Defense of Freewill Against Determinism

@EmperorNero,

EmperorNero wrote:

Yes, we do not use the term choose when we speak about objects, because we understand why it happens, i.e. we know if we place a stone on the top of a hill it will roll down one side, and not the other, because of it's mass and where exactly it is placed and such.

There is no why. There is only how. You see stones rolling down hill long enough and you think there is some special connection between mass, gravity, etc. Yet that's only a description of what does happen, not what has to happen. There's no reason why a stone has to respond that way as opposed to say, exploding into sparkles or turning into a teapot. These things just don't seem to happen. Nothing is ever really explained though.

@ughaibu,

ughaibu wrote:

As I demonstrated my ability to perform both actions, I see no reason to imagine that I was incapable of performing either. Do you have a reason?

You demonstrated that you do perform an action, you did not demonstrate that you could have picked the other one, i.e. your ability to perform both actions, which is the very thing you wanted to prove. So you really just make a unrelated statement, assume what you wanted to prove to be true, and place the burden on the opponent to disprove it.
That's a bit like proving the existence of God in the following manner:
1. Cats have four paws. (Which is true.)
2. Therefore God exists. Disprove it.

EmperorNero wrote:

Are you claiming that stones are conscious?

Are you claiming that they are not? It's your proof, I'm trying to tare it down.

ughaibu wrote:

If you think that stones have free will, that's your affair.

Actually, it's your affair. You see, that was an argumentum ad absurdum, it leads your statement to an illogical conclusion. You are ridiculing your own logical deduction.

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper wrote:

There is no why. There is only how. You see stones rolling down hill long enough and you think there is some special connection between mass, gravity, etc. Yet that's only a description of what does happen, not what has to happen. There's no reason why a stone has to respond that way as opposed to say, exploding into sparkles or turning into a teapot. These things just don't seem to happen. Nothing is ever really explained though.

You are right. But this is a bit as if we were debating the capital of Canada, and you were claiming that the capital of Canada is Toronto, and I provide a reliable source to the contrary (it's Ottawa). And you respond "yeah, but we could be in a dream machine, so Toronto might be the capital of Canada in the real world, we can't be sure."
It's technically accurate, but a little overkill

You are absolutely right that the universe does not conform itself to the laws we made about it, nor any laws if we happen to be imprecise or mistaken about the laws we made. The universe might still follow deterministic laws, it just doesn't have to.
It's like someone on the street yells at you "go over there", and you respond, "I don't have to do what you say, you don't have authority over me". That you don't have to conform to what he orders does not exclude that you might do it anyways.
So determinism doesn't have to be right. But it must not be wrong either.

But let's say that determinism is in fact wrong, the universe is random. That does defend free will against determinism, as is the title of the thread, but it does not defend free will as such, it just makes it possible. A random universe does not have to imply that we have greater control over our decisions. We might still be robots... just with randomness instead of determinism.

If you agree that humans are biological organisms that evolved out of primordial elements, you agree that free will has to come from somewhere, because it is not the default condition, it did not use to be. Bacteria do simply react to stimuli they are confronted with, they do not have a "choice", lower mammals don't either. Humans are more complicated machines, but where does free will come from? It would have to explained, biologically, where it came from, and not be the default position that has to be disproven.

Edit: I hope you understand that I use the term "cause" more as a manner of speaking than a accurate description. I.e. not that X obtains then Y follows necessarily, but that Y follows X, always. It's just easier to say.

@EmperorNero,

EmperorNero wrote:

Night Ripper wrote:
There is no why. There is only how. You see stones rolling down hill long enough and you think there is some special connection between mass, gravity, etc. Yet that's only a description of what does happen, not what has to happen. There's no reason why a stone has to respond that way as opposed to say, exploding into sparkles or turning into a teapot. These things just don't seem to happen. Nothing is ever really explained though.

You are right. But this is a bit as if we were debating the capital of Canada, and you were claiming that the capital of Canada is Toronto, and I provide a reliable source to the contrary (it's Ottawa). And you respond "yeah, but we could be in a dream machine, so Toronto might be the capital of Canada in the real world, we can't be sure."
It's technically accurate, but a little overkill

You are absolutely right that the universe does not conform itself to the laws we made about it, nor any laws if we happen to be imprecise or mistaken about the laws we made. The universe might still follow deterministic laws, it just doesn't have to.
It's like someone on the street yells at you "go over there", and you respond, "I don't have to do what you say, you don't have authority over me". That you don't have to conform to what he orders does not exclude that you might do it anyways.
So determinism doesn't have to be right. But it must not be wrong either.

