Free will re-redux

Of course it's bait. It's just a thread to say hello to some of my old friends here.

Then again, I really am waiting for the coherent description of a libertarian free decision.

~~ Paul

What's your personal position, incompatibalist in favour of hard determinism or combatibilist?

Is that really "Paul"... or is it... "Harry"...?...

So I am not the only one who has heard of Harry Manx. 

I thought you were going with this Harry and Paul ...

https://youtu.be/6ghIoPLyJ-k

You just made one. It wasn't your brain cells.

Edit : You're also demonstrating a fondness for things past. Very un-biological robot like

Why wasn't it my brain cells? Why can't determinism and randomness give rise to the feeling of fondness?

~~ Paul

Is that really "Paul"... or is it... "Harry"...?...

It's really Paul. But I quite enjoyed listening to Harry.

~~ Paul

That was meant to be playful if pointed, btw. In any case, welcome back, friend. I hope there are no hard feelings from last time.

Hard feelings? Not at all.

I still have solid Trump supporters I haven't unfriended on Facebook.

~~ Paul

What's your personal position, incompatibalist in favour of hard determinism or combatibilist?

I'm not sure what the right term is. Determinism and randomness.

I think random means "not deterministic." But that has been argued to death here.

What I get when I ask for a description of a libertarian free decision is more of a description of the source of the decision. I'm looking for the method used to make the decision.

~~ Paul

I'm not sure what the right term is. Determinism and randomness.

I think random means "not deterministic." But that has been argued to death here.

What I get when I ask for a description of a libertarian free decision is more of a description of the source of the decision. I'm looking for the method used to make the decision.

~~ Paul

Well I believe in determinism and randomness, but I'm a compatibilist. The recycled quote for that is along the lines of "A man cannot will what he wills but can do what he wills", you are a product of your environment, your opinions and options are influenced by other things in your life. Where it differes however is that if you were to have to choose between red and blue, even if you might choose red cause of your history, there is no obstacle, no force of the universe stopping you from choosing blue, if something was different you would choose blue. A hard determinist who says there is no free will says that no what, regardless of anything, there was never any possibility, it was always going to be red. I might have butchered it a little, Daniel Dennett the atheist philosopher has written a lot about it you might be able to find something by him if you're interested.

Libertarian free will is still a bit of an outlier to me. There's certainly been interesting neuroscience work regarding free will but a lot of it has turned out to be contradictory, or is across incredibly short timespans. Free will might emerge from randomness or deterministic processes across large spanses of time, compared to a brief second button press. Weeks of deliberation to buy a car might be free while something else might be instinctual. I feel like certain PSI research might be indicative there too, but I'll keep that out since I know you might not care for it. Some of the knowledge arguments, too, against hard determinism can be pretty good too, how can we make scientific progress if certain propositions from hard determinism are true.

But, either way that's just my opinion, and it's not like I can choose to have it or anything.

Where it differes however is that if you were to have to choose between red and blue, even if you might choose red cause of your history, there is no obstacle, no force of the universe stopping you from choosing blue, if something was different you would choose blue.

I always find these arbitrary examples such as choosing A or B where there is no distinction between them, to obscure rather than to illuminate the problem.

There are other choices in life, for example whether to continue in the same path or to set off in a completely new direction, which are much more interesting.

Well I believe in determinism and randomness, but I'm a compatibilist. The recycled quote for that is along the lines of "A man cannot will what he wills but can do what he wills", you are a product of your environment, your opinions and options are influenced by other things in your life. Where it differes however is that if you were to have to choose between red and blue, even if you might choose red cause of your history, there is no obstacle, no force of the universe stopping you from choosing blue, if something was different you would choose blue. A hard determinist who says there is no free will says that no what, regardless of anything, there was never any possibility, it was always going to be red. I might have butchered it a little, Daniel Dennett the atheist philosopher has written a lot about it you might be able to find something by him if you're interested.

Libertarian free will is still a bit of an outlier to me. There's certainly been interesting neuroscience work regarding free will but a lot of it has turned out to be contradictory, or is across incredibly short timespans. Free will might emerge from randomness or deterministic processes across large spanses of time, compared to a brief second button press. Weeks of deliberation to buy a car might be free while something else might be instinctual. I feel like certain PSI research might be indicative there too, but I'll keep that out since I know you might not care for it. Some of the knowledge arguments, too, against hard determinism can be pretty good too, how can we make scientific progress if certain propositions from hard determinism are true.

But, either way that's just my opinion, and it's not like I can choose to have it or anything.

If you believe determinism and randomness are all there is, then it seems to me you also must believe that they are also all there is to consciousness, consciousness is some sort of illusion (somehow without an actual experiencer of this illusion), and you are a materialist in mind-brain philosophy.

We're still waiting for that elusive materialistic explanation of what is the true nature of consciousness, awareness, subjectivity and intentionality, how these things are one and the same as matter and energy and their workings, or epiphenomena of them. The well-known Hard Problem of consciousness is a very good formulation of the core problem with this. The fact is, the true nature of consciousness and its various attributes such as awareness, qualia, subjectivity and agency are a total mystery, with no sign of any breakthrough.

The free will issue hinges on this because the will (or agency or intentionality) and therefore also free will are also essential attributes or components of consciousness, and as such are probably unknowable in terms of human analytical thinking - that is, there will probably never be an answer to the question of how (free) will can be neither deterministic or random, or some combination of the two. But in my opinion the reality of the conscious will and apparent free will are just as self-evident as the existence of consciousness itself - we directly experience them and like the other attributes of consciousness they are in an entirely different existential realm than matter and energy.

I think that there's a lot of truth to that too nbtruthman, but I was just coming at it from a non psi perspective. If we factor in research from there there's a lot of stuff that suggests what might be a kind of classical free will, with respect to one's environment as well. 

But, coming at it from a position equal to Paul's, compatibilism is a solid choice, with room for potential discoveries saying that we might actually have more free will than we originally thought or less.