There is also the question of test-ability or "unfalsifiability". Determinists, who subscribe to the notion of predetermination, by their own reckoning believe that the theory is unfalsifiable, simply claiming that the degree of complexity makes it impossible for Humans to test the theory. Rending the theory to being nothing more than an untestable logical extension of an "idea". A pseudo science that has huge implications if accepted as a reality. The intriguing thing to me is that the Determinist will seek to destroy personal responsibility for decisions made by claiming free will to be an illusion using a logical illusion to do so. Perhaps it could be described as a form of extreme rationalization that has lost it's footing in the real world?
How is that relevant? We observe the brain making choices among alternatives according to its own criteria: true or false?
Your example is not a deductive argument, and thus validity and soundness are not applicable. - If you had presented an example such as: - Pigs have wingsWinged creatures might be able to fly - Therefore pigs might be able to fly Then you would have a valid argument, but one that is not sound. You claimed the logic (of my argument) is sound, which for a deductive argument means that it is both of a valid form and that the premises are true. Kant undoubtedly has many other things to say that also aren't relevant to the discussion. I have never claimed that it is truth. You, however, have stated that the argument is sound: thus you are saying that the form is valid and the premises true. So you are claiming the premises true. Yet you also dispute them. Contradictory.
It is falsifiable. Simply come up with a deterministic system that contains genuine alternatives. Do that and you have falsified the incompatibilist view. Determinists, in my experience, do not, on the whole, seek to destroy personal responsibility. They might understand it differently, and come up with different explanations for how it holds in a world without genuine alternatives, but destroy it? No, your attacks are again simply appeals to consequence, and in this case seemingly entirely unfounded and based on your effort to appeal to fear. Where have I, for example, sought to destroy personal responsibility? Where has anyone arguing the incompatibilist viewpoint on this site sought to do such? Where has any determinist philosopher in history sought to do such from an incompatibilist position? For the latter there may well be some, but before you start coming up with such accusations, you really should do your homework and support them. And yet more hyperbole, more appeals to emotion, and more appeals to what you see as consequence. Do you not have anything approaching an actual non-fallacious argument?
We’re only speaking of precision of predictability in this respect. The actual working process of determinism is still valid regardless of the perceived resolution. If a causal chain is infinite, then so is its associated action. Again, in respect to predictability, the more you know, the more accurate the prediction. The deterministic process is not dependent on predictability, but like everything else predictability is an effect of determinism. The question is not whether there exists the ability to possess complete knowledge to make precise determinations, but whether observed reality supports the assumption that reality is a deterministic process. If one concludes that is is, then all action is strictly dependent on aggregate antecedent action, infinite or not. The big bang is an attempt with limited knowledge to deduce a moment in the evolutionary history of our particular universe. As more knowledge is revealed in the future, the picture of that moment will most certainly become clearer. I would assume the sum of events before and after the now to be infinite, and they are all inextricably bound by a deterministic flow. You still don’t seem to understand the meaning of a universal determined process. It means that every aspect of the every entity is determined, as in scripted by the whole of reality. This includes the going through the motions of imagining possibilities, considering their value, and the resulting sense of motivation they instigate, but that process was always going to happen as scripted by reality, just like the scripted action of a theatrical production where ideally there is also no place for alternatives. The act of considering alternatives is alway going to involve a process of mental modeling, which is essentially a form of imagination. The perception of alternatives is a result of a lack of sufficient knowledge to perceive the determined nature of the moment. How can determinism be considered supernatural when it describes reality as it exists? Your contention on the other hand that events could transpire alternatively does border on the supernatural. To justify the existence of actual alternatives, you must conclude that reality could magically be other than what it is. Replication is the determined evolution of a new event, it isn’t an alternative to the original. There are no do overs for the now. I use actual for events outside of imagination. Universal determination does not allow freedom of action in any circumstance. You can model modes of freedom mentally or otherwise until you're blue in the face, but that can't qualify it as an actual facet of a determined reality. Since freedom is the antithesis of determinism, how are you going to justify it in any form in a deterministic reality?
