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From: *Hemidactylus* <ecphoric@allspamis.invalid>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Making your mind up
Date: Sat, 04 May 2024 00:24:34 +0000
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LDagget <j.nobel.daggett@gmail.com> wrote:
> Arkalen wrote:
> 
> [ chomp chomp chomp ]
> 
>> I feel you're maybe seeing the philosophical objection to free will 
>> based on determinism but you're missing a parallel one involved in 
>> random choice. Basically many people feel that a choice being random 
>> isn't "free will" anymore than it being predetermined is. That "free 
>> will" still requires decisions to be under our control somehow, which 
>> randomness negates. Like "free will" involves "free" and "will" and 
>> determinism gets in the way of the "free" part but randomness gets in 
>> the way of the "will" part.
> 
>> Put another way, if we translate it into the legal domain (the area 
>> where notions of "free will" have actual practical relevance), someone 
>> with a mental disorder that leads them to predictably and unavoidably do
> 
>> a bad thing would be considered legally incompetent - but someone with a
> 
>> mental disorder that lead them to behave randomly would be considered 
>> just as incompetent. Either way the issue is not having control over 
>> one's actions.
> 
> 
> Please reread that. It's frustratingly pointless for being a combination
> of meta arguments and ridiculously literal parsing. I know you can do
> better.
> 
I thought Arkalen was saying something I was trying to get at in my own
reply to Bob but Arkalen did it better.
>
> Few adherents of a dualism that includes some metaphysical realization of
> "free will" go so far as to deny that "choices" can be influenced by 
> environmental factors. That some subset of those factors that coincide
> with
> the timing of making a choice are "random" is pretty much a given. To
> what extent you are influenced by a blue car versus a white car driving
> past you influences a choice you are about to make may be small or large,
> but the color is essentially random with respect to the elements of most
> of the sort of choices you might be challenged to make, for example what
> to order off of a lunch menu. And if you have some objection to thinking
> that some car of a different color can influence such a choice, use your
> imagination to find something else that could be an influence and fill in
> the obvious blanks on a backwards causation chain as per below. 
> 
> The back chain of dependencies that lead to what car passes you when has
> a fading sense of determinism, by which I mean that far enough back, some
> critical factor, perhaps weather, was essentially random but was
> consequential
> in determining some future event that had influence upon a choice you
> are faced with. 
> 
> This should be a recognized given in all discussions of free will. Nothing
> 
> in this is controversial, new, or surprising. No discussion of determinism
> can honestly deny that in our universe, randomness creeps in. It's a
> given.
> And so discussions that deny it are grossly tedious. Randomness in
> causation
> is a given. Choices have myriad influences of varying scale. 
> 
I think contingency itself important from what I recall of Gould. And
randomness is a thing, but it does crap all as a starting point for free
will. May as well be rolling dice when deciding to commit murder or not.
>
> The free will question is, what influence is there that is not material?
>
If one is a dualist or libertarian. They have no monopoly on free will.
Compatibilism exists. Dennett made a career out of it. 
>
> How does that non-material influence act upon the material brain, by what
> force or mechanism? What is the evidence?
> 
Doesn’t matter if one can make deterministic arguments for free will. I’m
agnostic somewhat.