Summations Only

All the gunman is doing is placing two desires in conflict that would not normally come into conflict, namely my desire to live, and my desire to wear the shirt I want. Obviously, my desire to wear the shirt I want pales in significance to wanting to stay alive, thus I do what the gunman wants.However, in the real world, desires come into conflict all the time. Sometimes they do so naturally, sometimes they do so through the actions of yourself and others. There is no functional difference except that we can point at the gunman and say "He forced this outcome." instead of having to point to the world at large and say "This all forced this outcome."Will I say I'm freer without the gunman. I probably would. WOuld I say I'm free? No. Free, on its own, is an absolute. "Free shoes" means absolutely no cost. "Free from slavery" means absolutely no involuntary servitude. Using free, but then only charging a little bit negates the use of the word free. Calling someone free from slavery because they're only enslaved on Mondays means they're not free. Are they freer? Yes. Ok, I can grant that. That means your will is freer when no gunman is present. That does not mean it is free. But the thing is, what they agree on, I also agree with. What they agree on is something just about anyone would agree with. It does nothing for the debate to assert something that everyone already agrees on. What is important in a debate is where they differ.Part of the difference, one that Mits and I agree on, is that what Dr. A is describing is not free will. Ok, suppose we do that. The compatibilists go away, and Mits and I can continue our discussion on whether people are free of deterministic causes. Now that free will has been redefined, we'll call this ability super mega ultra free will.That's why I'm against this new definition, it does nothing to solve the debate, it only makes the debate more difficult because what we understood to be free will is no longer free will, so we need to come up with a new term, and now, whenever someone says something about free will, we have to stop the discussion and ask them to tell us what they mean by free will. Do they mean the compatibilist definition or do they mean the super mega ultra free will? I think it was the other way around. People seem to have this ability to make choices such that multiple outcomes were possible. It seems like they can be primal causers. "Cool," we thnk, "let's call this ability free will."Determinism came on the scene and said, "Wait, we don't think we actually have this ability, it's an illusion."So, sure, fine, go ahead and redefine it, but that just means we have to come up with another term for how it seems people can make decisions. Then, when that term becomes the norm for describing this ability, can we please ask the compatibilists not to redefine it again? Ok, what about a chip imoplanted in the brain that makes you raise your arm?Probably not free to you either.What about a chip that makes you want to raise your arm, and you subsequently do it?Is the will free in this case?

This still doesn't allow free will, though, right? It only enters randomness into the equation.

Yeah, that's why we're arguing. Exactly, which is why it is wrong to say the will is free, full stop. Free is an absolute, so if you don't mean absolutely free, you need to qualify the statement with, "The will is free of pixies," etc.That's also why I said the situation with the gunman is functionally the same as the one without the gunman. The only difference is that there is one additional factor at play in the environment, and that one addition happens to be something else with a will. It most certainly changes the morality of the situation, but not the functionality of the situation. I agree.

Yeah, I can certainly see the appeal. Once the debate has been settled between libertarians and determinists, maybe revising the definition would make sense, but as long as there is still debate over whether people are free of determinism or not, changing the term's definition only serves to muddy the waters of that debate.I also think there is a perfectly good term already available: will. We can use will to describe everything that compatibilists and revisionists want to use free will for, but without introducing an absolute adjective when an absolute is not warranted.

Which is why I'm willing to allow some constraints, like violating gross laws of physics or logic.But, this just begs the question of where do you draw the line. As a determinist, I feel thet physics determines everything, from the inability to fly, to the inability to choose other than you ended up choosing. Why? It certainly appears that it is, but I contend that that is the illusion. Just because there isn't an obvious cause to your action doesn't mean one isn't there, or that a million little causes combined aren't constraining your choice just as much as the gunman.And even if I concede that it is freer, that doesn't mean it is free.$.50 for something is freer than $1.00 for the same thing, but that doesn't make it free when you only pay $.50. The point of that subthread was that doing what you want, if what you want is fully determined, doesn't make you any freer. Your desire is not free and you don't have the ability to not act on your desire, so where does freedom come in? The only answer is that you are free to act on your desire...but that would seem to be true always.Even with the gunman, you are "free" to act on your desire to remain alive. Just because that desire is placed in conflilct with another desire doesn't necessarily mean you're any less free. If it did, then anytime desires were placed in conflict, you're not free, and so I challenge you to find a time when you don't have competing desires.

