I mean, what about you is persistent?

What about you is knowable without other?

For years I've been looking and I cannot find anything that is actually unique.

Even the inquiry is initiated due to outside influences.

The question of free will boils down to if you think we live in a purely physical world or not. Considering that there is absolutely no evidence to the contrary, I believe we do. In this case, free will cannot exists, because it would imply that you ego could somehow override the laws of physics.

IDK if you're missing my point or just being flip (as I was) for internet points. But, on the off chance you missed the point, sexual selection selects for a ton of sociability traits.

So, unless you think sexual selection is Orwellian on its own, I'm not really sure what your point is.

I am free, therefore I am

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Nope I'm too uncooperative

>I think we’re trying to shoehorn the concept that true chaos exists and “percolates” to disrupt a clean deterministic system.

It's not shoehorning at all though, is it? Humans exist. Humans can leverage quantum probability. That is all that is needed because we act as a conduit for the micro, medium, and macro scales to interact in ways they may not absent the involvement of intelligence. Left alone, our Sun will become a white dwarf in about 5 billion years. If humans stick around long enough, it's likely we'll find a way to prevent that. If we decided whether to let the Sun burn itself out or to refuel it based on the roll of a quantum RNG, that would be a piece of quantum randomness affecting the lifecycle of stars. Scale it up. Even if you consider it to be shoehorning, it doesn't matter. It's still disruption to the supposedly clean deterministic system.

>Let’s look at the ratio of pi. Its values consist of unpredictable seemingly random strings of digits. Randomness therefore exists?

Pi isn't random. It's irrational. Its numbers don't change, it's properties aren't in flux- they just require discovery. Fun aside: we only need 40 digits of pi to calculate the circumference of the universe to within an error margin smaller than a hydrogen atom, but last summer we knew over 62.8 trillion digits of pi.

>What if the observed radioactive decay when aggregated forms a more cohesive pattern akin to the bell curves and distribution of other phenomena?

Then my beliefs will adjust based on the evidence because these are beliefs founded upon the evidence, not beliefs that cherry pick evidence in support of beliefs I intend to hold regardless.

Have you tried dating?

I heard a quote by Nietzsche and was wondering if anyone knew in which of his books he said this:

“I know of no better life purpose than too perish attempting the great and impossible. The fact that something seems impossible should not be a reason to not pursue it. That’s exactly what makes it worth pursuing. Where would the courage and greatness be if success was certain and there was no risk. The only true failure is shrinking away from life’s challenges.”

Thank you in advance!!

I think we’re trying to shoehorn the concept that true chaos exists and “percolates” to disrupt a clean deterministic system. However I’m not convinced this is the case.

Let’s look at the ratio of pi. Its values consist of unpredictable seemingly random strings of digits. Randomness therefore exists?

Well - that’s in pure mathematics so does this even apply to a physical world? Not sure if these two can bridge the gap between the conceptual math to material reality.

Say some value of some phenomenon seems random. like your radioactive decay. I’m still not sure if that proves anything. What if the observed radioactive decay when aggregated forms a more cohesive pattern akin to the bell curves and distribution of other phenomena? My point was to say that seemingly random events such as the flip of a coin become not random when aggregated. And maybe that is also the case in your example.

A lot of anti-freewill comments in this thread, which is outside the norm for here. Usually see a lot of compatabalism.

wouldn't it be more simple to say that there is no demarcation point?

Another simplistic demonstration I found neat is this distribution of balls which despite the random falling behavior of each individual ball, ultimately reveals an orderly outcome of an aggregate population of balls - and consistently behaves this way over and over when the process is repeated.

So if we imagine ourselves as being one single ball, then we will feel as though the paths we “choose” will be either random or even made by our free will to pick between a right or left direction at each collision and crossroads that we encounter - and where we end up may feel as though we chose our adventure. However, the fact we all together as a group behave in such a predictable way as to repeat the bell curved distribution contradicts the idea that individual choice is separate and independent from determinism.

Our choices are not only limited (we cannot for instance choose to violate physical laws of the universe - so we’re constrained to choices bracketed inside parameters) but our choices are ultimately following a grander deterministic set of rules. What you choose and what I choose may seem independent of one another - and independent of the choices of everyone in our population- yet we will fall within a bell curve and the bell curve will be established each time by our so called choices.

We have no more free will than each of those little falling balls. Randomness exists but randomness leads to both order and predictability and consistency. Randomness does not equal complete chaos. It is merely a process to carry one thing from one state to another state and there is nothing chaotic about that process, only that from the perspective of the individual in motion, the future is opaque until it becomes the present.

We can have competing desires, but only one side can "win" in any given situation. In fact, we rarely wholeheartedly do anything. This doesn't mean that we didn't genuinely want to do multiple conflicting things. You're right, if you didn't want to do the drug but did it anyway, you didn't have free will, you felt forced. That's exactly what I'm saying. If you did the thing your higher order desires want, then you feel free, like you really wanted that. That's the experience of free will. You can also say that when you do what you wholeheartedly wanted to, that's free will.

