Free will and determinism

[BelieveItOarKnot]

It's false instantaneously, whether anybody claims it or not.

Or, as in most claims there is some truth and some not so much

The real difficulty is trying to lay down hard lines on either side of the ledgers

Killing for example we could think is a hard line evil, but when attached to kill or be killed maybe not so much

A more basic and assuredly real construct is that everyone is comprised of good and evil, never one eliminating the other.

As such there are never perfect decisions, perfect outcomes or perfect agreements

That card was never in the deck to start with

 

[BelieveItOarKnot]

Think of it this way -> I’m not claiming where the light ends and the darkness begins; I’m simply saying I can clearly see which direction the light is shining from, and even the shadow testifies to it.

There is a false notion within Christian freewillism that darkness or evil only exists because of a lack of light or good

That can only mean that the light and good was insufficient to dispel or eliminate, which equates to God being insufficient. Freewillism excuses God and writes God out of these equations.

A similar dilemma exists in Christian determinism. It's one thing to state God is the determiner. It's quite another to claim what the determiner determines

 

[Fervent]

Again' it's simply neurobiology combined with determinism. If you don't understand the basic premise, might I suggest that you take the time to acquaint yourself with the subject.

Saying "it's simply neurobiology" doesn't address my criticism, it's not a lack of understanding the premise. It's pointing out that the premise isn't liveable. Asking someone to act in a certain way requires they be in control of their actions, which requires free will. The move from squiggles on a screen to neurobiological processes requires some kind of magic if there isn't an ability to freely act upon the request.

 

[Fervent]

Antecedent conditions. A request for someone to stop doing something can be a simple and polite statement or I could threaten to kill him and his all his family if he doesn't. Both will have some effect on his decision. He'll decide on his preference based on that.

You still aren't getting this, are you...

The conditions determine how he chooses. If they change, then so might he might change his decision. It really is perverse to deny this.

I've spelled out what you are doing, which is creating a definition that cannot be falsified because any evidence presented will automatically be claimed as evidence for your belief. But as I said earlier, if everything can be evideence then nothing is evidence.

 

[BelieveItOarKnot]

It's just the opposite. You can't escape it. For every cause there is an .......?

Fill in the blank.

Let's drive the logic Mack truck through your buddy's construct one more time:

Each person is comprised of, in Polsky's own words, a GAZILLION different deterministic features all contributing to decisions and thereby decisions are determinist.

There are many flaws therein. Does he even touch on randomness, that being a great unkown unknowable in the mix?

It's always one thing with determinism. You can certainly claim it but it can never be completely captured. Sapolsky might think he can juggle and jiggle a gazillion components all interacting with gazillions of other components. Such claims are absurd.

Its one thing to note it. Quite another to say, deterministically what it is, whatever it is

 

[BelieveItOarKnot]

It's pointing out that the premise isn't liveable. Asking someone to act in a certain way requires they be in control of their actions, which requires free will.

In the Christian construct the above is not true.

The evil in humanity has a life of its own that can never be eliminated or eradicated by any act of will

We are all quite immersed in sin, no not one other than God Himself in the flesh being sinless.

There is no action of willpower that can eliminate this fact.

A will that cannot be honest with its own construct certainly isn't free via being a lying hypocrite, but rather is a dominated over captive thereof, easily openly recognized as such

 

[Mark Quayle]

It's required to be honest and even dictionaries do not agree on the primitive. It's unreasonable to suffer false meanings that are unreasonable. The will still has to have substantive meaning in a moral/immoral context. This is not a swipe at anyone, so just give me a chance here. How did you end up appointing a derivative definition of a will that objectively doesn't exist in a moral/immoral context? Consider my reasoning based on the pragmatic premise that the Truth precedes a lie in meaning and a true lie is posing as true.

Nobody likes the logic behind morality because it is clinical. But Romans 9 is pretty clear, both the reprobate and the saved are like clay in the Potter's hand. At the risk of taking the figure too far, God makes some for one purpose, some for another. We are all caused to do what we do. That we do so willingly is enough to rate as a moral issue. And if God is indeed God, and first causer, then he has the absolute right of the potter over the clay. But we insist on being animate, moral in and of ourselves. If God is God, our morality and animation and sentience doesn't even rate, in comparison.

