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How do you exactly define 'free will'?
- Thread starter Renji
- Start date
JerryL
Well-Known Member
By using a different definition of "Free will" than I am using. I did read parts of the links.
JerryL
Well-Known Member
Either that process has random elements or it does not.
If it does, then the randomness (which is not will) Is the part that varies the outcome. If it does not then the outcome is entirely the result of the conditions.
"unnecessary" is a nonsensical word. Something cannot be absolutely necessary... it can only be relatively necessary.
The brain has developed the way it has because the developments were beneficial to the likelihood of reproduction.
A tautological assertion is self-referencially true. Sometimes referred to as a "truism".
My claim on free will "It either has random elements or does not", or the inverse "It is either determined by the state of everything or it is not", is a tautology.
How is it possible for something to be "determined by random"? Moreover, how can you defend your claim not to have made an equivocation fallacy when not only the sense but the part of speech (adjective vs. a noun that doesn't exist in the English language) differs in your argument?
It does exist. There are several definitions of random which allow a tossed coin that is clearly some negligible difference from the idealized "fair" and for which the flip is conditioned by atmospheric conditions, force, etc., yet which is "random." However, there is no coin or anything else such that the outcome can be determined by "random".
Your scream was determined by an outcome, in your example. That outcome was given, and your response was not in any way or sense "determined by random". To describe the situation in line with your methods, we would say that given the outcome of the coin, whatever outcome there was you would scream either heads or tails. However, even if we can make sense of this notion of a random coin resulting in your determined action, the randomness describes the dynamics of the coin. Your actions are not random in the slightest, as apparently you are (in your example) necessarily required to scream the result. As a result is necessarily given, you will necessarily scream the outcome. If your actions were truly random, it would be possible for you to scream anything or not respond at all.
Unfortunately, you have sought to completely eradicate any means for or models of causation in your thought experiment. The fact that this makes terms like "determinism" utterly meaningless in general doesn't negate the logic of your argument, but it does mean that at this stage we are left with a confused mess of terms in which things happen and are categorized as random or deterministic not just arbitrarily but paradoxically, as you have both conflated the two as a causal mechanism and described "determined" as being caused by "random".
It might behoove you to consider the importance of causality when attempting to describe causal models. Simply categorizing outcomes that are determined because they happened into some artificial dichotomy will at best provide you with such a dichotomy so long as it is both accepted to begin with (i.e., it is granted as a premise rather than in any way shown) and determined to be within the realm of logical possibilities. Even accepting that both are true, this merely shows that if we accept your premises, then we should accept your conclusion. It gives us no reason to consider your premises as anything more than nonsense (I'm not asserting here that they are, merely that his is the structure of your argument, which is of the form "granted my premise is true, my conclusion is true as it is my premise").
JerryL
Well-Known Member
Schrodinger's cat would be an example. A poison gas triggered by a random event.
So you believe in a fully deterministic universe. I suspect there are some people into Quantum theory who would disagree with you (Schrodinger, for example); but whatever.
Yes. Hence why I didn't say that the scream was random. I said it was determined by [a] random [event]. In this case: the orientation of our fictional random coin.
Remember. Something can be determined by the state of everything, be random, or be some combination of the two.
Sorry that you find the language confusing. I've spent quite a few pages clarifying for your benefit
And my premise is a tautology ("either A or not A"). Further: no one has given an example which falls outside my premise. Every attempt at doing so thusfar has either been an equivocation of a goal-post move.
What is neither random nor not random?
Schrödinger’s cat concerns a poison gas that is both released and not released. It is determined both to happen and not happen. How is that “determined by random”? More importantly, again how can you claim not to have made an equivocation fallacy when you use “random” not only in two different senses but as both an adjective and a noun?
No. I think that anybody who believes there is some chance that the universe is deterministic is, by this point, relying on a practically religious-like faith. Nor do I have any idea how you inferred that from what I stated.
Only the outcome of the coin toss didn’t determine the scream (I’ve seen a lot of coins flipped but never accompanied by a scream). The outcome doesn’t determine whether or not you scream. You decided to scream given a particular outcome. There is no causal/deterministic connection between the random toss and your behavior other than that you’ve specified in advance that a particular outcome will mean you behave in a particular wave.
