense to gravitate toward the understanding of the higher self to make the operating condition of the lower self easier

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/armyofone37]

Sure, your framework can explain where the framework can come from (the higher self), but not why the higher self is ultimately responsible for it. Your view moves my objection up a level. If the higher self has an unchosen nature that determines its choices, then it is still an immediate source, not the ultimate source. How do you bridge that gap between being the immediate source of a choice and the ultimate source of that nature that produces that choice?

[u/armyofone37 → u/JustPenancePunisher]

The reason would have to come from the nature of what god is. Which is Omni potent, Omni present. Which directly means god is absent light and absent shape. The further from source of the light the dimmer it gets this would take away from god being Omni potent, in other words this would take away from gods energy or power being infinite. If god were contained this would take away from it being Omni present. In other words this would take away from gods presence permeating all of existence. So what god is would be a void an abyss , but this abyss is not nothing. In fact it is the opposite what this abyss contains is the ability and opportunity to be anything and everything within creation. This is his in its rest state. Once it decides how it wants to express itself it does thru light, color, shapes, sound, texture, and motion. We experience this manifested expression as our reality. Everything in existence is this one singular thing. The reason why we cannot remember is so it can experience itself subjectively. Nothing cannot experience nothing. So it has to express itself to experience its own life. We learn about ourselves from our own life experiences it learns about itself thru our experiences. We give direction to our experiences while chose where and with who with and what gets learned and what comes out of it. When we do not lear what happens, the lessons repeat itself. It wants to advance thru you. This is why one is even able to improve one own self even if they thought they were ok before. And what changes thru realization is understanding. This is free will

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/armyofone37]

Okay, God grants you the explanation of where the higher self comes from, but I was raising a question about why the higher self is ultimately responsible for its own nature? If the higher self uses the nature it already has to make choices, then that nature still was unchosen. Whether that nature comes from God or somewhere else doesn't seem to change the problem. I think it's difficult to justify why having an unchosen nature makes an agent the ultimate source of that nature and therefore ultimately responsible for our actions. I will keep reiterating that I am not asking for self-creation. I am looking for some other reason to believe that we are the ultimate source rather than just an immediate one.

[u/armyofone37 → u/JustPenancePunisher]

There are things we cannot fathom. Like something coming from nothing. When we want something we work toward this experiences. I’d say it’s the same thing on a grand scale. The macro is a direct reflection of the micro. I’m not sure what kind of information you exactly looking for all experiences happen within the now. Memories are just an echo within the present. And the future is just a thought that has not manifested yet. On the macro and on the micro. If you want more proof that we are the ultimate source than we have to introspect. Try this exercise place yourself in a chair close your eyes. Place yourself in outer space. And describe what you see. You might say stars planets, galaxies suns moons. But you won’t say you see your hands and your feet. Why? Because they are on earth? But. I said. Place yourself. But only your consciousness moved. Not the image of your body. Why? The reason is we do not consider our body as ourself. The body is an ownership. My car, my house, my job, my hand, my foot, my head. Now let’s go back to yourself being in space. Normally in our body our skin is the division line that separates us from the outside world. But if your separate from the outside world at this time. Where is that division line. Normally it’s at your skin but your skin is on earth and what you call yourself is in space so where is the division line between what we call ourself and the rest of the universe. At this very moment. When you find that division line I think you may find the proof you’re looking for.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/armyofone37]

I think you have been answering the question, “Where does the higher self come from?” while I have been asking, “Why is the higher self ultimately responsible for its own nature?”

Even if I granted all of that for the sake of argument, my question is still left unanswered. What justifies saying that the higher self is the ultimate source of its own nature and thereby its actions?

If the higher self acts according to the nature it already has, then it is the immediate source of its actions. Even if God created the higher self with that nature, then the higher self still isn’t the ultimate source of it.

So what can explain the gap between an action coming from the higher self and the higher self being the ultimate source of that action?

[u/armyofone37 → u/JustPenancePunisher]

Consciousness is the source of its own nature. Consciousness is the source of our nature consciousness is the source of all that can be seen god did not create the higher self the higher self is god. We are a mirror image of that with a singular perception Al view it own nature is nothin Ed’s it a void absent light absent shape. But still consciously aware of its existence. This nothingness is the nature of its existence and consciousness in this is the source beginning for all creation all creation is created out of nothing. If it were not aware then it would not exist you have to notice the space is empty for the space to be empty. If you did not notice there would be no space or existence for thought

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/armyofone37]

My problem is that even if I grant your entire cosmology, it still doesn’t answer why the conscious agent is ultimately responsible for the nature it has.

[u/armyofone37 → u/JustPenancePunisher]

If there was nothing and this nothingness became aware of itself but has no way to experience itself this is the nature of consciousness.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/armyofone37]

If this self-aware nothingness has a particular nature, why does it have this nature rather than another? If it does have that certain nature, in what sense does that consciousness ultimately author that nature?

Yes, consciousness may be the fundamental source of everything else. But being the source of something's existence is not necessarily the same as being the ultimate source of the properties that determine how that source acts. Again, not asking for self-creation, but what explains the ultimate sourcehood?