You obviously don't see how you are twisting the point. Deterministic predeterminism is unable to be tested in the context of claiming free will to be an illusion. therefore is it unfalsifiable. Science isn't built on opinion no matter how you wish to wrap it up. The only empirical evidence put forward has been from ICEAURA and that is in support of free will being real and scientifically proven. I have seen nothing but calls to "logical authority" by you and others and not a shred of empirical evidence to support it. All evidence that i am aware of points to the "real" autonomy of a self willed, self determining entity called a human being. Do you have any empirical evidence to suggest other wise? any? Do we all need to go out and buy tin foil hats?
A human driver approaching a traffic light: Done - if the current system is deterministic. The supernatural assumption. Quit making it, and your mind will clear. There is no sum of what has not happened yet. The observation of alternatives is a result of sufficient knowledge to observe their possession by the driver, as the driver approaches the light. That includes full recognition (for the sake of the argument) that everything about the driver in that moment - the one in which those alternatives exist and are observed - is determined. It hasn't happened yet. Try not assuming that, and reread. That makes it irrelevant. We are not discussing freedom of will of the entire universe as a whole. The example is a driver approaching a traffic light.
I'm not twisting anything. You said that it was unfalsifiable and I have provided you with how it can be: a deterministic system that offers genuine alternatives. Being falsifiable or not is different to whether something can be proven correct or not. With regard whether it should be accepted, however, I'm happy to go along with logic. Accepting the premise of the universe being deterministic, everything is predetermined. You yourself have agreed as much. If everything is predetermined, there are by definition no genuine alternatives. And chicken eggs aren't blue. Oh, sorry, I thought it was time to rattle off something irrelevant to what was actually said. At no point in the evidence that iceaura has alluded to is there any indication of genuine alternatives being carried out. He can talk of cars at traffic lights, or lab tests, all he wants, but there is no evidence in there of genuine alternatives, only of mental consideration of imagined alternatives. This is what he, and others, consider to be free will, but in a deterministic universe it is entirely predetermined. The decision taken was set in stone aeons ago. Nothing you nor iceaura have said addresses that point, but rather you simply ignore it as irrelevant. Which is why I consider your notion of free will to be trivial. Because all it is is the operation of a deterministic process, and like all other deterministic processes there are no genuine alternatives, and everything was predetermined. Feel free to provide an example of a deterministic system that offers genuine alternatives. Not merely imagined counterfactual alternatives but genuine alternatives. Show that for a deterministic system there can be the same input leading to different outputs. If you can do that then you can show the argument is false. If you can't then if you accept the premise of a deterministic universe, and you consider the logic to be valid that leads to the universe being predetermined, then you should accept the conclusion of a predetermined universe. And if you accept that the universe is predetermined, how can our choices be free in anything other than the trivial sense of a working thermostat being free to operate? There is no evidence that suggests it at the level of the deterministic system. All evidence at that level is that deterministic systems operate in a clearly defined way, with a single input leading to a single output, and that if you know the input, and know the rules, then you can know the output before it happens. Any evidence put forward for what you suggest only look at indeterministic sub-systems within the actual deterministic system. If you only consider the indeterministic system then logically you end up with what appears to be genuine alternatives, but when you look at the whole deterministic system that is actually in operation then it is not. Any and every deterministic system. Every deterministic mathematical model. Every law by which the universe operates. The rest is just looking at the logical conclusion of those. Your continued appeals to consequence are childish. Please grow up.
“How does a brain behave diferently than it was determined to by its genes an invironment.???” It woud explain brain autonomy.!!! Which gets back to my original queston… what are the factors which determine what the brains criteria will be.??? Are you convienced that the only explination is supernatural.???
Your going to be famous! Or at the very least your words will be! It is written in the stars.... Thank you for your fine examples....