Moreover, given a random coin toss, what is “random” is the outcome of the coin toss (the state of the system). Once the outcome is realized (i.e., heads or tails), then the random element is over. We have a specified state. If your behavior is governed by this state, then it is determined by a given outcome, not “by random”.
I remember you saying this. I don’t recall you giving any evidence that it is so, any reason to believe it so, or even any model or explanation in which the above actually makes sense.
And as much as I appreciate that, you continue not to connect your usage to that used within literature on physics, metaphysics, philosophy, etc., while it also doesn’t seem consistent (hence the use of random both as a cause and to describe a type of outcome).
"Either all elves are alligators, or not all elves are alligators"; "either X physical system is a particle, or it is a wave"; "either this statement is necessarily false, or it isn't necessarily false"; "either some tautologies are true, or some aren't"; "either everything is true or false, or it isn't"; "either most immortals are human, or most immortals are not humans"; "either Zeus is superior to YHWH, or he isn't". The form “either A or not A” doesn’t itself entail a tautology, as there are multiple ways in which the form can either failure to mean anything, be wrong, or fundamentally mislead. You’ve presented a dichotomy (that isn’t always a dichotomy, as something can be “determined by random” and both determined and random). The only sense in which your premise is a tautology is in that you assert “that which happened, happened”. Tautologies really can’t be true of much that relates to the world but are rather true by definition, formal tautologies, etc. You aren’t seeking simply to define determinism and random but to relate these to reality. As such, the form “either A or not A” isn’t a tautology as it depends upon the correspondence between
1) the proposition and its negation
&
2) reality.
I gave several. You simply incorrectly defined e.g., quantum mechanics as “random” or as “determined by random”, which is wrong (even if the latter were somehow meaningful).
You haven’t really offered a definition of random either, just varying descriptions in which you use the word.
Probabilistic, chance-raising, contingent, etc. I’ve attached yet another source for you to help you understand the nuances of causality, determinism, etc.
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NulliuSINverba
Active Member
I've seen at least one person from this forum present the argument that God cannot know what decision(s) a person will make in the future.
So (taking that person's assertion as my cue - irrespective of whether it's true or not) ... one might define "free will" as the ability to leave God guessing. Or (if you like) ... the ability to trump omniscience.
Or if you're really feeling kinky: The ability to redefine omniscience.
JerryL
Well-Known Member
I keep forgetting your inability to contextualize.
In the experiment described by Schrodenger: there is an item which triggers randomly. This item then is the cause of another deterministic item. Such a causal chain would be an example of what I meant when I said "determined by random".
And again, I used the term as a simplification. It was shorthand for something like "You've then proposed an event in which the outcome is determined by a combination of something random and 'the state of everything'".
Then random
Yes. There were many things that happened between the event of the coin landing and the scream. You have a definition of "cause" that is different than the one I am familiar with and, more importantly, different from the way I'm using it. Equivocation fallacy.
Exactly why "determined by random" rather than just "random". It is a combination of random events and the state of the universe.
I don't like to argue other people's claims very much; so I'm not going to tie it in to someone else's use... even though it may in some cases be the same.
I don't know enough about "elves". But if I took a specific elf (say a Tolkien elf), then the latter. Not all elves are alligators.
That's actually apples-and-oranges to the claim you are responding to. Let's try putting that back in my terms. "Either X physical system is a particle, not a particle, or a mixture of the two"
Statements, unlike real things, can be nonsensical. In this case, its problem is its recursive-ness. I don't have that issue with my claim.
Some tautologies are true.
"Things" are not logic and so cannot be true or false. Therefore your answer is "isn't".
Not
True statement but not answerable without more data. We'd have to define "superior" and also determine what criteria. I suspect that the two (being fictitious) are equal: which would make the answer "he isn't".
I'm sorry. Were those not supposed to be answerable? Want to try again.
Not determined by the state of anything.
I'm not interested in defending other people's claims.
