Is libertarian free will coherent?

[The Thinker]

Only when interacting with time. The fact that you can't imagine a timeless being who can interact with time but is outside of time is immaterial.

Um no, it's logical, not immaterial. Change requires time, that is a logical necessity. If you ignore this you throw logic out the window.

Because foreknowledge and timelessness defeat your argument.

How is that possibly the case? Make an argument showing it, instead of asserting it. Nothing in my argument relies on god. God is irrelevant. The very concept of LFW itself is self-refuting.

[Bill the Cat]

Um no, it's logical, not immaterial. Change requires time, that is a logical necessity. If you ignore this you throw logic out the window.

God interacting with time does not change Him at all. Nothing actually changes for His perspective. It's all as it should be, and as He foreknows it to be.

How is that possibly the case? Make an argument showing it, instead of asserting it. Nothing in my argument relies on god. God is irrelevant. The very concept of LFW itself is self-refuting.

No it isn't. Your whole argument relies on temporal agents only.

[The Thinker]

God interacting with time does not change Him at all. Nothing actually changes for His perspective. It's all as it should be, and as He foreknows it to be.

Interacting requires change. Otherwise you're claiming god does nothing, and yet can do something. Changing states requires time. This is all by the way irrelevant to my argument or this discussion. Just make a logical argument showing LFW is coherent.

No it isn't. Your whole argument relies on temporal agents only.

No, it actually doesn't. But humans are temporal agents, and so if you acknowledge this it negates LFW for humans. So you concede this? To deny it you'd have to show humans are not temporal agents. But even then I have an argument that applies to non-temporal agents. So there's no way you will succeed.

[Bill the Cat]

Interacting requires change.

Not from God's perspective.

Otherwise you're claiming god does nothing, and yet can do something.

No I am not. God acts in our time, but exists in timelessness.

Changing states requires time.

Which is why God doesn't change.

This is all by the way irrelevant to my argument or this discussion. Just make a logical argument showing LFW is coherent.

I'm trying to see how you handle God's foreknowledge and causation. So far, I'm not impressed.

No, it actually doesn't.

Yes, actually it does.

But humans are temporal agents, and so if you acknowledge this it negates LFW for humans.

No it doesn't. God causes based on His perfect foreknowledge of our free decisions. Thus, our decisions can be both caused, and free.

So you concede this?

Nope.

To deny it you'd have to show humans are not temporal agents.

Nope. Just that our free decisions are able to be known and caused based on that knowledge.

But even then I have an argument that applies to non-temporal agents. So there's no way you will succeed.

[Sparko]

Hey could one of you pass the salt?

I choose not to.

[Sparko]

You are actually such a moron because you have a lay-person's understanding of this. It is not merely the cause, the focus is on whatever chronological order of events you think takes place when a "free decision is made" if the decision is part of a series of causes that go beyond you, it isn't free. If it terminates in something uncaused, you cannot by definition have any control over it, so it isn't up to you. There's no logically possible way out of the dilemma.

All those thoughts in your (1)(2)(3) are either uncaused or caused. Your choice is either caused or uncaused. Same problem, same dilemma.

You have no idea how idiotic you are.

They are "caused" by my mind. derp. I am hungry. so my mind thinks "hmm I am hungry. What do I want to eat? Maybe I will go to McDonalds. Nah I went there yesterday.... hmm how about KFC? I haven't had fried chicken in a while.... no wait. I really need to lose 5 pounds so I can look good for the beach this summer. I think I will skip lunch after all." Hunger (in my own body) instigated the train of thought. But after that the thoughts were entirely create by my mind. Which controlled which neurons fired in my brain, recalling different memories like where I ate last, and that I am getting a bit fat, and then my will decides that I want to lose weight more than I want to eat lunch and I choose freely to not eat lunch.

[The Thinker]

Not from God's perspective.

That makes no sense.

No I am not. God acts in our time, but exists in timelessness.

Again, that makes no sense. You are special pleading here.

Which is why God doesn't change.

Then he can't do anything.

I'm trying to see how you handle God's foreknowledge and causation. So far, I'm not impressed.

Since you're whole worldview is based on something self-refuting. What you are impressed by means nothing.

God's irrelevant to the discussion. But so far you're just asserting god does stuff, but remains timeless. That's the equivalent of saying god does stuff but remains changeless. Special pleading won't help you here.

Yes, actually it does.

No it doesn't. My argument is very versatile.

No it doesn't. God causes based on His perfect foreknowledge of our free decisions. Thus, our decisions can be both caused, and free.

