Why do you still believe in free will, Veeky Forums...

Why do you still believe in free will, Veeky Forums? This concept is nothing but a comfort blanket and does not accurately reflect the human thought process.

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My sense of self makes it seem intuitively true, and if I'm wrong there are no downsides because I didn't have a choice in the first place.

>does not accurately reflect the human thought process
Well except for the scientific studies that say otherwise. Fun fact, the Libet experiment, the most famous experiment that initially lead some to use it as evidence to support determinism has had studies to supersede that lead to the opposite conclusion.

I don't share your intuition. To me, at least some form of determinism makes much more sense. To the extent that we are "free", our thought process is better described as "freely considering", meaning it can consider a staggering amount of choices theoretically. The choice your will actually commits to, however, is tied to your emotional, biological, social conditions. Selectively interpreting information to cope with reality is an instrinsic mechanism of our thought processes, precluding any notion that they are non-determined.

>using scientific studies to back up metaphysical theories

>I can argue across definitions
Wittgenstein would like a word with you.

I think you misunderstand what I mean by intuitive. I feel like I'm making a choice by responding to you. Perhaps I'm not really, but as far as I am capable of experiencing emotions my sense of self is told that it has the ability to do so.

And, again, I see no reason to believe the opposite, since the only way my choice of belief could matter is if it's false.

>I can cross epistemological gaps

Philosophy would like a word with you

Have you done much reading on the subject? It sounds like you have this straw-man idea about what free-will is that doesn't line up with any sense of what modern proponents of free-will actually believe. No one has seriously been a proponent of free will libertarianism for around two centuries.

>I can cross epistemological gaps
Except I didn't because we are arguing about two different things that use the same word to describe them, hence why I said
>I can argue across definitions

to know god is to realize your own divine will

I've read some compatibilist essays and they spout total bullshit, so I can't imagine that non-compatibilist supporters of free will are any better. You're potentially determined to recommend me some, however.

Spinoza argued that we have free will insofar as we are rational, though

>half of all philosophers on this subject are stupid and I can easily see how all of them are wrong
You either believe that you that you are a super genius who by solving this problem would rank as one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived. I think the far more likely option is that your understanding of the various positions is limited.
I don't mean to sound snarky, I just feel like I needed to point out the implications of your line of reasoning.

"It would be misleading to specify a strict definition of free will since in the philosophical work devoted to this notion there is probably no single concept of it."
This is one for the first sentences of the article on compatibilism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

I think what you are doing is defining certain words in very particular ways and then using those definition every-time you see that word used when that is not what is actually meant. I remember seeing some guy on Veeky Forums arguing that it was impossible not to be a hedonist because he had is one definition of pleasure which made it impossible for something to not ascribe to it even though it's a definition that no one accepts.

You are right in a sense, but: the commonly held idea of free will =/= work done within contemporary analytic philosophy. The latter is, let's face it, not very influntial. Do I have to read every relevant thinker before forming an opinion on a standard issue in philosophy?

>Do I have to read every relevant thinker before forming an opinion on a standard issue in philosophy?
There is a difference between holding a position that is perfectly respectable and thinking another perfectly respectable position is stupid. The reason why these positions are respectable is because there are very strong arguments to support them.

HEY WHAT BOOK IS THIS ABOUT? I SURE ENJOY DISCUSSING LITERATURE.

>I SURE ENJOY DISCUSSING LITERATURE.
Doesn't look like it considering you keep deliberately coming to non-literature threads to complain and create endless whining meta-garbage instead of staying in one of the dozens of lit threads.

Thanks for proving my point. It's a lit board, go to another board for these shitposts.

>a newfriend can't cope with the fact Veeky Forums is not his magical wonderland fantasy
You might want to try Reddit for well-moderated shitpost-free experience.

>these shitposts
It's a thread about the literary works of Baruch Spinoza and his views on free will outlined in them. It's not OP's fault if you're mentally deficient to the point anything that's not a babby Memestoyevsky or 'tfw just read the stranger woah' seems like irrelevant discussion. Now fuck off.

I think the concept of free will is not much different from the concept of the easter bunny. I used to believe in the existence of the easter bunny but eventually realized that I actually have no basis to do so. It was an illusion.
Same thing with free will, only it was a much more complicated process and took a lot longer. And the consequences were a little more dramatic.

>He thinks he has a will himself

Do you have any idea what you're getting into?

some events are determined by God
some events are determined by man
la voluntad es un espectro

>it's a thread about the literary works of Baruch Spinoza and his views on free will outlined in them
not a single mention of Spinoza or a single one of his works in the whole thread
>the conversation doesn't address in any way his ideas on free will
>people explicitly asking for or referring to things by people who aren't Spinoza
>only connection at all is pic related

Fuck off, philosophical discussion is welcome on Veeky Forums, as stated in the sticky. It was tried on Veeky Forums but the discussion was even worse and it became /pol/ 0.5.
I'd gladly talk about Spinoza but I don't think many people really read him, seeing the average number of replies in my previous Spinoza threads.

I've been on this board for years, philosophy is part of its culture, deal with it.