Is libertarian free will coherent?

[The Thinker]

yeah I totally missed that. Thanks. His "logic" is set up so that nothing can prove him wrong because he has redefined LFW to be something that can't exist.

Our will is part of our mind. It is the part that makes decisions. It is not some add-on box. It is a function of our mind.

At this point, it is useless to even argue with him because he has locked himself into his own little room and everything "proves" him right. Even evidence to the contrary. He is as bad as Darfius and his "Great Delusion"

I can't believe it took you this long to concede that we have no control over our will.

Yet you still now want to claim LFW. That's just redefining LFW to say that whatever conscious thoughts, desires and the like pop into our mind which we have no control over - we can just call that our "free will" since it happens in our mind.

So basically we have (according to you) libertarian free will requires at least 1 things:


(3) In the same situation we could have done otherwise

Is that correct?

[Sparko]

That doesn't show anything because the day before there were different physical circumstances leading up until you chose the different thing. You'd have to show the exact same physical state of the universe and you making a different decision.

like I said, you have set up this situation so that there is no way to prove you wrong (at least in your head). Without a time machine, it would be impossible to make a choice a different way. Free will has nothing to do with it. You are a moron. There is no point in continuing since nothing said can ever convince you that you are wrong. Must be your lack of free will. LOL.

as to what free will is, at the basic level free will is the ability to make choices without coercion.

[Sparko]

I can't believe it took you this long to concede that we have no control over our will.

who is this "we" you keep speaking of?

[Bill the Cat]

No, I'm just shooting down baseless absurd claims that I suspect are made in lieu of you having an actual argument.

No you aren't. You are showing you don't grasp the most basic concept that God does not exist in our time but can interact with our time at any time as He sees fit.

[Joel]

Something acts on god? An external force?

Sorry but we've been down this road before. If some spontaneous change happens to a person with no prior cause or explanation, that is not free will. We'll just be going around in circles again and again.

Nope, I didn't say any of that. I didn't say anything acts on God. And I didn't say anything happens to a person without cause.

How do you explain why the agent does X vs Y vs Z if there is no change in the agent?

It seems you think there is some contradiction in that. If there is please point it out. Because I don't see one, and thus I don't see anything in that that needs explaining.

Answer: How do you explain why the agent does X vs Y vs Z if there is no change in the agent?

You just repeated yourself. You didn't say what about it you think is contradictory and thus needs explaining.
I can only assume you are still confusing action and passion, or confusing cause and effect. They are different. I can't know what you think needs explaining unless you tell me.

The person need only control the first change, which is caused: by the person.

So you have an uncaused change

That's the opposite of what I said in the very sentence you were replying to. Is this reading disability of yours is just a put on?

What causes the agent to change the first change?

Change the change? That's meaningless.

I am [carefully reading what Joel writes], you're just equivocating here just like you've done over and over. Is the first change uncaused or caused?

I have consistently and repeatedly said that the first change "is caused: by the person."
Yes, I'm increasingly convinced this reading disability of yours is just a put on.

outline a full chronological order of evens when you think a "free" decision takes place.

I did so in my previous 2 posts. Which you supposedly read.
If you see anything specifically missing or contradictory, feel free to point it out.

Where does the free will part come in? And for where ever you think it does, is that step caused or uncaused?

I already answered the first question when I wrote: "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."

I also already answered the second question when I wrote: "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."

But what you want me to say is that the human's faculty of LFW control was not caused to cause the first change and thus the LFW faculty was not caused to do so. And then you would try to argue that because the LFW faculty was not caused to do so that the person (via their LFW faculty) did not control which first change to cause. I already anticipated that before and pointed out that that does not logically follow.

Your argument is:
P1) X causes Y
P2) X was not caused to cause Y
C) Therefore, X did not control whether Y was caused to be.

But the conclusion (C) does not logically follow from those two premises. There is no logical rule of inference that produces the conclusion from those premises. For one thing, there is no mention of the term "control" in the premises. You would need some additional premise.

Presumably you want to supply an additional premise like:
P3) If "X was not caused to cause Y", then "X did not control whether Y was caused to be."

Which is not only not obviously true, but seems to be false. (P3) is logically equivalent to its contrapositive:
P3) If "X did control whether Y was caused to be", then "X was caused to cause Y"

which seems obviously false.

If you think the conclusion (C) follows somehow from my position then you need to provide the additional premises required to make your argument logically valid.

