About a week ago, I posted a conversation between me and my philosophy professor...

>What causes the laws of nature?
Not the right question to ask IMO.

"Physical object" is just an abstraction we use to refer to clumps of matter. Matter, energy, forces, etc... are all a result of physical laws in exactly the same way. Making a distinction between physical laws, and other things which are subject to physical laws, but not laws themselves, is complicating matters needlessly. Maybe it's useful to have this distinction in some cases, but at least for the purposes of arguing determinism vs. free will, I don't see why it's necessary.
If we take for example the equation "1 + 1 = 2", you can say that 1 and 2 are mathematical objects, and "+" and "=" are mathematical laws. But you can also simply say that the entire equation is a result of the axiomas of peano arithmetic.

A genuine choice wasn't made. The mind is like a computer, a choice implies that there was any alternative action that could have been taken. There was only one, and there was no choice or preferred action, it was just the causes of the laws of nature acting on the body, which is made of all the same elements, and bound to the same laws as every other physical object on earth.

Right, that was part of my notes which are disjointed, and isn't relevant. I realize it just looks weird in that context, and confusing, and out of place. I sent a message to my professor telling him to just ignore that sentence.

>A genuine choice wasn't made. The mind is like a computer, a choice implies that there was any alternative action that could have been taken.
There were many possible choices, the mind weighed them against each other and chose one. I don't understand why it matters that, when presented with the same options, the mind would make the same choice. It seems to me like this is a hallmark of a good decision process, so how can it be a violation of free will? If I want to do a thing, then it's obvious that I'd want to do that thing again when I'm in the same situation, no?

There could not have been multiple outcomes to a given situation. There could have only been one outcome to any given situation. The world operates according to mathematical laws, which are in themselves perfect. If you had powerful enough machinery, you could estimate the outcome of any given event. Even in a computer, it can estimate the outcome of an event, but it doesn't think or have free will. Nor do human beings for that matter, and our brains are no exception to this physical rule, that everything that happened couldn't have happened in any other way, and operate according to these mathematical, physical laws.

>Even in a computer, it can estimate the outcome of an event, but it doesn't think or have free will.
Aren't you contradicting yourself?
>brain is a computer
>computer doens't think
>brain doesn't think
Personally I have no problems with the idea that a computer could be conscious and have free will.
>There could not have been multiple outcomes to a given situation. There could have only been one outcome to any given situation. The world operates according to mathematical laws, which are in themselves perfect. If you had powerful enough machinery, you could estimate the outcome of any given event.
But why does any of this violate free will? It's the dichotomy determinism free will that I object to.

No. Computers don't think. Human brains appear to think, which is an illusion. Human brains are like computers. What we call thinking, is actually just us being bound to outcomes in the same way a computer, which doesn't think does. If a computer were conscious, it would make no difference.

You're giving special privilege to human beings, saying we have choices. What is you don't go anywhere near explaining how this is possible. You instead just say that human beings make choices, therefor we have free will. You have to define what you mean by a choice, and how that does not fit into a deterministic system.

If you're a Christian just tell me now, so we can save ourselves some time.

>You're giving special privilege to human beings
Not at all. Humans have choices, a stock trading program has choices, a self-driving car has choices... For example: you stand at a fork in the road. The choices are:
- go left
- go right
>and how that does not fit into a deterministic system.
It does fit into a deterministic system.

Can you explain what you mean by choice, in terms describing the physical properties of consequences, the physical properties of the brain, and how the brain can defy mechanistic causes? The word mechanistic itself implies determinism, mind you, and is physical. If you want to argue outside of the realm of the physical and deterministic, you are arguing in the realm of magic or unfalsifiable hypothesis, which isn't a truth claim. So please go ahead and explain this to me, without the vague platitudes.

Could it not be a mix of both? Take chess for example. There are trillions of moves you can make, but the end result is one of two outcomes, you either win or lose (Stalemates count as the aggressor losing). Likewise, both object and law affect choices within time frames. With the sitting example, it is the force of gravity that keeps us on our feet, however, the condition of the ground, and the nerves in our feet sending a signal of discomfort to the brain, make us wish to sit. Without nerves or ability to interpret the message, we could stand all day, and without gravity, we would not have the same pressure against the ground as we would with gravity. And so, we can have two or more choices. Either ignore both and continue standing, address the physical and redistribute the amount of gravity to the less sensitive posterior upon a softer surface, or other motions, such as lying down on the hard surface, on the soft surface, or standing on the soft surface. As for the probabilism vs determinism, both can also exist within a specified timeframe.
If I stood all day, and am affected by both law and object, deterministically, I will eventually sit, however the probability of sitting increases as time passes. Back to the chess match, by taking the opponents queen, I increase the probability of the deterministic outcome of either winning or losing by removing a piece. Whether the opponent tries to take the queen back depends on how much the player actually used the piece, how much he might need it, and how many moves/pieces he would need to sacrifice in order to undo that one step, moving the game tens of steps forward in order to move one step back.
However, both object and law are limiting factors as well. For example, say a cat is stuck in a tree, and it has the options to wait, climb down, or jump down. Outside of those options that could be used to get down include teleportation or sprouting wings and flying down.