But let's say that determinism is in fact wrong, the universe is random. That does defend free will against determinism, as is the title of the thread, but it does not defend free will as such, it just makes it possible. A random universe does not have to imply that we have greater control over our decisions. We might still be robots... just with randomness instead of determinism.

If you agree that humans are biological organisms that evolved out of primordial elements, you agree that free will has to come from somewhere, because it is not the default condition, it did not use to be. Bacteria do simply react to stimuli they are confronted with, they do not have a "choice", lower mammals don't either. Humans are more complicated machines, but where does free will come from? It would have to explained, biologically, where it came from, and not be the default position that has to be disproven.

Why would anyone think it is an accident that stones roll downhill rather than (say) sing "Yankee Doodle Dandy", and the only reason we don't think there is an explanation for why they do the former and do not do the latter, is that they keep on doing the former, and not the latter, is difficult to understand. Do you really think that the next time you expect a stone will roll downhill, it might just well stay and sing a chorus of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" is that stones have always been rolling downhill, and never been observed to sing a chorus of "Yankee Doodle Dandy"? If not, then just what do you believe if there is no explanation of why the stone rolls downhill and does not sing, "Yankee Doodle Dandy" if you think that it is just an accident that it does the first, and does not do the second?

@kennethamy,

I'm not quite sure, but I don't disagree with determinism. For all I care, stones to behave by Newtonian laws. I am the one defending determinism. It is your side that disagrees with determinism. I just made an argument that, even if there is no determinism, that does not have mean that there is free will. But if there is determinism, that's just fine with me.

@EmperorNero,

EmperorNero wrote:

You demonstrated that you do perform an action, you did not demonstrate that you could have picked the other one, i.e. your ability to perform both actions, which is the very thing you wanted to prove.

Read my demonstration again, it begins with me demonstrating that I can perform two distinct actions. It also includes an explanation of what a choice is, and a choice certainly is not simultaneously performing both actions. You seem to be claiming that because I only performed one of the actions, that I didn't demonstrate a choice, but performing one and only one action, drawn from a set of options, is exactly what a choice is. So, as you appear to think that the fact that I made a choice is reason to believe that that choice wasn't a demonstration of free will, when it's the case that in order to make any choice, free or otherwise, I need to make a choice, I reject your criticism and do not consider you to have offered any reason for me to doubt my demonstration.

EmperorNero wrote:

ughaibu wrote:
Are you claiming that stones are conscious?
Are you claiming that they are not? It's your proof, I'm trying to tare it down.

I really dont care if you think that stones are conscious and have free will.

@ughaibu,

ughaibu wrote:

Read my demonstration again, it begins with me
demonstrating that I can perform two distinct actions

No, you declare that you can perform two distinct actions, which is not demonstrating it. You did not demonstrate that you could have picked the other one, i.e. your ability to perform both actions. Declaring that you could have performed the other action is as much proof of your actual ability of doing so as an alcoholic saying "I can stop drinking if I want" is proof of his ability to actually do so. It's just saying you could, which is not demonstrating that you can.

ughaibu wrote:

I really dont care if you think that stones are conscious and have free will.

That's too bad, because it's your argument that requires that humans have consciousness but stones do not. If you don't bother to show that to be the case, your argument is invalidated.

@EmperorNero,

EmperorNero wrote:

No, you declare that you can perform two distinct actions.

Bullshit! I can type 01 and I can type 10, I have thereby demonstrated that I can perform both actions.

EmperorNero wrote:

You did not demonstrate that you could have picked the other one

Of course I didn't, because I chose the one which I chose. It is blindingly obvious that I dont choose the one which I dont choose, and as your objection seems to be that I didn't choose the one which I didn't choose, that objection is utterly vapid. Think about it, how the hell is "you didn't choose the one which you didn't choose" meant to be a reason for me to think anything, other than that I was correct, free will denial is not worth wasting my time on.

EmperorNero wrote:

That's too bad, because it's your argument that requires that humans have consciousness but stones do not

More nonsense:
1) I presented a demonstration, not an argument
2) my demonstration doesn't involve stones
3) you introduced the stones, they're your problem, you live with them.

