I have a different definition of a free choice, one where it very much is a good thing

Okkaaayyy... You may be unimpressed with those who I have conversed with before (which is entirely reasonable) yet at least when they state a contrary opinion or fact those represent their beliefs. I guess I assumed too much in this exchange.

While I am happy to reply to your queries, could you please enlighten me with what you're referring to above. It is tedious having an exchange where one party's input is a set of opinions/understandings that they don't actually believe in.

This is pretty funny since by this definition, we have free will even in a deterministic world because antecedent brain state X does not always lead to the same decision being made since decisions are not solely a function of the brain state. The decision of when to cross the street depends far more on the traffic than it does the antecedent brain state

Well, since in your view, Determinism can have antecedent state X leading to many possible resultant states, that (as I stated previously as you quoted) is a "Determinism" that I can get behind.

I am somewhat amused that you're stumped as to what additional factors might be responsible for multiple resultant states that are not "randomness", yet you provided one yourself. Namely traffic patterns when deciding when to cross the street.

Bottom line, I have previously conversed with Determinists who do believe 1) it's all about the antecedent brain state, 2) what we subjectively experience as pondering is an illusion and 3) there is only a single possible resultant state. I apologize for assuming your brand of Determinism was similar. You've been clear, though that none of those 3 features of other's Determinism is part of your understanding of it. Like I said before, that's the kind of "Determinism" I can live with.

You don't know?

Whatever the absolute judgement on the Hiroshima bombing is, relatively speaking the firebombing of Dresden had similar casualties (to the Nagasaki bombing) but didn't shorten the war by 10 minutes, so is morally worse.

You seem to completely deny the concept of choice at all. Why? Are you trying to argue that you should be held responsible for any actions? That would be like putting your hand in the fire and subsequently complaining that it's not your fault that you no longer have a hand.

Huh? As a Free Will believer, I completely support the concept of (true) choice. In other words I believe that the conversation we each have in our minds where we go over the pros and cons, possible and probable outcomes, memories of similar incidents in the past, what have you, is where the choice is made, ie exactly as we perceive it in real time. I don't believe that the outcome is set before all of the aforementioned "pondering" by the physical and electrical brain state just before the act of "pondering". To my way of thinking this latter situation would amount to no True choice.

No one has been able to predict human decision making, no matter how detailed their knowledge of the antecedent state might be. If such predictions could be made, it would be concrete proof of Determinism and a solid refutation of Free Will.

Thus analysis of antecedent states and their respective resultant outcomes act, statistically as if, humans actually makes decisions through pondering various aspects of the subject matter at least partially separate from their antecedent brain state. Though while consistent with this, if falls short of proof of it.

As a non-expert in the history of leadership, but a close observer of leaders in the present day one aspect of why things are the way they are now is opaque to me, but another is crystal clear. I do not feel confident what exactly accounted for the ancient historical dominance of men in leadership. I don't personally find the tired, old, wornout tropes about testosterone or aggressiveness or physical strength very compelling. But it is clear to that once men were ensconced in power how that tradition was passed down so we currently live in a society that talks the talk on equal opportunity, yet doesn't walk that walk.

Why? Because the Modern religious live in a soviety that holds science and technology in high regard, therefore logic has more credibility that faith (even among the faithful) thus the draw towards proofs.

Their biology calls them to provide, just as they did hundreds of thousands of years ago in hunting parties

Your post hoc analysis suffers from a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics when trying to use biological and mostly psychological differences between men and women to rationalize what has happened and more importantly what should happen moving forward.

Specifically I am referring to the exaggeration of the differences between the psychological or biological averages of the genders while ignoring the much wider differences within each gender.

Thus, when describing populations, it makes more sense to divide them along the descriptors you are studying, say leadership or aggressiveness or nurturing and including those of both genders with those skills, than by gender. When viewed that way, it is easy to calculate that say women are underrepresented in powerful and wealth generating positions beyond what you would expect based on their innate skillset. That is accounted for by feminist scholars (logically) by the effect of power dynamics and gender bias.

