So you have concluded that there is no free will (in the sense defined here), but you still seem to behave the same as you did when you believed in such free will. In fact, you find yourself reverting to behaviors that don’t make a whole lot of sense when viewed from the understanding ’bout the lack of free will.
First, understand that it happens to even the strongest free will skeptic. Unless you were raised in a household of free will skeptics who live in a bubble and re-enforced the understanding that no one has free will throughout your lifetime, the chances are high that you were raised believing that all of the options before you were viable (feasible) and with all of the psychological baggage that comes along with believing that you and others truly could have, of your or their own accord, done otherwise.
Since this is the case, you will no doubt carry much blame and guilt on your shoulders when you do something that you in hindsight regret. You will also, every now and again, place blame on another, become angry at another as if they could have or should have done otherwise, and so on.
So long as you still have a psychology built upon this intuitive free will feeling, you will no doubt revert back to free will behavior. And the fact that you and I will, at times, revert to such behavior is a testament to the lack of free will.
That being said, there are some things we can do to train the mind and to start stripping away the largest offenders of such a free will psychology. It’s my hope that posts like this can causally play a part in re-building a psychology that is “free” from free will psychology.
So what’s the number one thing to work on? That’s easy – the number one thing to work on is remembering that there is no free will, even when such memory comes to the forefront of consciousness only after free will psychological behavior.
The closer you can remember such to the event, the more the understanding will naturally come about. Eventually you will remember such right after the behavior, or even while in the process of it. In other words you will begin to catch yourself in the act. After a while you will catch yourself before the behavior happens, and eventually a behavioral shift will happen without you even thinking about it.
But saying that you will remember is easier said than done. Though most of my articles are and will still be on the philosophy of the “free will” topic, this “mind training” series will be more focused on the psychology and techniques one can use so that the “no free will” psychology naturally starts to override the “free will” psychology. If you are unfamiliar with some of the benefits of having a “no free will” psychology, see here:
10 Benefits of Not Believing in Free Will
As I build more training articles I’ll link to each one. If you aren’t subscribed to the blog, do so now. The No free Will Mind Training (Abbreviated NFWMT or NFW Mind Training) articles will be intermingled with the other posts, but they will always be categorized under NFW Mind Training to get to them all easily here:
breakingthefreewillillusion.com/category/nfw-mind-training/
* If you still think free will exists, this training is jumping the gun. Start here instead.
'Trick Slattery
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20 Responses to “No Free Will Mind Training (NFWMT): Introduction”
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You might want to read Dr. Nahmias’s artitcle on the negative effects of telling people they have no free will: http://eddynahmias.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Neuroethics-Response-to-Baumeister.pdf
Several studies he mentions show that telling people they have no free will leads them to cheat more and behave more aggressively.
The purpose of guilt and regret is to serve as a bookmark, reminding us to change whatever bad behavior brought up those feelings. When you’ve learned what you should learn from that experience, and perhaps made those corrections to your behavior, you can dismiss the feelings. After they’ve served their purpose they are no longer useful. But I don’t think they should be dismissed out of hand, without addressing the issue in some way. I think that’s how it is supposed to work.
Hi Marvin,
First – thanks for stopping by. 🙂
I’m well aware of such studies:
A Temporary Imposed Lack of Belief in Free Will? Seriously?
Problems With The Free Will and Determinism Plus Scale (FAD-Plus)
I’ll be addressing various other studies as I go.
There is a very important distinction between “guilt” and “regret”. I think I’ll have to make a post about this distinction. Guilt doesn’t make a whole lot of sense from the lack of free will, but regret falls in line fine, and is the only placeholder needed (the other is way too detrimental to be worthy of such a placeholder).
I see you’ve made a whole lot of comments to other posts which I may respond to when I find time (they only get approved on response). This one above was a shorter one comparatively so I could do a quicker response to it. The others were longer, more time consuming to address (I disagree with much of what was said), and hence less conversational – but I may respond to some anyway later on. If you want to be assured of approval and response to a comment, a shorter comment that addresses a single point is more likely to be approved and responded to. The details can always be fleshed out in more detail as responses follow.
