I wish you were trying to convince me. I am all-loving. I would love to be all-knowing and all-powerful also. I long to prevent all suffering, inequality, injustice, and deaths. I long to make all living things forever happy. I can't do these things due to my lack of omniscience and omnipotence. Only all-knowing and all-powerful beings are morally culpable. I don't know if such beings even exist.

I disagree. Genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences determine and constrain the choices made by organisms. This is a fact. This is why banana trees don't type posts on forums and humans don't photosynthesise. These are evidence-based statements. The only way you are going to convince me that you have free will is by forever refraining from doing the 27 things and by doing the 7 tasks I asked you to do.

Are you joking? They are not silly or loopy or irrelevant. They are as factual as the Earth orbits the Sun.

"Push yourself" means to do something that takes effort e.g. I am suffering from depression, CPTSD and chronic pain. So, it takes a lot of effort for me to read posts and reply to posts. It's not all chemical reactions. Please see: https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain-basics/brain/brain-physiology/action-potentials-and-synapses and https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-mind-emerges-from-the-brains-complex-networks/

Quantum indeterminacy does not lead to macroscopic indeterminacy due to quantum decoherence. At the macroscopic level, things don't happen randomly. They happen deterministically.

I have tried yoga. I am not very good at it.

As I said before, earthquakes are 100% determined but it is hard to predict with 100% accuracy because of the complexity of the interacting variables that cause earthquakes. The same goes for weather. Our computers are not sophisticated enough to simulate reality with 100% accuracy but they are much better now than they were 50 years ago.

I don't see any evidence for any X factor in decision-making. Can you show me any evidence for the X factor that I could see using a brain scanner?

Thank you for the reading recommendation. "Ants don't play guitars." is a fact. "Humans don't fly like the birds." is also a fact. Just as what I said in my post are facts.

Genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences determine and constrain the choices made by organisms. This is a fact. This is why banana trees don't type posts on forums and humans don't photosynthesise.

Is that assigned culpability or actual culpability?

I have no idea what that means!

I am not trying to give you anything new. Determinism is not a new idea. I have told you how you can prove to me that you have free will but you have consistently failed to do so. I don't have anything else to say.

I have seen brain scans of people who were suffering from depressive episodes. I have seen brain scans of people who were suffering from manic episodes. They are significantly different. I have never seen a brain scan of someone who was both happy and unhappy at the same time. Can you prove to me that you are both happy and unhappy at the same time?

I am not a professional philosopher. I am not even a student of philosophy. For me, science is the way to truth. That's why I conduct experiments to discover truths. Perhaps this forum is not the place I should be at. For me, the arbiter of truth is evidence.

An earthquake is determined by all the variables that cause it. A cyclone is determined by all the variables that cause it. A choice is determined by all the variables that cause it. Do you understand now?

It sounds like a contradiction to me. It's saying someone was alive and dead at the same time or angry and calm at the same time or excited and bored at the same time.

I provided you with the determining effects of genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences. If you don't remember what I said, please read my posts again. Once you have refrained from the 27 things I asked you to refrain from and have done the 7 tasks I asked you to do, I will be convinced that you have free will.

I don't know what it is like to be you or anyone else. I have never been happy and unhappy at the same time.

I agree.

How can you be both happy and not happy at the same time? I have never experienced. I wish we were all telepathic - that way we could really know what it is like to be each other instead of having to resort to communicate with words.

I have already provided you with evidence. I have invited you to refute my position but you have failed to do so.

It's a matter of evidence. I have provided you with the evidence. You failed to forever refrain from the 27 things I asked you to refrain from. You failed to do the 7 tasks I asked you to do.

I disagree with you because the evidence contradicts your position. It does not matter to me whether you agree with me or not.

No, the significant life experiences I listed actually happened. That's why I was able to compare the before and after states. Don't worry about saying sorry. We are all doomed to suffer and die.

