Yes, as along as that the drive to sleep is merely an inclination and not a necessity. E.g. if you pass out from exhaustion, then this is too strong to be an inclination.

[...] A low frequency of recidivism, on the other hand, would mean we can override our "programming." — TheMadFool

Indeed, I think that may work. The following assumptions would have to be true:
1. The inclination for recidivism would always or almost always have to be present.
2. If free will exists, many criminals would freely choose to not repeat the crimes.

we can compare humans with artificial entities — TheMadFool

That sounds correct. The robot would have to be virtually the same as the human subject in every way - e.g. same memories, inclinations, situation, etc. - minus free will.

Hopefully there exist arguments on free will that don't rely on waiting on this level of technology haha.

Correct. Inclination is any internal force that drives, though does not compel, you to do something.

I don't think the test would work, because we don't know how effective free will is to counter recidivism. We could know that if we could observe some test subjects with free will and some without it. But in the actual world, either everyone has free will or no one has it. Alternatively, we could compare the frequency of recidivism between humans and dogs, but the two might be too different to compare haha.

the existence of free will would add another "internal force" that can change our behavior. — Samuel Lacrampe

I take back what I said. Free will is not another force that we add to sum up among the other inclinations. Rather, free will can always choose against all the inclinations, no matter their intensity. That's what makes it free.

Mmmh... Let's put it this way: For a given case, if recidivism happens, then deterrence and rehabilitation will not be effective, regardless if we have free will or not. Likewise, if recidivism does not happen, then deterrence and rehabilitation will be effective, regardless if we have free will or not. In short, free will does not change the effects of deterrence and rehabilitation.

That said, I agree that the existence of free will would add another "internal force" that can change our behavior.

Kool I did not know about that word! That said, what is your argument? Are you saying that recidivism prevents deterrence and rehabilitation from being effective? But if so, how would having Free Will solve that issue?

Creatures without free will can also change. Instead of coming from free will, the change can come from external factors that can happen through deterrence and rehabilitation. I'll stick to the dog example, assuming you agree they don't have free will.

You can deter a dog from barking by using a shock collar. Similarly, rehabilitation or training the dog to obey his master can be done by rewarding desired behaviours and punishing undesired ones.

Hello.

You can tell me why you're a determinist all day long, but the real reason you are is because you lacked the power not to be. — Hanover

Of course, if everything is determined, then everything is determined. But we can still talk about things being true or false, and good or bad. E.g. Even if I am forced to state that "2+2=3", it is still a false statement. Likewise, even if I am forced to kill an innocent man, it is still a wrongful act (according to most ethics).

Hello.
This is close to my view. I would however correct you here:

In the absence of free will, retributive, deterrent, and rehabilitative arms of justice don't make sense — TheMadFool

I think deterrent and rehabilitative are still applicable without free will. Most of us would agree that a dog does not have free will; yet we can use processes to deter and rehabilitate.

Talking about normative ethics cannot be done until we have established whether it is possible or not to even do normative ethics — Hello Human

Sure. I have attempted to answer this question here.

using normative ethics to establish whether normative ethics are possible is a fundamentally flawed way to approach the problem. — Hello Human

Of course, this would be circular. But that was not my point. My point here was that we cannot have a justification without first having a normative ethics.

But to propose what reasons are sufficient would be doing normative ethics, a consequentialist would say that an action is justified because it causes more utility, a Kantian would something else, and all the others too. This discussion is focused on metaethics. — Hello Human

There are only 2 types of justifications or causes: efficient cause (what causes the effect), and final cause (the end goal or intention). If you exclude normative ethics from the discussion, which pertains to final cause, then this leaves only the efficient cause. And to @SophistiCat's point, there is always a sufficient efficient cause, otherwise the act would not have occurred.

If you justify an action before committing it, doesn’t that imply free will? If you cannot justify it, you act in a different manner. — NOS4A2

Hello.

I'd say not necessarily. Justifying means "having a good reason", and we can have a good reason without having free will. E.g. killing someone out of self-defense is justified, and compatible with hard determinism.

Free will, which is nonsensically defined anyway (free from what?), plays no role in this. — SolarWind

Hello.

Free will means that our intentions are partially free from the laws of physics (I say partially because we may not have free will when we are dead or unconscious). E.g. if you tie me up, then I am not free to walk around, but I am still free to intend to walk around.

Free will plays a role in ethics because it makes a difference between an accidental homicide and an intended murder. The latter is more severe because it is willed; the former is less severe because it is not willed.

Hello.

We distinguish between 2 types of good and evil: external (sometimes also called physical) and moral. External good and evil are ones that come to you; moral good and evil are ones that come from you, that are intended, or willed, which implies a free will.