>and how the brain can defy mechanistic causes
Do you even read what I'm saying? The brain does not need to defy mechanistic causes for a choice to exist.

In the end, we do have choices, caused by law and object, but limited by law and object, with a weighting to each option in terms of probability that the choice chosen will achieve a goal within a specified timeframe.

>If you want to argue outside of the realm of the physical and deterministic, you are arguing in the realm of magic or unfalsifiable hypothesis, which isn't a truth claim
I'm not arguing outside the physical/deterministic realm. I'm saying free will and determinism are *compatible*. You could've read that 5 posts ago but for some reason you chose (har har) to ignore it:
>But why does any of this violate free will? It's the dichotomy determinism free will that I object to.

And I'm saying show me a physical model where this is possible. I see that you keep making that exclamatory statement, but I want you to explain to me how that is physically possible.

I disagree that choices have to be physically possible. A choice is merely a course of action under consideration by some decision algorithm. Under determinism, it is physically possible to make a choice, namely by running the decision algorithm.
I'm curious about your answer to this:
>If I want to do a thing, then it's obvious that I'd want to do that thing again when I'm in the same situation, no?
For example, let's say we have a magical universe which can be rewound to a specific point in time. In this universe is Bob, who is pretty hungry and walking to the store to get something to eat. He comes at a fork in the road, with the left path going towards the road, and the right path towards an enclave of violent rapists. If Bob has free will, what do you suppose he will do? If we replay this scenario a million times, do you think that, out of his own free will, Bob will sometimes get to the store safely to satisfy his hunger, but also sometimes get violently raped?
In my opinion this is stupid, and that's why I'm arguing that your conception of free will makes no sense.

>with the left path going towards the store*
oops

>I disagree that choices have to be physically possible.
This is a contradiction. Things are either physically possible or they aren't. You're speaking nonsense, and you won't back up what you're saying with a physical model of how choice can occur. What you're saying isn't scientific.

Not *every outcome* of all possible options has to be physically possible, is what I meant. Only the one that's actually chosen is physically possible.

Describe what you mean when you say choice. What physical actions occur when a choice occurs, in a deterministic system?

I said that already:
>A choice is merely a course of action under consideration by some decision algorithm. Under determinism, it is physically possible to make a choice, namely by running the decision algorithm.
Also can you answer the second part of that post, or state your own definition of free will if you disagree with what I think is your definition?

I don't have my own definition of free will, because defining free will in a deterministic system is impossible. You would have to have forces that operate outside of a system of causality, which aren't consequential to the system of causes which precede one another. It would have to be a cause outside of a causal sequence of causes, which would imply a soul, and this is what every Christian tries to argue to say we have free will. This is why I think you're a Christian.

I don't understand, how can you argue against something which has no definition?

>It would have to be a cause outside of a causal sequence of causes, which would imply a soul, and this is what every Christian tries to argue to say we have free will. This is why I think you're a Christian.
Once again you show yourself to be incapable of reading.
By the way, keep us posted if your prof replies.

I sort of contradicted myself in saying I don't have a definition, but if you went on you would see how I explained that I do actually have a definition of what free will would be, but I said it's not a definition because it doesn't define anything that happens in reality. So in my mind I dismissed it as a definition. However, if you want a theoretical definition of what free will would be, then you can read past the first sentence of what I wrote to the rest of my response to you.

Saying I'm incapable of reading doesn't actually address my arguments. You're just making vague, platitudinous exclamatory statements like before. If you want to explain how my definition of free will outside of a deterministic system is wrong, and why it could exist inside of a deterministic system, I am still waiting for your response. Just telling me I don't understand what you're saying isn't an argument, especially when I addressed your argument based on what you said, and you haven't even tried to refute what I said point by point.

Under your conception of free will, does Bob get raped or not?

Yes? I don't see why you're even asking this question. Sure, bob gets raped, but does that mean that the action was a choice? This fucking question is so stupid and doesn't even follow what I said.

