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Isn’t writing a book that hopes to persuade people that free will doesn’t exist actually a testament to belief in free will.
by RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
Isn’t writing a book that hopes to persuade people that free will doesn’t exist actually a testament to belief in free will.
- lern_too_spel 3y agoNo. He had no choice but to write it. You had no choice but to interpret it incorrectly, and I had no choice but to correct you.
- block_dagger 3y agoI reply because I have no choice.
- ImHereToVote 3y agoYou simply have a supernatural belief about choice. What if choice is material. Then you do have choice, the problem is that someone could calculate what your choice will be. But it's still your choice.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- criddell 3y agoA ball doesn’t choose to roll downhill. Would a sentient ball believe it is choosing to roll downhill?
- ImHereToVote 3y agoDepends on the form of computation the ball possessed and at what scale. If it had sufficient computation for agency then I would call it choice. Choice is an emergent property. Just like the ability to freeze is an emergent phenomena of a set amount of particles.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- avgcorrection 3y ago> He had no choice but to write it. “I had no choice but to write the book” is not a coherent response to the claim that he betrays a personal belief in Free Will via his stated motivation for writing the book.
- lern_too_spel 3y agoHe had no choice but to state the motivation he stated.
- avgcorrection 3y agoNon sequitur.
- lern_too_spel 3y agoIt follows directly from lack of free will. Lack of free will does not mean that the author makes correct statements about his beliefs all the time.
- avgcorrection 3y agoThen you are making an irrelevant statement about the causality of him writing a book. Not about how his apparent belief is incoherent or not. Thus a non sequitur.
- lern_too_spel 3y agoI understand what you're saying now. Thanks for spelling out what you meant by your previous comment. A better response would have been if I spelled out that persuading people not to believe in free will does not require the persuader to believe in free will.
- hackinthebochs 3y agoFree will skepticism doesn't mean the future can't be altered by changes in present circumstances. Presenting arguments changes one's circumstances and so can change future belief states. Free will generally means more than just making choices. I can't vouch for Sapolsky's presentation, but what science tells us is that branching dynamics, the substrate of choice, supervenes on non-branching dynamics. What that means for free will/moral responsibility isn't so obvious.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoWhat are “belief” and “arguments” in a world without free will?
- hackinthebochs 3y agoA state of mind that disposes one to various thoughts and behaviors. There doesn't seem to be any tension between belief and a lack of free will.
- qez2 3y agoThere is indeed a tension of one defines free will in terms of thoughts and behaviors.
- hackinthebochs 3y agoYou're going to have to spell it out because it's not obvious.
- qez2 3y ago[dead]
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoHow are arguments different from physical actions (for example what is the difference between telling someone something and applying electric shocks to them) in a world without free will? Aren’t they all purely physical stimuli that produce a certain response? I am sure an electric shock also produces a certain state of mind.
- 303uru 3y agoNot at all. What do you think free will is? Unless you think there is something beyond the physical world, the belief in free will makes absolutely no sense.