Free will and determinism

[Fervent]

I think it's time for someone to explain how they make decisions. I don't think that @Fervent is going to do it. So off you go. Explain the process point by point and we'll investigate it. I'll wait here while you think about it.

Nope, no plans to offer an explanation. It's a mystery, but it seems preferable to be honest enough to admit that it's a mystery than pretend to know something that I couldn't possibly know or defend. And it's pretty clear that neither side is going to budge at this point and we're just going to go round and round, so how about you answer why you would be so committed to denying the efficacy of your own agency and denying causal power to your will? What do you gain out of playing the word games to claim you have free will but not really?

 

[Mark Quayle]

That's an awful lot of words to not say very much.

Yes, it is very complicated to try to accommodate your thinking so that you can understand the simple fact of causation.

Could have stopped with the first point, because you've stated a metaphysical thesis as if it were a self-evident truth.

Abstract thinking concerning physical principle does not imply metaphysical thesis. And yes, it is self-evident that causation drives all things subsequent to first cause. What is not self-evident, is the illogical notion that determinism rejects choice.

You admit you can't catalogue all of these supposed causes, so where do you gain knowledge of them?

Why use the nebulous term, "gain knowledge of"? Why should I need to be able to catalogue the myriad causes and long chains that result in the choice someone makes, in order to know that all effects are caused?

We see it all day every day! We even speak that way --"Why did Billy do THAT!? What in the world is WRONG with you, Billy???"

I need not catalogue anything, except my own experience of making decisions. You're stuck on a metaphysical hypothesis that isn't warranted, and in defense of that hypothesis you demean your own experiences. You call it "logic" but it's really not rational in the least, because you must deny having any genuine effect on your own thoughts, beliefs, or actions. It's all just prior causes playing themselves out in your life.

I'd like to see why you think it is metaphysics, but in the end, it doesn't matter. The question is irrelevant. That fact is that cause-and-effect is self-evident all around us. You have, for some reason, neither metaphysical nor physical support, but only happy-go-lucky ignoring of the obvious. Your position is maintained only by the consternation of "Determinism denies CHOICE!" Yet nobody has yet shown how that is so. It is only so far, in something like 148 pages of nearly 3000 posts, mere assertion.

But it has been fun!

 

[Bradskii]

Nope, no plans to offer an explanation. It's a mystery...

How you make a decision is a mystery? How on earth can that be? How can it possibly be that you don't know how you chose something? I'm not looking for some esoteric, hard to comprehend neurological process. I just want to know the steps that you go through to decide something. How you a make a choice. You can pick anything that you like. It can be an actual choice that you made or you can invent one. The job that you have. The place that you live. Where you last went on holiday and how you got there. Anything. Anything at all.

If you asked someone why they chose to live in NY or why they went to France for their holiday and they said 'Hey, it's a complete mystery to me', you'd think they were an idiot. So please, don't say that you don't know. Tell us what the process is that you go through.

 

[Fervent]

Yes, it is very complicated to try to accommodate your thinking so that you can understand the simple fact of causation.

Your model of causation is not a fact. And that's where this whole conversation breaks down, because you assert a simplistic model of causation as "fact" when it is anything but. You're talking about an overarching metaphysical "fact" that you believe in without being able to demonstrate, while I'm talking about a model of human behavior. What I'm saying is empirical, yours a construct of your thinking.

 

[Fervent]

How you make a decision is a mystery? How on earth can that be? How can it possibly be that you don't know how you chose something? I'm not looking for some esoteric, hard to comprehend neurological process. I just want to know the steps that you go through to decide something. How you a make a choice. You can pick anything that you like. It can be an actual choice that you made or you can invent one. The job that you have. The place that you live. Where you last went on holiday and how you got there. Anything. Anything at all.

Here you go again with what appears to be dishonesty, unless you genuinely have comprehension issues. It is a mystery how it is possible for me to make decisions, because I don't know everything that is involved in the process and don't pretend that I do. There are influences that I'm not always aware of, causes that I can't always track down, but ultimately the choice is at least partially in my hand. I won't pretend to understand how the universe works such that I am able to make decisions, though it seems unlikely that it is a fixed process with only one possible outcome. So because the best explanation for human behavior seems to be free will, and it seems that by definition free will is excluded on determinism, it seems likely that determinism is false.

If you asked someone why they chose to live where they live or why they went to France for their holiday and they said 'Hey, it's a complete mystery to me', you'd think they were an idiot. So please, don't say that you don't know. Tell us what the process is that you go through.

