What was this board's consensus on free will again? I forgot

Harris interviewed Dennett about free will, and to my mind exposed him as a charlatan. I can't believe he's a professional philosopher. I think Sam is right if you assume that determinism is true and that agent-causation is false.

free will is worth every penny

It was somewhat alarming how quickly Dennett retreated into semantics and word games when Harris started pressing him on various issues. Almost wondering if Dennett-san is getting old and losing some of his wit.

Free will, proposed by Christian theologians since ever, was never supposed to break a law of physics, since causation was the Christian main proof of God. Free will was simply a synonymous of human intelligence, free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action. A bee has less free will than a pitbull who has less free will than a irrational human, who has less free will than me. As much as you hate bees and pitbulls, you have to rationally understand that they are not equipped with much of a brain that evaluates different courses of action as you do. It is pretty damn simple, this ridiculous debate never existed over an IQ of say 120 points, supposing mine is 130. What will happen is some people will convince themselves that they have no free will and will start to use it as rhetorics for irresponsibility, and they will be assuming the other sides, probably the side of the cops and justice system, will not use the lack of free will as a justification for their actions. It's silly, hahaha.

You have no free will, listen to me goyim

The problem with this is not believing this is the only way to live a proper life.

If you actually think Sam Harris is the saner of the two then this board is fucking lost

-Veeky Forums

>In the early 20th century, the psychiatrist Kurt Schneider listed the forms of psychotic symptoms that he thought distinguished SCHIZOPHRENIA from other psychotic disorders. These are called first-rank symptoms or Schneider's first-rank symptoms. They include delusions of being controlled by an external force, the belief that thoughts are being inserted into or withdrawn from one's conscious mind, the belief that one's thoughts are being broadcast to other people, and hearing hallucinatory voices that comment on one's thoughts or actions or that have a conversation with other hallucinated voices

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia

Behold, the smart no free will people!

define "will"

Everything that happens up until your decision has already decided for you

Why do you say that? I'm not a fan of Dennett but I feel he won that argument decisively. Sam being a pop-pseud only focuses on the folk notion of free will that's completely irrational. All Dennett tried to do was explain that it's dangerous to start from an idea like that in philosophy and then proclaim that there's no free will, because there's a clear difference between volition and force.

Searle is just a poor man's Chopra

From the perspective of individual, it doesn't really matter if I have free will or not. Is this not right?

by "who"what"when"where"why"?
"gawd/self/mind/consciousness"? ...or "others"?

its a useful assupmtion in the human sciences like economics, psychology, and sociology

It's about right. If you do believe in freewill then you should realise it's like a train on tracks, the tracks being your survival instincts.

It's like a computer game, we cant cheat or break the rules, and we ourselves have objectives hardwired into us we can't deny.

From another perspective the future has already happened. Imagine living a dimension above ours, being able to freely move around time things like the big bang happened just as soon as it started, but to us it seems like it went on for a lot longer, because we experience time VERY SLOWLY.

Could be wrong because logic doesnt even exist like it does for us when you take Quantum Mech into the equation.

Go back to your containment board and wank to Derrida

I was thinking more on the lines like: If I do not have free will, I can't consciously react to the fact that I do not have free will. Therefore it doesn't matter from the perspective of how I conduct my own actions if I have free will or not.

dennett made good points with philosophical wisdom and experience behind them
sammy was an autistic child
i analyzed their exchange for my BA

>Sam being a pop-pseud only focuses on the folk notion of free will that's completely irrational
nothing wrong with "the folk notion," only sammy's crazily uncharitable reconstruction of what it supposedly is
also there's really no such thing as "the folk notion." people have many different understandings of free will, and what free will really is doesn't depend on any of them

>implying the ashkenazim aren't actually hearing the real voice of God to his chosen people
Stay mad goyim

You might be starting to get it.

The rest of you are very confused.

The paradox that just said, shows the Ouroboran nature of all stories.

