(2019-03-08, 02:41 PM)Laird Wrote: Please, can anybody give me a hand-waving description of a deterministic decision? Just a few necessary steps. Somebody, give me an example of a deterministic decision with some necessary steps. Please, somebody - anybody - fulfill my sincere request. All I'm asking for is even a vague example of a necessary series of steps which constitute a deterministic decision. Seriously, can nobody provide this?
Just assume they are necessary. It may be that there are no necessary events in our world, but I can still describe a set of necessary steps just in case our world is deterministic/random. I have a way of answering my own question in the context of such a world.
If you are going to insist that there are no necessary steps in our world, then that only increases the burden on you to describe how an unnecessary step actually occurs. But this is all irrelevant, since I have already stipulated that there is room for free will. I asked for a description of how a free decision is made. In response, you asked me for an example of a description in a physicalist world. I gave you one. The entire point of the description is to show what I want, not to be guaranteed correct. In particular, it does not involve any underlying axioms. I'm not asking for your axioms. I'm asking for something like I presented.
If it's not possible to give such a description without sounding mechanistic, fine. If you believe my question is incoherent, then I will accept that. But it will be tough to accept an alternate model of reality when the fundamental point in question---we can make free decisions---is just a matter of faith.
~~ Paul
If the existence of a thing is indistinguishable from its nonexistence, we say that thing does not exist. ---Yahzi
(This post was last modified: 2019-03-08, 03:18 PM by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos.)