[Joel]

Thinker's "(1) We are in control of our will" is baloney.
The human's faculty of will is not something the human needs control. It is the human's faculty of control.
By proposing this requirement Thinker is trying to trap you into infinite recursion by insisting that we need some second faculty to control our will. (If you are in control of your will, with what do you control your will? That's why he claims you've only pushed the problem back a step.) And then yet some third faculty to control the second faculty, ad infinitum.

It is sufficient for us to control our actions/effects (by our will). No "control of control" is required or even meaningful.

Now you're just admitted we have no control of our will, yet we have free will. Great.

Yes. For free will, "It is sufficient for us to control our actions/effects (by our will). No "control of control" is required or even meaningful."
The faculty of will is the control.

Your three requirements are unnecessary. Your requirement (1) is incorrect. Instead of your (1), "It is sufficient for us to control our actions/effects (by our will)." And then your requirements (2) and (3) follow from that, so it's not necessary to add them. (I.e., if we control our actions/effects, then we are causally effective and we could have done otherwise.)

Can you find any advocate of LFW who thinks your requirement (1) (control of control) is required for LFW? Let alone show that that is a consensus among LFW advocates?

[Joel]

I can't believe it took you this long to concede that we have no control over our will.

Yet you still now want to claim LFW. That's just redefining LFW to say that whatever conscious thoughts, desires and the like pop into our mind which we have no control over - we can just call that our "free will" since it happens in our mind.

Thinking thoughts (i.e. contemplating ideas) is one faculty of the human mind.
Feeling desires is another faculty of the human mind.
The will (the faculty of controlling actions/effects) is another faculty of the human mind.
(There are more faculties such as memory, reasoning, sensation, imagination, emotion,...)

There is no reason to confuse them and say that other faculties, like contemplation or desires, are the will. This too is something I pointed out repeatedly in the past in this thread, and you constantly would conflate them anyway.

(In case anyone is wondering, we know desires are not the will, because we don't always act in accordance to our every desire. Indeed the cardinal virtues of fortitude and temperance are about resisting desires to act, or refrain from acting, wrongly. It's where the phrase "will power" comes from. Or how Christians point out that being tempted is not sin.
We know that contemplating ideas is not the will because we are able to contemplate possible actions without doing them. And likewise with the other faculties.)

[Sparko]

Why are you even bothering Joel? He has defined, in his own head, LFW in such a way (falsely) that it is "incoherent" and so any attempt to show him LFW in action is automagically dismissed. Anything you say will either be dismissed outright, or redefined in such a way as to be consistent with his irrational definition and then dismissed.

[Joel]

Why are you even bothering Joel? He has defined, in his own head, LFW in such a way (falsely) that it is "incoherent" and so any attempt to show him LFW in action is automagically dismissed. Anything you say will either be dismissed outright, or redefined in such a way as to be consistent with his irrational definition and then dismissed.

What you say is correct. You are probably right that it isn't worth continuing unless he can show that his definition is what LFW advocates actually think LFW is. Otherwise it's just a straw man.

[The Thinker]

like I said, you have set up this situation so that there is no way to prove you wrong (at least in your head). Without a time machine, it would be impossible to make a choice a different way. Free will has nothing to do with it. You are a moron. There is no point in continuing since nothing said can ever convince you that you are wrong. Must be your lack of free will. LOL.

Um no, what I've described is what most people understand to be libertarian free will. I didn't set it up to be incoherent, it already was. You are a moron and you just don't want to admit defeat, so you hide behind a compromised version of free will which I predicted you would.

as to what free will is, at the basic level free will is the ability to make choices without coercion.

Coercion from what? How do you make those choices? If your brain determines all of your choices prior to your conscious awareness is that free will?

You clearly don't have enough subject matter experience here, moron.

[The Thinker]

who is this "we" you keep speaking of?

Everyone. If you claim you have control over your will, then you're back tracking and affirming the first LFW conditional I mentioned and you'd by contradicting yourself, yet again.

[The Thinker]

No you aren't. You are showing you don't grasp the most basic concept that God does not exist in our time but can interact with our time at any time as He sees fit.

The basic concept? Sorry, that's an incoherent concept. I'm fully aware that that's what theists like you believe god can do, I'm just showing you that the concept is logically impossible, just like LFW.