You keep forgetting to actually address the issue or properly contextualize. I've read Schrödinger's works in the original German and am more than familiar with this topic; it has become central to my doctoral work.
This isn't just wrong, but nonsensical. It's a farce. The idea that your explanation is remotely related to Schrödinger's thought experiment is comical. First, the entire point was a demonstration that QM entailed paradoxes in the macroscopic world. Second, there is no causal chain, and that was central to Schrödinger's point. Third, causality itself is meaningless here (at least insofar as any conceptualization of causality in terms of determinism is concerned, along with many others). QM dictates that multiple states are realized that CANNOT be caused by any "chain" you reference. Fourth, you still are wrong about "random" as you are now not only claiming that something antithetical to "random" is "random", you are claiming that something that isn't instantiated as a single event at all is somehow determined (when that would entail that multiple, incompatible states are "determined" despite the fact that they are all realized when that is impossible according to either "determinism" or "random". Do some homework before spouting such nonsense.
All you have is simplifications because you don't understand the real models, contexts, theory, etc., behind this. You cannot but spout simplistic versions of popular science accounts of notions and theories you don't understand and can't (and before you say you can or that you are even close to the ability to being able to, please explain the difference between functional spaces, infinite Euclidean space, infinite dimensional spaces, Hilbert space, and phase spaces).
"I have no idea what I'm talking about"? Yes, that was what it was shorthand for.
Then logical paradox.
You are familiar with a definition? Last time I heard, causality was not a part of your vocabulary. Please: feel free to proffer you definition.
Meaningless. Random events necessarily would be part of the state of the universe, and your utter inability to distinguish "random" from "determined" is so very much a part of your complete inability to present a remotely plausible model.
Fine. Make an argument of your own rather than redefining the meaning of technical terms whilst presenting an argument the relies on real logic/formal systems as being wrong.
So some elves aren't alligators? Or are you so incapable of the use of logical inference that this question of entailment doesn't make sense to you?
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JerryL
Well-Known Member
You do love your appeals to authority.
This is a good example of your inability to understand what's being said.
I am not talking about the original point of Schrodenger's thought experiment. I am talking about the mechanisms.
You on the other hand seem to simply want to move the discussion farther and farther away from what I said in an attempt to find something that will stick. I don't know why such trolling is so important to you; but it's silly.
And you haven't managed to grock the most basic of claims. All you have is pompousness to cover that. You are trolling at best.
And that's just an insult. Post reported.
Non sensical
Red-Herring
Straw-man / equivocation.
Trolling
Correct. If I assume Tolkien elves (since I don't know which elves you were imagining), then some elves aren't alligators.
You imagined your questions were complex-question fallacies; but the only one that was didn't line up with my question and, once I fixed the wording, was perfectly fine.
Further proof that you don't understand basic context.
Saying that I know about something isn’t an appeal to authority. I’m not asking you to take on my authority anything about Schrödinger's works.
In addition to calling me a pompous troll (at best), you’ve just said in two different ways in one post how I am unable to understand (to translate Heinlein) anything, be it “the most basic of claims” or “what’s being said.” Then you call it an insult when I say something similar and report it. Interesting.
Your example didn’t give any actual mechanism. You simply incorrectly described one:
This isn’t a description of a random event or of any “mechanism” no matter how much you’d like to “contextualize” whatever you believe Schrödinger’s thought experiment to be:
“In this paradox, Schrödinger imagined a cat confined to a box. Inside the box, the decay of an unstable atom serves as a trigger for the hammer to break a vial containing poison. The release of the poison will then kill the cat. According to the laws of quantum mechanics, the atom is at all times described by a superposition of “decayed” and “not decayed.”…One state corresponds to the atom not yet decayed, the hammer untriggered, the vial unharmed, and thus the cat alive. The other state represents a situation in which the atom has decayed, the hammer has broken the vial, and the poison thus released has killed the cat.
The second part of the paradox is established by the appearance of an external observer. When the observer opens the box, standard quantum theory predicts that she will “collapse” the superposition onto one of its two component states...The observer would therefore seem to suddenly decide the fate of the cat by simply looking at the unfortunate animal.”