 

[Jerry N.]

What you are describing is a situation where you have two equal options. Not two preferences.

It would be like me asking you if you want to be paid with a ten dollar bill or two fives. What you might say is that it doesn't matter which you take. They're equal. But I'm not going to give you twenty bucks, so you have to take one or the other. You might owe someone $5 so you take the two fives. Or you say it doesn't matter at all to you.

In the first instance, the fact that you owed someone $5 was an antecedent condition that determined your choice. And in the other it was effectively a random decision. No free will in either case.

I understand your concept better now, but I’m postulating that out of the millions of “choices” we make in our lifetime, it is possible that two preferences could be equal. How would you prove that two equal preferences don’t exist? I admit I can’t think of the condition, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I will give it more thought, but I can’t get around the idea that we must take responsibility for our choices. Since I believe there is a God, it is difficult to consider the topic without Him in it.

 

[partinobodycular]

The move from squiggles on a screen to neurobiological processes requires some kind of magic if there isn't an ability to freely act upon the request.

Again, the process isn't magic, it's called determinism. Ask AI a question and it's going to come up with an answer, and it doesn't need free will to do it. All that it needs is an algorithm controlling the process, and that algorithm is purely deterministic. Your thought process wouldn't seem to be any different. Like an AI the brain utilizes an iterative loop by which it refines and assesses the available data. It does this repeatedly until a threshold is reached and a choice is triggered. In this way the AI and the brain function almost identically. In both cases it may seem as though they're 'contemplating' the correct response, but in reality it's just a complex deterministic process. That 'contemplation' may look and feel like free will, but there's no reason to believe that it actually is.

 

[Fervent]

Again, the process isn't magic, it's called determinism. Ask AI a question and it's going to come up with an answer, and it doesn't need free will to do it. All that it needs is an algorithm controlling the process, and that algorithm is purely deterministic. Your thought process wouldn't seem to be any different. Like an AI the brain utilizes an iterative loop by which it refines and assesses the available data. It does this repeatedly until a threshold is reached and a choice is triggered. In this way the AI and the brain function almost identically. In both cases it may seem as though they're 'contemplating' the correct response, but in reality it's just a complex deterministic process. That 'contemplation' may look and feel like free will, but there's no reason to believe that it actually is.

you're making a false analogy, because prompting AI doesn't require the AI to make a decision just run a calcultion. Requesting a human being to act or refrain from acting requires them understanding and evaluating the request, not simply calculating. There is also the issue of transmission, since AI are physically connected all the way through. But the connection between the neurobiology of @BelieveItOarKnot and the words on the screen is not a physical one, but a symbolic/semantic one. So saying "determinism!" doesn't supply an explanation, it just calls the magic by another name.

 

[childeye 2]

I’m writing that there is no dichotomy between free will and determination. Free will is limited by determination and determination does not mean that there is no free will. It is like a road system you can’t leave (determination), but you can choose what turns you make (free will). I have avoided the discussion of faith and the will of God, because these things were not part of the discussion.

I would agree that free will and determinism is not a true dichotomy in the sense that they are not mutually exclusive. Free will would be the upstream view and determinism is a downstream view; determinism is objective and free will is subjective; they cannot be mutually exclusive because the objective view accounts for all subjective views even while the subjective view is limited in its account of the objective view.

Your road‑system analogy describes options, not autonomy. I’m not discussing whether a person can select between available paths. I’m discussing what governs the chooser.

A will governed by appetite, ego, fear, or impulse is not autonomous in any meaningful sense — it is reactive. A will governed by Agape is the only coherent form of autonomy because it is the only case where the self is not being driven by internal compulsions or external pressures.

So the issue is not whether determination limits choices. The issue is that ‘free will’ cannot be defined as a neutral chooser inside a deterministic system. The will is always governed by something, and that governance is the real dichotomy: Agape or non‑Agape, faith or unfaith.

That is why I’m addressing the moral structure of autonomy. It isn’t a tangent — it’s the foundation of the entire question.

 

[Bradskii]

Let's drive the logic Mack truck through your buddy's construct one more time:

Each person is comprised of, in Polsky's own words, a GAZILLION different deterministic features all contributing to decisions and thereby decisions are determinist.