Exactly. The physical realm is where proof and logic reside. The metaphysical is where belief and faith rule.

Thus why "proofs" of the existence (or nonexistence) of gods are nonsensical on their face.

While this is surely not the whole story I think, partly, there is value to disagreement. Agreement allows us to proceed, but philosophy doesn't proceed; Or when philosophy agrees it stops being philosophy and becomes something else. This doesn't accord well with philosophical traditions, which seem to have a sort of progress to them that's a mixture of agreement and disagreement, so it's definitely not the whole story. Only I think it worth highlighting that rational disagreement is valuable, and so the elusiveness of rational agreement isn't necessarily a fault against philosophy

Disagreement is, I agree, predictable and ultimately desirable. However, there should be agreement on the step up of the problem, that is what is known, what is unknown, what is opinion. Disagreement on what we theorize is the unknown is natural.

Basically, there are three temporal steps in what we label decision making: just before, during and the outcome. The outcome is completely observable, the brain state status before is grossly (but not finely) understood and what happens during is perceivable internally but essentially not understood externally. Determinists (that I commonly interact with) say that the brain state BEFORE Determines what happens DURING and therefore afterwards. Therefore the three are linked such that observed variation in conclusions are caused by variation in the brain state before (since no true variation occurs during). Believers in Free Will (that I know) believe that the brain state before influences (but does not determine) the process during decision making, such that at least some of the final outcome is created by the pondering or thinking step independent of the initial brain state.

None of us know the gradular details of human decision making,. That's why there is a logical debate between Determinists and those who believe in Free Will. Neither can disprove the other at the current state of knowledge. All we can do it observe what goes into and comes out of the Black Box that is what I called: "during" decision making.

Every single group of observational data ever collected is consistent with Free Will, though that is absolutely NOT proof that Free Will exists. Basically it comes down to what seems most logical/reasonable to you.

There are other choices available. There is still a choice being made, and it is Y. It being entirely deterministic or not seems to have nothing to do with the fact that a choice is being made, and by something capable of considering alternatives.

Your definition of 'choice' seems to be different than the usual one, which is a selection between multiple options. You apparently think the alternative options are not open to being chosen, rather than your processes having the option, but rejecting them.
Going to court and pleading 'not-guilty because physics made me do it' doesn't stand up. Your criteria for making the selection is what made you do it, and it is that criteria for which you are responsible

I am, in fact saying your use of the word "available" is nonstandard. If an "alternative" will never be selected, is it really available? I do not consider "possible" and "available" to be synonyms. It's really a matter of perspective. From the perspective of POSSIBLE conclusions, there are many. From the perspective of the purported decider, there was always going to be one conclusion. Identical to the situation where there is only one possible solution.

Kind of like two sports betting guys arguing whether the "better" pro team can ever lose, since some consider the outcome of the game as the definition of "better". Well, if you use that definition (the better team is the one thst beat it's opponent), then, no, the better team can never lose.

As to your last paragraph, some would label what you call: "your criteria" as Free Will.

That doesn't seem at all obvious to me. An agent who doesn't know what the future holds can still undergo a process of "decision making" even if that agent is fully deterministic and it will always make the same decision given the same starting state.

A deterministic chess program for example, which looks at a number of legal moves and decides which one it "likes" more based on some position-rating algorithm

True, from the "decider's" perspective, he's going through the motions we commonly associate with decision making, but to an outside observer who has true insight (in this example of Determinist universe), would see that as Determinists claim, the idea of choice (and thus a true decision) is an illusion.

In your example you're presenting as if the program and the algorithm are two separate entities akin to the man and his mind. In reality all there is is an algorithm, which is at it's core a glorified set of equations. Just as an algebraic equation doesn't "choose" between all possible answers, finally arriving at the one, true answer. It just has one true answer.

Just to be clear, the ANTECEDENT brain state is what I describe as the physical and electrical state of the brain. While pondering occurs (obviously) DURING decision making (assuming there is, in fact decision making). Thus they are different entities, but are not mutually exclusive.
— LuckyR
But the subsequent 'pondering' is also describable as physical and electrical state of the brain. They're just a little bit later. This is of course presuming that 'pondering' is a function of the brain, which plenty of people deny.