Schlosshauer, M. A. (2007). Decoherence: and the quantum-to-classical transition. Springer.
The mechanism is the observer’s decision/action, but more importantly this isn’t the mechanism which kills the cat or prevents the cat’s death; rather the cat has always been both alive and dead until the observer decides to look.
Also, this isn’t random, and fails to be so in two different ways:
1) Quantum theory holds that the release of the poison gas was neither determined nor random because it was both released and not released.
2) The state of the system observed is decided by the observer out of a set of outcomes described in QM probabilistically, not randomly.
Were I actually trolling, I would not be spending so much time and effort explaining in various ways where I see your arguments fail only to be ignored or written off (with a claim that I've made some fallacy, with the criteria for such characterizations never given). I've even taken the time to find materials or scan pages just to provide a platform for discourse.
I didn't, nor did I actually intend them to be questions but counter-examples. Any logical argument/statement of the form “Either A or not A” is formally/structurally valid, but not necessarily true:
Example 1:
Proposition A= “This statement is false”.
Proposition B= “Either proposition A is true, or it isn't”.
Example 2: “Either there exists a set with a cardinality between aleph-null and aleph-1, or there doesn’t.”
(the Continuum Hypothesis, which, simplistically, it is true if assumed true and false if assumed false and is “undecidable”).
Then there are examples of tautological structures which, while not strictly speaking false, aren't “true” so much as meaningless. An extreme example is something like “Either all blargs are blorks, or it is not the case that all blargs are blorks.”
Your premise, though, isn’t even of the form “A or not A”. In one form it is that everything is either determined, random, or a combination. Were you to define “random” as “not determined” and rid your argument of the 3rd option, it would be a false “tautology” of the 2nd type (reliance on ambiguity). In fact, if we include your “determined by random” option, it’s an equivocation fallacy, as you then use “random” both as a noun and an adjective, i.e., the same word with two senses so different they aren’t even the same part of speech.
“Treatments of Equivocation vary...Agreement exists, though, that using a term, concept, or phrase as if its meaning had stayed the same when in fact it has been shifted from one sense to another is fallacious and potentially deceptive.”
Tindale, C. W. (2007). Fallacies and argument appraisal (Critical Reasoning and Argumentation). Cambridge University Press.
Is typical of most of your “counter-arguments”, and it’s typical of trolling: you present your initial argument in terms of your definitions, ignore or dismiss criticisms by calling them fallacies without even saying what makes you believe them to be, repeat your initial argument as if repetition supports it, and demand others play by rules you refuse to.
I may be a pompous *** and whatever other insults you've thrown at me over many posts, but when I say you are wrong about something I say why. You seemingly reduce language itself (unless it’s your own) to a set of names of fallacies with which you can dismiss all critiques, no further discussion required.
JerryL
Well-Known Member
I'm aware of what it is.
And you've tossed tons of insults yourself. What are the two I've reported?
When you said "as usual" on one, thereby attacking me in general instead of merely in the context of the thread and here, where rather than responding to my quote you replaced it.
Glad you can describe one of the most well-known experiments in quantum theory.
But I have not suggested this experiment. I have suggested using the mechanism *from* this experiment. Specifically: "the decay of an unstable atom serves as a trigger for the hammer to break a vial containing poison."
There's your process which is both arguably random (moment of decay) and determined (the things that happen because of the decay).
Now I expect you'll answer with something about Shrodenger's experiment that has nothing at all to do with my own or completely ignores the illustrative *point* of what I've said.
And you said this after a quote of my post where I said why you were wrong. I think you've lost your point.
So, as we've said, either everything is determined by the conditions of, well, everything, or it's not. If it's not determined by conditions, it occurs randomly. Of course, some things can be the former and some the latter, creating a "combination of both".
This is why freedom, in any absolute sense, cannot exist at the same instant as well. Being slave to the state of everything isn't free, and being slave to randomness isn't will.
So you intentionally mischaracterized me?
I never claimed otherwise. I just don’t demand that other play by rules I feel free to flaunt.
