(2020-12-02, 02:08 AM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: I've read/listened/watched a lot of stuff about free will, since it ties into my interest in Philosophy of Causation...and I still don't know what kind of "how" answer you're looking for. I don't think I've ever seen the problem with free will presented this way. Usually it's a question of determinism, or physical closure, or the falsity of materialism. Every now and then I see someone mention the randomness/determinism exclusive dichotomy but no one's ever given an argument for [the dichotomy's] truth that I've seen.
I'm not giving any argument for the dichotomy. I shelved it pages ago. I'm just looking for a description of a free decision.
Quote:I don't even see why "a free decision is made" is really a problem to be honest. It seems like if there is free will there's going to be a component to the decision making process that does involve mental causation selecting a possibility. Without that you either lose the free part or the will part [or both at once...depends if "unfree will" or "random freedom" make sense].
I agree there is a mental cause selecting a possibility. How is the selection made?
Quote:Seems like the issue is again the idea that there's a randomness/determinism dichotomy? Or maybe the idea that something can be indeterministic without being random?Yes, what does it mean to be indeterministic but not random? In particular, what does it mean in the domain of making free decisions? What is the indeterministic method of making the decision? What steps lead you to indeterministically choosing A rather than B?
If the existence of a thing is indistinguishable from its nonexistence, we say that thing does not exist. ---Yahzi
(This post was last modified: 2020-12-05, 07:12 PM by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos.)