The Beauty Of Determinism!

[seer]

Prove it does. The problem is the concept of determinism in and of itself does nothing to influence whether human will is free or not, nor to what degree it may be free. It has already been demonstrated that determinism and Free Will is compatible in the concept of compatibilism.

In the course of this thread you have failed to demonstrate nor prove that this is false.

Are you freaking kidding? Are you so lazy that you have to use other peoples work? So try again Shuny, using your own words. First try defining free will. The tell us how is our will is both determined and free.

[Adam]

TO: Seer
No Twebber posted in the Chatbox after 10 PM All Hallow's Eve, Ten hours later activity resumed with such non-Elect as Cow Poke and Adam (me) bewailing their chagrin on being "Left Behind". Particularly absent today are far-away TWebbers--I guess the Lord snatched up around the globe the first areas to hail the new 2015 All Saints Day. What other day could be more appropriate?

So for history's record, apparently just after midnight, November 1, 2015.

Well, with Tassman back from Down Under along with Starlight the Kiwi, I must revise my theory about the 24-hour gradual onset of the Rapture as midnight struck in each time zone on the coming of November 1, 2015. I now lack evidence as to when the Rapture occurred around the world--it was probably simultaneous as predicted of old (well, "as of new" really, the idea goes back to Darby just two centuries ago).
Nick Peters, aka Apologia Phoenix, has not been seen in Deeper Waters since the Rapture. Gee, did we have to be as holy as he was (or as obsessed with grammatical proprieties?) to be saved? Truly alarming.

[Adam]

Latest news! Nick is back from Heaven! He must have asked for a Pass so he could come back to preach about what the Rapture is like!

The wrench in the works is that Apologia Phoenix STILL does not believe in the Rapture. How's THAT for a paradox?

[Tassman]

I'm just making sure we are on the same page - you would agree, that if LFW existed that it would not be compatible with determinism - correct?

Good so we agree

OK...

That is false Tass, his response depends on the theory of compatibilism. Where he refused a number of times to define free will, and has refused to define determinism.

What no one

I mean heck Tass, you don't even buy compatibilism, and the only reason you are giving it any weight in this thread is because another atheist is using it to attack me. Really bad form old friend.

[Jichard]

That is false Tass, his response depends on the theory of compatibilism.

That's false. My response depends on what the paper from the OP says. I've repeatedly shown how you've misrepresented what the paper says, and I've repeatedly backed this up with direct quotations from the paper. That's the case, regardless of whether or not compatibilism is true. It's telling that you persist in pretending otherwise.

Where he refused a number of times to define free will

That's a fabrication. You were told this in my very first post on this thread, but your usual dishonesty prevents you from admitting this.

"Experimental Philosophy on Free Will: An Error Theory for Incompatibilist Intuitions"
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cl...en&as_sdt=0,26

Really, seer, when will you tell the truth?

[Jichard]

Are you freaking kidding? Are you so lazy that you have to use other peoples work?

Isn't that exactly what you did in the OP? And isn't that exactly what you do whenever you quote-mine and misrepresent sources, such as Sam Harris, David Chalmers, and Vilenkin?

[Jichard]

Some self-reflection on the OP?

Are you freaking kidding? Are you so lazy that you have to use other peoples work?

[Jichard]

You refused to define free will

Fabrication on your part. You were told this in my very first post on this thread, but your usual dishonesty prevents you from admitting this.

"Experimental Philosophy on Free Will: An Error Theory for Incompatibilist Intuitions"
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cl...en&as_sdt=0,26

(that was not a definition you provided).

It was a definition; no need for you to pretend otherwise.

Most compatibilists would say that if an agent is free from external coercion, they have freedom of action.

Why would I trust you when it comes to what compatibilists say, when you've been willfully dishonest regarding the compatibilist position and when I've already cited reputable sources on the compatibilist position?

True - but that would apply to a monkey or dog. And since you refuse to define determinism we can only conclude that you know it will not help your case.

And more fabrications about my position, as usual. I defined determinism long ago, though you're too dishonest to admit this:

The research also supports my points about bypassing, since the research shows that the scientific determinism is not the same thing as the fatalistic determinism (the latter of which entails bypassing, while the former does not).

[...]

"Worldview Implications of Believing in Free Will and/or Determinism: Politics, Morality, and Punitiveness"
http://www-socpsy.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ka...2028201329.pdf

"Based on an extensive series of student and community surveys, we found that non-philosophers tended to distinguish four belief concepts: free will, scientific determinism, fatalistic determinism, and unpredictability. These distinctions were labeled after factor analyses showed four clusters of items.

[...] A second cluster of beliefs was interpreted as fatalistic determinismscientific determinismunpredictabilitydoes undermine autonomy is the fatalistic version: It harbors the implication that our actions do not matter because the future is already set in stone. This pessimistic tone may explain why fatalistic determinism has maladaptive correlates, such as an external locus of control and a lack of emotional stability (Paulhus & Carey, 2011).