Long story shory, in Determinism antecedent state X always leads to resultant answer Y, never Z.

Given said determinism, agree. It doesn't mean that decision making is not going on, that choices are not being made. That would be fate, something different than determinism.

In Free Will antecedent state X can lead to resultant answer Y or Z depending on the decision making process which occurred.

There you go. That definition says that there can be no free will given deterministic physics, and it even goes so far as to imply that truly random acts are the only example of free will.

To my understanding your comments make no sense.

Firstly, if antecedent state X ALWAYS leads to resultant state Y, there can't be decision making going on since there are no other choices to choose between, it's always going to be Y. Thus the Determinists are right (decision making is an illusion) in that scenario. "Fate" is just a layman's label for the result they notice without a theory (which Determinists have) as to why.

Second, I am at a loss how you got your bolded conclusion from what I posted (and you quoted). Perhaps you're not getting that in a Free Will universe, Deterministic physics doesn't fully account for animal decision making, that is in addition to physics, there's a process called... you guessed it... Free Will (randomness not required).

This makes it sound like 'pondering' and 'physical and electrical state of the brain' are necessarily mutually exclusive, sort of like 'computing' and 'transistor switching' are similarly exclusive, instead of one consisting of the other.

Just to be clear, the ANTECEDENT brain state is what I describe as the physical and electrical state of the brain. While pondering occurs (obviously) DURING decision making (assuming there is, in fact decision making). Thus they are different entities, but are not mutually exclusive.

Long story short, in Determinism antecedent state X always leads to resultant answer Y, never Z. In Free Will antecedent state X can lead to resultant answer Y or Z depending on the decision making process which occurred.

Determinists state that decisions are an illusion (in favor of antecedent brain states instead). I happen to believe that while brain states can and do INFLUENCE decision making, that there is another factor beyond brain states that participate in TRUE decision making (just as we internally perceive every day). You can label this factor Free Will, or pondering or thinking or true decision making. It doesn't matter what you call it.

Thus if you walk up to an ice cream cone counter and have to choose a flavor, Determinism says that your brain state will Determine which flavor you will "choose" though that choice is an illusion, you were always going to "choose" vanilla because you were in a vanilla brain state when you walked up. All of the pondering you perceive in your thoughts did not determine vanilla, it was just window dressing before the Determined conclusion of vanilla was voiced.

I believe that the pondering we all perceive in our minds in fact do play a role (perhaps a smaller role than we assume) in the final outcome, such that if we had a different internal conversation on the various pros and cons of vanilla, we may have chosen chocolate, even with the identical antecedent brain state.

Well part of the problem is that Free Will is purported to explain animal decision making only (not simple physical systems), thus terms like "non-deterministic world" implies that somehow nothing causes anything.

As to what a Free Will world looks like, it looks like our world. Remember it is Determinism that tells us that what we perceive as decision making every single day is, in fact an illusion and that in reality "decisions" are not the product of pondering, rather are determined by the physical and electrical state of the brain before the supposed "decision" is made.

The problem with statistics, especially about "race" is that folks tend to accept and repeat stats that support their worldview and downplay or ignore those that challenge their worldview. Thus it is not only possible, but rather it is routine to be able to promote bias through using (cherry-picked) statistics. Or to put it another way, folks come up with subjective conclusions "supported" by objective data.

Well I don't know why it doesn't work for you, since you neatly summed up my point.

Activist scholarship is dog shit, in my opinion. Woke corporate racism, that Diversity, Equity, Inclusion mantra, flows straight from that rotten core. The Skokal and grievance studies affairs basically prove that they peddle in nonsense.

Sure, the pendulum is swinging off center in that particular direction. But not acknowledging that in the past the pendulum was swung in other directions equally, or more off center that many people labeled "normal" is being somewhere between naive and disingenuous.

