I'd love to at least pass on my education and raise children to improve on it, but disabled women like me struggle dating, and while I wouldn't dream of blaming it for all my problems, on a societal level, it's partly because people are ableist eugenicists.

Also 'mental health' has come to mean shut up and put up, don't express 'toxic' dissatisfaction with the status quo, obligatory happiness, if you hate being underpaid or otherwise mistreated it's an individual problem, definitely don't be neurodivergent and want to burn the ableist status quo to the ground.

I don’t know what you mean by “that decision was made as soon as you are aware of the choice.” It’s not clear to me that that’s true, or that it would disprove free will if it were true.

Also, you seem to be assuming that “all our decisions can be traced back to genetics” and other things outside our control. Well, those things clearly contribute a lot to our actions, but that isn’t the issue. That just means we don’t have total freedom, which should be obvious even to believers in free will. When people argue against free will, it often seems like they’re setting up two extremes: either no freedom ever, or a magical, supernatural “ghost” roaming around our bodies. Framing it like that makes the second option sound so ridiculous as to suggest that the only serious answer for any educated person in the modern world is to deny free will in absolute terms. But I like the article’s suggestion to reconsider how we think about free will. We might not have all the relevant knowledge yet, and the debate doesn’t need to be constantly boiled down to two cartoonish extremes.

The article does a good job of subtly refuting the Libet experiment, after it was more bluntly debunked by John Searle in his book Rationality in Action over 20 years ago.

Society is not, though, or there would be more focus on disability inclusion, over the active discrimination which is still a very significant factor in why children, and adults, with disabilities suffer. Here in the UK, we don't even do anything to prevent systemic medical negligence disabling children, multiple known scandals incl. with babies who ought to have been healthy, and the individual cases still treated as isolated incidents with no examination of the system and no justice. There is also currently a campaign against adequate pain relief (some people are opioid addicts therefore people in pain should suffer), and disabled people are still forbidden from deciding they want to end their lives, unless they attempt to do it a way that has a high risk of failure and further disability.

I know it’s weird, nonsense and stupid question though, I just came up with the question “are feelings perfect or imperfect ?” Think about the feelings are truth or not, I’d say feelings are perfect because these express what you think purely. Although when it comes to how human is, human is definitely imperfect in many meaning so ai can say feelings are also imperfect and fragile. (I can’t define fragile means imperfect though) So I’d like to hear what you guys think about this question. I’m sure all thoughts and answers are correct.

You know I think we actually agree on a lot here, to the point that I’m not sure we disagree on much. I definitely agree that “free will vs determinism” reflects and promotes a confusion about the notion of freedom, the only thing I’m struggling how you’re not a compatibilist — “free will is real but not how you think” is still a way of believing free will is real!

They don’t need to do that blacks are already having way more abortion then whites in the USA so they doing a good job at that already without having to make it obvious

A lot of free will proponents seem unable to distinguish between the concepts of a subjective experience of free will and the ontological existence of free will. They think subjective experience is sufficient to automatically prove the latter. They see them both as one concept. So strange.

It's like a mind block. Kind of shocking to see, really.

> A determined reality would dictate that we wouldn't bother pretending to have free will if we didn't have it.

False. You seem to be under the assumption a determined reality cannot give rise to the illusion of free will. This is an grounded, baseless assumption you're standing on.

We are experiencing "free will" but our subjective experience of such does not automatically impart to the universe that then free will as a concept is true. If you don't see this, simply come up with any other subjective experience as example and you should reach the same conclusion.

Really important to note, as a disabled person who was casually and out of nowhere asked if I'd abort a child like me, that there is no screening test for most conditions. I'm also disabled as a result of severe medical negligence not my original condition. It can cause cleft palettes, which might however be picked up on a scan.

Ableism is also not identical to ideas of eugenics. The focus is on getting rid of conditions deemed disabilities, rather than aiming at positive traits, and neurodivergence (which has links to physical conditions, including connective tissue disorders like mine) is worth considering here.

Wonder how many philosophers have been neurodivergent, and that has been a factor in their philosophy? Some are certainly thought to have been.

Edit: Oh, and connective tissue disorders and hyperflexibility? They carry a risk of injury, not everyone would be capable, but ballet, gymnastics, you'll find those with them among those excelling there.

I think my focus on freedom comes more from a perspective of trying to conceptualize decision-making from a timeless perspective. The notion of time being phenomenal, and its linearity being a human mental construct, is fundamental in understanding the odd state of free will that has it seemingly existing and not at once. If you don't consider time as necessarily linear, then the notion of a decision being an "experience" that a being cannot opt out of becomes more clear. I think "will" is a stratified concept, and the same way an aware entity, such as a dog, sees an insect or plant as less free, a layman sees a dog as less free, and a rich man sees a layman as less free, and an enlightened thinker sees the rich man as less free, and the man surrounded by supportive community sees the enlightened thinker as less free, and this implies a degree to which freedom is simultaneously relative to and a guarantee to any entity, but in a way that is fundamentally tied to its level of understanding. I find that the language of "free will vs. determinism" distracts from the more important metaphysical fact of the oneness of human-kind through our common thread of perception, since the highest known form of freedom is that afforded through social cohesion.