Except that you all think the Ouroboros eats itself. It doesn't. It vomits itself up from nothing, then makes a head and tail to confuse you.

It is that inductively paradoxical Direcursive circularity of the conclusion that chooses the givens that then lead to the conclusions is what bootstraps the paradox into a story. You then forget the first part and just have a given leading to a conclusion.

On the topic of free will, Harris is much more reasonable. Dennett, like many compatibilists, just wants to redefine free will, and say we have that. What Sam, and most of us, are interested in, are the stronger, more folksy conceptions of free will -- and on that point, it isn't enough to just say "that's not what free will means" like Dennett does, or to give some nonsensical example of a boatman at the help of a boat in a storm. Sam is right that if everything is causally determined by physical laws and a fixed past, and all we are is physical stuff, that we cannot have free will because we never have the sort of control required for free will. Dennett never admits this.
The folk concept is what matters to people -- the people Sam had in mind when he wrote is book, and the people who are serious about freedom, and now a watered down version of it peddled by most compatibilists like Dennett. The folk conception also isn't irrational if approached from an agent-causal viewpoint.
Why do you say that? Harris is right about what follows from determinist materialist premises. All Dennett wants to do is revise what we mean by free will, but that merely changes the subject -- namely, to something no one was talking about or concerned with originally.

>The folk conception also isn't irrational if approached from an agent-causal viewpoint.
How would that work?

What the absolute fuck are you on about!

>All Dennett wants to do is revise what we mean by free will
no, this assumes that there is already an established something that "we" "mean" by free will
>Harris is right about what follows from determinist materialist premises
not really, he has a few simpleminded arguments that free will is incompatible with determinism
but his views on whether responsibility is incompatible with determinism are basically at war with themselves
and he's so far below dennett's level it's never even occurred to him to think of how to address dennett's compatibilism about determinism and the ability to do otherwise -- even though he himself accidentally accepts it towards the end of his book

On a substance dualist perspective, an agent-causal view holds that the will is a power of the mind, just like the power of understanding, judging, or thinking are powers of the mind.
>no, this assumes that there is already an established something that "we" "mean" by free will
There is, and Harris points it out in the book. Namely, the view that individuals have control sufficient for meriting either praise or blame for their actions.

What are the simple mind views of his that you think are inadequate. Sam's whole point is that we entirely lack control, and that in virtue of this there is no sense in which we could be called "free" compatibilism not withstanding.

I was going to post that there is no such thing as free will, but I changed my mind.

Haven't neuroscientists determined there is no free will?

>There is, and Harris points it out in the book. Namely, the view that individuals have control sufficient for meriting either praise or blame for their actions.
this is actually a much milder and more charitable reconstruction of "belief in free will" than harris makes
it's also a view that dennett would agree with and that harris is pretty unclear and inconsistent about disagreeing with
harris is explicit that there is a "popular notion" of free will and that it essentially involves metaphysically robust alternative possibilities and that this is the only relevant notion of free will -- all three points are false
>Sam's whole point is that we entirely lack control, and that in virtue of this there is no sense in which we could be called "free"
he actually countenances several senses in which we are free, including one in which we have "free will"
he's ok with freedom of action, political freedom, and daniel wegner's sense of free will (see his chapter on moral responsibility)

that's a scientistic myth

quantum physics is indeterministic but determinism is an emergent property of macro systems

>i'll take a random opinion out of my ass and post it as fact
fuck off

If simpler organisms aren't free then neither are we. Our brains are complex giving the illusion of free will, but it is an illusion and everything we do or think could be predicted with sufficient processing power.