I would love to know more about your experience of meditation. I meditate daily. I have not experienced what you described. How did you come to experience it?

I have seen the evidence for the following groups of variables: genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences. I have not seen any evidence for the existence of other groups of variables. If you can show me the evidence for other groups of variables, please do.

You have not managed to forever refrain from the 27 things I asked you to refrain from. Also, you have not managed to do the 7 things I asked you to do. I think this proves my point that you don't have free will. Your will is determined and constrained. I have given you the opportunity to prove me wrong but you have failed. It's not your fault. We are all prisoners of causality.

The strings of thoughts you shared in your post are not free from determinism. Our thoughts occur as a result of electrochemical activities in the brain. If your thoughts are so free, why don't you think of a trillion thoughts per second? Because your thoughts are not free. The nerve conduction velocity is 50 to 60 metres per second. If we could think freely, it would be whatever speed we want per second.

We don't have enough knowledge to predict people's behaviour with 100% accuracy but that does not mean that the behaviours are not deterministic. The same is true for predicting earthquakes.

I agree.

I am not convinced that being souls would give us the highest freedom. Being all-knowing and all-powerful would give us the highest freedom.

I do some things even though I don't want to do them. Here are some things I have done, currently do or will do even though I don't want to do them:

1. Breathe
2. Eat
3. Drink
4. Sleep
5. Dream
7. Pee
8. Poo
9. Fart
10. Burp
11. Sneeze
12. Cough
13. Age
14. Get ill
15. Get injured
16. Sweat
17. Cry
18. Suffer
19. Snore
20. Think
21. Feel
22. Choose
23. Be conceived
24. Be born
25. Remember some events that I don't want to remember
26. Forget information that I want to remember
27. Die

To prove me wrong, you would have to forever refrain from doing the above 27 things and instead do the following things:

1. Live forever without consuming any oxygen, fluids, or food.
2. Do things other organisms e.g. tardigrades, dolphins, chameleons, etc. can do.
3. Teleport everywhere and everywhen.
4. Prevent all suffering, inequality, injustice, and deaths.
5. Make all living things (including the dead ones and the never-born ones) forever happy.
6. Be all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful and make all the other beings also all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful.
7. Own an infinite number of universes and give all beings an infinite number of universes each for free.

Once you have done the above tasks, I will be convinced that you have free will. If I had free will, I would have already done the above tasks.

I carried out experiments to test the roles played by our genes, environments from conception to the present, nutrients from conception to the present, and experiences from the womb to the present. These experiments were not published in any journals because I carried them out alone and I was my only test subject. I compared myself with myself under different situations e.g. how lack of oxygen affected my decision making, how lack of water affected my decision making, how lack of food affected my decision making, how lack of sleep affected my decision making, how cold and heat affected my decision making, etc. I also compared myself to how I was before significant life events with how I was after significant life events. By significant life events, I mean being kidnapped, being raped, watching people murder each other, being in natural disasters which killed lots of people, relatives being murdered, etc. The more I experimented and compared, the more it became clear to me that our wills are determined and constrained by our genes, environments from conception to the present, nutrients from conception to the present, and experiences from the womb to the present. You can do the experiments on yourself - it's not necessary to take my word for it.

How much do you know about neuroscience? Have you ever seen PET scans and functional MRI scans of humans? I have. If you want to learn more about how choices arise in brains, I recommend that you start by reading this book: "Determined: Life Without Free Will" by Robert M. Sapolsky. It is available on Amazon Kindle. If you want to discuss the book with me, I am happy to discuss it.

If I had the genes of a banana tree, would I be able to type this post? No. I have seen many banana trees and none of them can read or type or even know English. They are probably not even sentient.

If the zygote that was I when I was conceived was placed inside an oven at 250 degrees Celsius for an hour would I have become the adult I am now? No. The lethal environment would have destroyed the zygote.

If the zygote that was I when I was conceived was deprived of all nutrients would I have become the adult I am now? No. The lack of nutrients would have killed the zygote.

