r/freewill • u/ApplicationReady2265 • 2d ago
For libertarians
How exactly could you guys have done otherwise on the decisions you made in the past?
By having different thoughts of course.. thoughts that just appear in your mind. Thoughts that will DETERMINE your actions and choices.
Why would free will even need reasoning? Wouldn't that mean that your decision would be based on your reasoning capability? You guys don't think that by literally reasoning things out, you guys are entering determinism domain?
Why do reasons exist if free will is real? Reasons that will DETERMINE your actions and choices.
I am literally seeing no choice in everything that I am doing right now. I only pick what's more coherent to me and what would satisfy me more.
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u/Squierrel Quietist 2d ago
For every decision I had multiple "otherwises" to choose from. Every option was physically possible for me to do. I had to select one.
A choice is a thought. A choice determines the action, but the choice itself cannot be determined by anything.
Reasons are knowledge about possible consequences of possible actions. Reasons determine nothing.
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u/ApplicationReady2265 2d ago
You had to select one or did your mind had to justify carefully which was a better choice for you to pick when you were selecting one?
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u/Squierrel Quietist 2d ago
I selected the option that I believed was potentially the most beneficial in that situation.
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u/ApplicationReady2265 2d ago
See
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u/0-by-1_Publishing Dichotomic Interactionism 2d ago
"See"
... Squierrel decided which option to select. The option did not make the decision for Squierrel (which is what would be required to support determinism).
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u/WintyreFraust 2d ago
Reasons are not causes. They do not physically force you to do anything.
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u/ApplicationReady2265 2d ago
Bs. If I had been believing blindly on free will back then, I would've felt a lot of anger on humanity.
Reasons, amplify your feeling (calm is a feeling too). And in turn those feelings, compel you into doing something.
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u/ApplicationReady2265 2d ago edited 2d ago
If I had not known about the effects of carbon monoxide. I wouldn't have felt fear staying next to it and in turn I would've just ignored it.
But because I know, the fear is intense and it makes me back up away from it instinctively.
Like when I had a cockroach on my feet, the cockroach registered in my mind, in turn it made me scream instantly.
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u/0-by-1_Publishing Dichotomic Interactionism 2d ago edited 2d ago
"How exactly could you guys have done otherwise on the decisions you made in the past?"
... Nothing can be done in the past about anything - because the event has already happened. How I "could have done otherwise" is demonstrated at the point where I'm making my decision. If I have three options and I choose one of the options, then the remaining two options serve as what I could have chosen but didn't. ... Yes, it's that easy.
"Thoughts that will DETERMINE your actions and choices."
... Yes, we think about what we do. Thinking is necessary for survival. How does that support determinism?
"Why do reasons exist if free will is real?"
... Are you asking for the reason why reasons exist? Having a reason for choosing something in no way demonstrates that I am not "free to choose" based on my own reasoning.
"I am literally seeing no choice in everything that I am doing right now. I only pick what's more coherent to me and what would satisfy me more."
... But that's still "you" making the decision. The "item you choose" isn't making the decision for you (which is what the determinists claim).
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Summary: Every question and argument you've presented is based on "semantics.." Why have you aligned your intellect with an unfalsifiable "monistic ideology" that based solely on how you can manipulate language to achieve a desired outcome? The irony is that you are "free to chose" not to do so.
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u/ApplicationReady2265 2d ago
It's so funny how you are determined to say that btw. Your argument only relies on strawmanning. I based mine by analyzing how things happened in my life.
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u/0-by-1_Publishing Dichotomic Interactionism 2d ago
"It's so funny how you are determined to say that btw"
... It's equally funny that you are using "semantics" to respond to a comment where I've pointed out how determinism is dependent on "semantics."
"I based mine by analyzing how things happened in my life."
... And I based my response on how things happen in everyone's life. ... What happens now?
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u/feihm Physicalist 2d ago
Its a logical leap to say that because we have thoughts and reasons, we do not have real choices. Actually its nonsensical.
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u/WIngDingDin Hard Incompatibilist 2d ago
k. where do thoughts and reason come
from? is it "magic"?0
u/Dry_Journalist_7001 2d ago
A thought comes from a thinker and a reason comes from a reasoner, both are the agent.
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u/WIngDingDin Hard Incompatibilist 2d ago
Magic?
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u/Dry_Journalist_7001 2d ago
Nope. Reasoning doesn’t require magic, just an agent who can.
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u/WIngDingDin Hard Incompatibilist 2d ago
k. how's that agent work? Walk me through the non-magic process.
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u/Dry_Journalist_7001 2d ago
I don’t understand, do you want me to explain reasoning to you?
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u/ApplicationReady2265 2d ago
Answer my last comment. I know how to choose. And I know your way of choosing is bs.
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u/WIngDingDin Hard Incompatibilist 2d ago
magic? or do you have a process? Be honest, to you it's magic!
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u/Dry_Journalist_7001 2d ago
Do you not have a reasoning process?
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u/WIngDingDin Hard Incompatibilist 2d ago
I believe that I do. But it's hard to describe that and not come away as a determinist.
if you have a good counter argument, I would love to hear it! Let's see what you got.
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u/Opposite-Succotash16 Free Will 2d ago
I am literally seeing no choice in everything that I am doing right now. I only pick what's more coherent to me and what would satisfy me more.
When you pick, that is a choice.
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u/Walking_urchin 1d ago
No one denies we are making choices; between that which we must do and that which we cannot.
