On a common sense level, it's a non-issue. I know too many people who aren't even aware of the problem.

I am fine with compatibilism. I want to raise my hand, it happens in a deterministic fashion. Sometimes I feel free. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I'm hungry, sometimes I'm not.

It would be a problem if you went through life as though you felt like you were on a rollercoaster, not free to get off.

If it feels free do it.


PairTheBoard

Are you better off there than here?

Why are people so caught up in the causal chain. Wherein there should be some supernatural or physical explanation for our liberation of this chain? It is only a chain in the absence of reason. Allow reason to unshackle you. As there is a reason one effect precedes another. Not a absolute one of course(well yes just not one we have purview too, or can likely conceive(we are not Sklansky’s physicist!))

It matches the evidence very well.

Sometimes complexity and the interesting arises from the micro... Poker would be less fun if the solution to a river check raise with a value holding was shooting the check raiser in the face and stealing the pot....

But for a detective catching the murderer is well enough. It would be above his pay grade to detain the mother and inquire into the screen writers of blues clues.

This analogy went over my head, can you explain it?

no no I can't

Lets say the detective caught the murderer, but also traced back where the murderer's raged stemmed from, which was child abuse for which justice was never served, so the detective tracks down the abusers, and serves them justice as well? And if this justice had been served sooner the murder wouldn't have happened?

Justice is only the most obvious illusion. Which is why Plato places it as paramount in his most famous dialogue. And then ends up making a mockery of both justice and the dialogue.

Plato was mentally handicapped.
Socrates was a god.
Neither men have anything to do with what justice is.
Even if both men existed and tried to find it.

If it's an illusion we surely have profited enormously from it: the world is a way fairer place now compared to virtually any given period of mankind in the past.

Donald Hoffman on Free Will




There are many youtube's with Donald Hoffman, a couple of which are posted in the thread, "Definition of spacetime". He has a mathematical model for Conscious Agents taken as fundamental with Free Will the "coin of the realm", as opposed to the paradigm of physicalism based on causation and chance. He claims that any explanation of either causation or chance results in an infinite regression so replacing them with Free Will is no worse for foundations of a theory.


PairTheBoard

This question is the apotheosis of self-masturbatory philosophy. We can never know, AND it doesn't matter. The answer with the most solid grounding is 'yes, but also no'.

It doesn't matter.

If you had to spend 20 years behind bars, it'll become evident, quick, that you feel you aren't free.

Why conflate the question of free will versus determinism with something other than the subjective feeling of freedom?

Objectively, we are as free as our environment allows us to be, you may argue.

Which has nothing to do with the question of whether the left turn you really wanted to take was your actual free will or not.

The only reason it matters is that moral responsibility makes no sense as a concept if there is no free will.

It is really hard to come up with a rational reason to praise (or blame) someone if they didn't have a choice that they could have actually made differently. "Good job being 6'1" would make the same amount of sense as "good job helping the little old lady across the road."

I mean, I told everyone the reason why it is reasonable three or four free will threads ago, but it apparently didn't stick.

I don't think I agree with that. To praise or not praise someone for making a moral choice or not making a moral choice on the basis of it being their free will or not their free will is incongruent, because the implication of the praise / not praise is that there is reason to reward good behaviour. If we want a world in which people do good deeds, we praise them; it's irrelevant whether there's genuine free will, effective free will, or if the entirety of free will were itself an illusion. Because if you were always going to make the moral choice for moral reasons, leading to praise, leading to feeling good about praise, and making more moral choices, the question of whether that was all predetermined is irrelevant. Free will being 100% an illusion incompatible with accountability and rational, moral thought processes. It just means that that accountability is pre-ordained. Good deeds don't stop being good deeds because they were bound to happen.

It isn't your fault. You like disagreeing. How could you resist that desire?

Also, just in case you are correct:

1) I disapprove of not using paragraphs in the strongest terms.

2) You could have just said "prosocial encouragement exists." That would not have needed a paragraph.

It would. DUCY?

Well, yes.

I agree with plenty of stuff and say that I agree with plenty of stuff and cannot understand how you've taken umbrage with me for the manner of my disagreement so I must assume you've taken umbrage with me either or both for my actual disagreement or the fact I made you read a total of 166 words. If 166 words is too much for you then it's confusing as to how you've managed to accrue as much knowledge as you apparently have.

Thanks for your notes. I am a published writer and editor, so I'm well aware of the rules around paragraphs. In this case, given it's all the same direct subject matter, and with no speech, there was no point at which it would have been appropriate to dice it up. The only sentence that doesn't directly flow on from the point of the last one is between the second and third sentences. I did in fact write more originally and then edit it down, but felt like the idea needed a bit of digging into and didn't have the presence of mind to boil my idea down to your three words, nor did I feel like I needed to, as I wasn't aware that extreme brevity to the point of eliding some of the detail was encouraged on any part of this forum let alone the SMP subforum where maybe you'd hope that most have the attention span beyond that of a syphilic gnat.

Why did you choose to add spice here where none was needed?

The umbrage was facetious. When I worked as a stringer, I was paid by the column inch, so I can appreciate using many words when few would suffice.

It would be nice if the effort of typing was put into how one would have to rethink reward/punishment in light of free will not existing. Removing a somewhat useful illusion and replacing it with a better understanding of what underlies that illusion often leads to better results.