Thanks again for the visit.
‘Trick
I just started using twitter recently and ran into your website from your comments there.
Since you’ve written a book, you’re probably too committed to your ideas to question or change them at this point.
I’m pretty sure I have the correct answer to this issue as well. But I ran into the issue about 50 years ago, so I’ve had a head start.
Well welcome to twitter. 🙂
Not at all. I’d be more than happy to change my position if there is a logical flaw in my assessment. I do, however, defend my position (when I have the time to) when I see a flaw in another’s.
Most people are pretty sure they have the correct answer. Rest assured I’ve been working on this topic for quite a long time (I’m older than you think). Please take the time to look at the definition of free will that I’m addressing, because I think you probably are a compatibilist from what I can tell with some of your comments: FREE WILL
You understanding the definition being used (and why) will probably be a huge time saver so we don’t talk past each other.
Later good sir.
The flaw is that you destroy the very concepts you use to express your view. The logic by which you take “free” from the vocabulary will also remove “will”, and “self”. And after they’re gone, there are no longer any “persons” to be concerned about. Your book subtitle: “For the Betterment of Humankind” becomes meaningless when idea of “persons” becomes meaningless.
Every human concept presumes a world of reliable cause and effect (determinism). It is impossible even to imagine an opposite, “indeterministic” world, where there is no reliable cause and effect. Atoms would not even exist without reliable forces binding together the subatomic particles.
Therefore, “freedom” can never imply freedom from causation. It can only imply freedom from specific constraints. If we set a bird “free” from its cage, should we argue it is not free, because it is still subject to causation? And if it actually were free from causation, then what would happen when it flapped its wings?
So the paradox of determinism “versus” free will is a hoax. Free will cannot logically imply freedom from causation. Without reliable cause and effect the will is unable to implement its intent. Therefore free will requires a deterministic universe. And every use of the term “free will” must recognize that underlying presumption.
Free will is nothing more and nothing less than us making our own choices. If someone forces us to choose or act against our will, then that is an “unfree” will. This distinction is all that is required to use the term “free will” in a relevant and meaningful fashion.
No it doesn’t. No free will skeptic says that things are not causally willed, only that they couldn’t have been willed (of their own accord) otherwise.
This is one of those words that need to be defined. I have a chapter on this in my book and I find that most of the time what people think this is is a category error.
This is a non-sequitur. It does not follow that the removal of “self” as people assume it is the removal of biological humans or experiential states to be concerned over (that can be “better” or “worse” than another).
This is arguable, but I’ll go with it as I suspect that the universe may be deterministic (even though I’m agnostic on such).
You have a “compatibilist” definition of free will. I address why compatibilist definitions are poor semantics, and the fact that people do think they have a special ability that is “more free” than you’re suggestion above:
Common Intuitions about Free Will (and how it needs to be defined)
Free Will Intuitions: Fred and Barney Case Study – InfoGraphic
To simply disregard this is to disregard the facts about the ability most people intuitively feel they possess. There are good reasons we shouldn’t be redefining free will to simply mean “making choices”:
Redefining “Free Will” is Like Redefining “Geocentric” – Except Worse
Dennett’s “Free Will” vs a Free Will Not Worth Wanting
But it’s fine if you want to call such free will “making choices” (though it’s as problematic as simply relabeling “god” as “the universe”) as long as you understand that we don’t have the free will ability defined here:
FREE WILL
…and you understand what it implies that we don’t have such an ability. 😉
This site is only about that specific definition and what it means that we don’t have it.
Laters.
Like I said earlier, you’re committed to maintaining the paradox. It serves your purpose to do so. Me, I’m just trying to get the facts straight.
You’ve probably heard of the Libet experiments, where subjects were wired to pick up pre-conscious mental activity, an EMG of the muscle response, and self-report when they were conscious of making the decision to squeeze their fist. They were late in becoming conscious of the decision but still had plenty of time to consciously countermand the subconscious impulse.
