What are discussions of free will really about?" — Bitter Crank
... discussions of free will are determined by the limited capacities of our minds? — Bitter Crank
nothing 'perennial' about it — StreetlightX
It would go a long way towards making such discussions more worthwhile if participants were at least somewhat aware of the history of the subject; its relation to freedom, voluntary action, agency, autonomy, responsibility, control, determination; the role it plays in law, ethics, psychology, sociology. There is, of course, massive literature on free will in philosophy, including experimental philosophy (yes, that's a thing). — SophistiCat
freedom, voluntary action, agency, autonomy, responsibility, control, determination — SophistiCat
Beliefs are deterministic, and I did not freely choose most of the beliefs I have. Preferences, also never deliberately put together, are also deterministic. Habits are deterministic. — Bitter Crank
'Free will' wasn't even a thing until some boofhead Church father decided to make it the cornerstone of his theology. — StreetlightX
Aristotle was the first philosopher to identify the tertium quid beyond chance and necessity as an autonomous agent power.
Aristotle knew that many of our decisions are quite predictable based on habit and character, but they are no less free nor we less responsible if our character itself and predictable habits were developed freely in the past and are changeable in the future.
One generation after Aristotle, Epicurus argued that as atoms moved through the void, there were occasions when they would "swerve" from their otherwise determined paths, thus initiating new causal chains. Epicurus argued that these swerves would allow us to be more responsible for our actions, something impossible if every action was deterministically caused. For Epicurus, the occasional interventions of arbitrary gods would be preferable to strict determinism.
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/tertium_quid.html
I agree. To the people who promote free will, I would keep asking 'Why?' like my determined 2-year-old does. I think they would quickly determine that behind every will, there was a preceding way... — CasKev
Why yes I am aware of the prevalence of third-rate scholarship on the issue.... — StreetlightX
Why yes I am aware of the prevalence of third-rate scholarship on the issue, cited frequently by philosophical dilettantes happy to anarchonisticly and omnivorously assimilate all discussions of freedom into the two-bit reductivism of 'free will'. — StreetlightX
Fortunately, some of the scholarship about the topics surrounding "free will" aren't beholden to the later view. They are rather committed to explaining how the alleged problems in accounting for agency and responsibility in a natural world tend to dissolve when our attempts at naturalizing those familiar phenomena appeal to rather more relaxed (embodied, situated and irreducible) Aristotelian conceptions of nature, agency and causation. — Pierre-Normand
Yeah, I'm aware of those moves, but I'm still of the mind that 'free will' has been so compromised by hundreds of years of theological poison that it needs to be dropped altogether. It's not 'freedom' I have a problem with, so much as 'the will'. It's that connection - unnecessary, overdetermined and intellectually disabling - that is what needs to be broken forever. — StreetlightX
So, merely scrubbing dubious notions (such as the purely mental acts of 'volitions') because they are tainted by their theological origins will leave the roots that currently nourish the philosophical confusions on the topics surrounding rational agency and personal responsibility firmly in place. — Pierre-Normand
So, merely scrubbing dubious notions (such as the purely mental acts of 'volitions') because they are tainted by their theological origins will leave the roots that currently nourish the philosophical confusions on the topics surrounding rational agency and personal responsibility firmly in place. — Pierre-Normand
A good dose of Spinoza - superior by far to Aristotle on this issue - would do everyone alot of good. — StreetlightX
I don't doubt this, but I think a good first step is in putting to question the very vocabulary involved;: freedom, but no 'will' please. This I think would have at least a primarily disorienting effect, which, given just how entrenched the idea is, would have value in itself. — StreetlightX
Science's mechanical view of nature is what has been at issue. Freewill just becomes the most convincing argument against the modern understanding of the mind being a product of machine-like information processes. — apokrisis
If agency rather is viewed as a natural (and social) phenomenon that can only be disclosed as intelligible from an empathetic and engaged participatory perspective, then there is nothing problematic in asserting that the will is a power that is being freely exercised by mature and responsible fellow rational agents. — Pierre-Normand
Yes, I think the third-rate literature that StreetlightX deplores, because of the confused ways in which it problematizes 'the freedom of the will', can be viewed as a reductio of the attempt to account for agency and practical knowledge from a third-personal disengaged view on the material process of decision making. — Pierre-Normand
In other words, discussions of free will are determined by the limited capacities of our minds? — Bitter Crank
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