I probably would be considered compatibilist, I was just being cheeky at first because free will vs. determinism vs. compatibilism is such a played out college philosophy debate that doesn’t hit on particularly presient issues.

In this debate, Julian Baggini, Güneş Taylor and Tommy Curry analyse the nature of the relationship between reason and emotion. The speakers provide compelling arguments both for the view that reason must be detached from emotions and the argument that reason is crucially linked to emotional experiences. Güneş Taylor argues that it is appropriate to conceive of reason and emotion as separate: reason does not have a biological or physiological basis, while emotions do. Therefore, the power of reason is that it can be divorced from emotions, allowing us to make judgements about a situation even when we are not directly affected by it emotionally, she says. But it is important to understand the interplay between reason and emotion. Julian Baggini contends that we cannot make sense of emotions without reason. Similarly, Tommy Curry rejects that idea that reason can be entirely separated from emotion. Instead, he suggests we must understand it as post-rationalisation of our emotive reactions.

What about those small little and „unimportant“ choices?
Will you treat yourself with a snack this evening? Is it a bar of chocolate, or rather a bunch of carrots?

You’re obviously a schizophrenic with comprehension issues: I wish you well...

...get your 8hrs sleep daily 👍

I agree that we should use words how they are used in daily life and not redefine them.

I think the judges shouldn't call that "free will" based on the usages of "free" and "will". Basically, I personally like the definition of libertarian free will better, because it's about a will that is free.

I'd call what the judge called "acting on free will", "acting based on your own will". If the judges definition is more common, it becomes the correct definition.

When it's hot in a room, then you don't have to fix the air-conditioning system, when there is a power failiure. The air-conditioniner wasn't "responsible". I think punishing criminals is like fixing or calibrating machines.

> We’re just extremely complex machines, so the reasoning is obfuscated to the point that it gives the illusion of free will.

That's interesting. You say you have an illusion of free will, but you have seen through it. I don't even have the illusion of free will. I just have a will, which is inherently subjective, so it can't be an illusion.

Maybe historically free will meant something different then how I'd define it today. Maybe "someone is free to act according to their will". (Maybe not that though. I'm not sure.) A judge said "I'm punishing you, because you acted on free will, i.e. you weren't directly coerced by other peoples wills."

Then over time the meaning of free will evolved to something like "will, at least partially independent of everything", but people still claim to believe in it, because they are thinking of the older, pragmatic definition.

Thanks for the clarification! And so, concerning these other terms I mentioned what’s the exact relation of mereology to them?

Emergence would be the opposite right? Because it in fact indeed treats the brain as a whole and goes as far to say that it’s something even bigger than its singular parts.

Eliminative materialism sounds synonymous but not completely identical with mereology to me because it implies that parts give a whole just only the parts and not something else like in emergence.

I’m asking because I’ve seen these exact terms used on an older discussion on this sub concerning the same topic

There are many people who don't believe in free will, it seems to me and they still follow laws. I don't know what the percentage in the general public is, mabye 25% don't believe in free will 25% do and 50% have never thought about it.

It's like shuffling a deck of cards.

Randomness is a weird concept. I think you can replace it with "unpredictable".

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Predictability depends on an individual perspective. When physicists say that quants are random, they say that noone will ever be able to predict their behaviour.

well there's a term and concept I'd not thought of. Sounds like it'd be useful in far-future sequel to Huxley's Brave New World

the fact that those concepts are vague (because we are ignorant about ourselves) does not change the fact that we have values that drive our choices. whatever the way it's operated, it does not change the outcome

How would you express those values?
There is no language to describe such subjective concepts.
And that would be the requirement for a machine to try to evaluate the results.
Then, computers work in binary. Meaning, everything is discrete to them. There is no continuous spectrum.
For example, who do you love/value more: your parents? Your siblings? Your children? Your pets?
Is this allocation constant? Or might it change depending on the situation?
Also, what are those values anyway?

And finally, who designed that computer? Who programmed it?
Can a universal thought process even exist?

No, philosophers who argue for the mereological fallacy (basically just a few Wittgenstein scholars, not many) aren't denying mental states/ consciousness, they're just saying it makes no sense to treat the brain as the organism/human being as a whole. Take the example of a clock — someone might be inclined to claim that it’s the hands that tell the time, others might claim it’s another part. But we know that it’s the entire clock that tells the time and that it only tells the time when it’s functionally integrated and correctly set.

It's the same for humans and their minds, etc. Psychological attributes are properties of people, it’s a person who thinks, not their brain. They might need a brain to think, but that doesn’t mean it’s the brain that thinks (and so on). This video by Peter Hacker nicely summarises the view - https://youtu.be/EMcmQPdi0Fs

The problem with this article is that it focusses on a single aspect of brain physiology without considering the determinism (or the acausality) of other events. The main problem with free will existing seems to be that our actions are either caused or uncaused. If they're caused, the classic determinism issue comes up. If they're uncaused, we can't influence them. The existence or otherwise, or the nature, of the readiness potential has no bearing on that.

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Here's a thought: your question is dumb and meaningless. According to you that is correct.

Awhile ago I wrote an essay about this. I read all the thought experiments about the continuity of personal identity - the brain upload, the clone, the swampman, memory continuity, etc. - and came to the conclusion that the only answer is that there is no continuous "me", only future people who have minds very similar to me. Tomorrow I am a different person. Dramatic events like lobotomies only serve to make future persons more dissimilar to previous ones.

Because logical positivism is often taken to believe a statement of the following sort: "a proposition is meaningful iff it is empirically testable (in principle if not in practice) or an analytic tautology or contradiction". But this statement would seem to be neither empirically testable, nor a tautology, nor a contradiction. Therefore it is not meaningful. Hence self-defeating. You can change some of the words in the statement above but the idea is the same. Whether there is a way for positivists to escape this sort of argument, I don't know, I haven't studied it.

I'll add that I take the Wittgensteinian view that language's meaning is determined by its use. This means that words can have different meanings, or at least intended meanings, not only in different contexts but also by different people. When a baby says "Mama", it isn't just saying someone's name, it is asking for its mother's attention. When a Muslim says God ("Allah" in Arabic), they typically mean something very different from what a Christian means. When you listen to someone talk, in order to understand what they mean you have to make many inferences into how they are using their words. Arts like poetry and rap can utilise this to layer meanings on top of each other. When you are trying to communicate something precisely, you need to try to make it as easy as possible for others to correctly infer what you mean. That may mean abandoning or giving a definition for what you mean by "god".

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It's obviously not a synonym, nor is it a logical implication. But phrasing the individual's decision in terms of social status vs. truth-seeking does seem apt.

Sure but it's a bit different when it's the government doing the selecting.

Yes exactly! It's really hard to explain to people who aren't as fluent in philosophy. They are very defensive over their "ability to choose" and can't separate the idea of true "free will" from what they really have. Most who disagree see it as a negative when I find it very neutral.

Speaking of the "readiness potential" described in the article where your brain unconciously prepares for a movement, what if I were to ask you to pick a random body part and move it? Let's say you picked your right hand. Why did you pick your right hand and not the left? Or your foot? You cannot say, you think it is literally random but it's of course not. It's caused by a combination of a massive amount of variables we have no control over or may not even be aware of.

I don't think you really have control over your thoughts, emotions or behaviours. We are influenced by our genes and the way we are raised, both of which we have no control of. Then we are influenced by our environment, which we don't always have good control of either. The pandemic quarantine affected me but there was nothing I could do to stop it.

The illusion of free will is a mechanism our brains developed to allow us to function as a species and survive. It may be an illusion but it is a necessary one often times.