You're claiming a lot more than that. If you asked that same person how a T-rex dying in Montana millions of years ago played into their decision they'd likely laugh in your face. Yet that's the kind of ridiculousness determinism asks us to believe. Having reasons for making decisions doesn't prove determinism, it just creates a dishonest distraction from the conversation.

 

[Bradskii]

Your model of causation is not a fact.

If we ask 'Why did that happen?' we are looking for a cause of it happening. We are looking for the reason why it happened. What you are saying is that you make decisions for no reason. There was no cause for them being made.

Hence my request for you to give an example of a decision that you made so that we can examine it. And hence the reason why you will avoid doing so. It's not a mystery. That's a nonsensical excuse. You just haven't got an example that fits your position.

Maybe @CoreyD will try.

 

[Bradskii]

Here you go again with what appears to be dishonesty, unless you genuinely have comprehension issues. It is a mystery how it is possible for me to make decisions, because I don't know everything that is involved in the process and don't pretend that I do.

No, I just want what you do know. That keeps it simple. Tell me the reasons that you know about as regards any decision you have ever made. No need to involve dinosaurs.

 

[Fervent]

If we ask 'Why did that happen?' we are looking for a cause of it happening. We are looking for the reason why it happened. What you are saying is that you make decisions for no reason. There was no cause for them being made.

You're twisting words around here relying on multiple meanings of "cause." I may have several reasons for doing something, all separately causing the same behavior. But that doesn't work in determinism, which requires that the decision have a sufficient historical cause. It is not enough that there are contemporaneous causes that lead me to make a decision, as reasons would be. If you truly wished to defend determinism, you wouldn't be resorting to these word games. And since you've been called out on it multiple times and persist with these sorts of "arguments" I must conclude you are intellectually dishonest, whether it is simply fooling yourself or trying to fool others is the only question.

Hence my request for you to give an example of a decision that you made so that we can examine it. And hence the reason why you will avoid doing so. It's not a mystery. That's a nonsensical excuse. You just haven't got an example that fits your position.

Maybe @CoreyD will try.

Yeah, your repetition of the same "argument" doesn't make it any better. You divert from the real issues with determinism and refuse to answer questions of why you defend such a thesis even though it requires you to engage in this sort of sophistry in order to have some semblance of defense.

 

[Fervent]

No, I just want what you do know. That keeps it simple. Tell me the reasons that you know about as regards any decision you have ever made. No need to involve dinosaurs.

For word games that you've been called out on multiple times by multiple users. Since you're arguing against a position no one holds, while conflating multiple meanings of the same word in order to give a smoke screen "defense" that doesn't actually fit with determinism, since you're calling contemporaneous "causes" antecedents, but I'm willing to bet you believe that physical causation is the heart of determinism, which would mean these "causes" you speak of(reasons, desires, etc) are not causally involved...since the sufficient cause of any action would be physical structures. You're conflating a metaphysical hypothesis with an explanation of human behavior, and giving undue priority to the metaphysical hypothesis.

 

[Bradskii]

I may have several reasons for doing something, all separately causing the same behavior.

Now your position was that you could make a decision that wasn't caused by anything. Now you've just said that there are reasons why you did something and they caused the decision. Maybe you can be specific about what it was so we can look at what it was that was 'causing the same behaviour.'

At the moment you are describing what I've been explaining to you. So there must be something that you are missing. Please continue.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Fervent said:
Nope, no plans to offer an explanation. It's a mystery...

How you make a decision is a mystery? How on earth can that be? How can it possibly be that you don't know how you chose something? I'm not looking for some esoteric, hard to comprehend neurological process. I just want to know the steps that you go through to decide something. How you a make a choice. You can pick anything that you like. It can be an actual choice that you made or you can invent one. The job that you have. The place that you live. Where you last went on holiday and how you got there. Anything. Anything at all.

If you asked someone why they chose to live in NY or why they went to France for their holiday and they said 'Hey, it's a complete mystery to me', you'd think they were an idiot. So please, don't say that you don't know. Tell us what the process is that you go through.

@Fervent if how your thesis works is a mystery, you have no basis for rejecting determinism. You have to show how you can make decisions uncaused.

 

[Bradskii]

For word games that you've been called out on multiple times by multiple users. Since you're arguing against a position no one holds...

