/philosophy/ - Philosophy

Case B wouldn't necessarily make it free will, its the same as Case A, you already can not act or make decisions without memories and experiences, you can only say that you have a "personality" in case B, but its still mathematical and still not free will.

>>100
That's the thing. They are all just algorithms.
So what is free will?

Its just an illusion caused by what we know as "consciousness", the processing of the algorithms just feels like you are doing them, you are makingg decisions, actually you are making decisions, its you that makes them, but you as in the memories and stuff, you just don't have free will, which i think doesn't change that much stuff if you ask me i'm okay with it

I think that somebody advocating the existence of free will would say that the recognition of a choice and the application of memories into determining the best of the alternatives entails free will. Even if the "decision" was predetermined based upon lived experiences and the functioning of the brain, what distinguishes human decision making from animal decision making is the fact that in humans there is a recognition of alternatives and a realization of the consequences of them.

>>96
If you spin it enough, of course it's all algorithms.

Free will can exist in a state of algorithms. Nobody makes a choice just for the sake of making choices, they see the choices, some of the consequences behind them, and decide on what they want based on that.

The universe runs on patterns. We run of patterns. It doesn't invalidate the things we do or think because of it.

Every choice you make will be dependent on two main things, biology, that you being a human and how you take in information and how you react on a emotional level, and your upbringing how you were raised and are still being raised media, what your friends say, events that happen to you, you have no control over any events in your life or your biology.

Free will is non existent made by people who wish they can make choices, in reality it was due to events, if you were born in Africa you probably would not be having this talk.

>>115
Well in that case is your mind truly yours? It belongs to your biology and circumstance, not you as a person. When could you consider your mind your own in that case?

Is the line being drawn in the right place? Is the line being drawn?

>>120
We're not separate from our bodies, m8. Your mind is part of your biology. There are various biological imperatives influencing the very train of thoughts you're having right now.
tl;dr: dualism sucks.

>>96
I've begun to think we don't understand probability well enough to define free will.

Empirically speaking we can't tell the difference, either. Stochasticism isn't free - it has abstract determinism in that the averages of the random system are rock solid.

But from the outside, there doesn't seem to be any way to tell the difference between erratic but probability-defined behaviour and will-directed unpredictability.

From the inside, only, are they distinguishable.

>>96
Well OP, I'd like to propose you forget the question of "free will" entirely, because you have good reason for not understanding it. The idea of "free will" is an inherently irrational one.

There are two radically different philosophers who I think approach the problem of human freedom in a far more refined way:

John Locke's idea of "liberty"

Locke addresses the issue of free will in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding by actually outright saying that it's a poorly-formed concept that makes no sense. Now, Locke is limiting himself to Empiricism here, so that makes his conception of human freedom a bit narrowminded, but essentially he proposes to think of it rather as human "liberty":

Humans are shaped by their experiences, according to brute Empiricism, and thus cannot possibly have any magical innate power to act freely. However, one certainly can act in accordance with the desires that have been formed by their experiences, and in most cases they should be allowed to.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty's "field" idea

Merleau-Ponty's conception of human freedom comes from a critique of Sartre's conception of radical freedom in Being and Nothingness. Whereas Sartre believes that humans must be absolutely free because of our ability to propose "nothingness" outside of a causal chain (e.g. We can talk about things that aren't in the room at the moment or that don't even exist), but this has a lot of problems that Merleau-Ponty addresses. At the moment, I can't remember all his critiques of Sartrean freedom, but essentially Merleau-Ponty's conception of human freedom is:

Humans are thrown into certain historical and cultural circumstances which limit their range of choices - they have a "field" of potential options, and this field of options is in fact always of ambiguous size. However, humans do still possess remarkable traits concerning choice that make any traditional determinist view simply not adequate in addressing human freedom, which means that beyond the historical and cultural circumstances - the "facticity" or "immanence" as some of you familiar with phenomenology and existentialism know it by - humans are free to pursue their options in any way they see fit.

>>97
Spinoza man. He's the shit. And the most hardcore determinist I know of.

>>198
this pyramid always troubled me. "Esteem" seems to be abused way too much, and "self-actualization" is only a problem when a person is psychologically imbalanced. When a person is sane, they can find it easily when safety is established, and some can even find it in danger or other stressful states. I think "Balance" would be a better top for the pyramid, following safety..

>>198
Maslov's pyramid is full of shit.