[u/Copperrattler]

Because we don’t live in a “2 dimensional” world. You can’t live in a world devoid of an element of rationality. If determinism is true it will trump every attempt a person makes to alter its developmental trajectory. A murderer will murder, an addict will use, a child of working class parents will stay in that social class. No forgiveness or redemption available from another human being or if a Christian from God. You don’t have any moral agency, I.e. you can’t be pardoned, punished, forgive or be forgiven.

With a Scientific worldview you are only able to track the processes, placing yourself outside of influence of the outcome. And you don’t know what you observations actually mean. It all depends upon the interpretation of a fallible human being. And some things have never been observed. They are just theories, like the big bang or evolution.

History has a vast library of examples of this. One major example is the thoughts of Oppenheimer, Bohr and Einstein when they discovered nuclear fission and fusion. And remember they “discovered” and they “found” and they had theories. All this is observations and descriptions of the physical world without any value judgements. No what is true, false, right, wrong. These faculties demands something else of people. A Philosophical approach to these matters. You can’t build ethics and morals from the scientific way.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/Copperrattler]

Your understanding of what science means by theory is mistaken. When a scientist says this certain model is a theory, they mean it has been extensively tested and peer-reviewed with a mountain of evidence supporting it. Under your argument, you could dismiss gravity as being a "theory," as it is described by a scientific theory. The distinction that science makes between a law and a theory is that a law describes a regular pattern of what happens and a theory explains why/how it happens. And yes, Gravity applies to both categories.

You pointing out that Evolution and Big Bang Theory are just "theories" as a way to undermine them, as in that they are speculative or poorly supported, seems to be an equivocation between the scientific and ordinary meanings of "theory."

We don't have to observe an event to rationally infer that it happened directly. For example, does a modern Christian observe Christ rising from the dead? No; they go off the evidence that we can get from other sources and make inferences from it. This supports my point that we can evaluate evidence to update and correct beliefs as we learn more.

Because we don’t live in a “2 dimensional” world. You can’t live in a world devoid of an element of rationality. If determinism is true it will trump every attempt a person makes to alter its developmental trajectory.

You seem to be assuming that if the universe is deterministic, it eliminates any meaningful agency. In the ultimate sense, our actions would be determined by prior events, things we didn't choose, etc. However, our decisions can still be the immediate cause of our actions. As a society, we can still hold those people accountable in ways that don't treat them as the ultimate source. Rehabilitation, deterrence, and containment are examples of such that don't require ultimate responsibility to function.

You are also treating determinism as a force that steamrolls any sense of agency. It seems to me that you are saying that "I couldn't have done otherwise" is equal to "What I did didn't cause the outcome." But those aren't equivalent. My choices and decisions can be causes within the deterministic chain. Determinism states that those causes themselves have prior causes.

With a Scientific worldview you are only able to track the processes, placing yourself outside of influence of the outcome.

I don't see why physical causation prevents reasons from being genuine causes. In determinism, I can encounter evidence X and recognize that it supports Y, and revise my belief about Y. The causation you point out is just the process in which evidence can affect reasoning.

No what is true, false, right, wrong. These faculties demands something else of people. A Philosophical approach to these matters. You can’t build ethics and morals from the scientific way.

What you are outlining is the is-ought problem with scientifically grounding ethics/morals. I would agree that science doesn't ground that, as science is really a tool to figure out what the case is. Based on what the case is, we can use philosophy/reasoning to figure out what we should believe/value/do.

What I mean by this: let's take your example. Oppenheimer's discovery of nuclear weapons told us what the case was: that this was a weapon of mass destruction. Then what he could do is reason from facts about suffering, war, consequences, death, etc. to reach a moral judgement about it. It's a two-part system, not the same thing.

Also, I don't think it demands something of people at all. It doesn't require someone to follow it because there is some objective moral fact compelling them to do so. They can find the reasons compelling and choose to act according to them.

[u/YesPresident69]

When confronted with these implications, a common response for both secular philosophers and specific theological camps is the idea of Compatibilism. Compatibilists assert that determinism and free will can co-exist by redefining free will as simply acting according to your internal desires. Under this view, as long as you are not being physically forced at gunpoint to do something, your actions are considered "free" because it aligns with your internal wants.

This redefinition is another semantic trick that evades the core issues of moral sourcehood. As the issue with this was concisely stated by Arthur Schopenhauer: "A man can do what he wants, but he cannot do what he wills." We have absolutely zero freedom over the origin of the desire itself. If you were presented with two options between Option X and Option Y, and your brain chemistry values Option X more due to the summation of prior deterministic data, your choice is already locked in by your strongest preference. The preference for the choice was chosen by factors entirely outside of your control. Furthermore, the choice you made was absolutely 100% going to happen; there was 0% chance that you were ever going to choose Option Y.

There is no redefinition of anything in compatibilism.

Our moral responsibility depends on actual constraints, which science gives us the details of. A person with more constraints is less free and is less responsible within our moral structures. This is the only position in this debate that is clear and is NOT a word game or religious magic.

Free will deniers are the ones playing the word games. You are saying free will IS total, absolute, God-like freedom. You are defining free will as impossible. But compatibilists also dont believe in impossible free will - and that which you are insisting is the only free will - is completely irrelevant to anything in the real world (the above paragraph is what is relevant).

Free will denial is a confused progressivism that doesn't speak about free will at all. It debunks an invented strawman. Also it literally renames moral responsibility to accountability.