>this is actually a much milder and more charitable reconstruction of "belief in free will" than harris makes
it's also a view that dennett would agree with and that harris is pretty unclear and inconsistent about disagreeing with
harris is explicit that there is a "popular notion" of free will and that it essentially involves metaphysically robust alternative possibilities and that this is the only relevant notion of free will -- all three points are false
I suppose I should say there is a lot packed into the notion of "control", on my reading, and it would probably include alternative possibilities. Do you disagree with the idea that most folks believe they have alternative possibilities when it comes to what they will (though not necessarily what is in their power to effect)? I agree that he is inconsistent about praise and blame, but that, it seems to me, is because of his desire to hold on to ethics.
>he actually countenances several senses in which we are free, including one in which we have "free will"
he's ok with freedom of action, political freedom, and daniel wegner's sense of free will (see his chapter on moral responsibility)
It was my understanding that he is pretty explicitly against those sorts of things. That he thinks everyone is essentially like Charles Witman, and that it is "brain tumors" all the way down for all of us.

the universe is self-evidently non-deterministic

your question, like ^ is just a restatement of presuppositions and not an argument

>Do you disagree with the idea that most folks believe they have alternative possibilities when it comes to what they will (though not necessarily what is in their power to effect)?
no, i don't know what most people think about free will, but i'm sure belief in alternative possibilities is widespread
as dennett and others show, however, alternative possibilities have to be interpreted in a specific (metaphysically robust) way to be inconsistent with determinism
sam harris himself believes in alternative possibilities despite his determinism, he just calls them "opportunities" (he accepts these at the same time as he accepts that we have free will in wegner's sense, towards the end of his chapter on moral responsibility)
>It was my understanding that he is pretty explicitly against those sorts of things. That he thinks everyone is essentially like Charles Witman, and that it is "brain tumors" all the way down for all of us.
yeah, he says shit like that, but he also says that responsibility exists and is just when you do things that are in keeping with your character, and that praise, blame, punishment, reward, etc. can be deserved for consequentialist reasons (which is what dennett also thinks)
the kind of free will he's against is very narrow, it's the one he says involves "desert in a deep sense" and "moral responsibility in the ultimate sense", but he never defines that "deep/ultimate sense"
in my analysis, it just comes down to "the sense which would make non-consequentialist punishment justified", but his metaethics already implies that anything like that would be nonsensical anyway so his whole determinist argument is kinda puzzling

The Bible contains a more sophisticated stance on free will than the majority of posters ITT.

>his metaethics

That's a stretch.

his moral semantics is utilitarian
he thinks "X should be done" basically means "X will lead to the greatest amount of well-being for conscious creatures", etc.
i have a bunch of quotes from him about this in my old notes

Do you have a chapter-and-verse for where the Bible talks about free will?

I'm not going to start a theology and mythology lecture, but I can give you a run down.

Essentially, God represents the nature of being and acts a creator, by using the logos to form the habitable world out of the chaotic waters of the depths.

Man also creates, as man was made in God's image.

Man may create, using the logos; however, the God/being/the universe has a nature that man is subject to and therefore, man's creative abilities are limited.

Man is both free to create and bound by the will of God.

Sometimes these two things run congruently, whereas at other times they clash; it is in man’s interest to attempt to live in harmony with and to fear God.

The problem is, that he has no basis for stating that morality is all about wellbeing.

He also lacks a sound epistemology from what I can understand, in that he is a scientific realist.

i agree, except i don't think the problem with his epistemology is his scientific realism (which i share), it's his scientism, naive evidentialism, and intuitionist theory of concepts

Free will is bullshit but it's good people think it's real. Research has shown free will skeptics lie steal and cheat more often. They also use drugs and eat more often. Determinists are also more likely to engage in mindless conformity.

Could you describe your epistemology to me?

On truth, not justification per se.

but they were determined at the big bang to steal and cheat

No
The universe is too random for that

i think of truth as more metaphysical than epistemological
the existence of truths precedes the existence of epistemic subjects (by necessity, since before there were epistemic subjects it was true that there were no epistemic subjects)
but epistemologically, i think of truth pretty noncommittally, as "adequatio ad re", but also disquotationally, so asserting P is the same as asserting that P is true (this has the consequence that anything assertible is truth-apt, so i find moral and aesthetic truths unproblematic)

I see...