Your position is that decisions can be made that are uncaused. I'm arguing against that. We're looking for examples from you. We're looking for the process that you go through in making a decision so we can examine it (you said it was a mystery but then almost immediately said that there are reasons for making a choice - and that's part of the process).

...since you're calling contemporaneous "causes" antecedents...

Yes, we'll keep this simple. You might argue that a T Rex has nothing to do with where you go on holiday, so we'll skip that. But your position is not that dinosaurs have nothing to do with causation in regards to your decisions. Your position is that a decision can be made where nothing is the cause.

So please, carry on describing your process (using contemporaneous information that you know about).

 

[Aaron112]

Silence may be Gold. Video Biblical advice how to stop arguing with bad spirits.

"I needed this. I live with a friend temporarily and she misunderstands me a lot and twist my words. I will be quiet. Let go and Let God."

Nope, no plans to offer an explanation. It's a mystery, but it seems preferable to be honest enough to admit that it's a mystery than pretend to know something that I couldn't possibly know or defend. And it's pretty clear that neither side is going to budge at this point and we're just going to go round and round, so how about you answer why you would be so committed to denying the efficacy of your own agency and denying causal power to your will? What do you gain out of playing the word games to claim you have free will but not really?

 

[Mark Quayle]

Silence may be Gold. Video Biblical advice how to stop arguing with bad spirits.

"I needed this. I live with a friend temporarily and she misunderstands me a lot and twist my words. I will be quiet. Let go and Let God."

relevance?

 

[Bradskii]

Silence may be Gold. Video Biblical advice how to stop arguing with bad spirits.

Maybe you're unaware of the cosmological argument. It's one of the 'proofs' for God. That every event has a cause. Therefore we can take that cause and effect back to the very beginning and we could say that there must have been, right at the start, an uncaused cause. And that is God.

Now I don't agree with the conclusion. But the premise, put forward by no less than Thomas Aquinas, is actually determinism. It's a well know theological argument. It hardly springs from 'bad spirits'. I am absolutely certain that if I had put Iit forward as such then those now arguing against it would be agreeing with it.

Maybe you should investigate it.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Everything that makes up 'you'. Everything that you are constitutes part of what is the sum of all the information on which you are basing your decision. The antecedent conditions. Your character, your biases, your past experiences, your mood, your health...everything that makes you the person that you are.

Which includes capacity for reasoning....or in other words, the ability to create reasons, not merely preferences, for a choice.

Free will.

 

[Ana the Ist]

@Fervent , at the risk of 'flaming', can you not see the lack of intellectual integrity within your position? You exalt 'what seems like' beyond 'what is simply logical'. That is the way of religious cults and drunkards. (No I am not calling you those things). You seem to be clinging to something beyond the mere discussion, that you fear to lose by admitting to the simple logic of causation.

The simple logic of causation?

I gave you an example of a situation where it would be extremely difficult to find a unique cause for a unique choice....and you simply asserted it must be there.

That's faith, not logic, not evidence. You can claim whatever you like without any shred of evidence....but there's nothing remotely logical about it.

When one throws an apple, the causes are some of them obvious. You seem to focus on the will as a not only primary and immediate cause, but as itself not having antecedent causes. We are not denying that the will has chosen to throw the apple. We are denying that the will is uncaused. We are not denying that the will must take responsibility for throwing the apple. We are saying the will is caused to take responsibility (or to refuse to take responsibility). But the will does not cause itself. It is, because it is caused to be. Thus, no matter how you paint it, it is not entirely spontaneous (and yes, 'entirely spontaneous' is redundant --something is either spontaneous, or it is not-- there is no such thing as "partly spontaneous", anymore than there is such a thing as "partly random".

 

[Ana the Ist]

Yes, nobody else is making them. How many times I have made that clear? You keep asking the same questions and I keep giving you the same answers.

It's not 'or'. It's 'and'. And they are based on what you know of the world at the time you make them. How else can you possibly make a decision? This has been explained I don't know how many times.

You can abstract from the known possible choices to unknown possible choices or synthesis of existing possible choices into new possible choices.

Obviously.

There's nothing magical about deciding what you prefer.

Preference doesn't seem to have much to do with the prospect of reasoning. I may prefer to call in sick but go to work anyway.

They're not 'arbitrary' decisions.

Some must be arbitrary. When potential differences between definitely unique choices are made out necessity without any clear understanding of differences....your idea of cause seems to entirely disappear in any explanatory power.