I would argue that it should be. However, when normal, everyday people speak about free will, they know that willing yourself to fly is impossible, so I'm attempting to use it as it is commonly used. Technically, you'd lose the ability to act on your will in many respects, but you could still scream (unless gagged), or wriggle, or imagine a nice big ham sandwich.All of our actions are constrained by the environment we are in, i.e. a gravity well constrains our ability to fly, a vaccuum constrains our ability to breathe, etc. Being tied down is just another environment that constrains our options. That's the illusion. Somtimes the constraints are more obvious, but if you can only do one thing at any given time, how is that any more or less constrained? There are always constraints that make it such that you can only do one thing, even if it may seem like you could have done otherwise.So, it's never absolutely free, and in my opinion, it's never even remotely free.

Yep, you got it. Welcome aboard.

What do you mean by this? Do you believe you can break causality?

Ok, then he's not talking about the same free will as Mr. Mits. I'm saying that Mr. Mits and Dr. A are in agreement on 99.9%. In fact, if you divorce the word "free" from the conversation, I'm going to agree with 99.9% of what they're saying.All I'm saying is that there is a debate between Libertarians (like Mr Mits) and Determinists, and in that debate, we're using free as meaning free from determinism. Having compatibilists come in and say that free doesn't mean free from determinism does nothing for the debate. If you don't mean free from determinism, then all three of us agree, but that still leaves the question about whether we are free from determinism.I then go one step further, and say that the compatibilist should know this, so their entering the debate and proposing a different definition of free in order to "solve" the debate is disingenuous. It sows confusion, either intentionally or not. And I'm saying he's not using it in the same way. He's conflating terms. Just like my eyesight analogy.

We've disagreed about this before. They point to the same visible effect, riasing hands and such, and they both say "Free will caused that."However, they have completely different mechanisms for what they mean by that sentence. One means "He, as a prime cause, raised his hand despite the possibility that he would not raise his hand."The other means, "He raised his hand because he wanted to, and there was no possibility of him not raising his hand."Did you get a chance to read through my eyesight analogy? Do you think both Mits and the Compatibilist are talking about the same phenomonological thing, but differing on the mechanics in that case?

It sure does. And except when thinking about it, or debating it, I act as if I can.But I can point to a lot of things that it seems like I could do, but in reality can't. This is also true. In fact, if you read earlier in the thread, I was trying to force quantum mechanics into the equation. It turns out, I didn't need to do that.Others are now adding Chaos Theory to the equation. The problem is, this adds randomness, but I don't see how it gives the type of free will we all seem to feel we have.Basically, I envision it like this. I do something, then ask myself why I did it. I name a few reasons. Then I stop and think, if those reasons were enough to make me want to do something, then wasn't it really those reasons that caused my action, and not me? If I set up an exactly the same environment, with the same causes, wouldn't I take the same action? If that's the case, then, allowing those causes, did I really have the option of not taking that action?Simply, I decide to turn left out of my drive way instead of right.
Why?
Well, turning left gets me out of my subdivision faster, it uses less gas, and I am accustomed to turning left. I'm also on my way to work, so going the shortest route ensures the higest probability of getting to work on time.So, given those reasons, could I turn right? Why would I? Well, maybe you wanted to be late for work because you know you have a bad day ahead of you and the cost of being late is minimal.Ah, but now you've entered another cause, one that overrides the previous ones, and the situation is not the same as when I turned left. If I really think about it, it just seems obvious that, given all the causes acting on me and my brain, the choice I make is inevitable. We would be very, very advanced robots, if we're robots at all. We're simply physical beings in a physical universe set up with causality as a central "law." Our consciousness makes us special, but not special enough to counteract the laws of the universe. I often say that free will is an illusion, but a necessary one. I think, if a lot of people actually believed in determinism, and understood the ramifications of it, they would probably just lay in bed, thinking nothing matters. So I have two conflicting impulses, I like to try and spread the truth (or what I believe to be the truth) through discussion and debate, but I also want everyone to be happy and find meaning in their lives. This is one case where I have conflicting desires. It's like when I'm on this forum, the part of me that wants to debate and spread truth has pointed a gun at the part of me that wants everyone to be happy.