But here’s the thing. All you need to do is ask whether the students who participated in the study were required to do so for class credit, or if they were allowed to volunteer, you know, of their own free will. And everyone knows the meaning of this free will. And it is this very simple and very ordinary free will that is actually being attacked by the so-called “hard” determinist. (Me, I believe in perfect determinism, and I find no issue between perfect determinism and this simple, ordinary free will.)
In any case, it was nice visiting and talking with you.
I can’t stress this enough. The facts are that people hold to a self-contradictory (rather than paradoxical) belief in free will.
For sure: Neuroscientific Supporting Evidence Against Free Will
That is because they believe they could have done otherwise. They believe that they could have chosen not to participate in the study but they chose to do so of their own “free will”. Again, this intuition has evidence for it: Free Will Intuitions: Fred and Barney Case Study – InfoGraphic
The hard determinist and hard incompatibilist is correct in rejecting and attacking this, and there are good reasons to do so.
Same here. It’s always good to see someone disagree without hostility. I appreciate that. 🙂
“I could have done otherwise” refers to the uncertainty at the beginning of any deliberation. At that point, the decider can honestly say, “I might choose A or I might choose B. I just don’t know yet. Let me think about it.”
Calling the decider “incoherent” for failing to say, “I don’t know yet whether A or B will be the inevitable result of my upcoming deliberation” is just being an annoying geek.
If returned precisely to that point in time, to that point of uncertainty, they could once again honestly say, “I might choose A or I might choose B.” Therefore it is not incoherent to say “I could have chosen otherwise”.
You are technically correct that only once choice was inevitable. But that fact is totally useless if you can’t tell the decider what that choice will be. In fact, the truth of universal inevitability is spectacularly useless. It is best to simply acknowledge it and then ignore it.
All of the value in determinism is in the practical sciences, like medicine, that helps us to better control our environment. But universal inevitability has absolutely no helpful implications. And all attempts to derive meaningful implications result in mental errors (such as fatalism or attacking free will and moral responsibility).
This is part of what creates the illusion.
I’m not calling the decider “inchoherent”, I’m calling the belief “incoherent” (it’s illogical). The fact that they don’t know yet is not what I’m talking about – that just adds to the illusion and false belief. It’s the fact that they believe that all of the options in front of them are viable and that if we were to bring them back in time to before the point of decision they could have decided, of their own accord, otherwise. Again, you aren’t looking at the evidence which shows people actually think this. It isn’t being an annoying geek (though I am a geek and can be annoying to those who insist on a compatibilist notion of free will).
This is where I think we may disagree the most. The “fact” is not a useless fact in any way, shape, or form. In fact it implies so much to so many other topics of concern, as well as our own thoughts and actions. Also, it isn’t “universal inevitability” that makes free will incoherent, as free will is also impossible in an indeterministic universe. But this is a different aspect of the discussion and since you are a determinist we don’t need to go there. 🙂
No, studies that create fatalistic attitudes are studies that (temporarily) confuse free will believers. Attacking free will and a certain type of moral responsibility is extremely important if done properly (if people are actually educated rather than confused). There is a whole lot riding on this understanding.
Later.
My point is that to say “I could have done otherwise” is similar to “the sun rises in the east and sets in the west”. We both know that it is the earth’s rotation that accounts for the sun’s apparent traverse across the sky. And yet if we find ourselves lost in the woods at sunset, the “fact” that the sun sets in the west could save our lives. Trying to express this “fact” in terms of the earth’s rotation is likely to make us dizzy as well as lost.
For all practical purposes, “I could have done otherwise” is “true”. Its practical meaning is that “I may do otherwise in the future”. As in, “if only I had known what I know now, I would have acted differently”. Or, “I can see now the mistake I made, and can try not to make it again.”
But instead of these simple meaningful interpretations, we have literal, technical interpretations of impossible scenarios where the world is reset back to where everything is just as it was then. This is where the confusion is introduced.
Confusion often arises from taking the other person’s words literally rather than trying to see what they really mean. And I believe that is what is going on with the debate over the phrase “I could have done otherwise”.
I do not believe that using the phrase “I could have done otherwise” is incoherent to anyone who is actually listening to what the person means.