If the zygote that was I had all the correct genes and was in the correct environment and received the correct nutrients then I would have been born as a healthy human baby. If that baby had different experiences from me such as learning Japanese instead of English, I would not be typing this message.

So, do you now see the roles played by my genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences in the typing of this post? This is why I am convinced that we don't have free will. Do you understand my thoughts and reasoning?

Something being determined is not the same as being predictable. For example, earthquakes are entirely deterministic but are hard to predict accurately.

Whether your prisoner chooses to escape from the prison or stays in the prison is not free from his genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences. Whatever he chooses will be the result of the interactions of the genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences.

Have you read all of my previous posts in this thread? It does not seem like you have.

I don't know if souls exist or not. How would an immaterial soul interact with a material body? I have witnessed lots of deaths, but I have never seen any soul leaving the body at the time of death. You can argue that the soul is immaterial and is therefore undetectable. In that case, how do you that it exists? I think the arbiter of truth is evidence. I have not seen any evidence for the existence of souls. Therefore, I am a materialist monist.

My definition of free will is a will that is free from determinants and constraints. I don't have such a will. I have never met anyone who does.

I think our choices are the result of the interaction between genes, environments from conception to the present, nutrients from conception to the present, and experiences from the womb to the present.

Thinking is not free from determinants and constraints. For example, I can think only in the languages I know. I can't think in languages I don't know. So, the fact that I learned English is determining the fact that I am now typing in English. The fact that I never learned Mandarin is preventing me from typing in Mandarin.

It goes even deeper than that. Assuming that atoms, molecules, cells, bodies, planets, universes are real and not simulation or hallucination or dream or illusion, our thinking occurs as a result of the electrochemical activities of the brain. This activity is determined and constrained by the laws of physics. That's why we can't think faster than our nerve conduction velocity which is 50 to 60 metres per second.

Happiness and sadness are mental states but they are determined by the electrochemical activities of the brain. You can't be both happy and sad at the same time but you can be happy at one time and sad at another time.

Hard determinism and free will are two ideas but they are ideas about how reality works. Hard determinism and free will are not mental states the way happiness and sadness are mental states.

I asked you "Can you give me one example of a choice that you have made that did not have any determinants and constraints?" You have not given me even one such example. The fact that you can't give me even one example of a choice that you have made that did not have any determinants and constraints proves my point.

How do you know that the world you perceive to be concrete is real? It could be a simulation, or a hallucination, or a dream, or an illusion. You can't prove that your perceived world is real.

Hard determinism and free will are opposing ideas. They can't both be true. How do we establish which is true? I can't do any of the things I want to do. I am constantly doing things I don't want to do. If I had free will, I would be able to do the things I want to do and refrain from doing the things I don't want to do. This is why I am convinced that I don't have free will.

You described is determined and constrained will instead of free will. I agree that we have determined and constrained will. Thus we can choose between drinking water or drinking tea but the choice is never free from determinants and constraints. For example, I drink water instead of tea as my mum drank water instead of tea. So, my choice to drink water instead of other liquids is determined by my experience of watching my mum drink only water during my childhood.

What do they mean when they say free will? How do you know that is the correct meaning?

Thinking that you are free does not make you actually free. You may think that you will go to heaven after you die, but that does not mean you actually will. The question of whether or not you are actually free from determinants and constraints has to be resolved by doing things that demonstrate that you are actually free from determinants and constraints. This is why I gave you some tasks to do and some tasks to refrain from doing.

I have considered many definitions of free will and rejected all the other definitions of free will because they were inaccurate. Free will is a will that is free from determinants and constraints is the most accurate definition for free will.

I have considered free will from a variety of perspectives. My evidence-based conclusion is that we don't have free will. The fact that you can't give me even one example of a choice that you have made that did not have any determinants and constraints proves my point.

