He still believes free will doesn't exist

>negatives exist
wow, you are spooked

>butthurt

THey make me cringe when they talk about "meritocracy"

I really want to fuck my buddy's GF, but I choose to not do it.

Yeah, you are a failure because free will doesn't exist. Keep lying to yourself bro.

you earned everything you have and deserve it

Advantageous or disadvantageous circumstances are irrelevant.
God I hate when you still can't understand that free will doesn't mean you're omnipotent.

Not only free will doesn't exist, its concept is meaningless.
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself what free will even means? Most likely your definition will be something like "the ability for an agent to spontaneously make a choice". But what defines a spontaneous decision?
If you mean that the agent decisions are objectively seen as random, then there is no guarantee that we aren't facing a form of probabilistic determinism.
Our intellect isn't equipped to deal with representing black boxes such as itself.

Nice meaningless word-play.

>no you don't understand
>it is not understandable

It much worse - the future isn't determined, but you have control over it anyway.

Who is this sl00t?

You don't really want to fuck your buddy's GF given the actual realistic consequences, you only want to fuck her in a hypothetical situation without those consequences.

Given the real situation, you do not want to fuck her.

>God I hate when you still can't understand that free will doesn't mean you're omnipotent.
It does. In order for a person to make a free choice he has to be outside of the chain of causation and has to be an unmoved mover.

Only God can have free will.

That's Canadian essayist and Youtube lecturer Ontologicool.

>145. From the narrow, restricted viewpoint of the present, you always have infinite choices (= free will), because choice is a mental process we use to imagine and decide upon possible courses of action, and hence can make as many of them as we want — whereas at the level of the universe you only have a single one: the one you'll end up making (= determinism), because the concept universe includes the concept time. Thus does the Overman solve, in a single sentence, problems that have frustrated mankind's greatest thinkers for millennia.

>159. The relationship between necessity and desire mirrors that between determinism and free will. The best move (and indeedeverymove) is necessary when regarded at the level of the universe, but from the perspective of the individual who'll perform it (and from those of all his allies and adversaries who are going to feel its effects) it's not necessary at all, but merely what he has chosen and wants to do.

>272. HBD advocates say "there is no free will because your brain controls you". But my brain IS me. Like saying "there is no free will because you control you". I.e. there IS free will. Retards confused by wordplay.

Wrong, there is no (You) at all.

If you read the post, then you would understand that it doesn't exist only at the level of the universe.

It doesn't exist at any level, people who believe in it have spend no time in actual introspection.

t. noob who needs to analyze the phenomenology of concepts better

t. scatterbrained faggot who doesn't do plenty shikantaza

>"Does Big Brother exist the same way I do?"
>"You do not exist"

>says opponents don't put in enough introspection
>"it doesn't exist because i say so"

>shikantaza
A slave's activity. Fitting for your apparent slave morality.

Can someone give me a good book about free will

ITT: anons trapped inside the conceptual prison they built with language abstraction processes.

L

our thinkress

Elbow Room and Freedom Evolves by Dan Dennett
Four views on free will
Paul Russell has some overview stuff, i think
Stay away from Sam Harriss.
There's honestly loads of books, expecially new ones by neuroscientists, most of them have the same arguments, so you can pick anywich one at pretty much random - Who's in charge, Against moral responcibility, books by Susan Blackmore, Bruce Hood and the likes.

Actually spend some time trying to observe your Self. It's not there.

It exists as a concept, and you need to believe in it in order to function daily and not be a useless pothead.

>It exists as a concept,
Everything you can blather about does.

> and you need to believe in it in order to function daily and not be a useless pothead.
Wrong.

God exists as a concept, and you need to believe in Him to function morally and not be a useless criminal.

even if you chose not to do it, how is that free will? Weren't you going to make that choice anyway? Everything that lead up to you making that choice allows you to make that choice, not your conscious decision, regardless of how much contemplation you put into it.

>Wrong.
People who aren't useless potheads disagree.

By the way, freedom is relative.

obviously, no one makes themselves, so if you define a free action as one that is done without influence from any preceding causes (a logical impossibility), then yes, I guess no one is "free", but in so far as someone is who they are, they're free to do as they like.

if i drop a coin, did i drop the coin? or did my hand drop the coin? or maybe something caused my hand to slip, and then did that thing make me drop the coin? none of these things are false. it's ultimately a matter of perspective.

i'm not an expert, but a lot of philosophy (not all of it, but a lot of it) seems like word games to me, or disagreements over what a particular word or concept should mean, and this isn't something that can be objectively proven.