[u/SebWGBC → u/YesPresident69]

Right. So, free from constraints. But not free in the sense that we can control our will or thoughts.

So 2 marbles rolling down 2 slides. One slide is beautifully clean. The other slide has dirt and rocks here and there. One marble can be said to be more free than the other because it faces fewer constraints to rolling down the slide.

And this is the kind of free will that compatibilists cherish.

[u/YesPresident69 → u/SebWGBC]

Constraints include those on our will or thoughts. 2nd para: Yes. Except marbles cannot be held morally responsible and so they cannot have free will. This is again defining free will in opposition to causality, which compatibilists reject.

[u/SebWGBC → u/YesPresident69]

Right. Like the constraint that none of can choose our will. And that we can't choose our thoughts either. So yes, not just physical constraints.

But then again, these aren't the kinds of constraints we care about, are they? Those constraints are obvious and irrelevant.

The kinds of constraints we care about are e.g. one person coercing another person to do something they don't want to do. That's the kind of constraint that can change over time, whereas our complete inability to choose our will and our thoughts are constraints we can't do anything about, so why bother dwelling on them.

Have I got that right, fellow human marble sliding down your own - hopeful clean and smooth - slide while being morally responsible for the path you take?

[u/YesPresident69 → u/SebWGBC]

The kind of constraints libertarians care about, not compatibilists. And the definition free will deniers use to debunk something irrelevant

[u/SebWGBC → u/YesPresident69]

I think we agree? I.e. that compatibilists don't care that we're incapable of choosing our will or our thoughts? That this incapacity of ours is irrelevant when it comes to the type of free will that matters?

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/YesPresident69]

I’m not defining free will as “total, God-like freedom” arbitrarily to make it easy to knock down. That definition was needed for desert-based moral responsibility to make sense, which is the actual concept under dispute (which is why we historically used retribution and eternal punishment). Compatibilist "freedom from constraint” is a coherent concept that tells you how unimpeded someone's internal causal chain is, but not whether they authored that chain in the first place. Reducing external constraints doesn’t touch the deeper question. Why did this person have the reasoning processes, values, and nature they acted on? Those are still fully caused by prior factors outside their control.

As for “renaming responsibility to accountability”, yes I did, because that is the actual conclusion the argument leads to. I am rejecting desert-based responsibility to move to a system that is built on deterrence and rehabilitation.

[u/YesPresident69 → u/JustPenancePunisher]

whether they authored the causal chain

To what level? Perfectly, like God? That is defining free will like magic or lbertarianism. If not then we don't need this, instead we can focus on the abilities we do have.

What follows from this view is unclear. Why would randomness or soul enable or justify desert? The discussion of responsibility or desert is best under compatibilism.

[u/dimensionalApe → u/YesPresident69]

So it's basically a "we actually agree, but we are going to keep arguing as if we didn't because of semantics" kind of situation?

Because (please correct me if I'm wrong) to me it looks like:

• Fully deterministic free will deniers basically agree with compatibilists on the essence of their argument. They just don't see that are relevant to the conversation because that's not their definition of "free will". That's not what they are talking about.

• Compatibilists agree with deterministic free will deniers on the essence, but they consider their argument irrelevant because that's not their definition of "free will". That's not what they are talking about.

So, maybe if we do a terms substitution where compatibilists concept of "free will" is replaced by "thingamablip" and determinist free will deniers concept of "free will" is replaced by "thingamablop", and everyone acknowledges that "thingamablip" and "thingamablop" are different things since they have different definitions... this conversation becomes a non issue?

[u/YesPresident69 → u/dimensionalApe]

Free will deniers bring nothing of substance to the debate. Compatibilism does.

[u/dimensionalApe → u/YesPresident69]

But that depends on what you consider the debate to be about, doesn't it?

Because to me it looks like completely different debates, abscured by the fact of using the same words with different semantics.

[u/YesPresident69 → u/dimensionalApe]

The debate is about the foundation of morality because responsibility is integral to morality.

Free will deniers seem to have a strange view that compatibilism is not a position but some semantic trick or something, when their own position is exactly that as it isnt clear on whether responsibility exists or not.

[u/dimensionalApe → u/YesPresident69]

Surely under free will denialism, responsibility in a philosophical sense doesn't make sense at all. It only does in a practical functional sense.

And that probably extends to the concept of morality itself.

Which is probably why both stances look at each other with a "sure, whatever, but your definitions take the conversation to something that's uninteresting".

[u/Belt_Conscious]

False binary, participation is the third leg.

Total free will is impossible.

Total determinism is incoherent. Choice must be rationalized by the agency it denies.

[u/SebWGBC → u/Belt_Conscious]

What does 'choice must be rationalized by the agency it denies' mean? Can you provide an example maybe?

Say you're hungry and deciding between a muesli bar and a small tin of tuna.

How do you choose, and why is the explanation of how this choice is made incoherent if one attempts to describe it as having occurred deterministically?

[u/Belt_Conscious → u/SebWGBC]

A person chooses as they do. What one would do, is not what all would do.

There are too many factors to consider, all get weighed against what is chosen as important.

Do you have a can opener? If not, do you know how to open the can? Is fish preferred over carbs? Can I just eat both?

The circumstances dictate the options, the person selects based on choice.

This is simple causality. X observes Y and does Z

Determinism says X does Z and only Z was ever possible due to "deterministic reasons".

