The biggest obstacle to libertarian free will, it seems to me, is not physicalism, but the metaphysics behind causation. An intuitive belief about causation is that for every event that occurs, there is a cause for that event's existence; thus, if there is a lightning strike, one expects that there is a cause for that lightning strike. However, if that metaphysical intuition is true, then whenever we have a thought, there must have been a cause to bring that thought about and this seems to deny libertarian free will. — Walter Pound
Is it necessary for uncaused causes to be possible for libertarian free will to be possible? — Walter Pound
Can anyone here present a theory of causation that allows for libertarian free will? — Walter Pound
If you make a decision, that decision will be based on who you are — Echarmion
I can present a theory of free will that allows for determinism. Causality is a human perception. Free will is a human experience. Neither can be said to be more real than the other. — Echarmion
You don't see the contradiction?As Chisholm explains it, humans have "a prerogative which some would attribute only to God: each of us, when we act, is a prime mover unmoved. — Walter Pound
God/Natural selection would be the cause for why some agent does anything.So the agent causes a thought to occur in his mind.
But nothing within the agent causes the agent to do that.
The fact that the thought comes about seems to be without any kind of explanation.
Even determinists will accept that an agent causes thoughts to occur in his mind, but the question is why does the agent do that and here is where the libertarian free willer has no explanation. It just happens. Why does the agent do anything? It sounds similar to an event that occurs in a quantum vacuum. — Walter Pound
How would you explain your awareness of other minds without using causation?However, if dualism is allowed then the mind may not be causally bound. It could very well be free. Of course what of causation in the mind plane? Could it be that the mind also is subject to causality? While one can't answer that in the negative neither can we in the affirmative and that provides enough room for the possibility of free will. Do you accept? — TheMadFool
I make a lot of decisions that are phenomenally "random." I do this on purpose. Sometimes I use a "random number generator" instead, but I can do more or less the same thing without a random number generator, too. — Terrapin Station
That's basically just saying "ontologically we don't know what's going on, which one is correct." — Terrapin Station
Then why use a random number generator if you can do more or less the same thing?Sometimes I use a "random number generator" instead, but I can do more or less the same thing without a random number generator, too. — Terrapin Station
So in other words, where they're not "based on who I am." They're phenomenally random instead. — Terrapin Station
The outcomes are phenomenally random. Whether or not it makes sense to refer to the operation of the RNG as a "decision" is a different and mostly semantic question. — Echarmion
Why are you mentioning an RNG?
I said "I make a lot of decisions that are phenomenally 'random.'"
That's all I said. Forget the earlier post. — Terrapin Station
The reason why I say that physicalism is not the biggest problem for free will is that we could even grant that physicalism is false and idealism is true, but if it is the case that for every event that occurs, there is a cause for that event's existence, then libertarian free will is still false.
Is it necessary for uncaused causes to be possible for libertarian free will to be possible?
Can anyone here present a theory of causation that allows for libertarian free will? — Walter Pound
I was arguing specifically against the notion that a free will requires "uncaused decisions". I am fine with accepting phenomenally random decisions as a possibility, I just don't think they are more "free" in some sense than phenomenally reasoned decisions. — Echarmion
Sure. I'd just say that some part of the process--somewhere from the deliberation (when that's present) to the decision has to involve some ontological indeterminateness to some extent* otherwise I don't know what "free" would be referring to ontologically (which is kind of another way of saying that I don't agree that compatibilism makes sense).
*"to some extent"=it wouldn't have to be complete, it could just be something like a probability bias. — Terrapin Station
I know that it's not the primary focus of this thread, but a consequence of this view of causation is that there could be no first cause/first event, because, by definition of "first," it could not have been preceded by any antecedent causes. And this would imply that the universe is infinitely old.An intuitive belief about causation is that for every event that occurs, there is a cause for that event's existence — Walter Pound
I can make them "free" by basing them on nothing else other than internal states I have. — Echarmion
I've never really understood how libertarian free will could be consistent with a naturalistic view of the world. — Arkady
Are you putting "free" in quotation marks there because it's not really ontological freedom? — Terrapin Station
Determinism is hardly a moribund view in philosophy. — Arkady
Even physicists are not unified — Arkady
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