My definition of free will is a will that is free from determinants and constraints. Can you give me one example of a choice that you have made that did not have any determinants and constraints?

Thank you for sharing your conclusion with us. What is the basis for your conclusion? My conclusion is that no one is morally culpable because no one has free will.

So, how does the decision to drink water instead of coffee come about? I am a water drinker. I don't drink alcohol or tea or coffee or fizzy drinks or milk. This occurs because of my genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences. It is not a free choice. My mum is also a water drinker. If my mum was different, I would have been different, too.

You can't do any of the things I asked you to do earlier yet you believe you have free will. What is the basis for your belief in having free will?

I can't do any of the things I want to do. I am constantly doing things I don't want to do. This is why I am convinced that I don't have free will. Here are some things I have done, currently do or will do even though I don't want to do them:

1. Breathe
2. Eat
3. Drink
4. Sleep
5. Dream
7. Pee
8. Poo
9. Fart
10. Burp
11. Sneeze
12. Cough
13. Age
14. Get ill
15. Get injured
16. Sweat
17. Cry
18. Suffer
19. Snore
20. Think
21. Feel
22. Choose
23. Be conceived
24. Be born
25. Remember some events that I want to forget
26. Forget information that I want to remember
27. Die

Can you refrain from doing the above 27 things forever? If you can do that, I will be convinced that you have free will.

Can you give me one example of a choice that you have made that did not have any determinants and constraints?

I agree.

I don't have any problem with other people having different views from me. In fact, I prefer it. Diversity of all kinds makes the world much more interesting than it would be if everyone were identical. Have you carried out experiments to test the effects of genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences on living things? I have. The arbiter of truth is evidence. My conclusion follows from the evidence.

My definition of free will is a will that is free from determinants and constraints. To prove me wrong, you would have to do the following:

1. Live forever without consuming any oxygen, fluids, or food.
2. Do things other organisms e.g. tardigrades, dolphins, chameleons, etc. can do.
3. Teleport everywhere and everywhen.
4. Prevent all suffering, inequality, injustice, and deaths.
5. Make all living things (including the dead ones and the never-born ones) forever happy.
6. Be all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful and make all the other beings also all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful.
7. Own an infinite number of universes and give all beings an infinite number of universes each for free.

Once you have done the above tasks, I will be convinced that you have free will. If I had free will, I would have already done the above tasks.

In a way, everything is pointless. I have never asked anyone to agree with me about anything and I never will. I have my thoughts and you have yours. If you had my genes, my environments from conception to the present, my nutrients from conception to the present, and my experiences from the womb to the present you would be typing these words where and when I am typing these words. If I had your genes, your environments from conception to the present, your nutrients from conception to the present, and your experiences from the womb to the present, I would be doing what you are doing in the present. The same goes for everyone else. We are all puppets controlled by the strings of variables.

To incontrovertibly prove that hard determinism is true, I would need to create a universe that has identical starting conditions and laws of physics and let it run for as long as the universe we are in has run to see if events unfold exactly as they did in this universe. As I can't create an identical universe or access data from another universe, I can't prove it incontrovertibly. However, I am almost certain that it is true - as my conclusion is based on experiments and observations carried out in this universe.

We make choices every second. Some of the choices are unconscious e.g. the heart rate, and some of the choices are conscious e.g. choosing to cheat or not cheat on a partner. All of the choices are determined and constrained by the genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences. We are never free from the variables that determine and constrain our choices. I don't assign culpability to anyone because no one is actually culpable. This is why I chose the "No one" option on the "Who is morally culpable?" poll in the first post in this thread. We are born inevitably, we live inevitable lives, and then we die inevitable deaths. Everything is proceeding in the only way it can.

You did not provide evidence for your claim - that's why I don't belive you.

I agree.

I agree.

Yes, we have conscious volition, but this volition is not free from determinants and constraints. My definition of free will is a will that is free from determinants and constraints.

I agree.