Just ask any NEET hikikomori who discusses /philosophy/, is actually confident, yet has no friends, sexual intimacy, or prosperity.

It's not as hard as it seems to move on from such trivial matters and just focus on the red and blue sections. They are the only ones that matter in my estimation.

>>198
All you need is energy.
That energy is free in this world, but not in our societies.
This might sound stupid to you, but we are way too indulged in the phenomenon which is called greed.
The system of the societies today promotes that kind of greed, indirectly making you think that getting a job is more important than taking care of your fellow humans.

There are countless amount of people who are struggling just to stay alive.
Many even die from not even being granted the simple physiological needs such as food.
Simultaneously there are tons of leftovers just thrown away, just because ==no one paid for it==.
People claim to ==own== the Earth. Land, buildings, and even ideas, now that patency is a thing, claims to be owned.
People have gone greedy enough to value money, life-less paperweight which isn't even natural to us humans, over the lives of others.
Money, economy nor employment is a need. It's rather a merciless kind of greed.

I apologize if I went too political, overall autistic about this, and probably derailing the thread topic.
The main reason for me to post this is to bring new ways of thinking, along with criticizing Maslow's pyramid of greed.

-

Either way, back to the thread topic.
I believe that instincts, events and experiences prevents you from deciding freely for yourself.
That's probably what we are, or are made to do. Some kind of idiot proof machines.
It's such a shame, though I guess it proves we are somehow connected with the world, and also the past.
I guess that free will does not exist as long as you exist, however, if you don't exist there's likely not any room for decisions anyway.
Holy shit we robots now.

>>165
>>168

All of those don't address free will any differently than what is basically "soft" determinism, soft only because they refuse to acknowledge that determinism is exactly what their own logic ends in.

Compatibilism shares the same problem, it doesn't solve any free will issue, it just decides to redefine freedom within the confines of determinism. In reality there isn't a problem of free will or responsibility, there is only a problem of people in denial that they are only given two choices in the matter:

There is no free will without determinism, and there is no free will with determinism, and there is no option in between at all. If you are a free agent with innate will, you have a process by which you choose, a process which you never chose. The cognitive process is the determiner.

The very notion of a self is an immediate defeat of free will.

Compatibilism has a sensible stance, the problem is that they shouldn't call it free will. The sense of self determination comes from the fact that there IS self determination as the instance of self reflection. Knowledge of our own determined being is itself a key to determining our future. If you know what makes you tick, you might just figure out how to make it tick you the way you want it to.

>>401
What exactly is the claim you're trying to make here? I don't see any reason why your view is incompatible with the ones I presented, and I find your post to be muddled and problematic - even if I agree with what seems to be your view.

You seem to be dismissing the issue of free will and determinism entirely because it is a poorly-formed problem. That was kind of the reason why I made the posts that I did if you didn't notice; free will is a pseudo-problem, an over-simplification that doesn't take choice and the significance of self-reflection into account. Surely, no one would ever convincingly be able to argue for a freedom beyond the so-called "cognitive processes" which we operate within the constraints of; I think it's safe to say we can assume that we are all limited immediately to a field of human possibilities, as M-P would put it. We also have the ability to pursue our individual, more limited and unique fields of possibility - or, we have the liberty to pursue our own wants, as Locke would put it. A reflection and understanding of ourselves, however, allows for us to make decisions in the future that shape our character and have self-determination, similar to what the Stoics say. We can, in a sense, determine ourselves by virtue of being aware of what determines us and being able to choose to do so - although whether or not we would do so is a somewhat separate but related problem.

So what, exactly, is the issue here? Did you not bother to read my posts very thoroughly, or am I completely misinterpreting the philosophers I've been referring to?

>>404
>We can, in a sense, determine ourselves by virtue of being aware of what determines us and being able to choose to do so
>being able to choose to do so
>choose

That's my problem. The word "choose" is loaded with the very incoherence that free will in the classical sense was loaded. The cognitive process will definitively act in accordance to its own structure and the inputs into that structure. "Choose" assumes a capacity that is impossible to have. It isn't a question of would, and could is impossible.

If the world rewound back to 1960 and the state of the world was exactly as it was back then, how could anyone have acted different? Why would they with the same cognitive process and inputs into that process? How could anyone act otherwise?

It's nonsense. Choice is only a psychological rationalization, an important one, but one that isn't phenomenally nor metaphysically real.