Calling it trivial is not the same as considering it or paying attention to it - and contradictory to claiming it does not exist.
There has been nothing contradictory, and calling it trivial means that I consider it trivial, and not worth paying attention to it... becaust I consider it trivial. It doesn't answer, or get close to answering, the discrepancy between a fully predetermined reality of a deterministic universe, and the sense of freedom we have in our choices. That we could choose differently if the inputs had been different is trivial.
Now you are denying the reality of the alternative chosen. This has been comical for some time.
There's nothing comical about you being unable to comprehend what is written. If I imagine a unicorn, does that unicorn have external reality? No. It has no existence as something genuine, it is limited to being an imagination.
And what is this new "external reality" supposed to be doing here? You need another dodge?
External reality is existence that is not internal to the mind. If you imagine something it has no such external reality. It may very well correspond, broadly, with something that does have external reality, but an imagination is not, in that sense, real, tangible, etc.
So in your world the supposed driver is not a driver
They are the driver.
- does not have the capability of driving the car at all,
They have capability, in that if the inputs to the system were different they would act differently. Different inputs lead to different outputs. As seen in all working thermostats.
not even the capability of stopping or going at a traffic light.
They have that capability - different inputs could lead to different outputs.
Ok, you have an argument there. There is no driver, no capabilities, no decision, no will, and therefore no possible freedom of that will. That at least makes sense.
Whatever argument you think I'm making here, I'm not making it. However you have managed to interpret what I have said as you have, you have done so erroneously. Referring to something as a system does not mean that the system can not be called something. A television is a system, but it is still a television.
But you continue:
They are observed to exist if the driver exists. All of them. "Externally" observed.
They exist, and are observed, as imaginations. What is imagined has no existence as imagined in the real world, unless you think unicorns exist just because in reality just because they've been imagined?
If the driver does not exist, what is doing the "imagining"?
The driver does exist, is doing the driving, and does the imagining. That is what the system called "driver" does.
My statements consist of claiming the existence of a driver capable of stopping or going depending on the color of a traffic light - that looks like a factual claim, to me. I don't see any facts counter to it.
You don't seem to quite understand what it means to be counterfactual. If you start a question with "what if..." then you are considering a counterfactual proposition. As such, all imagined alternatives of future events are counterfactual. They are all "what if... the light was green", "what if... the light was red". Because the universe is predetermined, there is only one factual course of events... the one taken. All others that are considered are counterfactual. Those counterfactual alternatives, those other imagined alternatives, never had any chance of becoming factual, because the fact was predetermined by the input, which itself was predetermined aeons ago.
Yes, your driver,
if the inputs were different (note the conditional, implying counterfactual) they could have concluded differently. Noone is denying that, and noone has ever denied that. That is a trivial notion of what it means to be free, and is as true of a thermostat as it is of any other system.
You were making sense for a minute there, when you argued from the nonexistence of the driver, the capabilities, the choices, etc.
I never argued that, so I guess you still can't make sense of it.
Now you are back in the rut, arguing from the stipulated predetermination to the absence of freedom as a logical consequence - which involves making the extra supernatural assumption (as Baldee was straightforward enough to include in one of their sets of premises).
Yaaaaawn. No such assumption, unless you think we also assume at the outset that Socrates is mortal.
And has the capabilities involved?
The capability that if the inputs are different then the output would be different, yes, just like a thermostat.
You are forgetting that you have restricted your system to the driver, this go round (see above, bolded). The input from the traffic light doesn't exist yet, in that system.
I am not forgetting that.
It can be either of two colors, to the driver system, when it arrives. That's why the driver possesses those alternative capabilities, and the capability of choosing among them - all predetermined, of course.
Yes, just like a thermostat, just more complex.
The driver is predetermined, based on the inputs to the system at that time) to imagine counterfactual alternatives (although one of which may turn out to be factual, it can't be known at the time of imagining). The driver is predetermined to select one of those based on an additional input to the system (the colour of the light), just like a thermostat turns on or off. Are we agreed?
Have I missed anything?
Because all you have done here, and all you have ever done, is describe a trivial notion of freedom. Noone has disputed that that trivial notion exists within our processing, the same way that it exists within a thermostat.
"Just" a matter of complexity? Oh child - - -
Well, I'm sure that one day you'll be able to impart your patronising sagacity to us youngsters, and explain just how complexity changes the fundamental principles at play. You haven't done yet. You haven't even come close. You have merely covered the issue with a blanket and uttered the word "complexity", expecting us all to gasp and go "oooh, yeah, of course!"
So, if you want to finally start explaining how the system, the will, can have a non-trivial freedom, please do, 'cos everything you've tried so far is just an argument for trivial notions. Otherwise you best scamper back into your hole and let the real grown-ups speak.