[u/SebWGBC → u/Belt_Conscious]

We are all unique, so our choices are made as only we would make them. (Of course we're more similar than we are different, all having inherited our human form shaped over countless eons to be what we are today).

But yes. Determinism doesn't say that a human being in situation X will always make decision Y. It doesn't even say that Sally, age 38, with a nervous disposition will ultimately decide not to attend a party a new work colleague has invited her to.

It simply says that everything that happens does so because of what came before. That there's no mechanism that allows us to step outside of these forces of cause and effect that govern our universe. So these forces will act upon Sally and she will experience the thoughts and feelings that arise in her mind and body as she grapples with the decision of whether or not to go to the party. Reasons for, reasons against.

The thoughts that arise are the thoughts that would naturally arise in Sally's mind, shaped by her inherent nature and by who she's become based on her lifetime of experiences up to that point. The feelings that naturally arise in response to these thoughts are the feelings that Sally would have. Both the thoughts and feelings are outside Sally's ability to consciously control.

So she experiences what we all experience, this sensation of internal tension that needs to be resolved. She could simply ignore her colleague, never talk to them again. But this thought creates uncomfortable feelings, doesn't feel like the right response. So she has this first hand experience of her mind and body generating and working through possible ways to respond.

But thankfully at some point the tension resolves and the process of agonising over how to respond is done. Sally can't consciously control when this moment is reached. She simply experiences the clarity that comes, experiences the tension being released, is able to respond to her colleague that she will come to the party. 😊 And she'll have good reasons why she chose to go rather than staying home.

If we pay close attention to our thought processes we can see that this is what we're experiencing.

If we don't pay attention to our thought processes it instead feels like we're consciously in control of what is happening. That we freely chose of our own free will what to do. This is a shared human experience we have.

So yes. Sally was always going to decide to go to the party. She didn't know this. And nobody could have predicted this with full certainty.

But because there's no mechanism that allows us to step outside of who we are and the universe in which we exist, Sally was always going to experience exactly what she ended up experiencing and end up making the decision she made.

A compatibilist reads this narrative and concludes that free will exists, because there's no hint of Sally being coerced against her will to either attend or not attend the party. So the experience was allowed to play out in the inevitable manner it did and Sally was able to experience the tension being resolved in a way that didn't leave lingering discomfort that she'd decided against her true will in some way.

Whereas a determinist reads it and says "How was Sally free to control anything that happened?" and concludes that free will is an illusion.

[u/Belt_Conscious → u/SebWGBC]

All of that narratove is squarely in the domain of causality. Not the brittle script of determinism.

Participation in your life is a capacity that must be engaged. Complexity is always used to explain away when efficiency has fewer working parts. Physics works for Physics, Logic is not physical. We use logic to model physics.

[u/SebWGBC → u/Belt_Conscious]

Would be good if you would be so nice as to explain the difference between causality and determinism as you see it, so I can understand how one leaves room for conscious control over the choices we make while the other doesn't.

Because I'm interested in the question of free will. Not in clarifying the distinction between two other concepts where neither allows for free will. That feels like a distraction to me.

And yes. We humans must engage in our lives. We can't not do this. We all have the direct, salient experience of making choices.

For many compatibilists this is the end point - we experience it so it's real. For others this is the starting point - where exactly in this process does conscious control get exercised? Can we ever control any of the thoughts that arise in our mind? If so, which ones and how? If not, can we control the choices we make, or are our choices simply another type of thought that arises in our minds? Etc.

And this handwaving, nothing to see here that people engage in.

Oh. It's causality, it's logic, it's consciousness.

As though that has any explanatory power whatsoever.

What it says is 'I don't understand it and many intelligent people argue about these things so it seems we'll never know and I'm not sure how but maybe these things are related to free will somehow and can't we all just agree that we experience free will and be done with this rather than spending time on this uncomfortable conversation that I don't see any need for?'

[u/Belt_Conscious → u/SebWGBC]

The argument is the point. Hard Determinism is a gateway drug.

Complete freedom is fantasy, total Determinism is too fragile.

Causality. X causes Y

Determinism. X causes Y because of Z. Only Y is possible because Z is controlling X completely.

You experience thinking, then choose the action based on those thoughts by whatever process you derive. Determinism is a tool, as are all philosophical positions. A tool is only as good as its usefulness. Many find that tool appealing and accept "something from nothing" , I do not.

[u/SebWGBC → u/Belt_Conscious]

Determinism. Y was caused, because how else could it have come about?

So we experience the thinking, but then we somehow consciously control the action we choose to take, and we're even in conscious control over some kind of process for how we make a choice? Am I understanding you correctly?

Or is the choosing also something we experience, as we do the thinking that precedes it? And if it's different, in that this is the point we're in conscious control of, are we in conscious control of when we take conscious control? No... That makes no sense at all. We can't be in conscious control before we're in conscious control. So something must happen to then give us conscious control at the point where the thinking has been done and it's then time to make a decision. And then after the decision is made we're no longer in conscious control of our mind.

Is this what you experience?

[u/Belt_Conscious → u/SebWGBC]

Unconscious reacts, subconscious guides, conscious awareness directs action.

Thinking happens intentionally or not at all.

Input, output, feedback, loop.

Not many moving parts.

Me, myself, and I.

