- I don’t believe that the universe is deterministic. But choice, yes, inherently is determined. Choices are, fundamentally, a determination.
- I’m still a bit unclear on what you mean by a one-way circuit. My best guess is that you’re seeing this as making us passive; that the events of the universe are like waves and your consciousness is just flotsam getting jostled around.
If so, that’s the wrong understanding to take away. In terms of my choice to go to Rio, the only way someone could have predicted that choice would be to simulate my brain, including my conscious thoughts (so it ends up being equivalent to asking me).
So my conscious thoughts are part of the waves, indeed an absolutely critical part, not the flotsam.
1 Like
Determanism is based on the subconscious ?
Conscious humans withstand the environment, and can choose to stop acting manually, allowing the brain to relax.
There’s an element of determinism, and in some, there is an element of free will, selecting which parts of the environment and what action to enact, or whether to do nothing and relax in the vessel. When a path is selected, and no decision is being made it’s all determined for a period of time.
You’re either above or below determinism.
Freewill happens firstly in the subconscious and what we experience in the conscious is a reflection of that.
Even our discusions here orginate primarly from the subconscious before we can hold it in the conscious.
All final decisions originate from the subconscious.
I experience this all the time on refelcting on my actions. I think of phoning Joe, that comes from my subconscious and it refelcts in my conscious. Then I think, nah, I’ll phone him later. And before I know it I have the phone in my hand as if by magic.
If you cross the road, and look to see if a car is coming, that’s a conscious act(and unconscious if you’re so used to it, it’s habit).
This alone disproves that the sub-conscious is the main drive of thought.
Conscious decisions over-rule or accept the sub-conscious.
Sub-conscious is part of the conscious.
Consciousness is in sync with sense interfaced in brain-space, reading and generating all thoughts, with some merge, of the sub-conscious, that passes information to the conscious to help it decide.
I agree with your last paragraph.
To look whethere cars are coming is an automation, however and is based on experience and memory. If not from the subconscious, then where ?
The conscious is primarily for sensory input. I won’t deny that it plays a roll in freewill, but instinct and “intution” overules the conscious in most cases. To me the conscious simply structures our reality for the subconscious.
If an approaching car is noted by your peripheral vision, it is your subconscious that saves you ?
No, it’s your conscious.
Sub-conscious is like a secondary running of body parts, focusing on where you don’t, and the re-focus on what you do.
AKA they work together.
Let’s replace subconscious then with automation ?
1 Like
Yes, that would be more proper.
1 Like
Nice 
So then Freewill is integrated into automation and a very small part is actually in the conscious ?
Yes.
You choose which side of the mountain to go down.
Once you start going down, it’s mostly ‘down’, and thus mostly automated, almost unconcious.
However, there’s this moment at the pinnacle, where you select an option, and whilst going down you can decide to stop if you want.
When we’re at the top, we decide based on various factors, apart from memory and experience, which is still to me an automation process, it’s also based on instinct, for lack of a better word. All those happen and are drawn upon parts that may not be based on the conscious. It comes from somewhere else. The final decision is still automated it happens before it reaches the conscious, the conscious just take note of it and it may create the illusion that the decision occured in the conscious.
1 Like
I understand where you’re coming from, but things like memory are a brain-interface- you first interpret these.
You don’t just shoot off from a memory, it prompts you.
Yes, that’s true.
If the memories, however are somewhat forgotten or accessed as integrated experience, it becomes instinct.
We don’t necessarily remember all our memories to guide us, they’re burried.
But I agree.
I reiterate what I said here.
In short, if you have no free will, you use an opposite version of ‘I’.
An example of what more the compatibilists imply would be nice.
I don’t think ‘absolute free will’ has been defined. Actions not externally compelled seem enough to justify responsibility. I do agree that others disagree on this point, but they’re assigning responsibility to a different agent, so my comment still holds even for them.
Again, an example of want not being in your control would be nice, so I can get an idea of what you think compatibilism is, and apparently why you don’t think you have compatibilist FW.
Five suggested examples:
Sign the document or I kill your family.
A rabid person wants to bite others. That’s a want, but it comes from the virus, not from that which would otherwise be held responsible.
A pig is possessed by demons. It’s actions are the demon’s desires, not the pig’s. The demon, not the pig, is responsible for the actions.
I don’t want to drown, but I cannot control the impulse to draw breath despite being underwater.
Perhaps I’m off track and you’re thinking of a different example of ‘want’ not being in your control.
Again, examples would help. Say I am a recovering alcoholic. I want to drink, but control that. I would classify that as control over actions since I have not removed the want, I just rationally (hopefully) refuse to act on that want. Ditto for wanting to throttle somebody, but refraining because it’s wrong. I need an example of control over the ‘want’ part instead of control over letting the want have its way.
Some use hypnosis to curb the urge to say smoke. That seems like control of the want more than it does control over lighting up.
You should. By good thing, I mean it makes you more fit. Evolution doesn’t select for things that get you killed, and acting without influence will definitely get you killed. Even plants do better than that.
Why then has nobody learned this? There’s all these posts and literature implying that libertarian free will (LFW) works if only determinism is false. LFW requires that quantum theory is wrong. It’s wide open to falsification since they assert external control, which QT disallows. So all they have to do is get some scientists to find which cell/organ/something in a human somewhere is sensitive to (amplifies) external volition, and poof, they’ve falsified the last 120 years of physics. Nobel prizes all around.
Nobody attempts that because deep down, they know their view is false, and thus dependent on lack of investigation. The purpose of LFW is not to be a valid hypothesis, but to aid in the herding of sheep, which works best if ignorance is maintained.
1 Like
My position is that every choice is the product of antecedents – predilections and understanding. That applies equally whether we’re talking about simpler instincts like running away from a fire, or something pretty far from our evolutionary past, like writing and directing a musical.
Neither is “withstanding” the environment in the sense I mean it.
Let’s try to put some meat on the bones so we aren’t just talking past each other.
Going back to my example of getting on a flight to Rio on a whim…
Now, you could ask me what was the reason I chose to do that. Maybe it would take a bit of introspection, but I might eventually answer that I was a bit bored with life, Rio always seemed somewhere lively and exotic, and I wanted to grow as a person etc etc.
But of course we can trace all these things to antecedents. e.g. I never got to choose to find surfing more exciting than filing tax returns; it’s just how I am.
Which is a thing that a believer in libertarian free will might lament. But my response would be: what would a free will choice be then? Forget about whether our universe is deterministic (it’s a complete red herring) – how do free will choices work?
How is a choice made that is neither for reasons nor random?
To choose between choices, is a free will choice.
You can use that term, I prefer not to, because of the baggage that goes with it.
As I say, my description of choice is not only compatible with determinism, but actually needs determinism.
That is to say, you can have choice in a non-deterministic universe (as ours appears to be), but there has to be a very strong cause-and-effect relationship for choice to mean anything. A 100% deterministic universe would have maximum choice, and the level of choice goes down as we add randomness.
1 Like
It’s interesting that LFW would violate physical laws and contradict known scientific theories. I guess the result of Lbiet’s experiment is an omen of a kind.
The late Dniael Dnenett was a fierce compatibilist and his differences with Sam Hrrais, who is a hard determinist, spilled over into the internet. I caught a glimpse of that in a video of the two in conversation.
Puppetry used to be a thing. Now it’s remote controlled toys. Good entertainment for children. The bright side of it.