Can't be? Not really. Won't be? Sure, lots of them. Basically look at any luxury brand now. They're all "natural", "organic" or "handmade". Just because you can automate a process doesn't mean you will.

CRT, like all theories, is open to legitimate criticism. However any intellectually honest review of it has to acknowledge that at this point both CRT and (especially) it's criticism have been co-opted by folks with political agendas to rile up their bases.

I don't think visual artists are worried much about elephants stealing their jobs or taking over their niche in the aesthetic ecology.

I agree about the worries of individuals, though that is fodder for the Economics Forum.

The concepts I outlined are valid, though (here in the Philosophy Forum).

Art has been created by nonhuman intelligence for decades (if not centuries). Our local zoo has sold art created by elephants for quite some time. In this scenario, the elephant acts as a "tool" of the "artist", who is the human who set up the scenario. No different from the "artist" who sets up the 3D printer or the AI.

Exactly. "Meaning" like "beauty" only makes sense in the context of an observer to grant an entity that quality. Thus there is no inherent meaning (nor beauty) in the absence of an audience.

What say you?

I completely agree with you.

Science and religion do not conflict any more than science and art conflict. Science deals with the physical, religion deals with the metaphysical and art deals with the emotional.

That is they each address different things.

Am I correct in thinking that there’s not a clear line dividing subjective to objective reality of objects if we have tools that allow us to do so ?

I suppose, since we do not possess technology to observe and record emotional responses.

It depends on whether the reality being sought is the objective reality of physical objects or the subjective reality "experienced" within the mind of an organic being.

Real is anything that is contained by reality. In that case you might ask what is reality? which can be subjective or objective, objective in terms of agreed upon consensus or subjective that which is in your private world such as a certain emotion.

I get the concept you're trying to communicate, but the wording you're using makes it potentially confusing at best and inaccurate at worst.

Namely, IMO it is more accurate to label the product of our perceptions as "perceptions" than "reality". Our perceptions could be reality itself, it could be our version of "reality" (which would likely not be true reality), OTOH the perceptions collected by a camera are free from human biases and psychological influences. Could video recordings of human events be "reality"? Well, at best they are external recordings of reality.

Well I too am in agreement with improvement in childrearing, though I look at how to get there a little differently. In my experience, prospective parents, or to label it more accurately: folks having sex without Birth Control, generally fall into three groups. Those who will be acceptable to excellent parents, those with good motivation but poor skills and/or habits who will benefit from instruction and/or support and those with no or reverse motivation who account for the vast majority of the really egregious problems. I'm not convinced instruction will benefit most in the third group, rather IMO subsidized access to effective Birth Control and the removal of societal messaging that parenthood is expected would be a more effective strategy.

So what is your point? I am against the extreme regulation of drugs. But there must be at least some regulation, as your pilot example shows (although weakly, as it seems at least as much a regulation of pilots as drugs).

I don't really have a dog in this fight. I'm perfectly happy with the legal status of drugs where I live.

Prohibition is merely the most extreme example of regulation.

Are you okay with the pilot of your plane or your surgeon taking recreational drugs at work?

Assuming you are not, then you agree with society (through the government) regulating the consumption of recreational drugs. At this point it's just a question of what sort of regulations a particular jurisdiction should enact, not whether there should be regulations.

For me the most convincing argument I suppose you could call it, is intelligent design combined with aesthetics. Why is our vision hard wired to like beauty ? Is it universal?

Yes, that has been a popular "argument" since antiquity: "I don't understand physically how this or that came to be, must have been a metaphysical entity". Obviously in ancient times just about everything observable was capable of being part of this narrative. Now since the advent of science, it is a much smaller (and shrinking) subset.

The majority believe so, yes.

The concept of relative risk is poorly appreciated by the lay public. As if there is a risk-free option.

Well according to some interpretations of Hume, it no longer exists, until it can be observed by a human to given it existance.

Commenting on the "meaning" of life without describing from whose perspective the meaning would be given is only a half asked question. In other words it is unanswerable as asked. It just begets another question.