>and you need to believe in it

I'd say being completely detached from your ego would make any human being rather dysfunctional navigating through daily life.

thanks wittgenstein you can go back being dead now

Doesn't matter if free will does or doesn't exist, nothing changes. This is the most useless debate ever addressed.

WTF why am i not GOD ALMIGHTY? LAME

the whole western philosophy is fairly pointless

Free will is a concept that is simply too complex and sophisticated for humans to understand the origin of, at this point in time.

I'm not sure if we have it, but I really hope that we do.

The most satisfying explanation for me so far is that an omniscient- and potent being gave it to us and I'm not religious.

I would imagine free will defies our concepts of causality and to explain it we need a radically different system of understanding the universe.

>Knowing the truth about something will not directly change things, so it is pointless to pursue.

It's like you think debating God's existence is useless.

>schopenpleb
read Freud

How would you describe Big N's take?

>The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far, it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for "freedom of the will" in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and, with more than Munchhausen's audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness. Suppose someone were thus to see through the boorish simplicity of this celebrated concept of "free will" and put it out of his head altogether, I beg of him to carry his "enlightenment" a step further, and also put out of his head the contrary of this monstrous conception of "free will": I mean "unfree will," which amounts to a misuse of cause and effect. One should not wrongly reify "cause" and "effect," as the natural scientists do (and whoever, like them, now "naturalizes" in his thinking), according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press and push until it "effects" its end; one should use "cause" and "effect" only as pure concepts, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and communication — not for explanation. In the "in-itself" there is nothing of "causal connections," of "necessity," or of "psychological non-freedom"; there the effect does not follow the cause, there is no rule of "law." It is we alone who have devised cause, sequence, for-each-other, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we project and mix this symbol world into things as if it existed "in itself," we act once more as we have always acted - mythologically. The "unfree will" is mythology; in real life it is only a matter of strong and weak wills.

Continued below.

Cont.

>It is almost always a symptom of what is lacking in himself when a thinker senses in every "causal connection" and "psychological necessity" something of constraint, need, compulsion to obey, pressure, and unfreedom; it is suspicious to have such feelings — the person betrays himself. And in general, if I have observed correctly, the "unfreedom of the will" is regarded as a problem from two entirely opposite standpoints, but always in a profoundly personal manner: some will not give up their "responsibility," their belief in themselves, the personal right to their merits at any price (the vain races belong to this class). Others, on the contrary, do not wish to be answerable for anything, or blamed for anything, and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to lay the blame for themselves somewhere else. The latter, when they write books, are in the habit today of taking the side of criminals; a sort of socialist pity is their most attractive disguise. And as a matter of fact, the fatalism of the weak-willed embellishes itself surprisingly when it can pose as "la religion de la souffrance humaine"; that is its "good taste,"

The reality and everything that encompasses(even ourselves and our actions) surely transcendents such dichotomies that are only apparent for us by the prism of our senses.
Something like the Teotl of the aztecs metaphysics and the Parmenides block universe.
An anomaly of time.

He seems really sure of himself and I think that's to his point's detriment. He positions himself as having a superior understanding, while he (in this paragraph) does not come up with any substantial evidence. I think his point about the many concepts we attribute to reality as being mythological, it's an interesting view. However, no matter if he's wrong or right, it seems like from his point of view the nature of free will is inexplicable. He's mostly trying to explain why other people have been wrong, instead of trying to elaborate why he is right.

... that's my initial reaction...lmk what you think

Not him but that is basically the gist of the Free Will debate. After a long back and forth you'll realise there is no meaningful definition of Free Will and thus the only way for Free Will to exist is through ridiculous word play that barely supports its own argument.

But I still live in the hearts and minds of men.

Free will required supernaturalism.

If you are free from the laws of biology and physics, then there is a part of you (making the decision) that is NOT biology and physics. So you have a non-physical soul.

Accept free will and you accept spiritualism, you new age hippie.

Brainlet detected.

>thinking we ever had a choice

Don't you get it? You can't do this. This is wrong. The whole fucking thing, you can't do this to people. Determinism is standing on principle, someone always has to. If no one does the principle is lost. If someone has a true and righteous claim to say that they must do what they do, then they are an autonomous force. Of course, you have to be willing to forfeit your life, in the hopes that someday you will reclaim it.

>Of course, you have to be willing to forfeit your life, in the hopes that someday you will reclaim it.

I don't understand, for what do you have to be willing to forfeit your life

I like the way you are thinking, but the real challenge is to find a way to explain how free will is possible.

Couldn't you quite easily refute that with the argument that determinism is reliant upon your biology and environment, which determines the principle?

