For someone who claims to have read and essentially memorized a 50 page tome on consciousness, I don't know how a simple logic statement can be so confusing to you.

P is required for Q.
-> P is necessary for Q
-> If we have Q, then we must also have P.
-> If Q then P.

Let

P = Intentionality
Q = Free will

Intentionality is required for free will
-> If there is free will, there must be intentionality

You require that Q is sufficient for P.

Assertions:

* If no free will, then no consciousness
-> If consciousness, then free will

* If intentionality, then consciousness.

* If free will, then intentionality.

I seem to have drawn myself a nice consistent picture.

If consciousness, then free will.
If free will, then intentionality.
If intentionality, then consciousness.

I have stated that none of the statements (consciousness, free will, intentionality) are empirically provable. So I know that there's no internal contradiction in what I've said so far.

Maybe somewhere I said something that caused confusion?

Edit: And the only claim to truth value to any of these is that I've asserted that my experience of free willed decisions is sufficient for me to take the position that I have free will.

Edit #2: And if I lose free will, I don't know how to make sense of either of the other two concepts without redefining them.

Edit #3: Similarly, if I lose consciousness, I don't know what free will looks like nor intentionality.

Edit #4: What were we talking about? Maybe I'm the one who has gotten confused.

It was a very small nitpick. IIRC, somethings (p) can be a necessary condition for another (q) while q is not sufficient for p. But, that's IIRC.

Is intentionality required for free will? I was claiming that free will is necessary for intentionality.

I would agree that (in my arguments) intentionality is a sufficient condition for free will...but I made my nitpick post because you may need to add a premise (or statement) that intentionality is sufficient for free will. (Though, from your post you appear to say that intentionality is necessary for free will...and I'm not sure that that's true.)

Interesting. I've never heard of that distinction.

In my head, they're all very tightly related. Brian is right at the point where he says I can't argue these points effectively. My problem is more from a lack of formal education in the nuances of all these terms (and the appropriate related terms and concepts). I can only get so far before things get fuzzy, and the fuzziness happens before the point where I can adequately distinguish between the different concepts.

There is nothing wrong with making assertions. The problem is that assertions are not particularly convincing. Also, it can be argued that your experience of free will is just the experience of something else (being the immediate cause, not being forced by immediate external causes, or whatever) that you have decided has implications that it may or not have.

I completely agree with these in the case of you. If I lose any of the concepts I believe in, it would make me have to redefine the other concepts I have as well.

Not confused. Just convinced that your position is the only possible position that explains your experiences. This is not exactly uncommon.

But it does not hold true that if their is hair, there must be dog.

Don't mess with me on logic statements

Huh? I think my experiences are fully explainable by determinism.

I just don't believe determinism is true.

LOL

You really can't admit that you made an error?

I said:

which I demonstrated translates to

You said:

which translates to

Stop being asinine.

wtf? he's not suggesting that hair is sufficient for dogness.

he's suggesting that hair is necessary for dogness; therefore, dogness is sufficient for hairness.

(FWIW, bad example since hair isn't a necessary condition...but that's a huge side issue of definitions and particularly of natural kinds.)

I completely misunderstood what you meant with your earlier statement. I thought you meant intentionality is necessary for free will equals free will is necessary for intentionality.

I maintained that misunderstanding through the follow up post.

My fault for misunderstanding you. My error

So, he thinks all dogs have hair? What a strange idea!

Intentionality and free will are not necessary conditions for each other in either direction, imo, so it would have been an excellent example, had I understood his post.

I don't think that anyone would suggest that consciousness doesn't exist. That idea went out with the pure behaviorists.

Given what you have said earlier, I don't see how the first sentence makes sense.

?

Given that nobody is quite sure what "consciousness" really is, I don't see this a problem. It it ultimately turns out that determinism is true, then the conception of "consciousness" that I have is wrong (just like those other things).

The two aren't mutually exclusive, so this is just an unsupported assertion.

More unsupported assertions. Yet again, you haven't given a single reason for anyone to believe any of this.

Uh, you're the one who claimed that there would be no difference. You literally claimed that there was no difference. So what? So you were wrong, that's what.

Now you're trying to backpedal and act like the significance of the difference is what matters. You're not going to get away that easily, and if you want to talk about the standards according to which we evaluate the significance of an event then you should do so explicitly in the first place.

You assume wrong. An implicit acceptance of the Western sense of "self" is expedient, but I in no way believe it's "true." I don't believe in "niceness" or "self-consciousness" or "self-confidence" either, except as references for particular ranges of behavior. I don't believe that any of these things "really" exist.