Without free will, moral good and evil cannot exist. Granted, external good and evil remain, and an ethics can indeed still be based solely on that; but we could not judge people as being morally good or evil. E.g. we could say that Hitler's actions were bad for society (he produced a lot of external evil), but if all his acts were determined, then we could not say he is himself evil ... which sounds absurd.

Hello.
This is an interesting post, but there seems to be a lot of different topics here. What is your main point?

If it is about whether things can exist beyond our conception of it and language, then the answer is yes, so long as it abides to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (which you have alluded to): It is logically possible, but we must have a sufficient reason to posit it. Something like Aquinas' Five Ways: Since all things in the universe are contingent, it is necessary to posit a necessary being as their cause; even if such a being is not imaginable to us since we have never perceived such a thing.

Hello.

Premises:
P1: Some acts are good, e.g. honesty and saving lives, and some are evil, e.g. lying and killing.
P2: Some good acts are better than others, e.g. saving lives is better than honesty; some are worse than others, e.g. killing is worse than lying.
These premises are known through the Principle of Universal Perception: we all perceive the same value for these acts.

Now the goal is to maximize the good and minimize the evil for a given situation.
To use @Tom Storm's example: It is morally good to lie to the nazi to save the jew because lying is a lesser evil than killing.

[...] And perhaps to a lesser extent lower life forms - worms bacteria etc. — Benj96

In your view, what is the lowest form of being that is conscious? Is a rock conscious? If not, then the point remains: science says that rocks are older than any living being.

Hello.
Does reality require an observer? If by observer we mean a human being, and we believe in science that the universe is much older than the human species, then the answer is clearly 'no'. Am I missing something?

Also I think you nailed it by stating that the observer is itself part of reality. Since nothing comes from nothing, then the observer came from something else that is part of reality.

So 'probable' is 'plausible' but with numbers involved.

Note that, as described previously, it seems that Michael's description of induction is not compatible with yours, because it is not evaluating a hypothesis.

Hello.
That is indeed one of the descriptions I found, as described in the OP. But 2 things to notice.

(1) This description of induction is not compatible with other descriptions above such as here and here. (Not a criticism; just an observation).

(2) It seems like induction is very much deduction, but with a small extra leap. In your example, the reasoning would be deduction if the conclusion was written as "Hence, Louise probably (96%) speaks both Dutch and French". The small extra leap is to assume it is the case if we really had to choose.

So could we generalize and say induction is just choosing the outcome that has been deduced as most probable? It would seem odd to rank such as statement as a type of reasoning.

Thanks anyways!

So it seems the distinction is merely in the chronological order of experience. Abduction is an explanation based on past experience, whereas induction is a revised explanation based on subsequent experience. And had the subsequent experience actually happened before the original explanation, then it would be called abduction instead of induction; right? If this is true, then I find the distinction to be negligible.

As a side question, what is the difference between 'probable' and 'plausible'?

Abduction is formulating a hypothesis, while induction is testing a hypothesis. — aletheist

This distinction is in the function but not in the act. It seems to me that both are IBE, which is used both to build the hypothesis and to test it against new data.

[...] He helpfully characterized the three propositions as rule, case, and result. — aletheist

Yes I'm familiar with how Peirce described it (I gave the link to this example in the OP). In which case, it seems to me that both abduction and induction are IBE, and the distinction is that induction is a general explanation whereas abduction is a specific one.

I notice as well that your definition of induction as "testing a hypothesis" does not seem to fit Peirce's example of induction. The concluding rule "All the beans in this bag are white" does not serve to test either the case: "This bean is from this bag" or the result: "This bean is white". It's just a general IBE.

Deduction derives necessary conclusions based strictly on formal considerations. — aletheist

I accept that claim. Thanks.

But now, how is induction different from abduction? Upon observing a black swan, the only reasoning needed at that point is: "I observe a black swan, therefore some swans are black". But that's just abduction; is it not?

Another way to say the same thing: arguments are composed only of premises and conclusion. Premises are built from abduction, and conclusions are built from deduction. There seems to be no need for a third type of reasoning.

No, it is not necessarily false, it is contingently false--it is contradicted by experience, not logic. That is what makes it inductive, rather than deductive. — aletheist

Deduction is the explication of what would follow necessarily from that hypothesis if it were true. — aletheist

If some swans are black, the explication that necessarily follows is that the hypothesis "all swans are white" is false. So we falsify the hypothesis with deduction as you've defined it.

Otherwise, in general, all deductions must contain some experience since it checks for possible contradictions between premises that are built from experience.