@ughaibu,

ughaibu wrote:

EmperorNero wrote:
No, you declare that you can perform two distinct actions.
Bullshit! I can type 01 and I can type 10, I have thereby demonstrated that I can perform both actions.
EmperorNero wrote:
You did not demonstrate that you could have picked the other one
Of course I didn't, because I chose the one which I chose. It is blindingly obvious that I dont choose the one which I dont choose, and as your objection seems to be that I didn't choose the one which I didn't choose, that objection is utterly vapid. Think about it, how the hell is "you didn't choose the one which you didn't choose" meant to be a reason for me to think anything, other than that I was correct, free will denial is not worth wasting my time on.
EmperorNero wrote:
That's too bad, because it's your argument that requires that humans have consciousness but stones do not
More nonsense:
1) I presented a demonstration, not an argument
2) my demonstration doesn't involve stones
3) you introduced the stones, they're your problem, you live with them.

Anything you do he can simply say that's what you had to do and that you couldn't do anything else. How this is testable, I have no idea but there's really nothing you can do to argue against such a bizarre argument like that. You would have to stop the universe and play it back with a different result to satisfy him. However, he can't stop the universe and play it back showing that it has to play out the same way no matter what.

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper wrote:

Anything you do he can simply say that's what you had to do and that you couldn't do anything else. How this is testable, I have no idea

One can use the coin tossing argument, demonstrating that the probability of the choice being determined is infinitely small. Of course, the denier can still say something like "well, it might be determined anyway", but that's not any kind of reason for me to doubt my demonstration.

@ughaibu,

ughaibu wrote:

Night Ripper wrote:
Anything you do he can simply say that's what you had to do and that you couldn't do anything else. How this is testable, I have no idea

One can use the coin tossing argument, demonstrating that the probability of the choice being determined is infinitely small. Of course, the denier can still say something like "well, it might be determined anyway", but that's not any kind of reason for me to doubt my demonstration.

The probability of any particular string of coin tosses approaches zero as the length of the string approaches infinity. In that sense, any string is rare.

@ughaibu,

ughaibu wrote:

I can type 01 and I can type 10, I have thereby demonstrated that I can perform both actions.

Yes, you experience the sensation of being able to preform both actions, of choosing. But whatever you end up doing is causally determined before you do it, before you were confronted with the situation. Saying "I have a choice" does not address that, nobody denies that we appear to make choices.

ughaibu wrote:

your objection seems to be that I didn't choose the one which I didn't choose, that objection is utterly vapid.

Yes, my objection appears to be that, but it is not. It is not that you don't choose what you don't choose, that is indeed obvious and pretty irrelevant, and arguing against that is just a way of avoiding the real argument. The objection is that, whatever you end up doing, you could not have picked the other one, even if you actually choose, because your actions are causally determined by physics.

ughaibu wrote:

More nonsense:
1) I presented a demonstration, not an argument
2) my demonstration doesn't involve stones
3) you introduced the stones, they're your problem, you live with them.

1) Semantics.
2) If your demonstration can be applied to stones, it is shown to be nonsensical, because stones do not have free will.
3) You are the one who has to explain how your demonstration does not lead to nonsensical conclusions. It's your problem.

Night Ripper wrote:

Anything you do he can simply say that's what you had to do and that you couldn't do anything else. How this is testable, I have no idea but there's really nothing you can do to argue against such a bizarre argument like that. You would have to stop the universe and play it back with a different result to satisfy him

Yeah, pretty much.
But I am not making a positive statement here, it is ughaibu who professes to be able to demonstrate to free will. I am merely objecting to the validity of his demonstration.

Is the the absence of free will a position that is impossible to argue against? Possibly. But that does not mean it is wrong.

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper wrote:

The probability of any particular string of coin tosses approaches zero as the length of the string approaches infinity. In that sense, any string is rare.

Sure, but according to the determinist denier both the result of the coin toss and which of two numbers I choose, are both fixed features of the world. The fact that, regardless of what method I choose to assign numbers to faces of coins, I will tend to be correct about half the time if I dont look at the coin before choosing but can be correct 100% of the time if I choose after looking at the coin, is sufficient to prove that determinism is infinitely improbable and free will is infinitely probable.

