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@secularmerlin
@Fallaneze
In short, if you make a claim it is down to you to justify it. It's impolite to simply demand anybody else proves the negation is true.
That applies whether the claim is positive (eg god exists) or negative (god does not exist).
I don't see what all the fuss is about.
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@Fallaneze
Does a bop exist outside a formal debate?
I'd say probably not, in which case the bop lies with whoever is trying to persuade others their claim is true, whether that claim is god does or god does not exist (or any claim at all).
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@secularmerlin
If i were to make a claim without a supporting argument it would be playground standard for me to insist you prove me wrong. There is nothing to be gained by engaging in such faux-debates and a rapid bail out is in order! But you might (unwisely!) choose to prove the claim wrong, in which case you would aquire the BoP for some counter-claim.
but that is viewing debate only in its 'adversarial' form. In dialectical debate its ok to float ideas that are 'wrong' but may serve as a useful starting point of investigating a subject. New ideas are usually initially 'not quite on the money' but need refinement. In an adversarial debate the goal is to shoot one's opponent down in flames - in a dialectical debate one does not have opponents - one has collaborators.
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@secularmerlin
@Fallaneze
I suggest that one has to take attitude to the negation of a claim into account.
I'm imagining a scale that runs from +10 (being very confident a claim is true) to -10 (being very confident the negation of aclaim is true). Words like 'skeptical', 'belief', 'non-belief' and 'disbelief' are somewhat imprecise and ambiguous as to where they fall on that scale! My attitude to 'god exists' is about -9. That also tells you my attiude to the clain 'god does not exist'. What word you want to use to describe -9 on that scale is enirely upto you - but it's not necessarily the word everyone would choose; such is the nature of everyday language.
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@Fallaneze
I think its possible to define 'free will' in a way that it does exist and in another away that it doesn't exist.
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My point is not to defend Islam or sharia - which I detest - but to point out that the problem is with fanaticism, not with any paricular creed.
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@secularmerlin
It is true that skepticism is not a positive claim of any kind. All I mean is that it is never rational to believe something if you have no reason to believe. In fact not just any reason is sufficient to guarantee a rational position.
Aristotle said "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”. I think he had a point.
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@secularmerlin
Well, let's hope I'm a good guesser!There is my definition of my own soft solipsism.
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@Mopac
What does it mean to you personally if you do not have free will?What does it mean personally if you do have free will?
I don't get the 'personally' bit.
Answering both questions together, I would not be 'I' without my free will. It would be a strange life if I prefered tea to coffee yet had no power to choose between them. If I didn't have free will, I might choose tea every time, coffee every time or bounce betwen them at random, but that isn't the case. In reality, I choose the one I prefer, which is most definitely not 'random'!
Anti-freewillers are, allegedly, predetermined by conditions at the big bang to challenge me by pointing out my preferences are not under my control. I agree with that, but I wonder if that's a useful idea. Ofcourse ultimately everything is made of atoms and subject to cause and effect, but one can be over-reductive and say there is no difference between, for example, a statue and a person - after all, they are both 'only' collections of atoms and subect to cause and effect.
But the ways statues and people are the same is less important andless interesting than the ways they are different. I'dsay the thing applies to things that do have free will (eg people) and things that don't (eg leaves in the wind).
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@Mopac
Critters that do not prefer breathing have few offspring. Natural selection has ensured everyone is born with a preference for breathing pre-installed.I have a preference for breathing.
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@Fallaneze
However they arose, my preferences are my preferences, not anyone else's. It seems that some people insist that free will has to be independent of any influence whatsoever (ie taking an extreme interpretation of 'free') because it makes it easy to dismiss free will on semantic grounds.What if your preferences are installed by determinis tic forces beyond your control?
It's patently obvious we don't make choices free of influences. the most ardent supporter of free will does not deny our choices are influencedy by external factors and internal states such as preferences. Indeed a form of 'free will' independent of desires would be wotrh having,or wanting. That would indded be indistinguishable from 'random behaviour'.
But there are entities in the world - such as leaves blowing in the wind - that do not have freewill in any meaningful,sense and entities that do have free will such as DA posters.
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@Snoopy
if we make a choice in a specific set of circumstances, realign our will, then make another choice in the same set of circumstances.
As long as my choices are determined by my preferences (ie not by non-self factors) I have all the 'free will' I want.