I get how each step of the example is categorized in the type of reasoning as you have defined them, but I still don't understand the distinction between induction and deduction in the example, as explained below.

We go looking for more swans and see a black one, so our hypothesis is falsified. — aletheist

Yes. As the original hypothesis is in contradiction with the new data, then it is necessarily false. So this is deduction.

If we were never to see a black swan, then the hypothesis would not be falsified, but that does not warrant certainty that it is true since we only ever observe a finite sample of swans. — aletheist

As the original hypothesis is not in contradiction with the new data, then it is not necessarily false. This is also deduction.

Hello.
Could you give a specific example of your general description?
I fail to see why the verification of the hypothesis by experiments should not simply fall under deduction.

E.g. we observe 100 swans and all are white; so we hypothesize that all swans that exist are white. Then we test this by looking for more swans, and find one that is black. As "all swans are white" contradicts with "one swan is not white", we reject the original hypothesis. This rejection is based on deduction.

Hello.
I agree with your view on abduction.
Could you give a specific example of induction? I suspect any instance would fall under either abduction in the sense of IBE, or deduction.

Why would a rational person who made the rational decision in that scenario the first time not make it the second? — Kenosha Kid

The key is the word "rational". If a person chooses the path of reason 100% of the time, then you are correct that any change in decision, even freely chosen, must come from a change in the situation. But the real impact of free will comes before that; when it comes to choosing between the path of reason and the path of the appetite (when the two are conflicting).

You asked me what I think: either I am not capable to understand those super-complex explanations, or those super-complicated explanations are simply long complicated senseless phrases that are intended to make ordinary people like me that ''scientists know the truth, but it's complicated'' when in fact there is only the impotence of the materialistic view of the reality. — Eugen

I'm with you on that one. "Knowledge" is "justified true belief". I don't think someone truly knows what they are talking about if they cannot justify with simple explanations, even if these simple explanations are a summary of the real thing only.

For me and my situation to be absolutely identical would be equivalent to reversing time back to the start of the situation and replaying. I think almost all of us would expect the situation to play out in exactly the same way and, because of that, almost all of us are determinists deep down. — Kenosha Kid

I agree that if revisiting a past event as a spectator, we would expect the exact same outcome for that event every time; but note that this expectation is also compatible with free will as I define it: In the original event, the person freely chooses to act in a particular way, and upon revisiting that event, we see a replay of that same act being freely chosen.

Interesting theory. But I wonder if it merely pushes the problem one more step, instead of explaining it. A condition to accept a property as being physical is that it must be observable by physical instruments (I think). Physical instruments have not observed such a property in particles; and so even if particles had such a property, it still would not be correct to call it "physical". Note that when it comes to our own consciousness, although we can observe our own individually, it is not observed by physical instruments either.

What do you think?

What I am getting out of your claim is that the will has the possibility of choosing; but also does not because it will always choose the same decision for a given set of information it receives. If on the other hand, for a given set of information, the will can choose between two decisions, then it can choose between two decisions.

Hello.

Maybe everything is determined goes for every structure before reaching the biological state. — Eugen

Are you saying that things are determined prior to the biological state, and then not necessarily determined after that? But then if not for an additional non-physical thing like the soul, how can things go from being determined to non-determined?

There are people who argue against LFW on the basis that there can only be determined and random things — InPitzotl

It's a matter of definitions. If randomness was defined as "not determined" or "Cause A does not always give Effect B", then there would only be 2 categories. But this definition is incorrect, because it is possible for a Cause A to not always give Effect B, and yet not have randomness. On the other hand, the definiton "Cause A does not always give Effect B, and there is no agency" seems correct. In that case, what remains is the category "Cause A does not always give Effect B, and there is an agency", and this definition fits for Free Will. I could be wrong if the definition of either of the three terms, Determinism, Randomness, Free Will, is incorrect.

The "more general" things are still theories before they are tested (and accepted). String Theory's a prime example. — InPitzotl

Sure, we can come up with a theory first, and proceed to hypothesis testing to validate the theory second; so long as some hypothesis testing is applicable to the theory. My guess is that hypothesis testing applies to String Theory, even if not at the present time. And of course, no theory should be accepted before testing and validation (unless a theory has to be provisionally accepted for some practical reason).

