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I suppose it's a subject I've long wondered about - am I just some sort of biological robot fulfilling some pre-determined program? Or have I actually been equi

I suppose it's a subject I've long wondered about - am I just some sort of biological robot fulfilling some pre-determined program? Or have I actually been equipped with some sort of agency? I guess it's the old free will question and it may be unanswerable. That said, I can't say I've ever really felt much instinctual desire to reproduce, and if I have, perhaps I have reasoned myself out of the idea in some way. Either way it would seem that I am an evolutionary dead end. Am I supposed to feel some way about that? It seems like having an opinion on g=9.8m/s2 or the boiling point of water; useless.

mensetmanusman 2y ago
Free will is so self-evident that deniers of free will have to give lectures at universities to convince everyone else that the universe is making illusions for fun at the cost of thermodynamic efficiency.
- vidarh 2y ago
  Define it in a way that doesn't mean it is just an illusion, and that actually explains something then. I've yet to meet anyone able to do so coherently.
  - mensetmanusman 2y ago
    It’s impossible to define it or do anything requiring verbs if you don’t have free will, so it’s tautologically impossible to satisfy this class of solipsistic ideas.
    - effingwewt 2y ago
      Lol because commands can't be typed out by a computer. Your argument is flawed.
      - mensetmanusman 2y ago
        Simply point to a computer that has never had conscious human involvement in any part of its evolution and wait for it to type out something ;)
    - vidarh 2y ago
      A machine can type, so this is not a logically valid argument. You've also presented no argument for why it is impossible to define. If free will is possible, there should be no reason you can't define what it is.
      - mensetmanusman 2y ago
        If there is no free will, it’s tautologically impossible to define anything, therefore there is no reason to make an argument for free will, because in doing so I would be using free will.
        vidarh 2y ago
        This argument is not logically valid. Nothing changes with respect to the possibility of defining something if there is no free will - defining something is merely mapping an identifier to a representation of meaning. A purely mechanical device can define things just fine. Free will is demonstrably not necessary to define things.
        mensetmanusman 2y ago
        It is logically valid, because it’s like asking a candle flame to flicker in a certain pattern to prove it can control how it flickers to other candle flames. If we have no free will we are just like candle flames; any argument that says we are more than candle flames is not valid when you assume we are candle flames. People forget that logic requires axioms.
        vidarh 2y ago
        Your argument does not hold at all. In fact I'd go so far as to say it is total nonsense. If I were to ask you to act a certain way and you do, this would neither prove nor disprove free will, because it tells me nothing about whether causality required you to act that way or differently and whether or not you deviated from causality, and so your analogy is meaningless. It is not what we'd ask you to do in order to prove free will. You're using an assumption about an invalid argument as an argument in favour of free will, and that's no more valid than the original invalid argument. To prove free will you need to prove that there are decisions in the brain that does not follow a) strict causality, b) randomness, c) any combination of the two. As you've pointed out, experiments where you ask a subject to act in specific ways do not produce evidence for it, as they can just as well just be causality in action. That the strawman hypothesis you presented is not valid does not prove the inverse, nor does it release any obligation of proponents of the idea of free will from providing evidence, or even just a definition to support their idea. Free will is an absolutely extraordinary claim in that respect, because it implies a third category of events that is not a mix of strict cause-effect chains and random events, but introduces a "will-effect" chain that has no direct causal link but at the same time is not random. As it stands, without a definition, the notion of free will is not even a fanciful hypothesis - to suggest it is a hypothesis would imply a fully formed idea. But the concept is so woolly and meaningless it tells us nothing. It's at most a fervent wish or hope of not being an automaton. But a wish is not evidence, nor an argument, or even a hypothesis. If you want to produce a valid argument for free will, you need to be able to either proffer a hypothesis for how such a "will-effect" chain can exist, or demonstrate physical transitions in a mind that are demonstrably not cause-effect or random byproducts of ordinary physics. Even just come up with a coherent definition and you will be world famous, as you'd have introduced a new area of logic. If you can prove a physical mechanism for it, you'll have Nobel Prize in physics in the bag.

mensetmanusman 2y ago

Free will is so self-evident that deniers of free will have to give lectures at universities to convince everyone else that the universe is making illusions for fun at the cost of thermodynamic efficiency.

vidarh 2y ago
Define it in a way that doesn't mean it is just an illusion, and that actually explains something then. I've yet to meet anyone able to do so coherently.
- mensetmanusman 2y ago
  It’s impossible to define it or do anything requiring verbs if you don’t have free will, so it’s tautologically impossible to satisfy this class of solipsistic ideas.
  - effingwewt 2y ago
    Lol because commands can't be typed out by a computer. Your argument is flawed.
    - mensetmanusman 2y ago
      Simply point to a computer that has never had conscious human involvement in any part of its evolution and wait for it to type out something ;)
  - vidarh 2y ago
    A machine can type, so this is not a logically valid argument. You've also presented no argument for why it is impossible to define. If free will is possible, there should be no reason you can't define what it is.
    - mensetmanusman 2y ago
      If there is no free will, it’s tautologically impossible to define anything, therefore there is no reason to make an argument for free will, because in doing so I would be using free will.
      - vidarh 2y ago
        This argument is not logically valid. Nothing changes with respect to the possibility of defining something if there is no free will - defining something is merely mapping an identifier to a representation of meaning. A purely mechanical device can define things just fine. Free will is demonstrably not necessary to define things.
        mensetmanusman 2y ago
        It is logically valid, because it’s like asking a candle flame to flicker in a certain pattern to prove it can control how it flickers to other candle flames. If we have no free will we are just like candle flames; any argument that says we are more than candle flames is not valid when you assume we are candle flames. People forget that logic requires axioms.
        vidarh 2y ago
        Your argument does not hold at all. In fact I'd go so far as to say it is total nonsense. If I were to ask you to act a certain way and you do, this would neither prove nor disprove free will, because it tells me nothing about whether causality required you to act that way or differently and whether or not you deviated from causality, and so your analogy is meaningless. It is not what we'd ask you to do in order to prove free will. You're using an assumption about an invalid argument as an argument in favour of free will, and that's no more valid than the original invalid argument. To prove free will you need to prove that there are decisions in the brain that does not follow a) strict causality, b) randomness, c) any combination of the two. As you've pointed out, experiments where you ask a subject to act in specific ways do not produce evidence for it, as they can just as well just be causality in action. That the strawman hypothesis you presented is not valid does not prove the inverse, nor does it release any obligation of proponents of the idea of free will from providing evidence, or even just a definition to support their idea. Free will is an absolutely extraordinary claim in that respect, because it implies a third category of events that is not a mix of strict cause-effect chains and random events, but introduces a "will-effect" chain that has no direct causal link but at the same time is not random. As it stands, without a definition, the notion of free will is not even a fanciful hypothesis - to suggest it is a hypothesis would imply a fully formed idea. But the concept is so woolly and meaningless it tells us nothing. It's at most a fervent wish or hope of not being an automaton. But a wish is not evidence, nor an argument, or even a hypothesis. If you want to produce a valid argument for free will, you need to be able to either proffer a hypothesis for how such a "will-effect" chain can exist, or demonstrate physical transitions in a mind that are demonstrably not cause-effect or random byproducts of ordinary physics. Even just come up with a coherent definition and you will be world famous, as you'd have introduced a new area of logic. If you can prove a physical mechanism for it, you'll have Nobel Prize in physics in the bag.