Our findings also suggest that believing in fatalistic determinism leads people to interpret causal explanations as inevitable (138-139)."

You are all bluster Jichard, and unprincipled to the core - back on ignore.

Tassman was right:

Typical theist response when confronted by arguments they can't respond to, namely block your ears.

[seer]

Just wanted to make sure we are on the same page. And the evidence for LFW is our (yours and mine) everyday experience. I chose a university striped oxford shirt this morning, after some conscious deliberations. I could have chosen differently. It was my conscious choice, and nothing but my own decision prevented me from choosing otherwise.

What no one

Except hasn't quantum mechanics taught us that the universe is not deterministic?

But you do in the end reject compatibilism. And BTW even Dennett does not think that LFW is incoherent and even made a pretty good case for it in his book.

While he himself is a confirmed compatibilist, even a determinist, in "On Giving Libertarians What They Say They Want," Chapter 15 of his 1978 book Brainstorms, Daniel Dennett articulated the case for a two-stage model of free will better than any libertarian.

http://www.informationphilosopher.co...phers/dennett/

[shunyadragon]

Are you freaking kidding? Are you so lazy that you have to use other peoples work? So try again Shuny, using your own words. First try defining free will. The tell us how is our will is both determined and free.

Determinism does not determine whether our will is free or not. You have not demonstrated how Determinism determines whether our will is free or not. Determinism does not describe that every event in the nature world including our will is predetermined. Maybe if you are Calvinist or some similar belief one may believe this. In compatablism our will may be in part free and in part determined by other circumstances.


We have a will, but it is not necessarily free.

[seer]

Determinism does not determine whether our will is free or not. You have not demonstrated how Determinism determines whether our will is free or not. Determinism does not describe that every event in the nature world including our will is predetermined. Maybe if you are Calvinist or some similar belief one may believe this. In compatablism our will may be in part free and in part determined by other circumstances.


We have a will, but it is not necessarily free.

What are you talking about? Is everything determined or not? If not, then there is room for freedom, if not then there isn't.

[Tassman]

Just wanted to make sure we are on the same page. And the evidence for LFW is our (yours and mine) everyday experience. I chose a university striped oxford shirt this morning, after some conscious deliberations. I could have chosen differently. It was my conscious choice, and nothing but my own decision prevented me from choosing otherwise.

illusion

[seer]

illusion

Except you claimed to like Dan Dennett, and he makes a good case for LFW. And he does this by denying that everything is deterministic.

"The model of decision making I am proposing, has the following feature: when we are faced with an important decision, a consideration-generator whose output is to some degree undetermined produces a series of considerations, some of which may of course be immediately rejected as irrelevant by the agent (consciously or unconsciously). Those considerations that are selected by the agent as having a more than negligible bearing on the decision then figure in a reasoning process, and if the agent is in the main reasonable, those considerations ultimately serve as predictors and explicators of the agent's final decision." (Brainstorms, p.295)


"This result is not just what the libertarian is looking for, but it is a useful result nevertheless. It shows that we can indeed install indeterminism in the internal causal chains affecting human behavior at the macroscopic level while preserving the intelligibility of practical deliberation that the libertarian requires. We may have good reasons from other quarters for embracing determinism, but we need not fear that macroscopic indeterminism in human behavior would of necessity rob our lives of intelligibility by producing chaos." (p.292)

http://www.informationphilosopher.co...phers/dennett/

[Jichard]

Except you claimed to like Dan Dennett, and he makes a good case for LFW. And he does this by denying that everything is deterministic.

Pure, unrepentant misrepresentation. Daniel Dennett does not make a good case for libertarian free will. In fact, Dennett rejects there being libertarian free will. He rejects the idea that quantum indeterminacy is required for free will and he rejects the idea that quantum indeterminacy can be harnessed in some way that yields free will. He makes this painfully clear in his book Freedom Evolves, especially in its critique of the work of Robert Kane.

I mean, he literally writes things like:

Libertarians have long insisted that the compatibilist sorts of free will I am describing and defending are not the real thing at all, and not even an acceptable substitute for the real thing [...] According to us compatibilists, libertarians seem to think that you can have free will only if you can engage in what we might call moral levitation. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to levitate - and then to dash off in any direction with the merest flick of a whim? I'd love to be able to do that, but I can't. It's impossible. (Freedom Evolves, page 101).

[...]

An examination of the best positive case for libertarianism shows that it cannot find a defensible location for indeterminism within the decision-making processes of a responsible agent. Since it cannot motivate its defining requirement, we can leave indeterminism behind and consider more realisitic requirements for freedom, and how they could have evolved (Freedom Evolves, 136-137)."

So, once again, seer willfully misrepresents sources. Typical.

[Tassman]

Except you claimed to like Dan Dennett, and he makes a good case for LFW. And he does this by denying that everything is deterministic.

If not why not?