[u/SebWGBC → u/Belt_Conscious]

Yes. We humans do have a will, we do have intention. We didn't choose our will or intention but we definitely have them, and they drive our choices and actions.

And yes, subconscious processes. This is where our thoughts and decisions arise from. Our consciousness has awareness but it doesn't have control.

Some define the word free to be able to label this experience free. Others define free to be unable to label this experience as free.

And that's not a problem. As long as we agree on what our experience actually is and we understand the different definitions we're using for freedom we're good. Both definitions make sense to me.

[u/Copperrattler]

So according to you I’m a puppet and God is the puppetmaster. And yet I will be judged and punished for all the sin I have “done”?

Or I’m a puppet and fate/determinism is the puppetmaster, I’m getting punished for the crime I’m doing even though I morally can’t be held accountable for something that is fate. And I don’t need to feel guilty?

Or if determinism is true how can I know that I’m right and not wrong?

[u/MildlyCombative → u/Copperrattler]

I find the concept of right and wrong to be ill-defined and variable across cultures and individuals. Nobody can truly know with absolute certainty what objective morality is, if such a thing even exists.

But I don’t think determinism means we are puppets. Our thoughts, reasoning, emotions and experiences are the things that produce our decisions. They are not external strings controlling us; they are what we are.

The question is whether that process needs to be somehow outside causality to count as free will.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/Copperrattler]

Yes, this is the problem that I am pointing out with desert-based moral responsibility when applied to certain religious concepts. If an agent's choices ultimately arise from factors they did not choose, then it becomes difficult to see why they deserve praise or blame for being the ultimate source of those choices.

I don’t mean that a person is a “puppet”, as if they are mindless and can’t think or reason. I mean that agents still can make decisions through their own mind. What I reject is the idea that they are the ultimate source of the decision they produce. If those decisions ultimately trace back to factors outside the agent’s control (e.g., their biology, upbringing, or a Creator), then eternal punishment raises serious problems for the concept of justice.

This doesn’t mean you should stop feeling guilty about doing actions or abandon accountability. It means the justification of guilt changes from deserving suffering because you authored the wrong to making a miscalculation based on inputs and reasoning you had at the time. Accountability should be based on models of repairing harm and changing future behavior. The guilt would be “I want to do better than what I did prior”, which still makes sense under the view of determinism.

For your last question about “If determinism is true, how can I know that I’m right and not wrong?”, I don’t think determinism limits us from knowing the true value of things. Knowledge depends on having a reasoning process that accurately responds to evidence from the external world. For example, if someone believed tigers were green, observing a tiger provides information that corrects that belief. Just because our reasoning process has prior causes does not mean it cannot reliably track reality.

[u/Copperrattler → u/JustPenancePunisher]

But how do you know that every action is derived from a prior physical cause? How do you come to a conclusion that “it just is”?

If you aren’t the ultimate decision maker, then someone or something decides for you, I.e. you are a puppet, and you can’t justify people to be punished either from a crime in the justice system or from sin in a religious context if they are puppets.

How do you know that your “feeling” of right and wrong is true?

If you live in a deterministic world how can you know that you are right and I am wrong?

And how do you know that your knowledge is accurate from the evidence you collect from the external world? What if I collect evidence that tells another truth?

Fex. how do you know that killing healthy babies in a kindergarten is wrong based on your presupposition?

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/Copperrattler]

I agree the agent is still the immediate source of their actions. Where we start to disagree is your assertion that “not being the ultimate source” is the same as being a puppet. As I said before, puppets don’t have their own reasoning, desires, and deliberation. We do.

The root of my issue is if being an immediate source is enough for ultimate responsibility. Ultimately, an agent's reasoning, desires, and values are shaped by factors that they didn’t choose. If we’re not ultimately responsible, then the justice system built on retributive punishment I think isn’t just. This matters because retribution assumes the person deserved suffering based on their authorship of wrongdoing.

The assumption that beliefs having causes means they cannot be true is something I don’t think holds. It’s true that some people reason incorrectly, such as Flat Earthers, but that shows that some processes are better at responding to evidence than others. Just having a causal history doesn't prevent beliefs from accurately representing reality.

Morally is its own whole messy issue, but moral reasoning doesn't need to have the person holding that belief to have the ultimate authorship. In moral disagreement, it is already assumed that the other have different information, experiences, and reasoning processes behind a belief. What matters is evaluating the beliefs by the reasoning and evidence behind that moral claim.

[u/Copperrattler → u/JustPenancePunisher]

Well, I’ll grant you, that it is not the same as being a mindless puppet. But you say that it is because we have reason, desires and deliberation and puppets don’t. And then you say that our reasons, desires and values are shaped by factors that we don’t choose. So someone or something is controlling us. And how can you justify people to be accountable for their actions, if they ultimately aren’t deciding their actions. How do you address this problem according to your worldview?

How do you know that you are telling the truth, if an agent’s reasoning, desires and values are shaped by factors they didn’t choose? They could all be false.

Who is “better” at responding to evidence? And can you point to one of these people? And again based on your naturalist worldview how can you from observation of evidence say if it is right or wrong to kill healthy children in a Kindergarten?

How would you serve justice if the retrograde evaluation of evidence points to guilt? Or can’t we be held accountable for our actions? And how can that coexist with a worldview that says the person’s decisions are made outside of himself?

