I’ve seen something like this argument before and I wonder if you can clarify it for me. In the first premise, what does “could have done otherwise” mean? That if they had decided to do otherwise, they could have?

Surely in a deterministic universe this could still be true, because the deciding to do otherwise would be part of the causal chain leading them to act, so changing that part could change the resulting action.

I don’t really understand the second premise either - surely whether the universe is deterministic or not, once an action has been taken it can’t be changed. Can you clarify how someone could do otherwise than they actually do in any kind of universe?

I think I broadly agree that the article above is arguing from a different conception of free will, in a rather sneaky way.

That sounds like something an agent in charge of running the simulation would say to a patient(s) who is close to discovering the truth, in order to maintain the ruse. Just kidding. I too regard it as baseless and arbitrary.

>These are just more assertions lacking any given justification. You aren't bothering to try justify your position at all.

>Also, it's very unclear what idea of free will is sitting in your head.

Why yes, if you neatly clip around the specific parts of my post where I point out that determinism conflicts with the very definition of free will brought up in the article, then yes, you're right.

Here, let me quote the full thing for you:

>A pre-determined choice is not a choice. A deterministic universe neatly wipes out any such concerns as "reason responsiveness" or whatever other definition of free will you care to align on. Zizek's treasured quote that the author presents with such reverence boils down to accepting the lack of choice, and finding "freedom" in that unity with the universe, by recognizing that the "choice" you are making was in fact made by the very universe you are trying to affect, and only has meaning because of that commonality of source.

Let's say there is a human string puppet. It's wants to move a certain way, but the strings (or an exoskelleton) forces it to move another way.

It feels intuitive that a human that isn't tied to strings is freeer than a human that is.

The will may still be determined, so I wouldn't call it free will, but the untied human is free to act according to his will.

A short while ago someone argued that the term "free will" is also used in juristic contexts. I'd say at least they are talking about something, whether you should call it "free will" or not.

I suggest "free to act according to your own will".

People think of string-puppets when they feel uncomfortable with entertaining that they don't have free will.
On the other hand people also would say that a hypnotized person is not acting on free will, although they are free to act according to their will - which happens to be manipulated. Not all types of manipulation are considered as taking away free will. If you ask nicely or buy a service, that is also manipulating will.

What I'm saying is: There might be something what people call "free will" that exists and something different, that other people call "free will", that doesn't exist.

The determinism camp is dying, if not dead already. It's too blatantly obvious that in a determinist scenario, something has to do the determining- and the self is the increasingly obvious starting point. The only remaining debate (which philosophers are currently losing to religion - I would blame this on Heidegger's betrayal of secular philosophy, since my reading of him has steered me and many others in this direction) is whether the self is a "thing" with an extremely limited function, or whether it has a much different nature than we thought and religion is basically right about the most important things. If you're reading this comment, go find some people to study Heidegger with. "Free will" is a somewhat nonsensical term, anyway - I don't think it's translatable from the Germans who formulated these views.

>Well for many ancient people, the answer was simple: if something upsets the gods, it's bad. If it pleases them, it's good.

Maybe, though non-theological ethical philosophy did start in "ancient" times (e.g. see the Ancient Greeks), not all religions had/have gods (e.g. Animism, Buddhism), plenty of people (maybe the majority?) today claim their morality stems from their religion, and of those who don't only a fraction utilise ethical theories to make judgements, rather relying on their intuitions and what their society expects.

>Stuff about Kant

I couldn't find the relevant passage where he lays out his thought experiments about lying, so I can't confirm what you said. I also can't remember whether he used them as examples of or arguments for his categorical imperative framework. And I can't remember anything to do with kittnes lol. In any case, it's strange of you to bring up Kant but not mention the categorical imperative. I get that it's complicated (rules vs. duties, how to resolve conflicts, etc.), and I'm not entirely convinced Kant had fully thought it all out himself, but the way you treat him still feels unfair.

>Jumping to utilitarianism

You started by asking "what actually makes something 'bad' or 'good'", then jumped pretty much into stating your version of utilitarianism. It's fine to be a utilitarian, but you shouldn't pretend you actually made any arguments for why it is correct.

>Stuff about conservatives

I personally think you're right that conservatives, as with almost everyone in society, don't spend much time thinking carefully about ethical theories when making moral judgements, and instead react with their gut combined with the usual psychological biases (in-group vs. out-group, familiarity, confirmation bias etc.). At least the religious can appeal to their scripture, even if it's only when convenient to what they already think. But I don't know if widespread adoption of utilitarianism would help society or mankind. I don't think anyone has ever adopted a life solely governed by utilitarian ideals, because to do so would be nigh impossible; are you familiar with the common criticisms of utilitarianism? Oh and any conservative watching your video will identify what you say they say as strawmen.

I'm not convinced the very concept of free will isn't meaningless. It doesn't necessarily correspond to any aspect of reality. There is an embedded assumption that there is an objective reality in which that free will is exercised and that's a meaningless concept, too. I can only be point to my own subjective experience, and I don't know if the idea of free will has any significance in that context. It feels purely conceptual, purely semantic.

Gödel proved his incompletenes theorem. Of course that only means something when the proof is actually correct.

It's a big proof. It has something to do with the proposition "This sentence is not provable." It turns out that this sentence is neither provable nor unprovable.

Gödel also associated propositions in formal languages with Gödel-numbers. I don't know why that's necessary. You can mathematically reason about words just as well. Something with avoiding self-referenciality?

Well, Gödel actually talks about a number that represents that weird sentence.

more...

It’s also incompatible with the observational data we’ve gathered so far. When we perform fMRI scans of the various structures of the brain and ask the subject to decide between binary options, the decision is made in the subconscious regions and then reported to the conscious regions. This means that when we’re deciding something, our “conscious mind” is told what’s being “thought about” and the eventual verdict, rather than being involved in it.