The alternative, practical interpretations of the phrase are not incoherent. They are helpful and meaningful.
No one thinks “I could have done otherwise” means that they could do something different “in the future” (no one confuses tenses that badly). Otherwise the question can just be asked “would you do X again in the future?”. This is obviously not the same thing. Unless people are unfamiliar with the English language it would be quite difficult to get the tense confused here in the same way we use “rise” for the sun due to our colloquial perception.
Again, read this scenario, because 76% think that Fred and Barney could have done otherwise:
Free Will Intuitions: Fred and Barney Case Study – InfoGraphic
In other words, they believe that Fred could have returned the wallet and Barney could have kept the wallet – at that time of the event. This says nothing about what they think Fred and Barney could do in the future after the event – and the scenario is clear on what it’s addressing as well as the tense.
The very notion of blameworthiness is embedded on this idea that someone could have and should have done otherwise than what they did – at the time they did it. And this is indeed the intuition of the masses. It stems from not seeing all of the variables and thinking that all of the options in front of you are real possibilities.
Perhaps this is not your own intuition, I don’t know, but let’s not deny the facts here about the masses perception of their abilities.
And regardless of this, if they could not have done otherwise at the time of decision (which you agree with I believe), there are important things that need to change in our thinking, attitudes, and actions.
Like I said, “I could have done otherwise” refers to the point of uncertainty, when all you knew with certainty was that there was more than one option, and you did not know which you would pick. But it is typically invoked later, when you are reviewing your choice so that you can learn from your mistake and make a better choice next time, in the future.
And, of course, Fred and Barney could each have done otherwise had they chosen to do otherwise. Each was acting of his own free will. And there were no external constraints upon their choice. Each made a decision that was authentically their own, based upon their own reasons, beliefs, and values. And that is called “acting of your own free will”.
Had both men found the bank’s money together, and had Fred told Barney he would shoot his wife and kids if Barney did not go along with Fred keeping the money, then Barney’s going along would not be of his own free will.
Because Barney was acting under threat, while Fred was not, the court would not hold Barney responsible for the theft.
Fred, on the other hand, would be treated differently. He would have to (a) return the money, (b) be subject to corrective penalty to change his future behavior, (c) be restrained in prison until we can be reasonably sure he has changed, and (d) suffer no further penalty than what is reasonable to accomplish (a), (b), and (c). This is moral justice.
Now, if we throw out the concept of autonomy, that is, people making choices for themselves of their own free will, then we must also discard responsibility and rehabilitation. And that leaves us with no tools to redeem the offenders that can be corrected.
Sorry, but the words “could have” means that you are making the assessment after the fact and still assessing that you “could have” done something “otherwise”.
Yes, and if you are reviewing the choice you made and assessing that you “could have” done otherwise (in a deterministic universe), you are making an incorrect assessment. This is all regardless of whether you would or would not repeat the offense.
No external constraints? Did you read the scenario?
I repeat, did you read the scenario? There was no possibility of “had both…”
The “threat” would just be one more causal factor.
I don’t think any free will skeptic would disagree with this type of causal justice. None of this, however, implies that Fred was blameworthy (just as a rabid dog or hurricane wouldn’t be blameworthy, but we would create preventative future acts).
It’s simply not the case that we need to throw out rehabilitation, deterrence, incarceration, and so on.That does not mean the person is any more responsible than a rabid dog is for contracting rabies, or a person in a mental institute is for their specific brain state. Of course we would rehabilitate the person in the mental institute while not holding them accountable for the acts they have done due to their condition. Likewise, the same follows for a person who we don’t deem has such a condition. If we find that a brain tumor is causing a person to do immoral acts, we can actually remove that brain tumor (if such is possible) without ever blaming them or holding them morally responsible for what they have done due to the tumor. This is no different for the assessment of a person without a tumor or mental illness.
Trick: “No external constraints? Did you read the scenario?”
I read the scenario. But you seem to think that how they were raised is still “external” to them, even years after they have left home. That parental influence was part of what made them who they were at that moment. And that is one reason why each made a different decision about the lost money satchel they found with the bank’s name on it. The decisions were authentically their own decisions.