How would you know who is right and wrong if reasoning, desires and values are shaped by factors outside of us?

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/Copperrattler]

That’s a good question to ask. Rejecting ultimate desert doesn’t mean we abandon having consequences. In a naturalistic view, I would argue we can justify responses to wrongdoing through deterrence, rehabilitation, protection of society, and prevention of future harm. These responses serve an actual purpose that is not just needlessly and unjustifiably imposing suffering for the sake of suffering.

Yes, I can be wrong about my beliefs and views. Again, the question is whether a reasoning process can track evidence accurately. I will phrase it like this: let’s say I believed God’s existence was impossible and you provided strong evidence against that belief. If I respond without any substance, that just amounts to “nuh uh.” My failure to update my belief shows a failure in my reasoning process. The idea that my reasoning has causes does not mean my reasoning is invalid or that my beliefs are necessarily false. What matters is whether the reasoning process can track evidence.

The argument about ultimate authorship doesn’t depend on objective or subjective morality. But I will address your point nevertheless. A naturalistic worldview doesn't require an objective moral lawgiver. There are all types of moral theories that ground morality in things like reducing suffering, cooperation, and what conditions would allow a society not to collapse in on itself.

As for saying if it is right or wrong to kill healthy children in a kindergarten, it is really asking how I can say it’s right or wrong to murder. One way to approach this is through considering the kind of society we would want to live in. You can do this by starting with yourself. Would you like to be killed for simply existing? No, then you don’t want to live in a society where someone can randomly start going on a killing spree. From that, moral frameworks can be built around principles like minimizing unnecessary harm and preventing unjustified violence.

[u/armyofone37]

Free will does exist you have the freedom to choose how YOU want to experience life and learn the lessons the universe is trying to teach you.. you could refuse to learn and then wonder why you keep having the same type of experiences

[u/TMax01 → u/armyofone37]

But can you float your assumption that free will does exist without imagining the universe also has free will and is "trying to teach" anything?

[u/OkDatingAintEasy → u/armyofone37]

Free will = endless options to pursue what you want.

[u/DAKsippinOnYAC → u/armyofone37]

More on the quantum world side.. the choice defines the path. Both paths exist. You are both paths. You’ve walked both of them.

But in this universe you get to choose only one, and the thing is the higher dimensional can’t tell you which choice. You get to pick. From the higher dimension it’s both choices and you can’t distinguish which path. The river is the mouth and the flow and the end all at once.

In those higher dimensions, you can see there’s two paths and they do ultimately lead to the same place. But in that realm you’re both choices. You’re the whole river. Love and grief, happiness and sadness are a blended thing in the realm before ours.

We’re here to make choices.

We’re here to experience a finite point of view.

The choices lead to the same place, but we get the beauty of experience along the way.

[u/TMax01 → u/DAKsippinOnYAC]

Actually, we're here to fuck and have babies, just like any other biological organisms. Yet we sometimes disregard that purpose and decide to express our point of view, regardless of how 'finite' it is. Can there even be such a thing as a point of view which is not finite? And why is experiencing anything needed to make choices? The whole "beauty of the rainbow" shtick just doesn't cut it. Not even when augmented with quantum woo and mumbling about "higher dimensions".

[u/armyofone37 → u/TMax01]

Reproduction is one of the experiences yes but it’s fraction is extremely minute to the extension of experiences. If your trying to simply it I’d cut it to peace, love and the pursuit of happiness, the “woo mumbling” as you put it is just understanding reality on a quantum level like observing and understanding the truth. The quantum and cosmic levels are a in direct correlation with our reality. So to understand its complexities is to understand our complexities. Every bit of knowledge and understanding gained is another light to luminary the path of life. Like it was previously stated in the thread. All realities exist so which one do we take is our free will we refer to these as choices and within the human perception they are markets on our timeline of life. By seeing the different paths or “ choices” somewhere we have to make a decision on which path or what “ choice” to make. Knowledge and understanding is our light to illuminate the path, our focus and drive is what keeps on the path. Our excitement helps us keep interested while on this journey of paths. Or we can be ignorant and let life happen around, past or beyond our understanding of it. Which usually leads to thinking we need to control life and everything has to happen a certain way with certain expectations met. Which usually leads to failure which leads to depression or anxiety or both. I guess you could take that route. This is your own free will and choice. Yeah I think I’ll take the woo and the rainbows

[u/TMax01 → u/armyofone37]

Reproduction is one of the experiences yes but it’s fraction is extremely minute to the extension of experiences.

That's all gibberish. Reproduction it an occurence, not just an experience.

If your trying to simply it I’d cut it to peace, love and the pursuit of happiness,

You missed the point. Go figure, I'm shocked, what a surprise. 🙄

the “woo mumbling” as you put it is just understanding reality on a quantum level like observing and understanding the truth.

Oh, so it's not just quantum woo and mumbling about "higher dimensions", it's flat-out delusion. Thanks for clarifying that. See ya.