I personally disagree with complete determinism, however I think your biology and environment increases the probability that you will carry out certain choices over less probable ones.

In a deterministic universe, some are assigned to more arduous tasks than others. Many can construe this as "forfeiting your life". That's all I meant by it.

Damn, you're pathetic.

At least you're pulling the wool over your own eyes, I guess.

I would argue that to be able to make the decision to forfeit your life you need free will ;)

In a deterministic universe there is no life that is "yours". You are an aggregate of physical and biological events.

If someone is wronged and they spend the rest of their lives trying to set it right, have they pulled the wool over their own eyes? If they are a person suited to it, would anyone not strive to survive and not only that but fight a wrong, isn't it always the case that they would do so? I use personal injury as an example, as it is suited as an excellent motivator for most people. There may always be exceptions to the rule, and I call this determinism as well, but for the most part someone will at least try to avenge themselves.

>nothing changes
In your small world.

That's why I say many can construe this incorrectly. That's right, your life would just be the natural procession of events. You were always going to do what you do.

These two attitudes seem to be from the same poster but are contradictory. Am I wrong?

>Am I wrong?

Yes. They're not contradictory.

>would anyone not strive to survive and not only that but fight a wrong, isn't it always the case that they would do so?

is tantamount to

>You were always going to do what you do.

I don't need to justify why a thing that feels significant to me is worthwhile by relating it to something that YOU feel is significant. If it's not significant to you then just fuck off.

Suppose one rationalized their will as being the will of the universe. Are they not experiencing free will then? For they are no longer being guided by anything, because they are both the guide and the one being guided.

I see. It's just that the first one seems to imply a sense of internal logic that is necessary to drive the behaviour. But with determinism that's not even necessary. The behaviour is determined physically regardless of how much it "makes sense".

This seems to be a cyclical argument. If a person believes they must do a thing then they do a thing which means that they were always going to do a thing which in turn means that they must have thought that doing a thing would be right which means that they would believe that they must do a thing, invariably leading to them doing that thing.

What is the point of this conversation? To determine if the person or the universe decided? I say, what's the difference?

Well this might seem strange to you, but for thousands of years it's felt quite important to many people to understand whether they or the universe is in control of their actions.

For one thing, it impacts a felt sense of responsibility that has lots to do with motivation and reward sensitivity.

>What is the point of this conversation?
Good question, the answer being there is none. The subject leads to a circlejerk always and the only possible reconciliation of the sides is to separate free will and determinism as "modes" that are not constant and depend on your perception.

That was a bit of satire. The whole problem is that the question is a loaded one, is going to be debated until new information comes to light. Where is metaphysical information in ample supply these days, anyway?

You don't think that the dissemination of that modal thinking is a worthwhile point?

Anyway, you talk as if people had the option of deciding whether it was important to them or not.

I see previous user's point, but I have to agree with you. No need to be rude to him I'd say tho. Nihilism is a whole doctrine in itself that ironically occupies many people.

If you think the debate is the most useless ever anything and everything might as well be considered completely insignificant, arbitrarily.

Only thing I need to find significance in the debate is that I enjoy thinking about it.

Then there are countless other ways in how you might deem it as useful. (like how it can give your life purpose.. just a small example)

It's supply is available in discourse.

Which, to address , is why I would knock back hard against those who try to shut the discourse down. If you're truly nihilistic, then it doesn't matter than other people are talking. Obviously, he has a value system about what we SHOULD be talking about.

>Anyway, you talk as if people had the option of deciding whether it was important to them or not.
Some people do, some don't. It's a matter of power.

Power obtained how?

I don't think he's trying to shut the discourse down. If so I would solidify my efforts to keep the conversation going, I do too find great meaning in it and think it is important for humanity to never stop contemplating these fundamental issues, as long as the conversation stays fresh and keeps evolving.

I think user, like most people, simply hasn't given it much thought and doesn't feel the need to. In typical Veeky Forums fashion he then proclaims his point of view as the superior one. It's standard fare.

With more power.

...

"Free" is a word that we have defined exclusively from the situations where we are free to do that which we wish to do. When talking about free will in an argument about a deterministic universe, we extrapolate our original meaning of free and assume it is compatible in discussing freedom from physical causality. Just because an action you made was determined, does not mean it was coerced, because you as a system still made the choice. Saying it was determined by the universe for you only makes sense if you consider the universe to be independent of you. But this is not the case; you are the universe, you're not independent of it. When you make a decision, you as a system factor in all the nuances, and make the choice most in line with what you want the most. This is as free as it gets.