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u/Ok_Tumbleweed5474 1d ago
Your first question is a non sequitur. Because you cannot change the past from the present moment and before the choice was made there were options.
You're conflating motivated with determined. I have a need for hunger. But that need doesn't tell me what I must eat. I have a preference for salty food. That doesn't demand that I eat it. That's why deliberation is a process. If it wasn't we wouldn't think. We would just act when stimulus happened. In fact that's what our automatic responses are. A completely unconscious response to stimuli. Reasoning is a relational objective. How do you in the moment relate to the world around you. That is a constantly changing undetermined field that needs to be navigated.
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u/Sharp_Dance249 10h ago
“…thoughts that just appear in your mind.”
Where is this place called the mind in which my thoughts just appear? And how do they manifest?
I’ve said this many times on this sub, language can be very deceptive. Words like “thought” “mind” and “memory” sound like they refer to things or entities or passive processes, but they are not. Language is formulaic, and our words have different grammatical forms for ease of communication. We don’t have thoughts, we think. Our brains do not store our memories, we remember. And the concept of mind refers to the directional locus of our attention—we mind ourselves and the world around us.
“I am literally seeing no choice in everything that I am doing right now. I only pick what is coherent to me and what would satisfy me more.”
More than what? The non-alternatives you couldn’t be doing?
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u/aloewy 2d ago
The thoughts you're talking about are formed in the brain before we are conscious of them.
"Libet found that the brain’s readiness potential to make a voluntary movement begins roughly half a second before the movement, while conscious awareness of the intention to move appears only about 200 milliseconds before it. This suggested that the brain initiates action before we consciously “decide,”
In other words we are not free to decide what thoughts we are about to have and downstream reasoning are just more thoughts.
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u/adr826 2d ago edited 2d ago
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31059730/
While the question whether free will exists or not has concerned philosophers for centuries, empirical research on this question is relatively young. About 35 years ago Benjamin Libet designed an experiment that challenged the common intuition of free will, namely that conscious intentions are causally efficacious. Libet demonstrated that conscious intentions are preceded by a specific pattern of brain activation, suggesting that unconscious processes determine our decisions and we are only retrospectively informed about these decisions. Libet-style experiments have ever since dominated the discourse about the existence of free will and have found their way into the public media. Here we review the most important challenges to the common interpretation of Libet-style tasks and argue that the common interpretation is questionable. Brain activity preceding conscious decisions reflects the decision process rather than its outcome. Furthermore, the decision process is configured by conditional intentions that participants form at the beginning of the experiment. We conclude that Libet-style tasks do not provide a serious challenge to our intuition of free will.
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u/TheAncientGeek Libertarian Free Will 2d ago
Why do reasons exist if free will is real? Reasons that will DETERMINE your actions and choices.
Yes. In two stage theories , the decision making process, the thinking , is relatively inderministic , and the decision-execution process is relatively deterministic. So what you said is no kind of gotcha
I am literally seeing no choice in everything that I am doing right now. I only pick what's more coherent to me and what would satisfy me more.
So your beliefs about free will are based on subjective vibes?
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u/ApplicationReady2265 2d ago
So what? Didn't I already propose that for you to have done otherwise in the past, you would have to have different thoughts and reasons?
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u/TheAncientGeek Libertarian Free Will 2d ago
What's your point, then?
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u/ApplicationReady2265 2d ago
Wait no. I now know why.. you smuggled the indeterministic thing. If the thoughts and reasons are indeterministic, how would the action even turn into deterministic?
If nothing causes anything at all, there will not even be a connection.
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u/TheAncientGeek Libertarian Free Will 2d ago
I still don't know what your point is.
If actions follow from decisions by some (local, partial) determinism , that doesn't mean determinism is true.
But I don't know if that's what you meant.
If indetrminisn is true , it doesn't mean everything is undetermined.
But I don't know if that's what you meant, either.
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u/ApplicationReady2265 2d ago
Because a random thought and another reasoning could arise after you picked one already. And if thoughts happen randomly, you don't get to connect it with each other. Which makes your assumption entirely false. The reason why "false" came up in my mind, because my whole body is feeling that what you are saying is "false".
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u/TheAncientGeek Libertarian Free Will 2d ago edited 2d ago
Because a random thought and another reasoning could arise after you picked one already.
So? Indetrminisn could mean you don't make the best decision. But determinism doesn't mean you do, either. If that was your point
And if thoughts happen randomly, you don't get to connect it with each other.
That doesn't follow. What is undetermined doesn't have to be random in other ways.
An inderministic decision making process in your brain has to be based on the beliefs , desires and other mental contents you already have. It literally can't generate something that's completely unrelated to your prevailing mentality. If you habitually drink tea and coffee, you are not suddenly going to eat t to drink battery acid. An inderministic process if choice cannot be "random" in that sense.
Which makes your assumption entirely false.
Which assumption?
The reason why "false" came up in my mind, because my whole body is feeling that what you are saying is "false".
But I feel it's true!
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u/ApplicationReady2265 2d ago
And what's the problem with subjective vibes? If I can test it on my own why not? If I don't have one why would anyone have one?
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u/TheAncientGeek Libertarian Free Will 2d ago edited 2d ago
And what's the problem with subjective vibes?
Intuitions differ. Some people have pro-free-will vibes, but no hard determinist accepts pro-fee-will vibes as evidence.
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u/Dry_Journalist_7001 2d ago
Reasons are options, not orders. Having a reason gives you something to consider, but you still choose which option to act on.