In my view we are all of us ignorant of infinitely many things, so it is not an insult to say of someone that they are ignorant of something, it is a given (to say that they are ignorant of particular things, however, is not given but a claim). By contrast, it is not true of everybody (and arguably nobody not an infant or brain-dead) that they can’t understand “the most basic of claims”.
Ah, that. I meant in in the context of our interactions, which I thought was obvious. And while arguably, referring to my “inability to understand what’s being said” is subject specific, asserting that I can’t understand “the most basic of claims” is a general description of my intellectual capacity, not some area of knowledge I am insufficiently familiar with. Regardless, I’m not the one demanding the other guy play nice while I am free to directly and passive-aggressively attack their person, integrity, personality, etc.
It’s not an experiment in quantum theory. This is one reason I’ve objected to certain claims you’ve made about your argument which you have said is a “thought experiment”. I won’t belabor the point other than to point out two of my central problems with casting such arguments in terms of experiments:
1) Thought experiments, like real experiments, rely on our knowledge of the physical world. However, they cannot tell us things about this world the ways experiments can. I cannot, for example, create a thought experiment in which I accidently stumble upon evidence for electrons or X-rays.
2) As recent years have shown (and increasingly so) many a thought experiment has been not only physical instantiated but in many ways, demonstrating that while these arguments are certainly useful and can be extremely important in guiding the sciences (for example, when we are unable to test certain claims empirically but can analyze the logic of some theory), they are fundamentally different. It was the belief that such reasoning was a kind of experiment that prevented the Greeks from developing the sciences and the increasing rejection that brought us from natural philosophy to the sciences.
2) As recent years have shown (and increasingly so) many a thought experiment has been not only physical instantiated but in many ways, demonstrating that while these arguments are certainly useful and can be extremely important in guiding the sciences (for example, when we are unable to test certain claims empirically but can analyze the logic of some theory), they are fundamentally different. It was the belief that such reasoning was a kind of experiment that prevented the Greeks from developing the sciences and the increasing rejection that brought us from natural philosophy to the sciences.
Unless you are proposing that the mechanism not obey the laws of quantum physics, then we have a clear violation of your argument that everything is either random or determined or whatever that third thing (the combination or “determined by random”) is supposed to be. The state of the atom is both decayed and not decayed at the same time, which means that the poison is both released and not released and the cat both dead and alive. Which brings us to this:
There is no “moment of decay”. The atom was always both decayed and not decayed, and quantum theory holds that the observation forced it into one of its possible states (decayed or not). Quantum physics tells us that the state of the system is neither determined nor random nor singular. What we observe is a the result of a Hermition operator on an observable of the system, but the system itself can’t exist in some state until observed, in which case the statistical structure of the system allows us to predict the likely outcomes of observation.
You’ve described something that independently of Schrödinger makes no sense as it forces the classical view that a system reaches a state like decay at some moment in time onto the quantum world where in which such a system always existed in that state along with (possibly infinitely many) others.
Repeating a claim over and over again and continually asserting that I’ve committed X fallacy (without saying how) while failing to actually address my arguments isn’t my idea of saying why I am wrong.
For example, the only response I’ve received from multiple different ways I’ve demonstrated the fact just because we write a concept or linguistic construction as two words doesn’t mean we should or can treat it as such (which the German Gedankenexperiment and its English equivalent nicely demonstrate) and how this holds true of “free will”.
I’ve yet to hear how you aren’t guilty of an equivocation fallacy despite using “random” not only in multiple senses but multiple parts of speech.
You neatly skipped over my criticism of your assertion that your premise is a tautology.
And as for your central claims, you’ve “said” I was wrong merely by repeating different versions of this:
I’ve specified alternatives, which you have written off without evidence or ignored entirely. Nor have you made comprehensible this notion of “determined by random” other than rephrasing it without removing the inherent, mutual incompatibility of the two types of outcomes:
Take your example of the atom and imagine it wasn’t incompatible with quantum physics: the “random” component resulted in a state. That state wasn’t determined, or it wouldn’t be random.
JerryL
Well-Known Member
A fallacy is not a valid argument. So of course you don't get a response other than to call out the fallcay.
Equivocation fallacy.
See?