That literally makes no sense. God causes what? Our decisions? Our actions? Make an actual logical argument showing your point instead of just asserting stuff.

Nope.

You don't concede that people are temporal agents? Wow. You already said my argument applies to temporal agents.

Nope. Just that our free decisions are able to be known and caused based on that knowledge.

Are you saying our decisions are caused by god? How are they free if they were? And also, claiming to know god knows what we would "freely" choose is completely begging the question, because you're assuming the very idea of us freely choosing is not only coherent, but that it's actually the case. So your whole argument had committed the fallacy of begging the question. You have to show how it is even logically possible to freely will your thoughts, will, or actions.

Same to you.

[The Thinker]

They are "caused" by my mind. derp.

And what causes your mind?

All you're doing is pushing back the problem one step.

I am hungry. so my mind thinks "hmm I am hungry. What do I want to eat? Maybe I will go to McDonalds. Nah I went there yesterday.... hmm how about KFC? I haven't had fried chicken in a while.... no wait. I really need to lose 5 pounds so I can look good for the beach this summer. I think I will skip lunch after all." Hunger (in my own body) instigated the train of thought. But after that the thoughts were entirely create by my mind. Which controlled which neurons fired in my brain, recalling different memories like where I ate last, and that I am getting a bit fat, and then my will decides that I want to lose weight more than I want to eat lunch and I choose freely to not eat lunch.

Prove to us that all these thoughts were not and cannot be part of a deterministic process. If you can't, then you cannot use this as evidence your will is "free."


And second your mind doesn't cause which neurons fire in your brain. That violates the laws of physics. It would have to be the case that a mental force overcame the natural forces in the standard model, and that simply doesn't happen. We've tested it over and over again.

[Sparko]

And what causes your mind?

who cares? The mind exists and makes decisions. At that point it can think what it wants and do what it wants based on various thoughts and inputs. If it is caused by 10 billion neurons, or by a "soul" it matters not. It exists as a complete entity that is self-aware and can make decisions and can actually control the brain. Your mind can rewrite the hardware it is based on. You can form new thoughts and new memories. And they become hardwired into your brain. The code is self writing. It is not merely "caused" by something. That is where your "logic" falls apart. The brain/mind makes decisions. of its own free will. My body felt hunger. I then had several choices I could make. My mind decided upon one of those choices. None of those choices was forced upon me. I could just as easily decided to eat at McDonald's as decide to skip lunch. And tomorrow I might just do that when presented with the same situation. That is what free will is. Making a decision without being coerced into making it. Nothing MADE me not eat lunch today. Nothing but my own will.

You can't deal with that so you desperately try to redefine free will away with your idiotic illogic that nobody is buying. Show me how I did not have free will in choosing to not eat lunch today. Go ahead.

And then give me an example of what real free will would look like. Give me a test to see if I can have free will or not. Give us a way to falsify your theory.
You can't. Because you have defined "free will" as "not free will"

All you're doing is pushing back the problem one step.

You keep saying that but you have not proved that.

Prove to us that all these thoughts were not and cannot be part of a deterministic process. If you can't, then you cannot use this as evidence your will is "free."

No you prove that they were. It is your claim after all that we don't have free will. There was nothing that forced me to not eat lunch today. I chose that. freely. Prove that I did not. Go on.

And second your mind doesn't cause which neurons fire in your brain. That violates the laws of physics. It would have to be the case that a mental force overcame the natural forces in the standard model, and that simply doesn't happen. We've tested it over and over again.

wow you are an idiot aren't you? Of course your mind controls what neurons fire. That is how thoughts work. When you want to recall something, you fire up different neurons to seek out and play back different memories. Your mind controls that. You don't just have random thoughts. They are ordered. If the brain just fired neurons randomly you wouldn't even have a mind.

When I decide to walk to the store, my mind tells my brain to fire up those motor neurons and walk to the store. When I want to memorize a bible passage my mind tells my brain to store those connections in hard wired synapses.

http://bigthink.com/hybrid-reality/d...trol-the-brain

[Joel]

I've already logically proven LFW is incoherent.

And I took the time to carefully explain the errors in your "logic". And then you decided you were bored with the discussion.

if the decision is part of a series of causes that go beyond you, it isn't free. If it terminates in something uncaused, you cannot by definition have any control over it, so it isn't up to you. There's no logically possible way out of the dilemma.

Let the following serve as a brief recap for anyone else joining in. (And you too if you don't recall.)

If you trace the series of changes (linked by causes) backwards, it either goes beyond you or it doesn't.
Let's suppose it doesn't go beyond you.
So then you ask whether, in that case, it terminates in something uncaused. No, in LFW the first change in the series is caused: by you. All of the changes are caused. No change is uncaused. And only changes require causes, right? So no need to go back further.