Then why would you describe yourself as a scientific realist?

because i think scientific assertions are truth-apt and (ideally) say what reality is really like
maybe we have different conceptions of scientific realism?

Perhaps.

Let's take this simple definition:

>the view that the world described by science is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be

I would say that the mere fact we observe something changes its form entirely, whatever it may actually be in 'reality'.

Additionally, our scientific knowledge changes over time, as we continually improve upon previous theories; therefore, I take an instrumentalist view.

That is to say, I'm a pragmatist in the broad sense of the word.

Assuming there are parallel universes and Buddha's and God with a capital g. The Mandela effect is the framing of God's will or transcendent universal subjectivity. You will always exist regardless of parallel universes. Isaiah 41:10 fear not, for I am with you;
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
That's where I'm at with it.

>no, i don't know what most people think about free will, but i'm sure belief in alternative possibilities is widespread; as dennett and others show, however, alternative possibilities have to be interpreted in a specific (metaphysically robust) way to be inconsistent with determinism
In what other ways can we understand alternative possibilities that are not metaphysically robust?
>yeah, he says shit like that...
I agree with most of what you say here, since his ethical views, it seems to me, puts him at odds with his views about free will. I do tend to take him at face-value with the brain-tumors all the way down talk, since it seems to me that that is the hard determinism picture he seems to wish to take, and I think Dennett is committed to it, too, since he seems to accept Harris' materialistic worldview; i.e. that we are just "clockwork".

Wait people actually take Dennett seriously? I thought he was basically considered a memelord in the philosophy world.

>I thought he was basically considered a memelord in the philosophy world.
No, not at all.

FREEDOM isnt free

Exists

Suppose free will exists. In this supposed world free will exists, therefore free will can exist as it does in the supposed world. Now that free will can exist, I don't know what to do next as I'm determined not to know.

Omg for the millionth time

We have the illusion of free will since we're part of the system.
However, the future isn't so much set in stone as it is predictable by an outside observer

The future is mostly determined by what happened in the past but you can also influence the future a little bit by what you do in the present.

Matter cannot act by itself, it must act in accordance with prior events.

Just because the universe is non-deterministic doesn't mean you have free will.

All it means that noone can predict the future.

Sam Harris is cool for pointing out that the lack of free will can be observed subjectively by a person:

- if you try not to think of anything some thought will emerge anyway and you have no control over what that thought will be
- thoughts are like super low lag version of humming a song - no one actually starts humming consciously, we only become aware of this after a lag
- if you are to pick an item from a repository of knowledge, you have no control over the mechanism that will obscure some of the items (ex. pick any city or pick any famous person)
- when someone/ourselves ask why we did any X thing we always construct the (often wrong/biased) reason at the moment of posing the question, not earlier

But he then changes his definition of self and goes oh you're not those thoughts at all just the conscious observer who views thoughts and the world around you, which is an incredibly Buddhist outlook.

That doesn't make sense to me because he has no way to prove that the conscious observer doesn't have influence other than religious experiences he has on meditation retreats. Very ironic for an atheist to base his position around.

>prove that the conscious observer doesn't have influence
Read the post again

By everything that happened leading up to it

Go back to cleaning your room, Peterson.

Why does anyone even take the concept seriously? It's self-contradictory.

Because life would be miserable without it, and we all subjectively think it's true.

Ah, Sam Harris, the man who solved the is-ought gap by ignoring it and pretending it doesn't exist

>All it means that noone can predict the future.
No, all it means is that the entire past and future of the universe cannot be uniquely determined from complete knowledge of the present. You can certainly "predict" the future of a stochastic system to varying degrees of sophistication and accuracy. It's called "statistics."

