You Do Not Have Free Will

[Meta_U]

@Materialist

Your recent statement, “My experiment was not intended to prove that determinism is false” is contradicted by your earlier statements - which I quoted.

Meta_U:

That’s an issue with your interpretation.

@Materialist

…if, and only if, indeterministic free will is true.

Regardless of whether “free will” is true or not, what the concept describes is inconsistent with the laws of physics. This is because what is described by that concept violates Newton’s laws. Therefore free will violates the laws of physics. Whether it is true or not is another question.

@Materialist

I repeatedly said that observations are consistent with both determinism and indeterminism.

But this is false. The observation that we can randomly choose is inconsistent with determinism. And it makes no difference if you interpret “observation” as “it seems like”. And, this observation is even stated and confirmed by the experiment you provided, as evidence. It is false to say that these observations are consistent with determinism.

I do not know how you can misconstrue this. The only way to make this consistent with determinism is to show that the observation is false. You need to show that the observation is not a true observation, that what seems to be the case, in observation, is not really the case. Then the observation can be dismissed as a false representation, a faulty observation which is unacceptable as an observation. Until then the observation persists as “the observation”, and this observation is clearly not consistent with determinism.

@Materialist

Here’s 2 things you’re missing:

#1 is dealt with above. What you insist on, that all human behaviour is consistent with determinism, is not consistent with the empirical evidence (observations). That is a significant problem for your claim.

#2. Free will is experimentally established by experiments like the one I described, and many others. And free will violates Newton’s laws, as explained already. That’s why your claim that there is no biological phenomena which violates the laws of physics is laughable.

@Materialist

This was in a response I made to Princerm, in which I used “choice” in the traditional sense, the sense that philosohers of mind typically use the term, and most of us use the term in everyday talk.This was to avoid confusion if he were to read parts of my discussion with you.

Philosophy of mind is not a traditional field. So if they have crafted their own definition of “choice”, which is not the same as the traditional definition, which is based in the concept of free will, this is not the traditional definition. I don’t think your chosen definition, that a choice other than the one made is not possible, is consistent with any definition of choice. “Choice” always implies the possibility of choosing any of the options.

[Princerm]

I somewhat agree with you, the environment that’s been curated for us is heavily due to determinism but don’t forget that one’s life experiences are compiled based on decisions they’ve made. So while it’s true that the surrounding you exist in is pretty deterministic, there’s also a free will factor to the environment itself that you find yourself in and then from then on your super unique consciousness makes a decision based on how you process and respond to information.