Are there any intelligent people out there who believe in free will? What problems do you have with hard determinism? ITT i will attempt to further my understanding of the theory, by answering your questions...and researching those questions to which I don't have answers. Most importantly, I hope to change the minds of those of you that belong to other camps (i.e. free-will, soft-determinism, agent theories etc.)...or...change a flawed view of my own.

Go.

I'm a libertarian about free will. Good luck changing my mind. I've done 2 graduate classes on free will and it hasn't happened...so...good luck.

Do you believe in responsibility?

No I do not sir
would you like to talk about it?

Unless of course you are talking about Sartre's idea of libertarianism...in which case, I agree with you and him assuming phenomenology (a large assumption but one i grant him for the sake of argument). Phenomenology is just a thinly veiled way of stepping outside the determinist problem (and into a more correct world view, according to him...and I disagree, but I don't think our arguments are that different). So while he says we are responsible for everything...I say we are responsible for nothing, and we're almost saying the same thing...god i love philosophy!

Yes. Delusion doesn't only affect dumb people.

Its lack of empirical grounding. In other words, the mechanisms hard determinism claims are sufficient to produce mental phenomena are, in almost ever case, not shown to be so through actual observation.

Actually, you're rather wrong here. A stronger argument can be made that the evidence strongly favours determinism rather than libertarianism. I'm a very rare libertarian in the philosophy world and even I admit that the libertarian is fighting an uphill battle.

OP: sorry, I think that there's responsibility. There's where you should start trying to convince me. Convince me that we're not responsible. Moreover, convince me that there are no counterfactuals: had I grown up thinking that we're not responsible for anything we do, I would have had a VERY different life...of crime.

Show me that that is not only false but impossible since counterfactuals must always be false: things could not have been otherwise.

o rly? which type of hard determinism are you speaking of? You do not believe that heredity, environment, and experience are the determining factors in all we do? What is left?

Oh, and I'm in the mood to fight since I'm tidying up my free will paper for both a presentation of it in Nov and for submission to the 2010 CPA as one of my 2 papers.

Okay, what reason is there to believe in free will? What evidence exists for it?

(Please avoid evidence that is subjective and experiential, unless that experience is accessible to me - I've never had any experience of free will and I find references to such experiences pretty absurd. Maybe if I'd had them, I wouldn't see them as so ridiculous, but as I haven't, I take them about as seriously as Aztec ghost stories.)

Quantum indeterminacy?

I fail to see the threat of counterfactuals to hard determinism. If you had grown up differently, you would have had a life of crime. But you could not have grown up differently. Argument over...
On a more interesting aside. If you had grown up differently, and had taken on a life of crime, you would still not be responsible for crimes you commit. For here you stand, you could be no other way. Note that this does not rule out punishment, so long as it has the causal efficacy that is intended. What it does rule out is blame. If i'm completely missing the boat here as to what your argument entails...i beg you, do not give up so fast on correcting the err in my ways. I CAN BE TAUGHT!

On another side note, "if you grew up thinking that we were not responsible for what we do, and lived a life of crime..." belittles what a thinking determinist would actually become I would love to explain why I think a determinist can not only be a functioning member of society, but would actually function better (without delusion, and more in touch with the way of the world)

I don't think that there's evidence either way. All evidence possible underdetermines the problem, IMO. Maybe I'm not creative enough but I can't think of a piece of evidence that would count as conclusive: either system can cohere with any observable event. So, the question really comes down to whether you believe in responsibility...then the question is whether you're a compatibilist or not. I happen to think that compatibilism is a contradiction (though I can't prove it...yet?).

Quantum indeterminacy happens at the quantum level. Physical manifestations of it that affect my visible life are nonexistant (except for all the gd books i had to read on it) Non visible effects, however, do not open up any realm for choice. If stuff is random its random, and we are not responsible for it anyway. So while determinism falls apart at the quantum level, I'm convinced it stills has pragmatic uses at the level we think on in a day to day existence. However, Touché. Sort of.

The type that denies free will.

I didn't say that. They are determining factors in most if not all of what we do.

I don't know. The point is that free will deniers don't know either to the extent of empirically excluding anything else being necessary.

Compatibilism is much easier to argue against from where i'm standing.

period. Good luck with a proof from the libertarian perspective...may i suggest Sartre :P

First, I'd be interested to know your philosophical training. I've read your posts and you're a bigger troll than I am.

What I mean by the counterfactual is that the pragmatists argue that the question of free will is meaningless since the presence or absence of free will would make no difference to people's actions. I think that this is false: people would behave differently if they believe in free will rather than determinism and vice versa. So, I think that it's a meaningful question.

What I mean by the counterfactual problem is that you really do have to contend that they're all false since there is no possible world other than the actual world. Counterfactuals depend on possible worlds (not their ontological existence, of course), but determinism rejects any possible world semantics: there is only the actual world.

Only weak libertarians use quantum as a crutch. I sure don't. I don't discuss quantum stuff once. Indeterminacy isn't enough for the libertarian since it can't just be random. It has to have purpose that requires a necessary reference to the agent. The agent has to at least influence the causal string (they don't have to create ex nihilo).

OP: please stop bringing up Sarte and other existentialists. That's belittling my position.

Lol. I was thinking the same thing. I'm glad you two found each other.

k?

Compatibilism doesn't even get off the ground for a hard determinist since they agree w/ the libertarian that responsibility is impossible w/o free will.

But, do you believe that there isn't responsibility because you're a determinist...or are you a determinist because you don't believe in responsibility?

At least I have the formal training...and, as it turns out, a lot in this particular topic.

I agree that if people recognize the presence or absence of free will would greatly affect their actions. That is why I'm making this thread. I do contend they are all false, but I don't mind discussing them because they have argumentative merit (i may be able to discuss things better on your home turf rather than have you leap onto mine). Yeah, I'm a troll in BBV...its hard not to be. My training: UVA degree double major in econ and philosophy. Studied a lot before and after college.

I don't think you give existentialists enough credit...it is certainly not a mark of disdain. You have still not laid out your claims yet...i would love to see your paper

the former obvi.

If you put it that way then we more or less agree on the empirical evidence part. Why you would think you "know" something with an incomplete basis in observation is another question, but that's not what I posted about here.

I give the existentialists a lot more credit than most professional philosophers since I studied them a lot in my formative years as a philosopher. I have an entire shelf of their works from classes and readings.

I don't need to lay out my position: nothing I say will convince you. It's not that you take determinism as default since you can't think of a way to reconcile the libertarian position with evidence that the universe is deterministic. That position I could argue against; in fact, it is the position that I specifically take as my target. But you don't even believe in responsibility. We have no shared ground.

If you want to know how I can try to reconcile the empirical evidence with how it's possible for free will to exist, I can do that. But, I can't prove that free will exists...not anymore than you can prove that determinism is true...not any more than I can prove that we are responsible...not anymore than you can prove that we are not responsible. DUCY?