(But then you are going to try anyway to press it further to infinite regress by asking what caused you to cause the first change. But again, the causing of the first change is not itself another change. This is related to the other discussion of how God can act upon temporal things, causing change in temporal things, without God himself changing. There is no a priori logical reason to think that an actor necessarily must change itself in the initial act of acting upon something else. But on the other hand the above does not preclude a LFW human from changing itself in the process; the first change in the series can involve, or result in, changes to the person.)

(Then you are going to argue that if you weren't caused, by a prior cause, to cause the first change, then you were uncaused and thus had no control. There are multiple problems with that. (1) The premise is illogical. Because causing the first change is not itself another change, the cause itself is not a change that can be said to be caused or uncaused; the change is the effect, not the cause. (2) Even if we imagined that the premise were not illogical, the conclusion doesn't follow. A person having no prior cause would not logically imply that the person didn't control the first change (e.g. control which, if any, first change to cause). Indeed the advocate of LFW is saying that causing the first change is the person using their faculty of LFW control.)

(Then in a last-ditch effort you are going to try to insist that the person would need to have control over their faculty of LFW control. Which is meaningless. The person only needs control (i.e. of which first change to cause), not control of control (of control etc). The latter has no meaning.)

In summary: All the changes are caused. The first change is caused and controlled by the human by their faculty of LFW control. And because it's LFW, the human does not cause that first change necessarily.

(Then you are going to complain that I haven't proven that any of this is actually the case. But that's not the point. The point is that it is logically self-consistent, and that your arguments don't apply, which is explained above. The thread, according to your own posts, is not about proving the actual truth of the matter but about what is logically consistent.)

[The Thinker]

who cares? The mind exists and makes decisions. At that point it can think what it wants and do what it wants based on various thoughts and inputs. If it is caused by 10 billion neurons, or by a "soul" it matters not. It exists as a complete entity that is self-aware and can make decisions and can actually control the brain.

Who cares? Your whole claim to LFW relies on it. If it is caused by 10 billion neurons that are part of a physical process -- guess what, you're mind is not free in the libertarian sense. It seems to me that you don't care, and you're really all concerned with that we have a mind and feel it makes decisions. Great, but your conceding my point if you do so. If it's caused by a soul, the soul is either caused or uncaused to do what it wants and you've got the same damn problem.

It seems to me that you're really just a compatibilist.

Your mind can rewrite the hardware it is based on. You can form new thoughts and new memories. And they become hardwired into your brain. The code is self writing. It is not merely "caused" by something. That is where your "logic" falls apart. The brain/mind makes decisions. of its own free will. My body felt hunger. I then had several choices I could make. My mind decided upon one of those choices. None of those choices was forced upon me. I could just as easily decided to eat at McDonald's as decide to skip lunch. And tomorrow I might just do that when presented with the same situation. That is what free will is. Making a decision without being coerced into making it.

The brain is doing everything. The mind is not writing anything to the brain. It's all physical processes with physical explanations as to what's determining neurons. Again, if you claim your mind made up the decision and was not forced on you, you are completely ignoring the fact that unconscious brain activity out of your control is what makes your decisions. So yes, "you" are forced. you couldn't have chosen otherwise because that would require a different series of physical events leading up until that point you think you made that decision.

Nothing MADE me not eat lunch today. Nothing but my own will.

You forgot that your will is caused by your brain, which you have no conscious control over....so yeah. Not free.

Claiming the mind can control the brain requires evidence. Show me what force overcomes the natural forces with actual evidence.

You can't deal with that so you desperately try to redefine free will away with your idiotic illogic that nobody is buying. Show me how I did not have free will in choosing to not eat lunch today. Go ahead.

You are the one redefining free will. I've already explained what it is: Libertarian free will requires at least 3 things:

(1) We are in control of our will
(2) Our mind is causally effective
(3) In the same situation we could have done otherwise


I already showed you did not have free will above when I said, "You forgot that your will is caused by your brain, which you have no conscious control over....so yeah. Not free." The burden of proof would be on you to show that your will exists independently on your brain causing it.

And then give me an example of what real free will would look like. Give me a test to see if I can have free will or not. Give us a way to falsify your theory. You can't. Because you have defined "free will" as "not free will"

No, because LFW is a self refuting and incoherent concept. Therefore I cannot show you what it would look like. It's like asking me to draw you a square circle.

