free will

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@keithprosser

I'm not interested in word-games that focus on whether free will is free or even if it is will. I take free will to be only a name or label for our faculty to make choices. The advantage of that is that it avoids getting bogged down in pointless semantics and turns the study of free will into a scientific study of a brain process. I think we can get an understanding of free will by studying organisms of increasing omplexity and learning how they choose between optional strategies. I expect that when we have done that, there will be no deep mystery about human free will.

So do you believe when a spider decides to eat one fly first and another fly second, they are exercising "free-will"?

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@secularmerlin

If debate was wrong in all cases, why would the church have ever held ecumenical councils to begin with?

There is a right type of debate, and a wrong type of debate.

The type of debate you are having with me is certainly an evil debate, because the intent is not to find truth, but to simply kill, steal, and destroy.

I do not respect your wicked appeals to my faith, which you don't understand and truly revile. You have no real interest in what I believe, and your worldview calls for the death of my religion.

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05.20.2019 03:24PM

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@secularmerlin

Aside from a blanket assertion that I've equivocated on the word "rational' I have not seen a refutation of my argument.

Topic's author

#94

keithprosser

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05.20.2019 03:38PM

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@3RU7AL

So do you believe when a spider decides to eat one fly first and another fly second, they are exercising "free-will"?

Spider brains have about half a million neurones, so they are much smaller and simplerthan mammalian or human brains. presumably it would be much easier to map brain activity and behaiour in a spider than a human. Perhaps it would be possible to discover exactly what goes on in a spider's brain when faced with and making a choice. I'd be surprised if anything 'anti-deterministic' was going on, but the experiment has not been done so we can't know that.

A major imponderable is whether spiders have 'subjective experience'. Even if we understand the mechanics of spider choice, would we know what it is like for a spider to choose - do spiders think they have free will? I have no idea (I doubt it!), but may be studying simpler brains than we have is the way to learn.

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05.20.2019 03:46PM

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@Mopac

If debate was wrong in all cases, why would the church have ever held ecumenical councils to begin with?

You tell me. You are the one who claimed debate is "unchristian" not I.

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05.20.2019 03:48PM

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@Fallaneze

Aside from a blanket assertion that I've equivocated on the word "rational' I have not seen a refutation of my argument.

What specifically are you arguing here? That there is no such thing as rational? Perhaps I am misunderstanding.

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@secularmerlin

Under determinism, all of our beliefs would be predetermined by chemical reactions and we would have zero control or influence over anything we think or do.

I'll stop there. Agree or disagree?

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@Fallaneze

You mean we would lack freewill? That would seem to logically follow.

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@keithprosser

I'd be surprised if anything 'anti-deterministic' was going on,

Me too.

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@Fallaneze

Under determinism, all of our beliefs would be predetermined by chemical reactions and we would have zero control or influence over anything we think or do.

The Standard Argument Against Free-Will (TSAAFW)

1) Determinism is incompatible with free-will (an inevitable outcome is not a willful choice).

2) Indeterminism is incompatible with free-will (a random or probabilistic outcome is not a willful choice).

3) No clever mix of the two solve either incompatibility.

Therefore, free-will is an incoherent concept.

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@secularmerlin

I actuallly did in that post you are replying to, but this is really just your way of dodging the subject of this topic, not an attempt by you to be educated.

I find your facetiousness offensive. The type of debate that is unchristian is the type of debate you engage in. Self righteousness over the truth's righteousness.

You don't want to engage me because your magic has no power over me, and engaging with me exposes your sophistry.

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05.20.2019 04:29PM

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@Mopac

You mean the post were you misrepresent me and call me evil? Yeah I pretty much ignored that part.

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@secularmerlin

Lets talk about eachother instead of free will. That seems to be what you really want.

Or maybe that isn't the right choice of words, wanting, that is. After all, if we have no free will as you seem to believe, it was determined before you were even born that you would be compelled into doing what you do. You are after all, little more than a manifestation of the weather.

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@secularmerlin

I understand that it would be a misrepresentation to call you evil, because evil itself is a meaningless term, as everything has been determined. Who can be blamed for anything?

In fact, your charge of me misrepresenting your position is in itself meaningless, because I am only expressing what I was determined to represent.

Don't blame me, blame reality as it is

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05.20.2019 05:27PM

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@Mopac

Want is the right word. Choose is the wrong word. I'm not sure that is what I want but this is an important distinction. You can be compelled to recognize reason. You can have cause to want something but neither is necessarily a choice.

This does not just apply to you and I however. I find the idea of a god with freewill to be logically incoherent as well.

That out of the way what about us did you want to discuss?

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05.20.2019 05:49PM

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@secularmerlin

If determinism is true, you can only be compelled to accept reason, or anything for that matter.

It is no strange thing that the very one who existed before time and thus outside time gave us the freedom of choice without determining the choices we make, also knows everything that happens in time.

It is not necessary that God determines what we do to be able to know what we are going to do.

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05.20.2019 05:56PM

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@Mopac

If any being knows what we will do, whether that being determined what we will do or not, then we cannot have freewill. Omniscience and freewill are mutually exclusive.

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05.20.2019 06:11PM

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@secularmerlin

Omniscience and free willl are only mutually exclusive to a being that is bound by time, not a being that exists before time, outside of time.

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Determinism cannot be rationally accepted if the position is indeed true. Agree or disagree?

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@Fallaneze

If you deny free will, things are not accepted out of reason, but out of necessity!

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@Mopac

Omniscience and free willl are only mutually exclusive to a being that is bound by time, not a being that exists before time, outside of time.

In order to exist a being needs space to exist in and time to exist during. Unless you can demonstrate that as false yoir claims of a being outside of time and space are nonsensical

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05.20.2019 07:03PM

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@Fallaneze

Determinism cannot be rationally accepted if the position is indeed true. Agree or disagree?

If this is directed at me then I disagree. You can be compelled to accept reason and no freewill is necessary.

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@secularmerlin

In order to exist a created being needs space to exist in and time to exist during.

Fixed.

But God does exist in space and time as well as outside it. That is part of the mystery of the incarnation. After all, to become incarnate in creation God had to take the form of creation.

#114

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@secularmerlin

(1) If determinism is true, mindless processes beyond our control determine which beliefs we accept.

(2) These mindless processes are not rational.

(C) Determinism cannot be rationally accepted if the position is indeed true.

Please me whether you disagree with (1) and/or (2).

#115

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05.20.2019 07:09PM

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@Mopac

Fallacy of special pleading.

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05.20.2019 07:12PM

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@secularmerlin

The Ultimate Reality by essence is Singularity. It is therefore not a fallacy to say that all created realities are contingent, but The Ultimate Reality by essence is not contingent. The Ultimate Reality is, after all, not created.

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05.20.2019 07:16PM

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@Mopac

Circular reasoning and special pleading.

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@Fallaneze

I disagree with your conclusion (C). In fact I would say that I have no choice but to accept that position as rational. You do not decide what is rational. You merely recognize it as rational.

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@secularmerlin

The Ultimate Reality cannot be a fallacy, wizard, no matter how pretentious you are about being rational.

The Ultimate Reality cannot be subject to time, because then time would be a reality over The Ultimate Reality. If there is a reality over The Ultimate Reality, it does not fulfil the essence of what it is to be The Ultimate Reality. That being the case, you are simply looking at a conception of God, and calling this conception God. God is not a conception. God is not a created being.

The Truth is not a fallacy. Time only exists as it does in Truth, only so much as The Truth is in it. Time does not exist before The Truth. Time exists because of The Truth.

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