I'll gladly respond to criticisms of my claim. You don't seem to have any. You have criticisms of straw-man caricatures of my claim and the claims of others.
Watch this magic trick: this post, your argument, and every post you've ever made or could make are ad hominem fallacies, straw-man arguments, equivocation fallacies, AND Ignorantio elenchi fallacies. "So of course you" can be dismissed and your arguments ignored.
It is easy to type the names of fallacies. This simply shows you can type. To show that someone has committed the fallacy you claim requires that you actually address what they said in the context of whatever fallacy you've (seemingly randomly) selected to avoid critiques. If you wish to see what such explanations are like, simply review my posts detailing the ways in which your use of random constitute an equivocation fallacy.
If you are only interested in trolling (defining yourself to be correct because you say so and accusing everyone who critiques you as committing fallacies you neither show they have nor indicate you actually understand), then why continue to act like you're making any argument at all? I've gone out of my way to provide you again and again and again with ways in which you can address critiques, support your argument, and even provided you with material so that we might try to proceed based on some common background and understanding. You've continually dismissed all of this that you didn't simply pretend didn't happen while accusing me and others of committing fallacies you neither show we have nor (again) indicate you understand.
Oh yes, very much so.
JerryL
Well-Known Member
You don't care, and it's pretty obvious to most others; so there's no point.
I've done so more than once. You've ignore it. It's why I don't read the majority of the majority of your posts. You aren't listening. You aren't attempting to stay on-topic. You aren't attempting to interact with what others say. Heck, you didn't even notice that I stated I was reporting your post until the second post I did it on.
So why would I bother? What would be the point? It's a distraction from the fact that free will is impossible. Everything is the result of the conditions of everything else and so not free. You could posit that randomness exists, creating an event not determined by the state of everything but by that randomness (or a combination of the two), but that's not will.
I've begun threads on this topic and participated in countless others. Of course I care. You have explicitly stated that you haven't read my posts or have ignored them or that you were so bored you missed things. As you have dismissed just about every other participant in this thread with as little explanation for your dismissals (i.e., your claims that fallacies you neither explain nor justify render some argument unworthy of your attention), I find it hard to accept that those who have repeatedly disagreed with your were lying when they expressed this.
How could you possibly have addressed arguments I've made when you have even acknowledged that they exist? And where have you ever explained the fallacies you claim others made by laying out the criteria you use?
You decided your argument was a tautology from the beginning, you demand others play by rules you need not, and you refuse to address most of all arguments as I have shown by quoting you as doing so, just as I have shown that you e.g., insult me doubly and more so in a post in which you felt the need to report my supposed insult. Do you have any idea the time it takes to scan dozens of papers ensure that the document is of a format you are able to read? Or the number of times I've tried to both explain and refer you to explanations you have ignored, dismissed for spurious reasons, or belittled? If you truly had responded to really any of my arguments you could show this by quoting. You don't, because you can't. You can certainly quote yourself agreeing with yourself, but not actually responding to fundamental errors in your argument I've pointed out which you've dismissed or ignored.
1) If you don't read the posts, you can't possibly know if I am staying on topic.
2) The fact that you think I'm not is mostly because you've assumed things to be true which are not and you want these to be accepted so that we can remain "on topic", which is just another way of saying that we accept your various fallacies and contraditions-in-terms and so forth rather than actually address the problems with your arguments.
3) I have stayed on one topic: your argument. As you have ignored and admitted to not realizing arguments I've made (such as the numerous times you claimed you didn't make the computer metaphor it turned out you did when I finally just quoted you), "staying on topic" seems to mean for you that I simply agree, rather than address the numerous flaws in your argument.
4) The fact that you can name fallacies you ascribe to me and others doesn't mean we must abandon these simply because you'd like to move on and not deal with the problems in your argument.
JerryL
Well-Known Member
You are equivocating. What you can establish you care about and what I just said you don't care about are two different things.
This is why most of most of your posts get ignored... because you fail at such a basic level to respond to what I said.
Two sentences in and you've already done it twice. I didn't say I haven't read your post. I said I haven't read most of most of your posts. When you think it suits you winning, you engage in useless semantic arguments; but then when the equivocation helps you, you toss precision out the window.