Fred’s unfortunate upbringing led him to commit a crime. And a judge is allowed to take into account all information about the offender before pronouncing a penalty. Why? Because to be effective correction, the penalty must consider how difficult it will be to change the offender’s future behavior.
For example, if Fred held a gun to Barney’s head and forced him to go along, then Fred is going to require a lot more correction than Barney. Right?
Trick: “The “threat” would just be one more causal factor.”
Of course. Keep in mind that determinism is completely in play throughout every scenario (and my determinism is perfect, while yours is merely “hard”, whatever that means).
The fact that Barney (in my coercion scenario) was acting under threat means that his behavior is corrected by simply removing the threat. Thus, the judge gives him no penalty. It is Fred who presents a need for a more serious correction (unless he is incorrigible, in which case he may spend the rest of his life in jail to protect society).
The point of corrective penalty is to determine the offender’s future behavior. It may rehabilitate by creating new, appropriate options and/or penalize him such that he has something new to consider the next time he is deliberating whether to steal or not. We want Fred to choose, of his own free will, a better option. We need an autonomously righteous person so we don’t have to follow Fred around for the rest of his life, otherwise we must keep him in prison until he dies.
Anyway, that is a summary of how determinism works in the penalty side of the judicial system. Free will is not only required to establish responsibility/blame, it is also required if there is to be any rehabilitation.
And in the case of the brain tumor, everything operates pretty much the same, except the means of correction are different. Removing the tumor is like removing Fred’s gun from Barney’s head.
I agree with almost everything you said on how we would “determine the offender’s future behavior” in differing ways depending on the different circumstance. In other words, you are not taking a position that differs from the free will skeptic on deterrence, incarceration, or rehabilitation – and the difference between how to treat the problem due to the differences in configurations that cause the problem.
Where we disagree is this: “Free will is not only required to establish responsibility/blame, it is also required if there is to be any rehabilitation.”
What the notion of free will: being able to have done, of one’s own accord, otherwise …does is allows for retributive justice to take place (it justifies retribution, etc.). We don’t require the notion of responsibility or blame in the normal “desert” fashion, and in fact that notion needs to be abandoned if we are to progress. We can simply look at the facts about the configuration (the person) that is causing the problem and assess the solution from there without any need to “blame”, just as we would assess that, for example, someone with a dangerous contagious disease would still need to be quarantined even though they are not responsible or to blame:
Quarantine Analogy and Free Will Skepticism
Also, you don’t seem to be understanding that the configuration of Fred and Barney’s brain at any given point dictates their action just as much as the gun or the tumor, and their brain configuration is dictated by their circumstances (genetics and environment that they have no control over) just as much as the tumor and gun.
The problem is with your semantic of free will. Most people would say that a person in a mental institute doesn’t really have free will, that their brain needs “fixing” and is what is causing their behavior. Under your semantic the insane person would have just as much free will as the sane person. What must be understood between the tumor, or insane brain, or normal brain is that those configurations were equally as dictated by their genetics and environment – regardless if there may be different ways to rehabilitate or prevent such a person. Their “will” was equally as “non-free” in all circumstances.
Later. 🙂
Apparently there is a rumor going around that free will is responsible for retributive “justice”. It is not. There is nothing about having free will that can justify an unjust punishment.
People can seek retribution, revenge or justice. They are not the same. Retribution returns harm for harm, and takes “an eye for an eye”. Revenge seeks satisfaction of a desire to return harm and is limited only by whenever that feeling of satisfaction kicks in. Justice seeks to protect the rights that we have agreed to respect and protect for each other, and may only do what is reasonably required to accomplish that. Anything beyond that inflicts a harm that cannot be justified.
What someone justly deserves is justice. That is how we should interpret “just deserts” if we care to be just.
If we are to rehabilitate an offender, then we must treat him as an autonomous being. We want him to make better choices in the future, and we want him to be able to make those choices on his own, that is, of his own free will. “Autonomy” and “free will” are semantically related. They both refer to a person able to make decisions for themselves on their own.
