Huh? No, free choice as the source of responsibility, and free choice is defined as being nonrandom.

I'm just going to stop and say that you're not making any sense at all to me anymore.

You VERY EXPLICITLY said that you're not refuting assertions. But here we have the assertion "determinism is incompatible with choice" and you are claiming to refute it. So I literally have no idea what any of your words mean now.

<sigh> It's STILL about the nature of "randomness" if you are going to assert that "free choice is defined as being nonrandom."

Edit: Yes, I said I was going to stop, but this is just another example of where I think you're talking yourself in circles. I hope you can see it.

Aaron,

Why do you insist on repeatedly asking questions such as this? Why don't you just tell us what you're thinking?

I think most people here are on the same page with me (in terms of my position and what I'm angling for). So I'm not going to be any more precise than that.

It's no more about the nature of randomness than it is about the nature of choice or responsibility (not "purely about the nature of randomness"). The main thing I was correcting was your edit, however.

And the reason randomness is relevant is because all the libertarians have made it relevant.

This *is* what I'm thinking. I want to understand the position being presented, so I ask for clarification of words and ideas.

I may weigh in tomorrow...Mad isn't doing a very good job and hasn't gotten past his position in another thread.

Aaron, I understand your frustration.

I really don't think you understand libertarianism if you think it's boiling down to "randomness." Unless, of course, by "randomness" you simply mean "not deterministic." And in that case, I'd have to go back and reread your posts to see whether they make sense with that framework.

regretting one's decision only show's that we are capable of regretting our decisions.

it has nothing to do with whether or not we could have made a different choice.

Are you mentally challenged in any way?

fair enough, thanks.

Once again, I said it doesn't boil down to randomness.

And no, I don't "understand" libertarianism in the sense that believers do, because there is clearly some experiential component to it and I don't have that.

My argument stated here was not about agents being able to make different choices, but about agents believing that they could have made different choices. this has to do with my claim of free will being prima facie true. Have you been following my convo with Madnak?

In entirety, +1. Except for the part about ice cream. I choose butter pecan.

Not sure of the source, but people act in the assumption that they have free will and everyone else doesn't...

Back to the point, Durka, if these sorts of arguments cannot be resolved through evidence, then how are they to be resolved? I cannot imagine that free will can exist and also not exist. Therefore, either it exists or it doesn't.

Durka, please present your argument as to why you believe free will exists. For one, I am willing to read your arguments and read outside sources so that you don't have to write an entire thesis from start to finish.

And, yes, I have read your previous posts in this thread. They are disjointed, due to you attempting to asking various questions and accusations. I promise to read, attempt to understand, and attempt to be convinced in return. I also promise to not nitpick language, except for in attempt to understand. I am sincerely hopeful others will do the same.

I will get to the rest tomorrow, but I wanted to comment on this.

Libertarianism is about the ability to choose differently with no pre-existing reason. Wishing that you chose differently implies that you could have. In determinism in that situation you could have only made one choice, the one that you chose. So you cannot wish that you would have done differently while being consistent with your belief, because your belief dictates that you could not have chosen differently.

I will try to formulate this more clearly tomorrow.

One more try. I'll give the quote, and if I think it will help I will rephrase the quote using other words.

Me:

You:

The absence of randomness/chance is related to responsibility.

Me:

You are claiming that previous free will discussions were different than this one. You have asserted that "randomness" as a non-factor is what distinguishes the current discussion from past free will discussions. So it looks like you're going to have to tell me about randomness if this is going to make sense.

[Aside: I still don't agree with your characterization of the history of free will arguments.]

You:

Non-randomness is somehow related to free choice and responsibility.

Me:

You have made "randomness" an essential piece of your philosophy, so you're going to have to help me understand that element if I'm going to understand what you're saying.

You:

It's not purely about randomness; it's related to randomness.

Me:

Is this what you mean by randomness? Simply some form of non-determinism? I don't understand what you're saying.

You:

I already told you, it's not purely about randomness.

My next response:

What are you talking about?

...unless the conditions were different, in which case you could and would have chosen differently. Even if the only change in condition had been your mood at the time.

But no, wishing that you could have chosen differently doesn't imply that you believe you could have. I can wish for lots of things that I don't believe are actually possible.

I don't think most people develop their thoughts about those wishes to a concrete degree in the first place, but when they do I think they generally envision different conditions.

+1. I kind of like this kind of concentrated wisdom.

I just think long thought chains/posts may confuse myself/yourselves/others, just coming away from the essential/truth.

Edit: wait a minute. What does this have to do with free will? Was Hawking talking about those who believe in determinism?

not really but i'll check it out later.

to be clear, you're not saying that the fact that we regret some of our decisions points towards free will being reality?

The grammar on that sentence was a bit mangled, but the parentheses were meant to clarify the pronoun. "The actions that can have been different even with identical causes are related to responsibility." Not the absence of randomness. But that is also related to responsibility, so I'm told.

What? I don't remember saying any of that.