There are many flaws therein. Does he even touch on randomness, that being a great unkown unknowable in the mix?

Yes. And states the galactically obvious point that if something is random then there is obviously no connection with free will.

It's always one thing with determinism. You can certainly claim it but it can never be completely captured.

And you can certainly disprove it. So why haven't you made any attempt to do so? Just nominate an event without a cause.

C'mon...give it your best shot.

 

[Jerry N.]

I would agree that free will and determinism is not a true dichotomy in the sense that they are not mutually exclusive. Free will would be the upstream view and determinism is a downstream view; determinism is objective and free will is subjective; they cannot be mutually exclusive because the objective view accounts for all subjective views even while the subjective view is limited in its account of the objective view.

Your road‑system analogy describes options, not autonomy. I’m not discussing whether a person can select between available paths. I’m discussing what governs the chooser.

A will governed by appetite, ego, fear, or impulse is not autonomous in any meaningful sense — it is reactive. A will governed by Agape is the only coherent form of autonomy because it is the only case where the self is not being driven by internal compulsions or external pressures.

So the issue is not whether determination limits choices. The issue is that ‘free will’ cannot be defined as a neutral chooser inside a deterministic system. The will is always governed by something, and that governance is the real dichotomy: Agape or non‑Agape, faith or unfaith.

That is why I’m addressing the moral structure of autonomy. It isn’t a tangent — it’s the foundation of the entire question.

I don’t have any problem with your logic, if you include moral “input.” The moral side of the decisions we make are based on a responsibility to the source of those moral standards and love. The moral imperatives can be refused, leading to the need for mitigation of the source of the standards. God, being the ultimate source of those standards, requires obedience out of fear or love. However, this thought experiment from Bradskii is trying to determine if free will is possible with the millions of deterministic inputs without considering the influence of God. I think his basic premises are incorrect, and humans (maybe higher animals) can ignore inputs and make some free will choices. Bradskii assumes that only one preference is possible, and I think the assumption is incorrect.

The road‑system analogy is flawed, but is is assumed that God made it.

 

[Bradskii]

I've spelled out what you are doing, which is creating a definition that cannot be falsified because any evidence presented will automatically be claimed as evidence for your belief.

Just supply evidence without a cause. And take a week or so to think about it as I'm giving you (actually me) another break for a while. Discuss the matter with someone else in the meantime.

 

[Bradskii]

For every unknowably determined decision there is an unknowably determined outcome

Gee, that makes no sense. We'll know what the determined outcome is. You'll make a decision. If you mean that we often are unaware of what caused it, then well done. There are infinite determinants.

 

[Fervent]

Just supply evidence without a cause.

Free will isn't "without a cause", it is agentive causation. So once again you are simply defining thing in such a way that everything that can occur will be taken as evidence, which empties any claim of it being built on evidence.

 

[Bradskii]

Free will is limited by determination and determination does not mean that there is no free will.

You need to read the OP again. It means exactly that.

 

[Jerry N.]

Yes. And states the galactically obvious point that if something is random then there is obviously no connection with free will.

And you can certainly disprove it. So why haven't you made any attempt to do so? Just nominate an event without a cause.

C'mon...give it your best shot.

I don’t believe it, but since you don’t believe in God, I would say The Big Bang.

 

[Fervent]

You need to read the OP again. It means exactly that.

Your OP definition isn't the definition of free will, and defining what it must means to make easy work in dismissing it is not only question begging but strawmanning on top of it. Your argument is fallacies built on fallacies built on fallacies. And any claim to be following evidence is nothing but a pretense.

 

[Bradskii]

I understand your concept better now, but I’m postulating that out of the millions of “choices” we make in our lifetime, it is possible that two preferences could be equal. How would you prove that two equal preferences don’t exist? I admit I can’t think of the condition, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

I gave you an example. A ten or two fives. Either might be equally preferrable.

I will give it more thought, but I can’t get around the idea that we must take responsibility for our choices.

I find it difficult as well.

Since I believe there is a God, it is difficult to consider the topic without Him in it.

I'll pass on any aspect of this that concerns God. Others may reply as they see fit.