...if, between one´s will and one´s action there is in fact a random outcome on the horizon, with or without patterns and regularities, the meaning is indeed quite simple...from top down, from willing, to act, nothing on what you do is theoretically or in practice your responsibility, given you are at best partially committed to the final outcome and not entirely responsible for what does happen...as I said, neither in your brain on willing, neither in your action to make it a fact !
To say otherwise, la la la I know better and stuff, its not only entirely fallacious but ridiculous plain silly !
How come intelligent and well informed people come to think otherwise is to me a mystery where convenience and subjectivity play indeed a major role...what can one do but to gaze to such nonsense !...

@EmperorNero,

EmperorNero wrote:

ughaibu wrote:
I can type 01 and I can type 10, I have thereby demonstrated that I can perform both actions.
you experience the sensation of being able to preform both actions

You can see, here on the page, there's an 01 and a 10. Are you really suggesting that I should doubt that I performed the action which resulted in these numbers appearing on this screen???!?

EmperorNero wrote:

whatever you end up doing, you could not have picked the other one because your actions are causally determined by physics.

Where's your argument for this? It's the first time you've mentioned it, and as 1) physics is what is done by physicists, so obviously doesn't determine my actions, as I'm not a physicist, and 2) physicists themselves dont generally hold determinism to be true, you've got a way to go.

1 - Either I am fully responsible for my wishes and actions and the door on freedom, from soft deterministic perspective, may be open for debate or...
2 - I am not entirely accountable for this events and fairly obviously cannot at any instance call myself a free actor when to depend on random outcomes...it does n´t matter at all to say that there are patterns...there is no direct link there ! ( not even for willing alone...what to say on actions thereafter...give me a break !!!)

@ughaibu,

ughaibu wrote:

EmperorNero wrote:
ughaibu wrote:
I can type 01 and I can type 10, I have thereby demonstrated that I can perform both actions.
you experience the sensation of being able to preform both actions
You can see, here on the page, there's an 01 and a 10. Are you really suggesting that I should doubt that I performed the action which resulted in these numbers appearing on this screen???!?

Bacteria can swim left or they can swim right, I have thereby demonstrated that bacteria can perform both actions. Thus they have free will.

EmperorNero wrote:

whatever you end up doing, you could not have picked the other one because your actions are causally determined by physics.

Where's your argument for this? It's the first time you've mentioned it, and as 1) physics is what is done by physicists, so obviously doesn't determine my actions, as I'm not a physicist, and 2) physicists themselves dont generally hold determinism to be true, you've got a way to go.[/quote]

Where is my argument? I have no argument, I am merely attacking your demonstration. Your demonstration does not become right because whatever I think is wrong.
You say your ability to choose proves that you have free will. I say, the way you define it, stones have the ability to choose and would, according to your demonstration, have free will. Which is obviously not true and invalidates your demonstration. That does not mean that you are wrong, just that your demonstration for it being so is.

@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

1 - Either I am fully responsible for my wishes and actions and the door on freedom, from soft deterministic perspective, may be open for debate or...
2 - I am not entirely accountable for this events and fairly obviously cannot at any instance call myself a free actor when to depend on random outcomes...it does n´t matter at all to say that there are patterns...there is no direct link there ! ( not even for willing alone...what to say on actions thereafter...give me a break !!!)

Aren't you a student of scientific education? Dont you know that determinism is almost definitely false?

@EmperorNero,

EmperorNero wrote:

ughaibu wrote:
EmperorNero wrote:
ughaibu wrote:
I can type 01 and I can type 10, I have thereby demonstrated that I can perform both actions.
you experience the sensation of being able to preform both actions
You can see, here on the page, there's an 01 and a 10. Are you really suggesting that I should doubt that I performed the action which resulted in these numbers appearing on this screen???!?
Bacteria can swim left or they can swim right, I have thereby demonstrated that bacteria can perform both actions.

Wonderful.

EmperorNero wrote:

I have no argument

Then you have given me no reason to doubt my demonstration, and as it's a simple demonstration that can be repeated by all healthy human adults, the present status is that free will carries by default.

So what ??? 90% of what I study in soft Sciences, is, as you also should know, plain wrong...Why do you think Humanistic study´s are normally a motive for laughter ? I wish there could be some more hardcore knowledge into it and less politics...

...look into the 70´s and the excessive importance given to education and cultural background for behaviour...today we are giving one step back on that...are you surprised ?

...Have you read anything on true homozigotic twins behavioural similarities ? You should !

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