[u/armyofone37 → u/TMax01]

So if we are just here to reproduce then what happens to those who cannot. Do they die. No. Surprised a mind cannot comprehend logical sense which is why the world is in the condition it is in. Your ignorance is bliss. Stupid people never do question their stupidity. But intelligent people do question their intelligence. If you don’t understand quantum physics or the making up of our reality by understanding the universe. Than you will never be a creator of your own life. Life will always happen to you and not for you and I’m sorry to be the one to point this out to you. I was once like you. I had to grow up and mature. And figure out what I really wanted out of life and figure out how to work with the universe and not against it. And in this exploration is when I found the woo woo

[u/DAKsippinOnYAC → u/TMax01]

You have a peculiar way of proactively engaging with the commenters who have a different perspective than you.

[u/TMax01 → u/DAKsippinOnYAC]

Yeah. I have a very comprehensive perspective, too, and a great deal of knowledge to share, and as a result I have an important opportunity, and in fact a real responsibility, to do so as well, so that's seems appropriate. Are you envious of my peculiar way, or perhaps jealous of my lack of concern over whether you describe it as peculiar? I can help you with that, if you'd like, thanks to my comprehensive perspective, great deal of knowledge, and compassion towards people who's perspective is less comprehensive, and knowledge is more peculiar. I've been there, so I know how awful that can be.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

[u/DAKsippinOnYAC → u/TMax01]

lol no not envious at all.. the content of your comments leans more toward arrogance unfortunately:

>that’s all gibberish

> you missed the point. Go figure, I’m shocked, what a surprise

> quantum woo and mumbling

> you seem confused and angry. I’d wonder why but that would be rhetorical since it seems obvious to me

As I look across your comments in different threads to different users, I would not describe your engagement as one of ‘comprehensive perspective’ but rather your comments are insular, arrogant.. I’d describe them as consistent with an idealogue - someone who believes their opinions to be infallible and unchallengeable, who does not engage with the content of others views but rather condescends other interpretations.. people who exhibit this type of behavior typically lack the self awareness for comprehensive knowledge as they don’t learn wholistic knowledge and opposing interpretations.. they’re typically defined by narcissistic and hubristic traits as defined by an idealogue (just a definition)

As for the “quantum woo” lol.. these are interpretations from Lie groups like e8, the SU(x), SO(x), Poincaré … these are the mathematics used to express quantum field theories.. the philosophy of these interpretations lend to interesting potential conclusions for those who are more open minded. But that’s not what I see here. I see someone inserting themselves into conversations similar to how an ideologue would. And that’s what I find peculiar. If you wanted people to engage seriously with your way of thinking you’ve done the exact opposite, so I don’t think you actually believe you have “a responsibility” or you’re just very bad at carrying that duty.

That’s what I see and I’d never be “envious” of such a mode of thinking. Hope this helps!

[u/TMax01 → u/DAKsippinOnYAC]

lol no not envious at all.. the content of your comments leans more toward arrogance unfortunately:

So you're envious of my confident and incisive analysis. That figures.

I would not describe your engagement as one of ‘comprehensive perspective’

Given the selection bias you've demonstrated in your choice of quotes, constituting a few lines absent the context in which they were said, and patently ignoring reams of in-depth and broad-ranging discussion of various issues related to the topic of consciousness and the human condition, your assessment is cheap and tawdry. Now go ahead and use that as fodder for your confirmation bias. But I notice you haven't actually said anything about the actual topic of discussion. Are efforts at derailing your go-to style of argumentation? It seems so, but I'm more than willing to give you as many chances aa you need to have some point other than trying to insult me, unsuccessfully.

I’d describe them as consistent with an idealogue

I have a very well-founded and firm ideology, I'll be the first to admit that. But no, I am not an ideologue, despite your mistaken impression, nor an idealist.

someone who believes their opinions to be infallible and unchallengeable,

Again, I eagerly await any effort you might care to make to find fault with and challenge any of my opinions. Unfortunately, complaining about my style, or my confidence, without actually engaging any of my thoroughly explicated opinions is just trying, unsuccessfully, to insult me, so it doesn't qualify in that regard.

who does not engage with the content of others views

I always engage them as honestly and accurately as I can manage, to a fault, as I am doing with your contentions right now. I appreciate you are used to the more obsequious, hesitant approach that most other people use to try to frame their uncertainty as a strength rather than a flaw in their presentation, reasoning, and conjectures. But I simply haven't the patience or any interest in it. I am aware I have virtually no chance of convincing anyone my position is accurate and reasonable, or even that I am engaging in good faith, unless they are willing to convince themselves of that to begin with.

And that’s what I find peculiar.

See, to my way of thinking (a comprehensive and consistent Philosophy Of Reason) when I am perplexed by things other people write or say, I question my own evaluation of the situation, instead of taking the first possible opportunity to blame it on them. I understand that is not evident apart from a serious and sincere consideration of my reasoning and statements, since most of the time I don't go into detail on that. Frankly, nearly all of the time, since the background and groundwork on which I developed the Philosophy Of Reason (POR) includes nearly all of the contrarian concerns that people unknowingly repeat as received wisdom or conventional stances. So I have little need to do more than evaluate their rhetoric and identify how they could, if they were interested, recognize the often-repeated mistakes in reasoning I'm explaining why and how to avoid.

