I literally presented the argument above, and you are ignoring it. It shows that either a) libertarian free will is a vacuous tautology or b) free will is not defined as libertarian free will.
So are you actually going to address it?
I’m not going to address it.
So? If you survey the general population, you might find that many claim that God is necessary for the universe to exist. That doesn’t make it true, even if they are the vast majority.
Nobody gets to decide if it’s true, just as nobody gets to decide if God created the universe. Either (b) is required for (a) or it isn’t, and it’s our job to present arguments or evidence to support one view or the other. Neither position can be dismissed as “false by definition”.
But we wouldn’t be surveying statement of fact, we would be surveying a DEFINITION.
If you don’t think the word “literally” should mean “figuratively”, you can kick and scream all you want, but the majority is going to get to decide that.
The overwhelming vast majority of linguists agree that language is descriptive, not prescriptive. So it’s the majority that gets to define what “free will” means (once again: see Ludwig Wittgenstein).
That’s why at the beginning I argued that this was linguistic debate, not philosophical.
And now here you come complaining that you don’t like how words and terms get their meaning.
But that is not for you to decide, and it’s not for philosophers to decide.
Free will means what it means. Period.
“The human will is an event, therefore compatibilism is true.” Anything follows from an absurdity. Everyone knows that the human will is not an event.
That’s enough of this for me.
But it’s a missapplication of physics. The human brain is the most complex naturally-occuring phenomenon known to science. Sure, it obeys ‘the laws of physics’ - if you drop a human brain out the window, it will fall at the rate determined by Newton’s Laws of Motion. But that’s about it.
The only way physicalism came to the ridiculous conclusion that human actions and thoughts are ‘determined by physics’ was by first, dividing the world into mind and matter. After that, it was easy to see what matter was, or so it was thought. Here it is, all around us, we can examine it, dissect it, peer at it through the microscope, makes things out of it, use its properties - which was done, to great effect. But what about mind? You can’t even see what it is, let alone poke it and prod it. So, which one are you going to go with? What ‘makes sense’? There’s physicalism for you.
I mean, this is just false. You can most definitely poke and prod the mind, and that is what the frontier of neuroscience is doing right now…
Metaphorically, using words. Not actually in the way you can with matter. You can poke the brain with instruments and look at the effects it has on mental capacities but whether you’re directly perceiving the mind is up for debate.
That’s true, it is still up for debate. That’s why I remain somewhat agnostic about what the mind is.
Has a bearing on the topic, right? If the nature of mind is uncertain, and physical determinism is incomplete, then what is actually explained by it?
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There’s no good reason for nonphysicalism. In fact by the Copernican/Mediocrity principle there’s nothing special about humans. Why are we not just sacks of particles, like everything else?
Let’s assume someone is answering mathematical flash cards, and is shown a card that says “10+5”. The person says “fifteen”. Of course the person determines the answer to be fifteen, before that answer is spoken. But do you think that this means that the subconscious has made this decision?
What would the sacks be made out of?
What do you suppose they’re made out of?
Computers are just boxes with silicon stuff in them. Elephants are big things with trunks. The earth is basically just a ball.
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You’re wrong, it’s all a mental construct and while 8 billion confused minds won’t cut it, the Nous will and does.
But that is not the exercise I presented. In my exercise you are telling yourself to not answer the following operation, and the result of the operation still pops up in your mind. So who did the operation then?
I’d recommend you pay more attention to what I write. This recent exchange began with this comment to Frank:
Here’s a claim: a) we have free will only if b) we could have done otherwise.
There are two ways to interpret this claim:
- (a) and (b) mean the same thing, such that “we have free will only if we could have done otherwise” means “we could have done otherwise only if we could have done otherwise”
- (a) and (b) do not mean the same thing, but (b) is a necessary condition for (a) to obtain
You responded to (2), but note the first part of (2): (a) and (b) do not mean the same thing.
If (2) is true then us having free will is not defined as us having had the capacity to do otherwise, just as the universe is not defined as having being created by God. It might be true that God is required for the universe to exist, and it might be true that us having had the capacity to do otherwise is required for free will, but this truth is not a definitional truth, and so appealing to popular belief is a non sequitur.
Whereas if you want to argue that us having free will is defined as us having had the capacity to do otherwise then you must accept that (1) is true, but if (1) is true then the claim “we have free will only if we could have done otherwise” is the vacuous tautology “we could have done otherwise only if we could have done otherwise”.
Well, the sacks couldn’t be made out of particles because then nothing would separate the particles within the sacks from the particles composing the sacks, and there’d just be particles without any sacks.
The conscious mind still did the operation in that example. The person just did not have the will power to prevent oneself from doing it. Doing the operation is a form of habit. You can tell yourself that the habit is bad, I must not perform that act, but unless you have the required will power to prevent yourself, you will go ahead with the bad act anyway. This does not indicate that you did not consciously decide to go ahead with the act which you had told yourself not to do, because you wanted to quit. It just indicates that the conscious mind is often conflicted.
I understand perfectly what you are saying. You are completely ignoring what I’m saying.
I will repeat once again what I said: you do not get to decide what free will means, it’s the general population.
The only thing that matters is whether the general population believes ¬b⇒¬a or not. And you COMPLETELY IGNORE this fact.
Your point 1) is an irrelevant red herring, because if a=b, then ¬b⇒¬a, the same goes for a⇔b. The same goes for your point 2) because if a⇒b, then ¬b⇒¬a.
I’m going to entertain your red herring to show how irrelevant it is.
Let’s consider an isomorphic claim: a) on object is a triangle only if b) the object has three sides.
Does it matter whether or not the general population consider a and b to be “the same thing”? No.
aan object is a triangle if and only ifbthe object has three sides isa⇔b, which implies¬b⇒¬aban object having three sides is a necessary condition forathe object being a triangle isa⇒b, which implies¬b⇒¬a
There is a technical distinction between a and b, even when a⇔b that doesn’t imply that a=b. Having three sides is a property, being a triangle is a concept. You may consider them equal, but an extraterrestrial might not even have a concept of “triangle”.
But it doesn’t matter whether the general population considers them equal or not, the only thing that matters is ¬b⇒¬a.
That is: the only thing that matters is that if an object doesn’t have three sides, it’s not a triangle. The overwhelming vast majority of the population would agree, and that’s all that matters. Case closed.
Free will doesn’t need to be defined as a=b in order for it to be defined as ¬b⇒¬a.
The fact that most people agree with ¬b⇒¬a destroys your case, that’s why you are completely ignoring this point and focusing on whether or not a=b, which is an irrelevant red herring.
Either way there isn’t a single philosophical paper asking either ¬b⇒¬a or a=b, precisely because compatibilists like you don’t want to know the answer.