>Free will

For fucks sake. How would free will even work? I don't have any saying in how anything else that goes on in the universe works, why would my own body be some exception? How would the I, that is the thoughts of me existing, be able to control the chemicals in my brain, that are the source of the feeling I have that I exist? It would be like a car that could drive itself, or a dinner that cooks itself.

The is-ought gap is easily traversed.

The immaterial mind can itself serve as a cause.

Nah

I've never understood how determinism interferes with free will.

I mean, no sapient being that we're aware of has perfect knowledge of everything that it will ever do and all the results there of, or even of everything that ever was, or, to perfection, even total awareness of its own decision making process.

Thus it seems that all sapient beings are forever burdened by free will.

The only ones that would be released from free will would be hypothetical omniscient beings, trapped inside the universe they were interacting with. Laplace demons and shit... Everything else, ie. everything that could physically exist, and be conscious, would be stuck with free will as they would inevitably have limited perspective.

It seems only fictional conscious creations that, by definition, are physically impossible, would be in the clear.

>this board
>consensus
that'll do, op, that'll do

>he hasn't read Romans 9

If the universe is determined, our will is determined. When someone's will has a destiny and can not be changed by that person, how you can you call that free will? If we are slaves to our nature, how do you call this free will? It seems as though you think we are as free as bacteria.

Yeah, it's a definitional issue on "free will." If it's true that all past and future events on the human scale are predetermined, that of itself does nothing to say the predetermined events were not "freely willed" by the human actors in question, in a manner -they- have implicitly predetermined. It reduces entirely to implicit choice of definitions, which obscures fuzzy arguments about consciousness and the nature of "will."
You can define "an action is freely willed iff it is possible that the actor will take a contrary action instead," but this is an unrealistically strict one which for example breaks down when we consider, say, how the assumption that an agent is rational and utility-maximizing implies they will necessarily choose a clearly superior option and cannot do otherwise without contradicting the assumption. But then again, is the implicit "decision" to be rationally utility-maximizing (in *any* given circumstance, not necessarily overall and in everything) genuinely a -decision- which such an actor "freely wills"? Or is it a compulsion, just like belief?
We certainly don't freely choose our beliefs. Claims of what -is- true, in contrast to those about what -ought to be- true, are independent of personal preference and reflect entirely how one sees the world. We can come to see the world differently as a result of our actions, what we do, what media we consume, what arguments we entertain and how well we try/are able to understand, synthesize, and extend them, sure, but factual belief at any given moment is not itself "chosen."

>If we are slaves to our nature
"Human nature" is an inherently mutable thing which changes depending on the conditions of our existence and upon the actions of others and ourselves, it's not some crystallized thing separate from and above human action. We can be "slaves to our nature" even when that nature includes free will, because we are affected in a definite way by any "chosen" action.

Yeah, you don't have that omniscient perspective, so you're still burdened with making a choice.

Even if you are aware of determinism, it doesn't get you out of making choices with limited data. And further, nothing conscious has unlimited data - unless there is a god, in which case only god lack free will.

Sure, you can argue it is an illusion, but one can make the same argument against consciousness itself. There is no other perspective to be had, only a hypothetical one that cannot exist and that you have no access to. Similarly, for a being to declare consciousness does not exist is self contradictory.

Saying free will doesn't exists is akin to saying Darkseid exists, and thus so does the Anti-Life Equation, thus life doesn't exists. Free will requires the existence of the physically impossible to be eliminated.

There is no choice, just cause and effect

That's all well and good to declare, but it doesn't get you out of having to make choices.

>having to make choices
But what if the choices you experience making are pre-ordained?
You niggers need Calvinism

I dont make choices. No one does. Things happen and we react to them. Our reaction is either fundamentally random or fundamentally determined, not enough evidence at this point to say which

There is no proof so we don't know.

>software is not physical
c'mon now

He's talking about an immaterial idea which gives rise to the material brain, obviously.
But it's still stupid

At least one blueprint/though of the idea must exist in the physical world, otherwise the "idea" does not exist.