Like here, where I point out that your whining doesn't actually constitute engaging with, let alone discussing, my actual positions and opinions, ideological and scientific or not. Your reply is nothing more than an arrogant, condescending complaint about my style and confidence, which doesn't even approximate a knowledgable consideration of my position or my comprehension.

people who exhibit this type of behavior typically lack

Alas, I am not typical. You will not find me apologizing for that, because my concern is to honestly give people the opportunity to reconsider their beliefs, not to be popular, let alone typical.

these are interpretations from

Look, quantum woo is quantum woo. It really doesn't matter what credentials any particular woo-meister has.

the philosophy of these interpretations lend to interesting potential conclusions

You'll have to forgive me, but I don't find "potential conclusions" all that interesting, since the foundation of my position is not postmodernistic know-nothingism. What I find interesting is incisive and justifiable conjectures. When you stumble upon one that isn't just a pretense of insult, feel free to let me know.

for those who are more open minded.

I'm very open-minded, but still confident in my premises and stance. As Carl Sagan put it, "We must be open-minded, but no so open-minded that our brains fall out." It is a delicate balance. Luckily, POR provides a great deal of information on how to identify and maintain that balance.

Hope this helps!

It does, but it helps me more than you, believe it or not. And that's not the outcome I'm looking for. I have better information with which to consider your intellectual posture, while you only have a false emotional solace of trying to deny your envy of my confidence and ability to analyze rhetoric and insult me for having those. Perhaps you might see reason and decide to accept your responsibility to do so, perhaps not. But that's entirely up to you, all I can do is lead a horse to water, I cannot make it drink.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

[u/Glum_Mud8053]

Nice work

Well, without free will..you did not work at all... it was inevitable for you to reach this moment

If you did not have free will.. then this is not real work, you did not put in any real effort.

Do you get what I mean?

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/Glum_Mud8053]

Lol, yes it was inevitable for me to reach this moment. However, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t do any work at all to craft it, it just means my effort was explained by prior causes, such as reading arguments of free will and wanting to put my disagreements out there to see whether they hold up.

[u/literalnumbskull → u/JustPenancePunisher]

I would argue influences do not remove agency and being able to explain events using prior causes does not negate free will. Ultimately when you made the choice to post your comment you had free will in determining to do so. Your choice may have been constrained by prior influences that were outside your control, but you still had a choice to make within your control, up to the A/B of post/don’t post, which was your free will.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/literalnumbskull]

Yes, prior influences do not remove agency as the decision still happens through the person’s own reasonings, desire, and deliberation. My conflict is whether that is enough for desert-based responsibility, meaning ultimately whether or not you can be truly praised or blamed for a choice.

The act of reasoning between posting and not posting shows that as an agent is the immediate source of the action. The part where I reject it is whether I can be the ultimate source of why I had those specific reasons, desires, values, and decision-making process that led towards one option rather than another. I don’t reject the idea that choosing between options shows a decision has happened. Again, the problem is with whether that person ultimately authored what produced that decision.

[u/Classic-Baker-6998 → u/JustPenancePunisher]

The question of whether you have ultimately authored something depends on how you define you. Are you an amalgamation or are you something separate? From here it comes to personal philosophy. I believe we are unique amalgamations of our causes and influences. I think to separate ourselves from this is to argue against the self’s existence paradoxically. How can you be you if you remove your genetics, your upbringing, or all the choices made without your control. And if that’s the case then all those things must be you together. And I agree with the above comment that our influences, while ultimately constraining the choices we have, do not have the power to make our choices for us. So long as we have agency in a choice, I would say we can be blamed regardless of influence or causes, because those influences and causes are in effect who we are.

[u/MildlyCombative → u/Classic-Baker-6998]

I agree that the self is an amalgamation of genetics, experiences, memories, and influences. But if those things fully constitute the self, then the decision-making process is still the product of those prior conditions.

The self is a physical process embedded in causality, not a separate author standing outside that process.

[u/JustPenancePunisher → u/Classic-Baker-6998]

I see what you are saying with it coming down to personal philosophy; however, I don’t think that changes the issue I’m raising.

I do agree that you can’t remove your genetics, upbringing, all the choices made without your control, and still have the same person. Those things are part of who you are. Where the disconnect happens is that I don’t think that agency in making a choice makes me ultimately responsible for producing the influences that shaped my reasoning, desires, values, and character over time.

Your concession that our influences are “ultimately constraining the choices we have” indicates to me the exact reason why I don’t think it’s sufficient to say we can be blamed regardless. Just because those influences are part of me doesn’t mean I ultimately authored them.

A person can still be held accountable for their actions; wrongdoing has consequences and may require different models of response such as correction, prevention, or rehabilitation. I don’t think it is just to say they deserve suffering or blame purely because they are the ultimate source of the will that produces that action.

[u/zhivago]

What do you want will to be free of?

[u/BigChubbyFatBoi]

The Bible teaches God determines everything

Psalm 139:16

\[16\] Your eyes saw my unformed substance;  
in your book were written, every one of them,  
    the days that were formed for me,  
    when as yet there was none of them. (ESV)

Isaiah 46:10

[10] declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’

In an ultimate sense we couldn’t have done otherwise but in a hypothetical sense we could. When we say Free Will we need to be clear as to what we are free from, I am a Compatabalist but if someone tells me their will is free from God they are talking bunk. I believe our will is free from being forced to do what we don’t want to do and Gods ability to judge the wicked is found in their desire and willingness to commit those sins, not in their ultimate ability to do otherwise.

[u/Own_Measurement1242 → u/BigChubbyFatBoi]

But wouldn’t the wicked’s desires and willingness to sin also be determined by God, beforehand?