Rough Summary:
Free will is not “free” in the sense of being uncaused. Free will is “free” in the sense that you are the cause. You are free to choose between A or B if your choice will determine the outcome.
Free will and determinism are both assumptions that are implicit in everything that we do. They both depend on each other. The conflict between free will and determinism arises due to Subject | Object Dissonance.
A choice is not the creation of new causality out of nothing. It is the causality of the universe flowing through you.
Although I’m not the author of this post (a friend of mine wrote it), I have created a PDF version of the essay that has a table of contents and headers to make it even easier to read.
Neither is a presupposition of thought. You don’t have to presume free will, beyond some general decision making ability, and you don’t have to presume strict determinism beyond some good-enough causal reliability. Moreover, both are potentially discoverable as facts.
False dichotomy. A choice can be influenced by your mental processes, knowledge and desires without being determined by them.
You can’t assume that any kind of choice counts as free will.
I see determinism, you are not the cause, only a cause. The choice you made was already a fact before you were born.
Indeterminism based free will doesn’t have to separate you from your own desires, values, and goals, because, realistically ,they are often conflicting , so that they don’t determine a single action. This point is explained by the parable of the cake. If I am offered a slice of cake, I might want to take it so as not to refuse my hostess, but also to refuse it so as to stick to my diet. Whichever action I chose, would have been supported by a reason. Reasons and actions can be chosen in pairs.
That’s only freedom in the compatibilists sense.
No, much of science is statistical and probablistic.
Determinism excludes libertarian free will by removing the ability to have done otherwise: you have offered nothing to restore it.
Right, but there’s a lot of conflation between what people should think I am and what they do unfairly think I am, which to be fair is a real thing, though it’s a real thing which the thing that people should think I am is trapped inside of, and to the extent that it is responsible for causing problems which the thing people should think I am are inclined to blame by nonconsensual association, it is parasitic, and the thing which people should think I am is a victim.
Hello! I would like to read this article, but unfortunately it shows that the file has been moved to the trash