That's akin to a solipsist asserting that there is no external world because s/he defines the latter in such a way that is not possible to validate it. The issue does not revolve around determinism versus freewill, but compatibilism versus incompatibilism. The latter two provide their own meanings of freewill which make it agreeable with determinism or not. Incompatibilism's depiction of freewill is designed to facilitate two rival views of its membership: both the (libertarian) denial of determinism and the opposite of freewill being denied. If it were in a moral context, it'd be somewhat like politics-A supporters calling "private property" good according their standards and politics-B supporters calling "private property" bad according to their standards. Compatibilists simply conceive freewill so that is agreeable with determinism -- end of problems. Which again is just a biased appeal to incompatiblism's loaded conception of freewill (or referencing the "bible" of one's own thought orientation choice). Having an identity that evolutionary processes in the past gave me is irrelevant, since I wouldn't exist if I was something or someone else. There's no soul more fundamental than the meat-body it occupies -- there is no "Oh, I could have been physically and psychologically different." Being different or otherwise than this means not existing, something else in my place. The rest implied underneath there is something along the line of antecedent states and concurrent properties of a human organism -- that it having any organization, preferences, and identity at all -- eliminates the capacity to make choices. Which is nonsensical from an empirical standpoint of how things work, since that's what is necessary for a decision-making system. Compatibilism actually needs at least adequate determinism for freewill. Another stance is hard indeterminism, which denies both determinism and freewill (or is very pessimistic about them). It's again usually subsumed by incompatibilism, though it might seem to deserve to be an independent third category of its own. It's pretty clear there is no absolute indeterminism, and the adequate determinism which does seem to be the case does not pose a threat to the freewill of compatibilism. Under normal circumstances, the overall managed functioning of the human body at a higher scale can prevent supposed randomness from overpowering it. The point of the prior reply/post was that if the game is rigged in advance, then assertions dependent upon reasoning making conclusions as part of the fact process are suspect, due to reasoning itself being compromised by external agency (i.e., human bodies stripped of or denied their autonomous operation). Including the decision -- of there being no freewill -- thus subject to such skepticism. IOW, the liberty to deny freewill even temporarily entails that freewill is the case. The denial sabotages itself by leaving the door forever open to doubt, since reasoning would be compromised by external agency. There would be no legitimate reduction of multiple options to one in human decision-making. ###
Being able to do two different mutually exclusive things at the same time would be supernatural, a violation of physical law and causation etc. That has been excluded from the beginning, here, by everyone. Rerun the situation with different contingent inputs, as scientists routinely do in labs everywhere - piles of evidence will appear before your very eyes, as it has theirs. With the added assumption that any freedom must be supernatural - a defiance of those physical laws etc. Without that further assumption no such logical conclusion follows. A deterministic driver approaching a traffic light. The driver possesses the ability to stop or go - mutually exclusive alternatives, both in the driver's possession when approaching the light. (Unless of course you mean "supernatural" when you say "genuine", as always before). Such as the driver. We are looking at the driver because that is the entity whose freedom of will is being discussed, in the example. That is known as paying attention. Labeling things you have not bothered to think about or even recognize "trivial" is not an argument. It is a stupidity. In human beings, that "sense" is flagrantly and dramatically not trivial. It is several orders of magnitude more complex, and several logical levels higher, than a thermostat. - - - - That has other, better, nonsupernatural explanations.
Ok… my complete statement::: "By startin wit the notion of a deterministic universe… its agreed that ther woud be no free will in that universe… however ther is evidence that ponts to the universe not bein deterministic dew to random events… but free will does not come from random events… so as it stands as far as evidence goes... the free will we feel that we have is just an illusion of free will.!!!" An personaly… i thank lookin at the complete story is much more interestin/satisfyin.!!! By startin wit the notion of a deterministic universe… do you agreed that ther woud be no free will in that universe.???
What are the factors which determine what the brains criteria will be.??? Woudnt that be genes an invironment.???
See the Encyclopedia Britannica, for starters. Any edition. In the example chosen, we have simplified them to two - red light;green light - for purposes of illustration. Or just "environment" - throw the genes in that box, if you want to. That would be the matter under discussion, if we ever get one started.
Ok… do you agree that genes/environment determine how the brain will make the choices that it makes.???
The primary motivation behind all self determinations is for self benefit. So one could argue that if a deterministic universe exists and it is a big if, then that deterministic universe is devoted to determining individual self benefit...... I find that kinda amuzzzzing for some reason.....Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The bummer is... one mans self benefit is anuther mans disadvantage Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
