As I said, I am still not sure why tossing dice has anything to do with personal agency. Consider the thought experiment I proposed earlier. All murderers in some hypothetical deterministic world are completely governed in their actions by natural law, save one that has a dice that they use to decide if they should shoot someone. Are they more free? Are they more responsible? — simeonz
I suppose my terms are that no decision is random ergo, no decision is truly free because it is the direct consequence of something that happened before.
This is fundamentally what I can't disprove. I hope that makes sense. — Barondan
Wait for a while, then drop it at a time determined only by your mind without any other influence. If you are capable of doing this, then you know that you have free will. — Metaphysician Undercover
Why do that for human beings? This seems rather selective and intentional on our part. — simeonz
the different narratives cannot always be reconciled. But sometimes they can. Einstein famously said that "it would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of air pressure.” I think he was too dismissive of air pressure graphs, which come handy to reproduce Beethoven's work on vinyl and digital formats... — Olivier5
:up: :lol: — Janus
Will the human spirit become irrelevant if one day it manages to understand its own neurological basis? Allow me to doubt. On the contrary, they will make a even bigger industry out of it... — Olivier5
I don't see how a causal explanation of human agency (demonstrating that it is not free from the determinations of the causal nexus) is possible because if what we think of as human agency were determined by anything other than an unconditioned aspect of the self then it would not really be human agency, and the explanation would not be an explanation, but an elimination. — Janus
In any case how could we ever know that such a purported explanation of the sense of human agency was the true explanation?
brain creates this 'virtual mental space' that the mind seems to be, we might also discover that the deliberations and decisions made within that mental space are needed, indispensable for the organism, not optional. Not frivolous, not an epiphenomenon, but something useful — Olivier5
Well said. I think the whole determinism indeterminism debate is a red herring. That’s not actually what people care about when they think of freedom and agency. I don’t think you need the possibility of doing otherwise to be free or morally responsible. All you need is uncertainty of the future, and lack of external impositions. — khaled
Not necessarily. The causal explanation could include the causality of the mental over the neuronal. — Olivier5
Because we could then replicate it, like we replicate Beethoven's fifth. We could make machines that have agency. — Olivier5
I wouldn't even require uncertainty. For example, theism generally ascribes omnipotence and omniscience to the deity, yet no one claims that they are not free. — simeonz
brain creates this 'virtual mental space' that the mind seems to be, we might also discover that the deliberations and decisions made within that mental space are needed, indispensable for the organism, not optional. Not frivolous, not an epiphenomenon, but something useful
— Olivier5
Sailing awfully close to dualist lines here. — khaled
This is difficult for me to process. I realize that you like to be general and broaden the scope, but this makes the discussion a little unconstrained. I am not asking if you are dualist, as if to expose your conviction and mock it, but it is pertinent to the discourse. The next question would be, how does this dualism manifest. Does it cause irregular patterns, such as distribution biases in QM.The person is the subject of all the possible true descriptions and explanations of her or him. — Janus
Unless you are a dualist and you suggest that QM affords the manifestation of will through probability distribution changes from the norm, you appear to suggest that our freedom stems from the conventional possible fluctuations in the chemical processes in our brain due to QM uncertainty. That is, a neurotransmitter binds to a neuroreceptor a microsecond earlier or later and that jags our thought process enough to give it physical autonomy from the externally compelling forces of the world. To me, this is the same as having a coin tossed inside your brain. Yes, we could claim that it is your own private coin, but I think that the killer thought experiment is still pertinent.No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that while quantum indeterminacy is necessary if there is to be freedom, In the sense that it allows that we always could have done otherwise, our moral choices cannot be determined (rather than merely enabled) by that indeterminism, but must be determined by the purposeful self or consciousness in order to themselves count as free and determining, as opposed to merely random, choices. — Janus
That's because the intelligent answer to that conundrum (from long ago, that is from Augustine) is that God exists in eternity, and so it's not a matter of God knowing what you do before you do it, which would suggest predetermination. God knows all of the past, present and future, so for God there is no before and after. — Janus
because life doesn't build things for no reason. — Olivier5
not logically possible — Olivier5
(on top of being not noticeable so nobody would know if they existed). — Olivier5
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