What do you think a deterministic process would subjectively feel like? Tell me. How could I tell a person who has free will from someone who doesn't? Tom has free will, frank doesn't. How can I tell that?

You keep saying that but you have not proved that.

Wow. This is Trump level stupidity. Tell me what causes the mind then. You know it either has a cause or not. If it has a cause it isn't free and you can't control it. It if is uncaused you cannot by definition control something uncaused and you can't control it.

This is simple logic that your emotions are not allowing you to accept because your whole worldview comes crashing down once you give up LFW.

No you prove that they were. It is your claim after all that we don't have free will. There was nothing that forced me to not eat lunch today. I chose that. freely. Prove that I did not. Go on.

Um no, the burden is on you to prove it is free. A deterministic process would subjectively feel exactly like what we all experience. Therefore you cannot use your subjective experience as an argument that you have LFW. Do you hear yourself? You've literally just asserted your view over and over again. And a great thinker once said, "If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence."

wow you are an idiot aren't you? Of course your mind controls what neurons fire. That is how thoughts work. When you want to recall something, you fire up different neurons to seek out and play back different memories. Your mind controls that. You don't just have random thoughts. They are ordered. If the brain just fired neurons randomly you wouldn't even have a mind.

No you're the idiot who has no idea what he's talking about. Show me some scientific evidence that the mind controls what neurons fire and show me what force makes this happen. That violates the laws of physics. Everything is happening in the brain, and the brain is a physical system, governed by the laws of physics. And mind overriding these physical laws violates the laws of physics. So you have no idea what you're talking about. You're taking first hand experience of how our thinking feels and making an ontological conclusion out of it, just like our thinking the world looks flat and then declaring it's flat.

Stick to politics, because science and metaphysics is just not your foray.

[Bill the Cat]

That makes no sense.

If you can't understand that simple concept, there's no reason to go any further.

[The Thinker]

And I took the time to carefully explain the errors in your "logic". And then you decided you were bored with the discussion.

Um no, you have never shown errors in my logic. Nice try.

(But then you are going to try anyway to press it further to infinite regress by asking what caused you to cause the first change. But again, the causing of the first change is not itself another change. This is related to the other discussion of how God can act upon temporal things, causing change in temporal things, without God himself changing. There is no a priori logical reason to think that an actor necessarily must change itself in the initial act of acting upon something else. But on the other hand the above does not preclude a LFW human from changing itself in the process; the first change in the series can involve, or result in, changes to the person.)

There is definitely an a priori reason to think that an actor necessarily must change itself in the initial act of acting upon something else, otherwise what's the difference in god's state between god doing something vs god not doing something. Your last sentence makes no sense. It just asserts a claim.

(Then you are going to argue that if you weren't caused, by a prior cause, to cause the first change, then you were uncaused and thus had no control. There are multiple problems with that. (1) The premise is illogical. Because causing the first change is not itself another change, the cause itself is not a change that can be said to be caused or uncaused; the change is the effect, not the cause. (2) Even if we imagined that the premise were not illogical, the conclusion doesn't follow. A person having no prior cause would not logically imply that the person didn't control the first change (e.g. control which, if any, first change to cause). Indeed the advocate of LFW is saying that causing the first change is the person using their faculty of LFW control.)

There are no problems with that. For (1) the premise is totally logical. Causing the first change has to be a change, otherwise you're saying no change happens in "you" (whatever you define that as) and yet you can cause either X, Y, or Z to happen. How do you explain why the agent does X vs Y vs Z if there is no change in the agent?

For (2) that makes no sense. You have to show how a person can have control over something uncaused. What you seem to be saying is that it's uncaused, the agent doesn't change, and yet the agent has control over it. That's just an assertion. No explanation is given. If you just want to define free will as whatever that uncaused thing is in the agent, then you're just playing word games. You haven't shown the agent has control over it. It's like claiming that a totally uncaused random process happens to be "free will" merely because it happened in an agent.

(Then in a last-ditch effort you are going to try to insist that the person would need to have control over their faculty of LFW control. Which is meaningless. The person only needs control (i.e. of which first change to cause), not control of control (of control etc). The latter has no meaning.)

No it is not meaningless, because at no point does the person have control in the LFW sense.

In summary: All the changes are caused. The first change is caused and controlled by the human by their faculty of LFW control. And because it's LFW, the human does not cause that first change necessarily.

Sorry, but this just asserts your claim. You're literally just claiming the first change is controlled by the person. There's no argument there!

(Then you are going to complain that I haven't proven that any of this is actually the case. But that's not the point. The point is that it is logically self-consistent, and that your arguments don't apply, which is explained above. The thread, according to your own posts, is not about proving the actual truth of the matter but about what is logically consistent.)