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@TheRealNihilist
If abortion was a good thing, all pregnancies would be aborted and people would throw a party whenever afoetus is terminated.I would like to know an argument that makes abortion a good thing.
so abortion is not agood thing in an absolute sense.
But somertimes aborting a pregnancy is 'more good' (better!) than not.
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@secularmerlin
@Mopac
@3RU7AL
An industrial robot enacts the will of its manufacturer and programmer. It is the ultimate slave wth no freedom.
But a person is free to enact their own will.
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@3RU7AL
Our inability to turn the clock back is independent of whether free will exists or not. seems like a red herrring to me.
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@secularmerlin
I disagree. I'd say for 'many people' having free will means no more than having preferences or desires. It may be useful to distinguish between free will (ie the desire to act) from the freedom to act - if you are tied to a chair your desire and will to run away still exist,even if the ability to do so does not.
'Many people' would say a leaf blowing in the wind does not have free will because it has no preferences or desires.
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@secularmerlin
I'd say the most important influence on a choice is preference. if my choices were indeterminate I would not be able to choose what i want! Rejecting free will takes the self 'out of the loop', as they say!
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@secularmerlin
Good point - what does the term 'free wll/freewill' refer to?
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@secularmerlin
'Free will' is only a label! I'd hope when we say 'free will' we are talking about the same thing - essentially our [apparent] power to choose - but just ecause that power is called 'free will' doesn't mean it has to be free in any sense. Snow leopards can't exist because you can't make a leopard from snow!
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@secularmerlin
I'd say that (if free will exists) free will is a cause which has its effect upon the mind.
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@secularmerlin
@Mopac
@3RU7AL
Let me suggest it is useful to think of the brain as a lump of matter that changes its configuration over time. 'Anti free will determinists' point out that those changes are the result of the operation of physical and chemical laws which we cannot exercise any influence or control over; ergo, freewill is a myth, or an illusion.
I'd say a major assumption there is that there is a precise one-to-one relationship between 'brain states' and 'mind states'.
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@secularmerlin
@janesix
@3RU7AL
it may be that philosophy is more useful for discovering errors than uncovering truths.
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@secularmerlin
@Fallaneze
it seems to more like an argument that choice does not exist rather than choice being rational or irrational.a choice to accept determinism would not and could not be rational.
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@3RU7AL
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.So do you believe when a spider decides to eat one fly first and another fly second, they are exercising "free-will"?
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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@Swagnarok
...markedly lower...
The problem might be defining 'markedly lower'.
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@secularmerlin
@Fallaneze
i don't know what 'epistemological framework' nor 'philosophical framework' mean.
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@Stephen
For instance if a educated white westerner was to become a Muslim and take up Islamic fundamentalism would he be "backward"?
i'd like to meet such a person because i don't understand the attraction of religion, especially in its fanatical forms. it is self-evident that islam is open to hard-line interpretation - that is not open to dispute. What concerns me is identifying the socio-political forces that seem to be strenthening the hand of the hard-liners and making the prospects of reform within islam retreat.
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@PGA2.0
The question is what is unjust about not allowing people into your country unless they follow the laws of the land???)
Consider two people in Houston doing similar jobs and living similar sorts of ordinary lives. One drove from new york to look for a job, one drove from Tijuana. Neither commits any robberies or murders. yet only one is subject to the threat of losing their livlihood and being deported. Indeed the new yorker has considerable advanteges over the mexican.
The only 'crime' the mexican commited was being born on the other side of a line on a map. Is that justice, or is it about humanity's innate 'us and them' mentality?
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@secularmerlin
Or the only way to truth... it depends what the truth is.which ironically is exactly what makes it[faith] a poor pathway to truth.
I'm starting to think about how 'levels of description' come into this issue. Maybe things like free will and consciousness
are concepts appropriate for a high-level, functional description of brain operation...
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@EtrnlVw
If it's possible, why have you counted it out?
As you have ruled out 'not needed', another reason to rule out god is that nothing happens that is incompatile with the 'no god' hypothesis. Prayers are not answered, good people suffer, bad people prosper in full accord with random chance.
There are things that happen that are beyond our understanding. How a baby develops in a womb is a total mystery - e can't build an artificialwomb and make atrifical babies in it! But the process of making a baby often goes wrong. Hence it's not magical - it is merely complicated.