I worded that very poorly. What I should have said was, voluntary action doesn’t require libertarian free will. Then, as I kept trying to explain more, I realized I don’t even think ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ really make sense in a deterministic/random universe.

>So I’m not really sure of your point.

My point was that free will means you could have acted differently given the same exact set of circumstances, genetics, environment, so on, because of some force that can act on the universe without detection. Involuntary means the person wouldn’t normally do that action except for a very small set of circumstances, usually because of threat to safety or life.

>most people would use the term free will in that context?

I’m not sure what the conventional use of the term ‘free will’ has to do with metaphysics. See the conventional use of “begging the question” for why lay use of philosophy jargon is not always helpful.

I subscribe to optimistic nihilism too.

> It doesn't have to be real to enjoy life, create meaning, experience things.

I'd just say here that those who say free ill is a lie, aren't saying to not enjoy life, create meaning, or experience things either.

The discourse around free will is orthogonal to all that. I tend to see a lot of people react defensively and unable to separate these concepts.

false dichotomy, but keep clinging to #1 if it helps you 🤷‍♀️

What’s bothering me here is that the statement that “‘certainly decisions are made by freely acting entities’ but nonetheless, free will doesn’t exist” seems to imply as confusing a notion of free will as any.

I think you and I are actually pretty close in what we think is going on, we just disagree about what “free will” is. I do not think free will describes anything about the likelihood of a given decision, but rather the mechanism by which it came to be. If I make the decision to hug my mom instead of punching her 100% of the time, I would say I’m more free than a scenario where whether I give my mom a hug or a punch is not predictable (I say this because sometimes I hear free will libertarians say they are free because their behavior is unpredictable, which is strange to me).

So if an event occurs because my self existed (in whatever sense it does exist) to order things in that way, then I’m satisfied I made that decision freely. I believe this is a pretty mainstream position among compatibilists.

Perhaps you’re thinking “this is such a strange understanding of freedom”, but I think the stranger understanding is the one where freedom requires power over the movement of atoms in the Big Bang

But if all experience is necessarily phenomenal, then free will is a moot point, is moreso what I’m trying to point at. Certainly decisions are made by freely acting entities, and if saying that makes me a “compatibilist,” then fine, but every “decision” made is a synthesis of opposed phenomena playing out their dialectical relationship through the mechanism of human perception. The “decision” is but a phenomenon we experience, which is pretty antithetical to the traditional understanding of free will.

Okay, I can work with that.

I think a problem here is that saying that free will is phenomenal is not the same as saying it’s “illusory” or not real. Phenomena is real, it’s just real as phenomena and not as noumena. Space, time, and causation are also “merely” phenomenal, but I don’t think we’re going to deny that they therefore don’t exist. If free will turned out to be “as real” as cause and effect, then I think almost just about any believer in free will would feel vindicated.

Your ad hominem ‘Nazi’ attack might make you popular in /politics, but I don’t think it’ll get you far here.

>But for people who value civilisation, high quality traits are things like intelligence, social cohesion, physical health, mental health, co-operativeness, etc.

yeah no, 'values' like co-operativeness and social cohesion are not necessarily good things, too much of either and you get a docile population who will not use violence at all.

society is only as valuable as it treats its least and any given population must have the ability to violently tear down society if need be (it shouldnt be encouraged but to diminish the ability to is to all but guarantee dystopia)

[removed]

Really enjoyed reading this! This finally puts to words why such a reductionistic approach in neurology is one sided.

I have one question, does the mereological fallacy mean the same thing as eliminative materialism or is there a difference between the two concepts?

I understand that these two form one position and their opposite is emergence/configurationism?

Basically, people who contribute to the philosophical “canon.” You could get a phd in Phil and study Plato until you’re the foremost expert, but you will only have learned philosophy, not become a philosopher. Kant put forth that all human experience is phenomenal, which would make “free will” a concept of phenomena. Since Kant, no refutation of this philosophy has stuck that wasn’t a rehashing of enlightenment rationalism. All lasting contributions to the canon have added onto Kant’s philosophy.

I think there is a big difference between primitive racist eugenics VS scientific genetic improvement.

One is a stupid racist ideology based on pseudoscience, the other is actual science trying to make better humans (for all races) without defects and undesirable problems.

Transhumanism is the rational goal to pursue, using tech and AI to create tougher, stronger and smarter humans without all the problems of natural evolution.

What set of philosophers are you defining that leads you to your conclusion?

Not a gotcha, just trying to understand your position.

Are there events that occur which require me as an agent to affect them? If yes, then there is free will, if not, there is neither free will nor me

>If all our decisions can be traced back to genetics, situational and nurture; aren’t those variables beyond our own control anyway?

This is in fact the thrust of Galen Strawson's major argument, which I find to be pretty compelling.

The article basically allows that we don't have freedom to do otherwise but says that free will is still a useful psychological concept, which is true. But it doesn't help proponents of libertarian free will.