To define free will as freedom from the causality of the physical systems that make us up, is to superimpose a sort of extraordinary freedom that the word originally never entailed. So saying that you had no free will over an action will, because of the history of the word, imply some level of coercion, which is ultimately misleading.

Solution from a purely epistemological perspective? Split the words: deny the extraordinary free will, and accept the practical free will. Let's call it non-greedy Compatibalism, where you argue that because of the history of the word free, the practical freedom that we do have should be called free will, as long as you are very clear about denying the kind of freedom that allows for morality concepts like blame and justice to have intrinsic meaning.

Compatabalists argue from a morality perspective, where if you give up the idea of free will, blame and justice become problematic concepts. I don't like this line of thinking. It should not be the place of philosophy to hold back the truth for the sake of keeping metaphysics consistent with their interpretation of morality.

this

Ask a half assed question, get a half assed answer.

>mind is seated in the brain
>brain is made of matter
>matter is subject to physics
Ergo free will does not exist.

>physics is seated in the human mind
Ergo free will can exist.

>Just because an action you made was determined, does not mean it was coerced, because you as a system still made the choice.

How did you make the choice though? If you did so by simply following physical laws of a deterministic universe, it is arguable that the making of that exact choice was necessary. The very definition of choice is being able to choose between two or more possibilities.
Simply said: If there's only one course of action in the universe, choices do not exist.

If you could theoretically predict any action in advance, it is necessary that it's impossible to change that predicted action, otherwise the prediction would be incorrect. This prediction can only be made accurately by taking every single variable in consideration, including the method of prediction. This is practically impossible I'd say as you'd have to take into consideration the effect of you taking in consideration the effect of you taking in consideration... ad infinitum.

If hypothetical knowledge of the exact prediction would allow you to change the course of the future, I'd say free will exists as something immaterial and outside of the physical universe.

>When you make a decision, you as a system factor in all the nuances, and make the choice most in line with what you want the most. This is as free as it gets.

I think if you as a system are factoring in all the nuances it must be subconsciously. People pursue what they want the most generally by making a conscious decision.

Thus there will always be subconscious elements that influence your choices. This maybe partly free, but far from as free as it gets.

... just my opinion. Excuse me if I'm rambling.

>implying that subjectivism actually matters
In all likelihood, physics are a real construct of the universe that consistently controls the behavior of matter. I can't prove that, but I think it's overwhelmingly likely, i.e. it's overwhelmingly likely that free will does not exist.

You don't get it. This "universe" you're talking about, it can't be talked about without someone doing the talking. It can't be known without someone to know it. In other words, you and the universe are inseparable. In other words, you and the universe define and create each other. Knowledge is the greatest illusion mankind has ever convinced itself of.

Physics is real to the mind that "knows" it. To the mind that doesn't, physics is not real, and there is no possibility of it existing being out there. In the reality of a dog, there is no Einstein's theory of relativity, it simply does not exist. But you are also looking at your own reality just like the dog is. Yours might be greater than the dog's, but it is just as dependent on you as the dog's is, and it is ultimately just as true. Where it differs is not in truth but in endurance.

In the end, the matter of free will is a matter of master vs. slave morality. The slave is often more intelligent than the master, and grasping the universal scale of determinism is definitely an indication of intelligence; hence why harping on determinism being the "ultimate truth" is always a symptom of slave morality. You can be intelligent and a master as well. To be so, you need to have wisdom, not just knowledge, wisdom being a voluntary limitation of knowledge. Forgo the truth for power. That is the mark of an intelligent master. Otherwise you are an intelligent slave, no more right than the intelligent master, just weaker.

>How did you make the choice though? If you did so by simply following physical laws of a deterministic universe, it is arguable that the making of that exact choice was necessary. The very definition of choice is being able to choose between two or more possibilities. Simply said: If there's only one course of action in the universe, choices do not exist.

It comes down to how we define "you", and how we define "choice". It is true that you will always make the same choice because the physical state of your brain had been determined all along. But there there is still a decision in the purely functional sense being made here. The brain worked out the best possible decision, and made it. It was always fixed; making the "choice" here doesn't mean freedom from causality, simply freedom from coercion. You will never be forced to do something that goes against your will because, because whatever decisions are "fixed", are also decisions you generally want want to do. So here I am making a purely semantic argument that it is confusing to call this a lack of free will, because "free" carries implication of coercion. Metaphysically I of course agree, every choice is fixed, and the intuition that freedom from causality exists, is simply an illusion.

>Thus there will always be subconscious elements that influence your choices. This maybe partly free, but far from as free as it gets.
This is not me saying this is the ultimate form of freedom, but that this is the extent of freedom that that we have.

What's so inherently desirable about power then?