That's because the only distinguishing factor between cause and effect is the relationship between them. When I choose to get a soda from the fridge....the cause is always because I wanted a soda from the fridge. It's doesn't matter which one is chosen because I have to choose one, so the idea that a unique cause made me choose one is absurd.

This occurs in exactly the same way if free will exists or not.

Then determinism explains nothing at all. It's nonsense masked as intellectualism. You're so far removed from your previous claims you now believe determinism and free will are the same thing....literally.

Congratulations, you've played yourself. A theory that unprovable (and it is) and unfalsifiable (and it is if this is what you're now claiming) is a useless theory.

No, the metaphysical concept is dualism. This mysterious manner in which one can make choices that aren't determined by anything.

What could you possibly be choosing from if you aren't at least limited by the choices you can consider? Not determined by anything makes no sense....where am I where completely unknown choices are only possible and still considered choices? Outside a universe lol?

Your attempt to redefine free will in nonsense....and determinism doesn't attack dualism.

 

[expos4ever]

I would like to address the matter of whether determinism excludes the possibility of making decisions. I maintain that it is relatively self-evident that it does not. A computer program, which I assume we will agree is completely deterministic, can make decisions - based on input and the logic of the program and the data it is fed, it may produce different outputs that, in turn, can affect the world (for example, if the program is inside a robot). Are these not decisions?

On the other hand, if you define a decision as necessarily entailing free will or some element of indeterminism, that's another story. But to me, that would be arguing circularly.

I suggest that a decision occurs anytime processing of information produces an impact on the world. I see no case that decisions cannot occur in a fully deterministic world.

 

[Jo555]

All decisions we make are determined by existing and prior influences. There has been an effectively infinite chain of events which has resulted in me sitting here writing this sentence. They have all led to this point. From the major events - I was born at a specific time and place, to the minor ones - it's raining today, to the seemingly inconsequential - I broke a string on my guitar last night.

There is no way that existence cannot be described other than determined.

The question is then not whether we make decisions that affect the trajectory of future events - I obviously decided to do this rather than something else. But if free will is defined as the ability to make decisions that are not determined by prior events and we could rerun the last hour exactly as it happened and make a different decision, then something actually needs to be different. But rerunning it exactly as it happened means that nothing is different.

So free will cannot be compatible with determinism. And if existence is deterministic then free will is an illusion.

If i understand you correctly, i agree to an extent.

As a Christian from what i know of freewill, or the ability to choose, before conversion, is an illusion ... But i can elaborate more on your thoughts because i think we are kinda on the same page there. And excuse me if I'm not fully understanding you. I feel like I'm struggling in French class all over again.

Merci Beaucoup.

The apostle Paul covers this in the book of Romans, chapter 7:

14 So the trouble is not with the law, for it is spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. 15 I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate. 16 But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. 17 So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.

18 And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[d] I want to do what is right, but I can’t. 19 I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. 20 But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.

21 I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. 22 I love God’s law with all my heart. 23 But there is another power[e] within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. 24 Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? 25 Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.
---------
In this chapter, and elsewhere in the book, Paul is speaking of the ineffectiveness of the law to change us because of spiritual properties at work. These spiritual properties are greater than our knowledge of good and evil and wanting to choose good over evil. This is the state of man before faith in Christ. More to it that i can go into later, but yes, prior faith the ability to choose is illusionary. The point of bringing choice in, and the law, was never to redeem us, but to show us our inability of our own.

As i like to tell others, you can test it. Life itself confirms these things.

Like i used to smoke. I tried to quit, but i just kept going back to it because knowing it wasn't good for me and just telling myself not to smoke just made the desire for a cigarette even greater. This is how partaking if the knowledge of good and evil works, or the law. It doesn't change you within; doesn't change the spiritual property at work. In other words, it doesn't change the heart.

It was brought in as a temporary measure to show us ourselves apart from the Lord's Spirit, given to those who believe in Father's God's work through Christ. Additionally, it is also like the police, who are representatives of the law. It helps restrain human behavior out of fear of consequences, but has no power to change the heart / spiritual property.

Whether you believe in God or not, it is hard to deny the depth of wisdom in there regarding human nature and properties at work.

So i would say that prior to faith, you premise is correct. I don't necessarily believe that is the case after faith, but not sure how affectively i can debate that because I'm still learning your language.

Can say more on it, but not sure if I'm on the same page regarding your thoughts and takes time to going into it more, so may need to return another day.

I ended up dropping french. Hopefully i can do better here.