In this thread. More than once.
If you had actually wanted to have a discussion, rather than spamvert a victory you would have kept to a small number of salient points. In that case: my response would have been short and you could easily have followed up on a claim of a logical fallacy if you felt it was unfounded.
But you haven't. And yes, when you are on paragraph 4 that has nothing to do with what I actually said, I tend to stop reading.
The initial statement: either things are dependant on the conditions everything or they are not is a tautology. My argument goes a little farther than that. I've said so: but you don't respond to most of what I said.
I've addressed every argument that addressed my claim. I've even addressed some that had nothing to do with my claim (usually by pointing out that they have nothing to do with my claim).
Seems like a tremendous waste of time.
As I've already pointed out: this is a straw-man. I do read. Just not most of most. It's typically not far in before it's clear you've gone off on a tangent having nothing to do with my claim. At which point I lose interest. Also: it's a derail. Indeed: most of what you have to say (such as all of this post) seem designed to distract from rather than interact with the topic.
Few if any problems with my arguments have been presented.
That's a good example of your problem. The comparison was not the argument. It was, in fact, off topic to discuss at all.
You haven't shown problems with my argument.
Indeed: What in your entire post that I'm responding to is on the topic of free will or my actual claim that everything is determined by conditions, random, or some combination of the two?
That's right. Not one bit.
I started to write a response, but had an idea (thanks to something you said) on a different approach I might try than the back-and-forth that you ignore in which I try to both create a framework/platform for dialogue while pointing out my criticisms of your argument and your method of argumentation.
Your argument is, as I understand it, that given any outcome whatsoever, that outcome is either “determined by the conditions of the universe”, “random”, or “some combination”.
So far as I am aware the closest you come to providing evidence for your position is your so-called “thought experiment” :
It is simple to show how this argument fails. Imagine that it is true that everything is determined by conditions. Then it would be possible to predict the future perfectly. In fact, that is the only thing that matters because determinism is the view that given the present the future is ensured, not given the present the past happened (which is what the argument amounts to). The past is defined as that which happened. To consider conditionals about what would happen if we were to rewind it is equivalent to making statements about the past that aren’t valid because the conditionals are set up to hide their modal nature:
#1 “If Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy, then somebody did.”
#2 “If Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy, then somebody would have”
By inserting the preface “if we rewound time”, the conditionals are really akin to the conditional #2. It assumes that Kennedy was shot (we’re rewinding the past, and he was shot), and then claims that if he was shot, B or C. However, we’ve already assumed that he was shot because it’s the past. So we start under the assumption that the past happened, and then given that it happened we are asked to realize that either it happened because of the “conditions” or “determined by random” or “Elvish magic”; it really doesn’t matter as the argument assumes that given something happened it happened and then asks us to grant this entails something. However, nothing can be logically deduced from the argument X=X. The past happened, but determinism says the future is fixed, not the past.
Then we have actual, physical evidence that the options given are wrong (including the third paradoxical “determined by random” nonsense).
Usually “random” in such debates is equated with quantum physics, which does actually show determinism is either false or modern physics is a bust. But typically this is only in terms of outcomes. If it is true that something is either determined by the conditions of the universe, or random, or both, then we still have quantum states which are not random nor determined nor a combination: they are quite literally described as existing in many (possibly infinite) distinct states. The famous double-slit experiment is perhaps the most famous and easiest demonstration of the logical structure of QM. If something can happen in either one way or another but not both, QM says it must happen by both. That is, if an electron can either travel through slit A or slit B, it travels through both. Also, the only thing that determines something definite about quantum systems is observation/measurement, in which we can quite literally “decide” what form reality will take (or at least what we will observe, which is all playing time backwards would allow anyway).
The above argument about QM is simply a bonus. The original thought experiment defeats itself, because it asks us to treat as conditional or as a possibility that which is neither. Alternatively, it asks us to consider that since there is a past, the future is either determined or random (or paradoxically both, I still don’t get this determined by random nonsense any more than I get how the multiple uses of different senses of random isn’t equivocation, apparently not even when two are different parts of speech).
