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Yet Another Thread on Freewill
- Thread starter Nakosis
- Start date
Nothing that I would see as beneficial.
Just from my personal POV, it seems better to accept accountability for my choices and to teach my kids the same.
Ok, though I would think any form of freewill regardless of how minuscule would negate the idea of determinism. Small, limited or even random choices/events would make the universe undeterministic.
Ok, what external force do you think come into play when you make a choice?
Like when you have to decide between vanilla or strawberry ice cream?
Hermit Philosopher
Selflessly here for you
Rejection of the concept of free will, is not beneficial to society as a whole, because it means that we must also entirely reject the idea of personal responsibility for the actions of individuals.
Humbly,
Hermit
vulcanlogician
Well-Known Member
It's all about having adequate ideas about the universe and reality. If there is no such thing as free will, then it is foolish to blame people for their choices. It helps reduce "moral anger"... that is, anger directed at an agent because of the badness of her choices/actions . ie. It leads to you being more forgiving and accepting of others.
If you want to change something about someone, the determinist will examine what caused them to be like that in the first place and fix THAT.
The counter-claim is nonsense even with free will. There's no need to argue against free will to cast God as evil.
Hard to say.
Free will is all about the possibility of alternatives that didn't actually happen.
The implication of this position, though, is that God doesn't actually care about preserving free will.
Bad example. If you reread my posts you will understand that yes we make decisions within a limited number of choices based on a history of cause and effect outcomes. Though there are potential influences that may effect this superficial decision from allergies, cultural preference, Some simply pick both.
The reasons one chooses a religion or belief system. By far the majority of believers, 95%+ make this choice within a limited range based on their family and peer group. Some may wander, but eventually return to the fold. The natural desire for a sense of community and identity has a strong influence on how we make our choices in the wide range of social decisions. We seek this sense of community in one way or another even those that go outside the box. Another factor that limits the choices is the social environment we are in. The more restrictive the social environment the more limited the possible choices humans can make.
There are many factors of our mental health and inherited properties that also influence the chain of cause and effect decisions we make. Our attributes of natural intelligence and physical abilities influence many of our decisions. Men who do not have the physical ability will not become stars in sports.
The possible limited potential of free will over time time does lead to the evolution of human cultures and society relationships.
The various forms of compatibilism better explain the nature of human will.
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One alternative is it may not have been written
I would say, in defense of libertarian freewill, allergies, culture preference and social pressure unless being directly applied from some other individual are internal factors. Even physical factors are your personal physiology which is fair game for a person to take into consideration in libertarian freewill.
In my view, physique, mental condition, desire, internalized cultural pressure, morality, anything that is internalized/part of the physical body, that is part of the decision fits with the definition, per post #16, of libertarian freewill.
Of course as someone who accepts determinism you could have a different definition of freewill but then it is the definition that is the problem and not the person who believes in libertarian freewill.
I don't find this idea that useful. People going about thinking they "fix" the issue the perceive that other people have. One is just as likely to make the situation worse. Unless one is Laplace's demon there's not a guarantee of making it better.
None that I know of. The question appears undecidable to me. Nor does the answer matter to me where my will comes from, although it does to those who use free will as a basis for punishment. Free will may very well be an illusion. That's OK if it's the case. Nothing changes. I expect that free will does not exist, but I intend to go on living as if it does whatever is the case.
Assuming that you have the choice, try agnosticism as just described.
It wouldn't be paradise if people were free to harm one another. You've probably seen the trope about God not wanting robots, meaning not wanting people incapable of sin, but assuming that one can get kicked out of heavenlike the disobedient angels, free will for eternity means eventually getting kicked out or leaving first.
The counterclaim fails anyway. Did God create free will? Then that deity is responsible for whatever follows, more so if it knew what that would be in advance.
vulcanlogician
Well-Known Member
I don't mean that determinism is a "useful fiction."
I mean that if determinism is true, one benefit of realizing the truth of it is that you have rational grounds to dismiss moral anger.
Also, if you want to help a problem such as high crime rates, you would know that the best way to go about things is to fix the things that cause people to commit crimes. (Like high poverty rates.)
People erroneously "fixing" other people's problems is a separate issue. That is (rather) a criticism about people's misconceptions and has nothing to do with the benefits of realizing the truth of determinism in a deterministic world. People making erroneous assumptions is its own problem, and remains a problem even in a world with free will.
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dybmh
ויהי מבדיל בין מים למים
Lacking God's perspective how does a person argue that God is evil?
dybmh
ויהי מבדיל בין מים למים
Freewill could have it's purpose in it's time and in it's place.
dybmh
ויהי מבדיל בין מים למים
For me, it's not about shifting the onus off God. It's about setting up a system where imperfect finite beings are given opportunity to improve.
I'm not going to play this game with you.
That makes the arguments harder for you, then, since instead of arguing that God preserves free will generally, you would need to argue for why God would want to preserve the free will of, say, a murderer in the act of murder when he's fine with getting rid of free will in other contexts.