And so would everyone else. My question is, why would they call this supersight, then? Wouldn't that just serve tio introduce confusion, especially among those debating the ability as it was defined, i.e. unaided? Yes, so therefore, I would completely justified in saying that supersight is an illusion, it doesn't exist.

Unfortunately, that sort of thinking doesn't work for me, because I always tend to keep thinking along the lines of, "Well, if I can anticipate that something bad will happen, then it can influence me not to attempt the jump."Of course, I don't often ride dirt bikes. One time, I was riding my mountain bike down a path. Ahead of me, I saw some people, so I took the side course, completely forgetting that it ended in about a 4 foot drop onto rock. When I saw the drop ahead, and knew I couldn't stop in time, yeah, I became kind of fatalistic, and instead of trying to stop it, I just accepted that it was going to happen and did all I could to just land the jump and keep going. It worked out fine. QM implies that randomness is indeed the order of atomic-scale things...or more correctly, probabilities. However, this doesn't exactly add "choice," and in fact, if we added randomness into decision making, I think people would feel even woprse about themselves than if we were all deterministic robots.For example, now we can rationalize when someone does something unspeakably horrible, by assuming they must have had a mental defect, or were abused as a child, or something. If it was actually random or probabilistic, it would seem to imply that there is a non-zero chance that anyone, including yourself, could just do something horrible without anything causing it. That would terrify the bejeezus outta me. That would be an expression of habit, which could be argued to be an example of determinism, or an example of free will, if people were willing to really get into it. Again, that could be because of a host of very complex, minute causes that were in flux. For example, your preference for a certain scope, versus the efficacy of that scope, versus mundane things like your emotional state at the time, the number of actions it takes to change the scope, etc.Complexity seems to be the major driver of the illusion, and in fact, in many interactions, complexity seems to overload the brain's capacity to understand something. But my presence was caused by previous actions. So, given my presence, the ball shattering is less likely, then there is the actual decision to catch the ball or not, on my part. What makes me decide to catch it rather than let it drop?I would be a very active participant in the action, and strongly affect the resulting future, but I would say that despite its complexity, if you break it down into all the little actions, my presence, my reasons for catching versus my reasons for not catching, etc, it begins to appear more and more obvious that it was predetermined. The difference is that, at least currently, robots are built to fulfill a function, and as such, you can very easily figure out what one will do. Now, we're on the cusp of creating robots that react to very complex stimuli, and therefore, we don't know exactly what it will do. DARPA, for instance, has a robotic "mule" to carry packs and equipment for soldiers. It's quite impressive how well it responds to walking over uneven terrain, or even being kicked or hit in order to stumble.But as humans, we're so complex, and so many of the causes are internal and otherwise not obvious, that even though you can think of us as very complex robots, isn't it at least interesting to see how you and everyone else will react to the world in the future? Quite often, I don't know how I'll react in a given situation until the situation presents itself, and then afterwards, I'm all, "Wow, I didn't expect me to do that."Every minute is another chance at discovery, and I for one, am incredibly interested in seeing what happens. But this is true of all animals, and even all objects. The ball would have shattered on the floor, except for the presence of the bed, which stopped it from hitting the floor, and cushioned its deceleration such that it didn't shatter.And don't forget the person throwing the ball. Presumably, if the person wanted the ball to shatter, he could easily figure out a way to do it.

