So... what is it rational to want?
— Banno
The good, of course — Heiko
I like where you’re going with your groundwork here, but do you see where THE good, if taken as a transcendental principle, cannot be that which is “rational to want”, that being merely A good, or some good or another, as a practical end? — Mww
I like where you’re going with your groundwork here, — Mww
I would not call the idea a thing.By imagining a thing that you call "The Good" you closed off the interesting line of thought here. Reification does that. — Banno
It is not me who postulates there must be something beyond the rational decision...The free will debate is masturbation so people can feel security by believing their actions are beyond their control, — Cidat
The question then is just if you are sick or just a criminal.On the other hand, by believing in free will you believe you have the power to steer your behavior in a positive direction, away from criminal abuse. If we don't have free will, we can never make any mistakes in our lives, since we could never have done anything any differently. — Cidat
That doesn't help; this is just the 7th grader overview. I'm looking for the bees knees of the meaning of the thing.Free will is the idea that — Cidat
Let's take a chess playing AI program. On the first move, it can open D4. Or, it can open E4. It cannot open E5. It has "multiple options to choose from regarding the outcome" (e.g., D4 and E4; but not E5) "of a particular situation" (start of a game).we have multiple options to choose from regarding the outcome of a particular situation. — Cidat
Take the same program. Suppose it does indeed open E4. That "action" (opening E4) could have been chosen as D4. It couldn't have been E5, mind you, because that's an impossible move. But it could have been D4.Thus, free will implies that freely willed actions could have been chosen differently. — Cidat
...the game could have looked quite different had the chess program opened with D4.Free will implies that the world could have looked radically different if we had just exercised our free will differently. — Cidat
This is an appeal to motive. It's also a bit of a straw man; the main personal psychological appeal to rejecting free will is that it tends to grant you freedom from being responsible; there are less extreme situations, such as a person who is terrified that anything they do is wrong. The main personal psychological appeal to accepting free will is that it tends to grant you the feeling that you are in control; that your actions matter and that you can avoid bad things. The main interpersonal psychological appeal to rejecting free will is that it avoids holding people to standards you believe they can't realistically live up to. The main interpersonal psychological appeal to accepting free will is that it promotes people taking responsibility for their actions; e.g., if something bad happens and someone else did it, that makes it their fault (note that the interpersonal appeal may actually be used to avoid personal responsibility, ironically).so people can feel security by believing their actions are beyond their control, freeing them from moral responsibility — Cidat
I believe I did both.Argue against or for free will all you want, but — Cidat
"Him" is me. So if you're really "just trying to make him understand what we're talking about", how about addressing the question "him" asked you instead of literally whining about the fact that he asked you a question.don't question my definitions. I'm just trying to make him understand what we're talking about.
But if we take "choice" in a looser sense, this fits entirely with your definition. So if you want to have this discussion, I want to keep a thumb here. You don't want to call this free will, but, it does match everything you say, with a looser sense of choice; a perfectly sane one, but looser one. I'll just grant that it's fake; so we'll just call this fake free will, or FFW.And no, computers are inherently deterministic machines, they produce the same output for the same input, so they cannot have free will. — Cidat
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