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@secularmerlin
@Fallaneze
AFAIK we don't know how the brain works - all we have are very plausible hypotheses. But I would accept that the brain does have the power to make inferences. That is to say brains naturally process information and draw a conclusion therefrom. Formal logic was invented as a model of what our brains do intuitively. That is to say a rule such as modus ponens (p implies q, p is true therefore q is true) is built into the way humans think.
Presumably we evolved brains that work that way because in the world we live in, that rule works. Critters that have an inbuilt grasp of that principle have an advantage over critters that don't.
But our brains are there to help us survive, not for the sake of doing logic for its own sake. What our brains do that formal logic does not relect very well is our ility to work with imperfect information. In formal logic, everything is true or false and there are no uncertainties or unknown factors. Thar rarely applies in the real world. So our brains draw conclusions based on probabilities, often when even the probabilities are unknown. We may well infer an enemy is present when the obective probability is low, because it pays to have false positives rather than false negatives.
So our brains implement a form of logic (or reasoning) that is distinctly 'fuzzy' and is only loosely approximated by formal logic. It may well be that a caveman will infer the existence of a sabre tooth tiger when a 'formal analysis' would not - but the cost of getting it wrong means that the less 'rational' inference is the better one to make.
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@PGA2.0
If you live in Texas, say, and someone comes from Oregon or Ohio to do a job that is no problem, but if he or she comes from Mexico it is. There are, I am sure, thieves and rapists in Oregon and honest hard working Mexicans, but the criterion is not what an individual is like but on the meaningless detail of their 'nationality'.
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@secularmerlin
What, in your opinion, does the term 'self' refer to? Is it the same thing you refer to as 'you' when you say 'You cannot choose your beliefs'?
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@Stephen
The problem is that you continually bring up a literal interpretation of Muslim scripture as the explanation of what is wrong with islam but you do not fully address why that applies to Islam but not to Judaism or Christianity.
The point of the OT quotations is to illustrate that if literal interpretation of scripture explained things then Judaism and Christianity would be just as bad as Islam.
In my view the reason the west is 'advanced' and the Muslim world is 'backward' is not because the west is Christian and the Muslim world is Islamic - the reason is the west is secular and the Muslim world religious.
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@Stephen
Are you saying those educated muslims are backward because they follow a "backward religion" of Islam?
I'm saying western societies are more liberal and progressive now than in the middle ages but in the islamic world a narrow, fundamentalistic attitude to scripture developed centuries ago is still going strong.
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One should never, ever confuse what is legal with what is just. They should be the same, but they frequently aren't.The law of justice in the USA is that a foreigner must come into the country legally.
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@Fallaneze
The distincaton falls apart if logical reasoning is a mindless force.By "rational" I mean basing your beliefs off of logical reasoning. Not having your beliefs installed by mindless forces beyond your control.
in fact,logical reasoning is forced and beyond control.
consider the classic
socrates is a man
all men are mortal
socrates is mortal.
the conclusion follows from the premises as does a physical effect from from its causes. That is logic demands socrates is mortal - one's mind does not 'control' logic.
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@secularmerlin
I only reject premesis that cannot be proved.
Not everything that is true can be proven. I reject/accept premises on an 'informal' basis. I reject what seems nonsense and accept what seems likely, although its rarely if ever strictly binary.
I reject the existence of gods (and such) not because I can disprove their existence nor prove their non-existence but on my assessment of what seems probable. I doubt you are really so mechanically hyper-rational as you try to come across!
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@Mopac
Not really. Denial of free will means accepting existence is no more than time 'cranking the handle' from big bang to heat death.Denial of free will effectively leads to blaming God for every evil that you (actually choose to) do.
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@Stronn
Isn't everything ultmately the product of random quantum events?Yes, blurring the line between random events and choice was my intent. It may be that what we perceive as freewill and choice is a ultimately the product of random quantum events.
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@Stronn
I think that if we have free will - which hasn't been proved absent - it must be dualistic. For many people that is enough to rule it out.
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@Stronn
I wonder if that is true. electrons etc. behave according to statististical laws with very high accuracy and reproducibility. I am not sure my own choices are statistically correlated... are the statistics of my choose tea/coffee choices fixed?Quantum events give the appearance of freewill in that they have patterns that are unpredictable. This is indistinguishable from the phenomenon you are referring to as choice.