Yes. Libertarians generally believe that freely willed actions are related to responsibility, but that random actions are not. Otherwise, free will would just be random action and there would be no issue.

Libertarian free will is indistinguishable from randomness. Libertarians typically believe that if an action can be perfectly predicted, then that action is not freely willed. From that (mainly) I derive that freely willed action must be unpredictable to some degree.

Normally, when we are not able to predict an outcome by any means, we call that outcome "random." However, libertarians are adamant that free will is not random.

I don't have any idea why they insist on these things. I'm defining libertarians based largely on how they describe their own views.

Cliff notes: Libertarians say that free will is about unpredictability. Unpredictability is normally called randomness. But free will is not called randomness.

Are you asking me why unpredictability is a part of the definition of free will, or why it's "not supposed to be random?" I don't know. You'll have to ask the people who invented the idea of free will about that. I'm just describing what I see. The visions of this magical free will stuff haven't been bestowed on me like they have on the libertarians.

i think that hawking quote is pretty damn stupid.

I don't think your expectations are accurate. Our brains are sufficiently complex that you can not see all the reactions going on to make a 'choice' in a deterministic world. Just because you can not understand what is going on doesn't mean it's not a deterministic process.

Why not? In a deterministic world, you could easily be forced to experience the emotions and thoughts of regret. And deliberation is also easily explainable -- it's just the deterministic process leading the brain to experiencing thoughts before ultimately ending in the reactions that enact the 'choice' made. Maybe I'm just not understanding what we're talking about?

You're equivocating a bit here. Actually, I think you're equivocating quite a lot. And it's coming down to what your understanding of "randomness" is. But fortunately, you've finally provided a definition of it, so that I can at least point it and use it to explain something.

Your definition of random is, in fact, what I suggested you were saying. You have defined anything that is "non-deterministic" to be random, so that there exist two categories of events. Deterministic events (under the narrow definition you presented) and everything else.

This categorically excludes the concept of free will as it is understood. It's pretty close to a strawman. (In fact, it is precisely that which is used in a strawman argument against the concept of responsibility: If my behavior is deterministic, then I cannot be held responsible for my actions. But if my behavior is not deterministic, then it's random, and I cannot be held responsible for my actions. Therefore, there's no such thing as responsibility.)

Libertarian free will is simply the negation of the claim that "ALL events are deterministic." In other words, "there are some events which are not deterministic" (again, using your narrow definition of determinism). There is no particular description of what causes particular outcomes. Rather, there is simply the claim that events happen that you would not have been able to "express as a function of every other state of the universe in some systematic and non-arbitrary way."

The equivocation happens at the point that you declare that "when we are not able to predict an outcome by any means, we call that outcome 'random.'" For example, there are events which are "random" but can be predicted (given sufficient information). Chaotic events, such as balls falling (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bean_machine) serve as sufficient examples to demonstrate this. The path of any particular ball is "random" in that we are unable to predict the outcome, but at the same time, it's "deterministic" because we understand that somehow, we *could* actually determine the path that a particular ball will take, given precise enough information.

Therefore, your sense of random is not well-applied in this situation. In this situation, the word is implying something about an absence of information, and not one of a systematic inability to compute (ie, predict) the outcome. You are adding a different concept (unsurprisingly, one that is related to measurement) when you use the term "random" in the way that you have been.

The fact that you think it's "indistinguishable" is part of your epistemology ("How can you know whether it's random or free-willed?"), and reflects a desire for an empirical answer. As it has been repeatedly stated, the question of free will is NOT an empirical one. There is no measurement that can prove or disprove either free will or determinism. This question is simply outside the realm of meaningful questions with that approach to knowledge.

I'm stepping into your conversation with Jib a bit here, but I've pointed to the notion of "regretting a decision." What does it mean that you made a "decision"? I'm going to assume that it's the same thing as a "choice."

"Regret" of a decision can be framed in the words "if only I had ..." Under the deterministic thesis, this regret is nonsense because there's no "if only..." The decision was the only possible decision, so that even if you somehow knew in advance the outcome, you still could not have done it differently. The idea that there is such a thing as "if only..." is an indication (not a proof) of free will. That there were other possibilities is what is encompassed in the negation of "ALL events are deterministic." It's the statement that "If I had to do it again, I would do it differently" (which implicitly assumes that you *could* have done it differently -- for if you couldn't have done it differently, you would have done it the same way).

[And all this is related back to the concept of responsibility, but that's a distraction from my primary objection to your position.]

All of this to say that your narrow definition of "deterministic" and that leads to your broad definition of "random" (as "not deterministic") is the reason that you're struggling to understand what people mean by "free will." It's what leads you to make claims like "Nobody has ever been recorded describing themselves as having libertarian free will in the ancient past." I would not be surprised if it ultimately turned out that in your own thoughts you've ended up using "determinism" in a very BROAD sense of some form of basic "cause-and-effect" (which is what I think you did in that first post that I responded to).

fyp