The reason it makes sense to call this free will and not an illusion is because that's what freedom is to a will. Why refer to something that's impossible (going against the laws of reality) as freedom? That seems silly, that's not something we can do and doesn't represent anything in our experience. The way I'm using it is a useful distinction, between when we feel free and when we don't. That's all freedom to a person's will is. Using terms like 'desire' or 'will' aren't helpful here. It's your will and your desires in every case. But only in some cases is your will free.

there are many things in our life that we are unable to control, and our conscious or meaningful decisions are influenced by uncontrollable circumstances we find ourselves in. So finding the demarcation point for where free will vs arbitrary actions is almost impossible

Another way to view randomness as the same as deterministic was posited by John Conway when developing the free-will theorem…

Imagine rolling all the random numbers you need for the universe’s lifetime in advance. Then simply pull them out in the order of their use… gives the illusion of total random outcomes for events - but they were still determined before the event.

>I dislike your focus on the legal use of "free will" because the legal system

If you read the legal judgements around free will you'll see that they have an amazing grasp and understanding of the subject. They are as good if not better than most stuff philosophers write on the subject.

I like looking at the legal approach since is a nice realistic approach and understanding of the world that makes sense rather than an incoherent idea that isn't applicable to the reality we live in.

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>I can't help but feel that if more people realized that compatibilism is flawed, we might be able to better rehabilitate people.

Having a more rehabilitative justice system has absolutely nothing to do with the fact the justice system is based on compatibilist free will. So that's just a non argument.

Any functioning justice system which focuses on rehabilitation needs to also use compatibilist free will to work.

In fact studies suggest the justice system would likely be even worse without compatibilist free will.

>These three studies suggest that endorsement of the belief in free will can lead to decreased ethnic/racial prejudice compared to denial of the belief in free will. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0091572#s1>
>
>For example, weakening free will belief led participants to behave less morally and responsibly (Baumeister et al., 2009; Protzko et al., 2016; Vohs & Schooler, 2008) From https://www.ethicalpsychology.com/search?q=free+will
>
>these results provide a potential explanation for the strength and prevalence of belief in free will: It is functional for holding others morally responsible and facilitates justifiably punishing harmful members of society. https://www.academia.edu/15691341/Free_to_punish_A_motivated_account_of_free_will_belief?utm_content=buffercd36e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer From https://www.ethicalpsychology.com/search?q=free+will
>
>A study suggests that when people are encouraged to believe their behavior is predetermined — by genes or by environment — they may be more likely to cheat. The report, in the January issue of Psychological Science, describes two studies by Kathleen D. Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan W. Schooler of the University of British Columbia.

From https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/health/19beha.html?scp=5&sq=psychology%20jonathan%20schooler&st=cse

As someone who has been attacked you do indeed have time to make a reasoned choice in response.

When I was attacked I literally reasoned through my choices, I could have allowed it to happen, I could have fled into traffic or I could defend myself.

Further more I had the option of either ramming my fingers into his eyes or hitting him in the throat, I chose the throat.

Some people do reason through as much as possible, I use my emotions to frame and guide my reasoning.

All of that is you though, that's the whole point.

If those things (your genes, neurons, environment, culture, memories etc) are not 'you' then 'you' don't exist

I dislike your focus on the legal use of "free will" because the legal system, particularly in the US (which is where you're citing cases from), has a very poor, punitive prison system that has terrible recidivism rates. I can't help but feel that if more people realized that compatibilism is flawed, we might be able to better rehabilitate people.

The perception of the self as a free rational agent which makes decisions independent of fate. It’s essentially the product of Christian free will and enlightenment era rationalism.

My case is unusual, but within a culture where there’s a strong belief in fate, people would agree that their sense of free will is an illusion. they might perceive themselves to have volition, but on a deeper level they’d believe this volition is a kind of mirage - basically the point of the Oedipus myth.

Totally random doesn’t mean 100% absolute maximum random, just as free will doesn’t mean the ability to ignore causality. It means that the specific moment of decay cannot, by any known means, be predicted even if you know the window.

>totally random and non-deterministic, e.g. radioactive decay

Its not totally random, from the perspective of an individual atom it appears to be. But if you have enough atoms then there is a clear non-randomness to the decay.

Look at it like this, if it were truly random, then different atoms couldn't have different half lives.

The continuity of brain and consciousness is not something I think we have a clear answer on. "Are you the same consciousness before and after a lobotomy" seems to be in the same class as "if you split the corpus collosum is it two consciousnesses now" and "Is Phineas Gage the same person before and after his accident?"

It will depend on whether you conceive of consciousness as arising from and dependant on its material substrate, or if you think consciousness is universal and that brains/minds are sort of like "antennas" that can pick up conscious signals, or any of many other theories of consciousness!