Well, under my definition of free will (which is compatible with determinism) Bob doesn't get raped. So wouldn't you say my definition is better, and you're just arguing against something completely retarded (which is not an impressive feat)? Why would someone's free will cause them to get violently raped instead of going to the store, when both possibilities are open to them?
Also I'm not sure which of my statements you deem vague, platitudinous and exclamatory. My position is simply that the very banal process of a deterministic computer weighing its options, and choosing one, is a perfectly valid implementation of "free will".

Wouldn't I say that your definition of free will is better because someone who got raped didn't actually get raped? What? Don't you also mean that free will caused someone to rape, not get raped, instead of going to the store? Why is this conversation even happening?

I don't even understand why were bringing the idea of rape into this. Please leave, this is a science board, not a Christian board.

>the how of the why you think
It's rather striking the difference between his writing and yours. Look how concisely he gets his point across. Meanwhile, you're constantly using bizarre sentence constructions and repeating particular phrases multiple times. The result is unnecessary "walls of text" that obfuscate your point, even from yourself.

>Are the laws of physics not physical too?
No, they're not, they're an abstract model that arose from our study of physical things.

I seriously hope you didn't actually send that mail.

It was an example to show that your/his idea of free will is absurd I've no idea where this idea that I'm christian comes from, I've said multiple times that I'm compatibilist and it has nothing to do with christianity, souls, dualism, or anything of that sort.

>It's rather striking the difference between his writing and yours.
I'm a first year philosophy student and he's a seasoned philosophy professor. What do you expect?

bump

OP please tell me that you're either really cool with your professor or that he encourages this type of discussion. Like, not to digress too much, but even the most enthusiastic professors wouldn't want to send walls of text back and forth to one of their first-year students via email to argue complicated subjects for the heck of it. That's a lot of unnecessary work for your professor, and I would imagine it's frustrating for an experienced technical writer like your professor to debate someone whose writing style is (sorry but it's true) full of fluff and noobie prose.

I'm not entirely sure what your situation is, but if you're just doing this for fun, make sure you keep the exchange brief. I'm just picturing your prof getting pissed after, say, your third wall of text sent to him that still invokes the same writing mistakes and shows that you either don't understand his position or that you aren't able to defend yours very well (or both), all while he should be preparing for the next lecture, assignment, exam, etc.

I only say this because I absolutely knew people like this in a few of my philosophy courses. They just wanted to flex their intellect and didn't care how much time was being wasted or how annoyed the prof was. They just wanted to show off, and they usually sucked at it.

Faggot professor should prostrate himself before students since they (or their parents) are the ones paying his salary. He's there for the students, not the other way around.

>implying he gets paid for all this extra dogshit outside of classes

>philosophy
He gets paid more than enough for literally loafing about.

The professor SHOULD go out of his way to help every student he or she teaches, but that doesn't give a student the right to waste a class hour or bog down a professor's time with extraneous arguing. Wouldn't you agree that this ends up hurting the education of the other paying students?

Man, fuck you. You're one of the worst parts about Veeky Forums.

Jesus christ the semantics! Fucking philosophy majors sure do love wanking themselves off.
>duhhh errr well, I don't believe in determinism because things are determined by natural laws and not natural objects.
Your professor is a fucking retard and so is this poster . Your professor is making obnoxious and ridiculous distinctions so that he can have his own special snowflake personal philosophic opinion. He's not some genius who's figured out how the world works, he's a fucking moron who's spent his life figuring out how to sound smart to people who aren't sure of themselves.

There is no objective determination for contribution to the field of philosophy. Anybody with a Doctorate in philosophy is just some schmuck who managed to convince a group of other schmucks that he has a good idea, unlike any other field where you actually have to produce something that works.

Unless you plan on pursuing a degree in bullshit, I suggest you re-write your letter and make it sound like you learned a lot from your discussion so the professor will give you better grades.

>even the most enthusiastic professors wouldn't want to send walls of text back and forth to one of their first-year students via email to argue complicated subjects for the heck of it.
I guarantee you that the professor is getting off to this bullshit.

>Are the laws of physics not physical too?
>No, they're not, they're an abstract model that arose from our study of physical things.
Fucking retard. Our DESCRIPTIONS of physical laws are abstract models. The effects of the laws exist in-and-of themselves.

e.g. The equation describing gravitational attraction is an abstract model. The fact that MASS ATTRACTS MASS is a physical law utterly independent of human existence.

Don't be deliberately obtuse you fucking shitfuck fuckershit shittyfuckershit.

The crucial point that your professor leaves out in his agreement with determinism 3 is whether his personal decision process (i.e. deciding what seems best to him) is itself subject to determinism, or if it is magical. In the first case, he is simply a compatibilist, in the second case, you can ask him to solve the problem of interaction.

I'm the fag who posted a lot at the start of this thread by the way.