No it is not logically self consistent! You just assert the person has control! You cannot by definition have control over something uncaused. This is ridiculous! Joel, you're a waste of my time.

[The Thinker]

If you can't understand that simple concept, there's no reason to go any further.

YOU don't understand this simple concept. All you're doing is asserting your POV and special pleading to get out of its logical problems.

It's the equivalent of this:

Thinker: I caused myself to exist.

Bill the cat: That's logically impossible.

Thinker: Only to you it is, not to me.

Bill the cat: That makes no sense.

Thinker: If you can't understand that simple concept, there's no reason to go any further.

[Sparko]

Who cares? Your whole claim to LFW relies on it. If it is caused by 10 billion neurons that are part of a physical process -- guess what, you're mind is not free in the libertarian sense. It seems to me that you don't care, and you're really all concerned with that we have a mind and feel it makes decisions. Great, but your conceding my point if you do so. If it's caused by a soul, the soul is either caused or uncaused to do what it wants and you've got the same damn problem.

It seems to me that you're really just a compatibilist.



The brain is doing everything. The mind is not writing anything to the brain. It's all physical processes with physical explanations as to what's determining neurons. Again, if you claim your mind made up the decision and was not forced on you, you are completely ignoring the fact that unconscious brain activity out of your control is what makes your decisions. So yes, "you" are forced. you couldn't have chosen otherwise because that would require a different series of physical events leading up until that point you think you made that decision.

Yet I could have done otherwise. I could have went to Mcdonald's. I chose not to. Because of a thought I had that I want to lose weight. That thought was not "caused" by anything. It was generated by my mind considering the various choices I had. Yesterday I ate soup I brought with me from home last week (I have several cans in my desk). I could have skipped lunch then too, but I chose not to. I could have had soup again today if I wanted, but I chose not to. My mind made choices and could have chosen differently. In fact in the same situation a day earlier I did choose differently.

So far you have just made a bunch of assertions, saying physical events led up to forcing me to skip lunch. But you have not proven it. Merely asserting it is not proof of anything.

You forgot that your will is caused by your brain, which you have no conscious control over....so yeah. Not free.

My will is part of my mind. my mind is caused by my brain, but it is more than just my brain. It is a collection of thoughts, desires, information all working in a self-aware environment capable of making choices. The mind is not just the hardware it runs on. It is self-aware and in control of itself. It can even rewrite itself and change. based on thoughts and actions it decides to take. It can learn.

Claiming the mind can control the brain requires evidence. Show me what force overcomes the natural forces with actual evidence.

Memorize this sentence "The Thinker is an idiot" - there you just changed your brain and wrote new neural pathways into your brain. Your mind, reading and memorizing that sentence just changed your brain. Now lift up your left arm. Your mind, reading that instruction, and your free will to follow that instruction causes neurons to fire in your brain, which control muscles and lifted your arm. Or perhaps you freely chose NOT to raise your arm. That is the choice your mind makes. freely.

You are the one redefining free will. I've already explained what it is: Libertarian free will requires at least 3 things:

(1) We are in control of our will
(2) Our mind is causally effective
(3) In the same situation we could have done otherwise

Can you show me an official source that says that Libertarian free will requires those three things? Number 2 doesn't even make sense. I am pretty sure you just made that part up. Sounds like you. But for now let's run with it.

I told you to raise your arm. Let's suppose you did.
1. You controlled your will and decided to raise your arm
2. Your mind caused your brain to fire neurons and raise your arm. It was effective in causing that to happen. It was "causally effective"
3. You could have not raised your arm

I already showed you did not have free will above when I said, "You forgot that your will is caused by your brain, which you have no conscious control over....so yeah. Not free." The burden of proof would be on you to show that your will exists independently on your brain causing it.

Why? If my brain causes my will how does that make it not free? My brain is free to make choices through the mind it generates. Not a problem.

No, because LFW is a self refuting and incoherent concept. Therefore I cannot show you what it would look like. It's like asking me to draw you a square circle.

like I said, you have redefined LFW to be nonsense so that you can claim it is nonsense. Your logic is unfalsifiable because you have created a logical loop so that everything anyone gives you as an example of LFW is actually an example of determinism. circular logic and begging the question.

What do you think a deterministic process would subjectively feel like? Tell me. How could I tell a person who has free will from someone who doesn't? Tom has free will, frank doesn't. How can I tell that?

It would probably feel like you are just along for the ride. You would not be in control. In fact you might not even be self-aware. There would be no need for self-awareness if everything just happened.