And I think the suggestion that they do exist is pretty ludicrous. On what basis can anyone make such a claim?

This suggests that a naive pre-philosophical perspective is not enough to justify claims of libertarian free will (which is hardly a pre-philosophical notion). That's perfectly fine, if there exists some kind of reasoning that does support the notion of libertarian free will - but no such reasoning has been presented. That reasoning could be as simple as some credible argument that the concept of libertarian free will really does correspond to some kind of basic human experience - but in the discussion on free will there is no such reasoning presented (unless it begs the question, per Jib's attempts) - the correspondence of libertarian free will with how people experience the world is merely assumed.

The onus is still on those making the claim to support it. No amount of handwaving can change that.

I do have to say, this is the first time in my whole history of posting on 2+2 that someone has actually responded to my point about

I agree with you; but most people sharing that intuition in a country where such a notion of free will is literally mentioned in most children's television cartoons is hardly surprising. Furthermore, many people (including myself) claim to have no such intuition. If free will is intuitively obvious, then I'd contend the intuition of free will has to be universal. A majority of educated Americans isn't sufficient to hold up such a strong claim.

While I can buy that this is the dominant position among experts on the subject (easily in fact, as I think it's the only position that is especially rational), it seems unlikely to me that most educated Americans (I'm thinking college graduates) are compatibilists. So I have to ask, the dominant position among whom?

In science, if two hypotheses predict the same empirical results, then the simpler hypothesis (that including fewer elements) is accepted. At a minimum, any hypothesis proposing some kind of extra (extraneous) variables bears the burden of proof. The principles of parsimony and economy are how we "pare down" the (infinite) range of possibilities.

Most epistemologies derived from pragmatism (including my own) take a similar approach. And even those that aren't typically acknowledge that the onus is on the one suggesting the addition of the unnecessary element.

Why is free will such an exception? Since you appear to accept that both ideas are equally consistent with our observations, why do you accept the one that throws extra factors into the mix and assert that it needs no justification?

Except that nowhere is choice defined as an ability to do otherwise given identical conditions (except in the tracts of libertarians themselves). Choice is generally defined as selection from a range of options, which is clearly possible under determinism.

Your attempt to equivocate here isn't going to fly.

The real crux of libertarian free will is indeterminism (well, incompatibilism is arguably even more important, but they're both relevant). Nothing in this account suggests indeterminism (unless you believe uncertainty implies indeterminism, and you haven't given any reason why that would be the case).

By the way, I forgot to call you out on this blatant straw man.

You already accepted my definition of determinism, so equivocating like this is out of line.

Determinism typically does not hold any one time index as having pre-eminence. It's no more meaningful to say that my actions were determined well before my existence than it is to say that my actions will be determined well after my death. It is simply wrong to say that my actions are already determined - in every sense in which the term "already" can be said to apply, it does not apply to my actions.

THERE ARE NO OPTIONS TO SELECT FROM

ducy?

More walls of text...

Again, see my above post. Given the definition of determinism I've given (and most any credible definition) this is nonsense. "Already" can't even apply (it's a syntax error here, not to mention a category error).

My definition explicitly shows that there is no script and that if there were, it would exist outside of time and not at a particular time index.

Your point applies to predestination, not to determinism (which is a wholly different concept). If you can't tell the difference between predestination and determinism, then you're working at an extremely naive level here and ought to step back and get a grasp on the basics before proceeding. If you can tell the difference, then conflating the two is egregiously disingenuous.

We are not discussing predestination here, and the both of you should have some scrap of intellectual honesty and quit bringing it up. It has nothing to do with the debate but it sufficiently confusing to those who aren't familiar with the subject that it will throw them off (and derail the whole thread in the process).

Based on my definition of "option," there absolutely are. I define it as "something that can be chosen." Which you probably agree with, because the definition of "can" is really where you're equivocating.

"Can" is "to have the ability, power, or means to." Nothing in there about any magical indeterministic processes divorced from all surroundings.

Or are you going to dig up definitions of "ability," "power," and "means" such that all three fundamentally imply indeterminism?

Good luck with that. No matter how "obvious" it may seem to you that "having the ability or power or means" to do something implies the possibility of different outcomes given the same conditions, it simply doesn't. We can play semantics until the cows come home, nothing in the words you're using imply what you think they're supposed to imply. You think you're making some kind of inference, when all you're really doing is begging the question.