I see a problem that it is impossible to make any prediction as to when a single, isolated radioactive atom will decay - that is totally indeteminate. But the behaviour of an ensemble of many such atoms is highly predictable, so something deterministic is setting the half-life. It seems to me that while we (by which I mean expert physicists!) know a lot about QM, there are still gaps in our understanding. i am not sure if its a gap in out factual knowledge or in our philosophical understanding - either way there are still things we are yet to master.
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@secularmerlin
I thought you were bored with discussions about frrewill.
I'm pretty sure i've never discussed frrewill and only when people don't respond to free will threads will I believe in free will!
As I said in the OP, I don't want to prejude too much. But it seems to me that there is a distinction between things people would say do display free will and objects that don't.
Even if you 'don't believe in free will' there is a difference in the way rocks and birds behave. An aspect of the difference is birds makes choices and rocks don't, and that - I submit - is the intuitive reason people distinguish between having and not having free will.
I think amateur philosophers (like us!) can get hung up on the literal meaning of 'free' and 'will'. The consequence is that we play 'dictionary wars' rather than thinking about the phenomenon itself. Even if determinism is true, the causal chain from physics to behaviour is so distant an convoluted it is hardly relevant. No one would think that 'explaining' ww2 as being predetermined by conditions at the big bang was a brilliant insight, so it is not a good explanation of free will either!
To suggest a differnt line for a free-will thread to take, let me ask if anyone can imagine a way to build a machine that manifests free will in the same way that people do (whether that is genuine free or illusory free will I do not specify!)
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If you hold a stone in your hand and let it go it will fall to the ground, but if you hold a bird and let it go it may not land for minutes, or hours.
The argument against free will is that the bird is no less subject to the laws of physics than the stone; the apparent difference is due to our ignorance of the forces and effects acting in the case of the bird. It is, I think, clear that argument is not rigorous! As we don't know the forces and their effects we can hardly be sure they account for the bird's behaviour.
In fact, we haven't got anywhere. We neither know that physical laws do account for the bird's behaviour nor that they do not. Whichever position one takes, an opponent can challenge with 'prove it!' to which no good answer can be made.
My view is that the world contains objects - such as rocks and steam engines - that manifest simple, deteministic behaviour and objects - such as birds and people - whose behaviour is far from simply deterministic. Without prejudging the nature or existence of 'free will', objects of the latter kind appear to manifest 'free will'.
One view of free will sees it as a 'high level' function, dependent on having a brain capable of consciousness and hence 'illsusion', but I want to present a different view. Consider,for example, an amoeba. An amoeba encountering a food particle behaves in a complex but inflexible way. I don't think amoeba can be said to have free will! But more complicated organisms have a wider range of responses and have to choose how to respond to a stimulus. Successul organisms will select a good option more frequently than unsucessful organisms. Thus the power to make choices will evolve. That is to say that organisms will evolve to make choices based on present conditions, past experience and even future expectation. That is to say that if one interprets 'free will' as 'the power to make choices' then free will can be expected to arise by normal evolutionary principles.
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.
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@mustardness
Big Loser.How do you spell Big Looser
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@secularmerlin
Is a free lance web designer at liberty to turn down a commission from, say, a KKK lodge?
I think discriminating against gays is ridiculous, discriminating against fascists and racists is laudable. But I have to accept other people will see things diferently. I think individiuals and 'private' businesses (which are effectively individuals) should be allowed to follow their conscience. Large, public companies should not, imo, have the same privilege. The dividing line might be based on, say, annual turnovern or number of shareholders.
If gay couples can't get anyone anywhere to design their cake, then the situation must be far more serious for gays in society generally, not just restricted to gettin their wedding cakes decorated.
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@Stephen
'Tis a pity it only you and I seem to think the article I linked to was interesting. I know where you stand!Yes, one deep exploration into Islam, that was.. Don't worry. I won't let your one and only thread ever on why "Islam Is Backward" sink from the top 10. There is much to explore and discuss in that one and only link.
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@secularmerlin
@Alec
Conusing indeed!
I don't quite get 'as a child...'. I can't be sure if its meant to be good or bad! I'm assuming good because the others are more obviously bad.
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