“Meaningless” is vaguely defined here. You defined free will at the beginning, so it must have some meaning in that sense.
It seems like “meaningless” is actually a placeholder for “doesn’t really exist”.
Which would make the trilemma boil down to:
Free will doesn’t exist
It exists and I have it
It exists and I don’t have it
And your basis for rejecting point 1 is that “truth wouldn’t matter, anything would be justified, therefore it’s false”.
I don’t think this follows.
Ultimately, what you’re pointing out is an issue of distinguishing between a non-free operating system that tends to accurately believe true things, versus a confused non-free operating system that tends to believe false things.
Just because this distinction cannot be subjectively resolved with 100% confidence (because what if the axioms of logic and self-coherence are wrong?), doesn’t make this automatically “moot”.
You have to at some level assume logic, memory and a degree of rationality no matter what circumstance you’re in. If you don’t assume that, then you’re not free either, you’re just acausally operating based on random whims—and that’s something you don’t control by definition.
“Meaningless” is vaguely defined here. You defined free will at the beginning, so it must have some meaning in that sense.
It seems like “meaningless” is actually a placeholder for “doesn’t really exist”.
Which would make the trilemma boil down to:
Free will doesn’t exist
It exists and I have it
It exists and I don’t have it
And your basis for rejecting point 1 is that “truth wouldn’t matter, anything would be justified, therefore it’s false”.
I don’t think this follows.
Ultimately, what you’re pointing out is an issue of distinguishing between a non-free operating system that tends to accurately believe true things, versus a confused non-free operating system that tends to believe false things.
Just because this distinction cannot be subjectively resolved with 100% confidence (because what if the axioms of logic and self-coherence are wrong?), doesn’t make this automatically “moot”.
You have to at some level assume logic, memory and a degree of rationality no matter what circumstance you’re in. If you don’t assume that, then you’re not free either, you’re just acausally operating based on random whims—and that’s something you don’t control by definition.