It appears that not only is free will non-existent, but consciousness may not actually be anything like we think it is. What we call consciousness may in fact just be the communication channels between the various brains that have been strapped on over the years.

Another example is when the connections between hemispheres are temporarily chemically “severed” the hemispheres begin behaving as two distinct minds. When isolating each hemispheres from the other’s field of vision from the other’s, you end up with extremely bizarre behaviors. One such behavior is the subject handing themselves an item from one hand to the next. They’re then asked how the item got into that hand. The response is universally that someone handed it to them.

My personal favorite rebuttal against free will though is “of course the brain would tell you it’s the master of the body.”

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Man I really thought that guy on the left was Dan Harmon for a sec

Make a rap of philosophy, or would that be poetry

If you want to do it, then do it

Thank you for trying to clarify and not argue. I found your post extremely helpful.

>Compatibilism is implying there exists a determinism without decision making capacity.

But it's not implying that.

I don't understand all the hostility towards compatibilism in the comments. To me, asking whether we have free will or everything is predetermined is a false dichotomy, like asking if our muscles are made of fibers or made of atoms. These are just two models of reality, and they are compatible, hence the name.

Compatibilism is simple: Determinism seems true. When I say I "can" decide to stand up and go eat a bar of chocolate, then, all that means that it's a future that appears accessible to me, that perhaps I have an action plan that I think would reach it if taken, a plan I also "can" deliberate upon, accept or reject - what else could it possibly mean? There might be a single future, or a randomly chosen future not under our control - either way we don't have access to knowledge of it. I don't know in advance what I will do, and interact with people who don't, either, all the time. Clearly we're used to doing reasoning under uncertainty and mentally working with counterfactuals. "Can" is a word that works in that context, we regularly use it to reason correctly and make correct predictions about ourselves and others; it must refer to how our decision processes interact with the world/the future, and not some kind of incoherent libertarian free will.

What does “freedom to act” mean? It sounds like a circular definition and nonsensical. If the universe is determined, you would act as you must act due to causality. What does freedom mean? Is it even meaningful outside of an aesthetic context? I think a feeling, what is perhaps referenced by freedom, is being substituted for an axiom without awareness of this choice.

What does free mean? Why do we need a concept of control in order to blame? I can chuck out a faulty coffee maker and I can morally blame a faulty human, if I am willing to thing of humans as a morality machine.

Every time I read about compatibilism I think of the god of the gaps. Except this latest argument does not even appear to be an argument. It seems to say, despite all evidence correctly pointing to our machine like nature bound by physical laws and our physical form, nevertheless we are free. But it says nothing about what freedom is and why that enables us to blame.

Then the calculator's functionality is not isomorphic to arithmetic, and only the physical explanation is true.

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1. If someone acts of her own free will, then she could have done otherwise.
2. If determinism is true, no one can do otherwise than one actually does.
3. Therefore, if determinism is true, no one acts of her own free will.

Is the standard argument.

What's your argument for your claim?

And they also believe that their free choices should be governed by their values and preferences which are a product of their upbringing

> ordinary people generally understand free will as the ability to choose a desired course of action without restraint

And that is perfectly compatible with determinism

Not the person you're responding to, but I think some people can still think of free will as possible in a deterministic universe without thinking that mental processes are somehow not in the mix with everything else.

I do think there are distinct sub systems to a deterministic universe. All things are equally determined and definite in their eventuality, buuut, not all things are of the same magnitude or complexity. The marbles on a track of molecules in a creek are not as sophisticated as the rube goldberging of a mind. To that notion, the more aware of a deterministic state a sub system of a determiniatic reality is, the more it can sort of adjust. SORT OF. We can divert creeks, and hoping for an at least pleasant way along the tracks for those now and in the future, thinking beings can seek a less painful average for their existence. After all, if the hill top of pain is percieved as negative, it only makes sense that all thinking beings would drain downhill towards the less painful reservoir below right?

Definitions are allowed to, and just sorta do, change, and choice/free will might be slightly different in the context of the universe than we initially thought. Like, our galaxy is not milk, but it's still called a galaxy. . .a word derived from thw greek word for milk. People don't still argue whether of not the stars are milk, maybe we need to stop arguing about the stagnant definition of free will not being compatible with a deterministic universe :/

>Is determinism true? I have no idea. That’s a question for quantum physicists to fight about. The interesting philosophical question is what if anything would follow about free will if it were true. - OP article

Determinism is as true as makes no difference. No it is not a physics question and nothing follows.

As I think both Harris and Dennett point out, physics is irrelevant here. Being a slave to the dice is no more free than being a slave to the clockwork. Stochastic mechanics are no more free than any other - they must be exactly random. Random behavior is the opposite of willpower.

Besides, a device that is random cannot compute. It’s a very good thing that at the scale of huge neuron cells, all the quantum randomness has averaged out - or the cell machinery couldn’t work. Your brain thinks because your neurons are non-random. The brain is a huge macrostructure with many emergent layers between your thoughts and molecular randomness.

Quantum mechanics isn’t magic or supernatural. It highlights the huge gap in training between physicists and philosophers that anyone could mention quantum anything in a discussion of free will without being laughed out of existence. It is the sort of silly grasping for mysterious skyhooks that Dennett is fond of roasting people for.

If there is no free will then you have no more free will about your reactions to an act than the actor does in the action.

This is what people seem to miss in this conversation. Somebody does something because they have no choice. You will react the way you do because you have no choice. The "you" could be the police, judge, jury, media, bystander etc.

Everybody acts exactly as the laws of the universe dictate.