Maybe not a strong one. (If there can be strong and weak determinists, why not strong and weak libertarians?) I certainly behave as a libertarian. Most people I talk to certainly answer as a libertarian. They believe, or in cases like me behave, as if they can break causality, that they really do have options to do other than they did. I don't know. When you get into moral debates about something someone has done. It invariably includes the proposal that the person is morally culpable for what he did because he didn't have to do it. This implies that he was the prime cause of the actions, that it was consistent with the state of the universe just prior to the heinous act that he not do it. I think alot of people see major events as causing other major events, or even a lot of minor events causing a major event, but when you get down to the individual level, there seems ot be a disconnect. It's very definitely inconsistent, which is why I don't subscribe to the supposed cause of this disconnect.It's weird. If they see someone that's "normal" hitting a kid, they'll at the very least, feel strongly that the person is a bad person. If they find out that the abuser was abused himself as a child, they feel like th person is less of a bad person, but also many seem to feel that he could have oversome that former abuse, so he's not fully free of blame. And finally, if the abuser is found to have a severe mental handicap, then it quite often makes them feel as if the abuser is not really at fault, it's an effect of the mental handicap.So, yes, there is a major disconnect, and a lot of it comes from the fact that some cases have obvious major causes, and others are more complex, and complexity tends to overload the brain's ability to comprehend. Most people tend to view themselves as at least partially free from causality, that they can override mere causality and do something else, and unless they see an obvious reason another person can't, they tend to assume that of others as well. But I think that's exactly what he woudl do. He woudl point ot the handicapped person and say the action was determined. But the "normal" person did of his free will, i.e. it was his choice and was not caused by anything else.I really do believe that the average person sues free will as a shorthand for the perceived ability humans have to break causality, to be the sole cause of things they decide to do. Possible is a very difficult word. Most people use it to convey the fact that something is not directly ruled-out by laws of physics. But even here, it depends on how fine-tuned you get with those laws and how aware we are of the circumstances.For example, if you had just left the room, know there was no chair in there and that no one else could ahve moved into the room, you can say that a chair inside the room is impossible. But, if you moved farther away, the fact that no one entered the room is no longer somehting you know, so you feel as if the possibility has opened up, when in fact, the possibility is exactly the same, because no one entered the room.Essentially, people use possible to express how confident they are in their awareness of the situation. If something is possible, it just means they are not aware of anything that would rule it out. We wouldn't, necessarily. We weren't talking about how people talk at all times, and I've even said that I would act and say things thatare consistent with libertarianism in every day life. The question at hand is what MITS actually thinks about the situation deep down. To get to this, you might have to ask a few questions and dig a bit, but once you get his grand philosophical belief, it will probably turn out that he really believes that each route was exactly as possible as the other in a grand metaphysically robust sense. But would he also assume that that external causal factor was sufficient to determine the choice, or would he assume that, even given that cause, I could have decided to go the other way? I think, if we use the word free, it should be used as an absolute, but in that case, I'd be doign the same thing as the revisionists, and redefining the term away from how it is commonly used. Only if by "all possible choices" you mean "the only possible choice." And I could accept free will means I can only do one thing at any and all given times, but it would be a drastic revision of what I think of when I think of free will.

Not necessarily. Hard Determinism is the belief that determinism is incompatible with free will. Soft Determinism asserts that free will is compatible with determinism (Dr. A is a soft determinist).If we allow quantum randomness, it still rules out free will, in my mind, so I'm still a hard determinist.It might rule out the possibility that every action could theoretically be predicted, down to atomic decay, but only at atomic scale or below. Up at the macroscopic world, including us humans, everything is cause and effect. I was merely stating that adding randomness into decision making is scarier than determinism. I don't think that randomness exists in decision making, and it seems pretty inescapable that we are not independent of previous states. Yeah, this is exactly how it feels, and why free will, as a concept, has persisted since time immemorial. The thing is, I could ask you "Why did you move your pinky?" And you would have an answer, maybe even as simple as "Because I wanted to." But then I could ask "Why did you want to?"For free will to make sense, there would have to be a spot, along that chain of quesitoning, where there simply wasn't an answer to "Why X?" If there's an answer, that's a cause.But, that doesn't seem right either. It seems like, if there's no answer to why, then that first action must be random, but as I've said, random doesn't help either.This is one of the things that Dr. A, and Straggler now, see as a reason to redefine free will; it's internally inconsistent or self-contradictory. Assuming free will, as it is seemingly understood, results in denying free will. In logic, this is a way to disprove a claim, asserting it ends up denying it.