[Bill the Cat]

The basic concept? Sorry, that's an incoherent concept. I'm fully aware that that's what theists like you believe god can do, I'm just showing you that the concept is logically impossible, just like LFW.

No it isn't logically impossible.

[The Thinker]

And I didn't say anything happens to a person without cause.

So what's the cause. And for whatever that cause is, what's the cause of that, and so on?

You just repeated yourself. You didn't say what about it you think is contradictory and thus needs explaining.
I can only assume you are still confusing action and passion, or confusing cause and effect. They are different. I can't know what you think needs explaining unless you tell me.

The question is simple: How do you explain why the agent does X vs Y vs Z if there is no change in the agent?

That absolutely needs explaining. You're saying the agent doesn't change, yet the agent can do various things. So situation A, agent doesn't change, does X. Situation B, agent doesn't change, does Y. What's the explanation why the agent did X vs Y? I see no no way to get an explanation here. So do you think there is no explanation? Or if you do, what is the explanation?

That's the opposite of what I said in the very sentence you were replying to. Is this reading disability of yours is just a put on?

I'm talking about the very first thing that happens in the chain: an uncaused chain. That's what you believe right?

Change the change? That's meaningless.

So you admit there is no explanation. It "just is"? I'm still waiting on you to show me where the free will part comes in.

I have consistently and repeatedly said that the first change "is caused: by the person."
Yes, I'm increasingly convinced this reading disability of yours is just a put on.

Your view makes no sense. That's why I'm asking you to outline an order of events. It seems to me that you think an agent/person can just spontaneously change, and that change can lead to a causal chain of events, and somehow this is free will.

Please define free will for me and tell me exactly what things are necessary for it.

I did so in my previous 2 posts. Which you supposedly read.
If you see anything specifically missing or contradictory, feel free to point it out.

I don't see any such thing. Just write it.

I already answered the first question when I wrote: "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."

That merely asserts your view, it doesn't show how its logically possible. How the hell does the agent control the change that causes it to cause the next thing? Where's the free will? I see nothing.

I also already answered the second question when I wrote: "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."

The effect of what? Are you saying it is an effect with no cause?

But what you want me to say is that the human's faculty of LFW control was not caused to cause the first change and thus the LFW faculty was not caused to do so. And then you would try to argue that because the LFW faculty was not caused to do so that the person (via their LFW faculty) did not control which first change to cause. I already anticipated that before and pointed out that that does not logically follow.

Sorry, but you are delusional man. You've shown no such thing doesn't logically follow. Do you agree that by definition you cannot have control over something uncaused? Yes or no?

Your argument is:
P1) X causes Y
P2) X was not caused to cause Y
C) Therefore, X did not control whether Y was caused to be.

But the conclusion (C) does not logically follow from those two premises. There is no logical rule of inference that produces the conclusion from those premises. For one thing, there is no mention of the term "control" in the premises. You would need some additional premise.

Presumably you want to supply an additional premise like:
P3) If "X was not caused to cause Y", then "X did not control whether Y was caused to be."

Which is not only not obviously true, but seems to be false. (P3) is logically equivalent to its contrapositive:
P3) If "X did control whether Y was caused to be", then "X was caused to cause Y"

which seems obviously false.

If you think the conclusion (C) follows somehow from my position then you need to provide the additional premises required to make your argument logically valid.

Completely wrong. The conclusion C absolutely does follow because X had no way of controlling whether or not it would cause Y. Think of it this way: If you spontaneously were caused to murder someone through some uncaused quantum fluctuation in your brain that caused your muscles to contract in a way that lead to you murdering someone, where does the control enter into the picture required for free will?

For P3, it is also the case that if X was caused to cause Y, then X did not control whether Y was caused to be. Whether caused or uncaused, there is no room for control. For your contrapositive, I don't think it is illuminating anything significant. The only additional premise I need to add is P3`) By definition you cannot control something uncaused.

That takes care of any problem you think exists here:

P1) X causes Y
P2) X was not caused to cause Y
P3`) By definition you cannot control something uncaused
C) Therefore, X did not control whether Y was caused to be

And I've been saying P3` this entire time and you leaving that out deliberately is a little disingenuous and clearly intended to somehow make me look bad. That's why I think you're a dishonest douchbag.

[The Thinker]

No it isn't logically impossible.

Oh really? Prove it. Explain how it's logically possible to be timeless and yet "interact" with time which requires doing something without making a fool of yourself by saying something incoherent and special pleading.