Your argument is, as I understand it, that given any outcome whatsoever, that outcome is either “determined by the conditions of the universe”, “random”, or “some combination”.
So far as I am aware the closest you come to providing evidence for your position is your so-called “thought experiment” :
It is simple to show how this argument fails. Imagine that it is true that everything is determined by conditions. Then it would be possible to predict the future perfectly. In fact, that is the only thing that matters because determinism is the view that given the present the future is ensured, not given the present the past happened (which is what the argument amounts to). The past is defined as that which happened. To consider conditionals about what would happen if we were to rewind it is equivalent to making statements about the past that aren’t valid because the conditionals are set up to hide their modal nature:
#1 “If Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy, then somebody did.”
#2 “If Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy, then somebody would have”
By inserting the preface “if we rewound time”, the conditionals are really akin to the conditional #2. It assumes that Kennedy was shot (we’re rewinding the past, and he was shot), and then claims that if he was shot, B or C. However, we’ve already assumed that he was shot because it’s the past. So we start under the assumption that the past happened, and then given that it happened we are asked to realize that either it happened because of the “conditions” or “determined by random” or “Elvish magic”; it really doesn’t matter as the argument assumes that given something happened it happened and then asks us to grant this entails something. However, nothing can be logically deduced from the argument X=X. The past happened, but determinism says the future is fixed, not the past.
Then we have actual, physical evidence that the options given are wrong (including the third paradoxical “determined by random” nonsense).
Usually “random” in such debates is equated with quantum physics, which does actually show determinism is either false or modern physics is a bust. But typically this is only in terms of outcomes. If it is true that something is either determined by the conditions of the universe, or random, or both, then we still have quantum states which are not random nor determined nor a combination: they are quite literally described as existing in many (possibly infinite) distinct states. The famous double-slit experiment is perhaps the most famous and easiest demonstration of the logical structure of QM. If something can happen in either one way or another but not both, QM says it must happen by both. That is, if an electron can either travel through slit A or slit B, it travels through both. Also, the only thing that determines something definite about quantum systems is observation/measurement, in which we can quite literally “decide” what form reality will take (or at least what we will observe, which is all playing time backwards would allow anyway).
The above argument about QM is simply a bonus. The original thought experiment defeats itself, because it asks us to treat as conditional or as a possibility that which is neither. Alternatively, it asks us to consider that since there is a past, the future is either determined or random (or paradoxically both, I still don’t get this determined by random nonsense any more than I get how the multiple uses of different senses of random isn’t equivocation, apparently not even when two are different parts of speech).
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1) Free will is a concept like "book" or "joke", and thus can't have random elements or be described in terms of outcomes/events as it isn't one. You may as well say "mailbox has random elements or it doesn't."
2) Equivocation fallacy. The inverse of "it either has random elements or does not" IS NOT "It is either determined by the state of everything or it is not". Given the form 'if A then B" then the inverse is "if not B then not A." You have "either A or not A" and "either B or not B". You equate "not B" with A and "not A" with B, which is textbook equivocation.
3) You seem to think tautologies are useful in proofs or arguments. The reason they are tautologies is because they are basically the equivalent of an equals sign in math, or they are true iff [if and only if] they are true by definition. From A =A follows nothing. "Either it is raining or it isn't. Ergo..."? Tautologies can be derived without premises and from them one can derive nothing.
4) In case you weren't aware, "or" in formal logic is inclusive (i.e., the answer to "Is the TV on or off" is "yes", as the inclusive "or" means the statement is true if the TV is on "or" if it is off). Thus (A v ~ A) v (B v ~B) is a tautology only in the sense that if there are two mutually exclusive possibilities, only one need be true.
5) I showed in my last post that the only argument you've offered that there exists only these options is flawed and wrong.
6) You've contradicted yourself here, because you have frequently said that there is another option (this paradoxical "determined by random" or "combination" or whatever you label your equivocation). If what you said above were really a tautology, then there could be no other option (non tertium datur, remember?)
7) As Willamena stated, it would be nice "for this (metaphysical) determinism [to be] explained, as opposed to just declared."