...if it were distinct "I"'s after the split, would that be critically damaging, or just interesting? — InPitzotl

At first glance, critically damaging. And interesting.

instead, we'll look at entropy. Entropy actually increases in time. But that means that effects can indeed be greater than the cause, even in a closed system. — InPitzotl

Indeed, entropy increases. But as previously mentioned, things can change into different things if both supervene on a same basic thing. E.g. squares can change into circles in a closed system, thereby resulting in more circles in the effect; but both squares and circles supervene on the arrangement of matter. Similarly for entropy, which can be roughly defined as (1) unavailable energy, or (2) disordered matter. For (1), energy was already present, and turned from available to unavailable, and both supervene on general energy; in (2), matter was already present and turned from ordered to disordered, and both supervene on arrangement of matter.

Therefore, I'm using LEM to show that my color list is complete. — InPitzotl

The LEM is used to come up with the list in the first place. As per the LEM, all things can be categorized either in category A or not-A; and that list is exhaustive. But we could also continue as so: All things within category not-A can be further categorized in category B or not-B; etc. This is how I came up here with an exhaustive list for determined, random, and free will, based on their definitions.

Theories tend to have many hypotheses incorporated into them.[...] The supported hypothesis is now one of the (thousands of) hypotheses supporting natural selection and evolution. — Paul Lucas PhD, quora

If theories are supported by hypotheses, and hypotheses are supported by testing, then theories are supported by testing.

Alien hand syndrome (AHS) is not split personality. — InPitzotl

I don't see how AHS entails split soul. AHS just shows that some of our bodily acts are not voluntary; but this is obviously true: e.g. acts from our digestive system and heart are never voluntary.

The less your souls have to do with subjective experiences and phenomena like making apparent free will choices as it relates to situations like AHS, the more it sounds like it's more about preserving a belief than being correct. — InPitzotl

In the religious view, the soul is the "I" where resides the subjective experiences of the senses or "first-person point of view", consciousness, thinking, feelings, etc. To relate it to the "split-brain video", it is possibly the same "I" that experiences both the theistic and atheistic views, and the "I" simply forgets one event when the other side of the brain is activated, sort of like how a drunk was conscious the night before but forgets the events the next morning.

Of course, factors like the circumstance, our appetite, and our reason, all influence the will towards a decision; but they cannot compel the will to the decision if the will is truly free. Worst case, they can compel the body to one path, like forcing someone at gunpoint to do something, but in this case, it would be literally against their will.

"Free Will: The will has the ability to choose between multiple effects."

Reason allows to determine which outcome is best, but free will allows to choose between our voice of reason and other voices like the appetite. And we observe that we in fact don't always choose the voice of reason. E.g. sometimes my reason tells me not to drink too much because I will pay for it tomorrow, and yet I can and have decided in the past to continue drinking; which resulted in a painful yet unsurprising hangover.

Go back to that CoE thing. You said according to PoSR energy cannot increase. Energy, it turns out, does indeed increase. — InPitzotl

As previously stated, energy in a simple closed system with nothing else cannot increase. But a change to the system can serve to explain the change in the results without violation of the PoSR.

Why? — InPitzotl

A Little Bang has insufficient causal power on its own to explain a Big Bang. This would be creating something out of nothing.

So here's the big question... why can't all three be physical? — InPitzotl

You have not answered my question about how you define the term "physical"; so I'll stick to my definition: "matter, energy and things associated with these, like forces, geometry, etc". Taken individually, like an individual atom, matter and energy behave in a way that is either deterministic or random. You can rearrange matter and energy to produce a human body, but cannot rearrange either matter, energy, or their behavior to produce free will.

It can't be used for the latter. I can't say that because I can only think of four colors, therefore there are only four colors due to the LEM. — InPitzotl

How does your example of colors rely on the LEM? You can however categorize all things into red things and non-red things, and this is exhaustive.

FYI, a hypothesis and a theory are different kinds of things. — InPitzotl

Theories are built from hypothesis testing. From this link: "The scientific method involves the proposal and testing of hypotheses, [...] if it fulfills the necessary criteria (see above), then the explanation becomes a theory."

...so there's your answer... science isn't distinct from philosophy... it's intermingled with it. — InPitzotl

No sir. In the pre-modern times, philosophy meant "search for truth" and included all fields of study to that end. In the modern times, fields of study have been separated into "science" which means "search for truths that are empirically verifiable", and "philosophy" which means "search for truths that are not empirically (ie only rationally) verifiable". Physics fits in science, metaphysics fits in philosophy.

it would appear people are splittable into pieces (link: youtube, Ramachandran) (at least two). — InPitzotl

Split personality does not entail split soul. If one side of the brain holds a memory that the other side does not, then this could be sufficient to explain a change in behaviour.

How we choose depends on the circumstances (what are my values, am I starving, is there bread, will anyone know, etc), i.e. is deterministic. — Kenosha Kid

But if all the circumstances are deterministic, including our values, then why claim that we have free will at all?