Operationally, to “blame” or “hold responsible” means only to identify a cause or causal agent that needs correction to prevent future harm. The fact that someone is to blame or is responsible for a harm does not justify any unjustifiable treatment.
If the criminal offender is an adult of sound mind, and is guilty of committing the crime, then he is “blamed” and “held responsible” for the harm he has caused. And that should result in a just penalty: one that reasonably repairs, corrects, protects, and does no more.
And while we’re addressing the individual’s responsibility, we should also be addressing the community issues that influenced him to make the wrong decision in the first place. Ideally, you want to address all the points of system failure that you can, if you want to reduce the likelihood of future harm.
But if we are going to address all the causes, then we cannot give the offender a get-out-of-jail-free card. The offender was the final responsible cause of the criminal harm.
Destroying the concepts of “free will”, “responsibility”, and “blame” undermines the attempts at correction. If the criminal himself is not considered responsible and is not mentally ill, then you have no grounds to take any action at all to correct him.
See the problem?
When we remove the notion of free will, retribution becomes nonsensical. With the notion that someone is blameworthy in the “desert” sense, retribution or excessive punishment become “justified’ as people are assumed to “deserve” such. It’s the notion that they “deserve” what they have coming to them that causes these problems, and the free will idea is a big influence in this.
By the way the idea of a “just punishment” is a misnomer, rather we simply have to punish or do what seems like a punishment (such as incarcerate) to prevent further harms (for the sake of utility). the person, however, doesn’t really “deserve” the punishment.
Yes, and many people feel that if someone did a bad act “of their own free will” that they “deserve” getting the same in return. This is a very common problem in the psychology of the masses. Much of the mentality about our own criminal systems has a foundation in retributive justice.
That is the very point. This whole notion of “deserve” is nonsensical. There is no “justly deserve” only “justification for creating preventative future measures”.
This is a nonsequitur. The point of rehabilitation is to change brain states. That’s not done “autonomously”, it’s done through much supporting work. Whether he makes the choices on his “own” is irrelevant and not required for rehabilitation. In fact, people are even working on microchips that could help psychopathic brain states.
Which is technically impossible to do.
Again, we don’t “blame” or “hold responsible” an insane person, but we certain try to correct them to prevent future harm. You are conflating the distinction between rehabilitation and some unnecessary need to “blame” in the “desert” sense.
If they are deemed to “deserve” it then it is justifiable.
I agree with your “just penalty”, but it shouldn’t be because the person is being “blamed” or “held responsible” in the desert sense. The only rational reason for these thing is the utility of doing them.
Agreed.
Just as we can’t simply give the person with a horrible contagious disease the “get out of quarantine” card. That does not, however, mean we hold them blameworthy or responsible in the “deserve” sense (e.g. they deserve being in quarantine for contracting the disease).
No it doesn’t. It only makes it harder to give excessive punishment or retributive justice. All other attempts at correction are justified entirely by the utility of doing so…just as quarantining a person is justified by that utility.
You’d have the very same grounds as you would for the mentally ill person. To prevent them from harming others / causing problems within society. The fact of the matter is, a normal person does not have any more “free will” than a mentally ill person, and is not any more “responsible”. Their brain state at the time they made a decision could not have been, of their own accord, otherwise.
The problem is we agree on how criminals should be handled, but don’t agree on the reason for handling them in such a way, and we don’t agree on the usage of words such as “free will”, “blame”, and “responsibility”. We simply don’t need these words to (rationally) enact all of those corrective procedures you display above. We only need to understand the consequences if we don’t do such. That is all.
Anyway, I think we could go on and on and on, both of us repeating the same thing. Much of our discussion is one of semantic disagreements, but this is often the case when a hard incompatibilist talks to a compatibilist. 🙂
Trick: “The point of rehabilitation is to change brain states. That’s not done “autonomously”, it’s done through much supporting work. Whether he makes the choices on his “own” is irrelevant and not required for rehabilitation. In fact, people are even working on microchips that could help psychopathic brain states.”
Gee, there goes “self”, personal “rights”, and “privacy”. I guess if we are done with free will and autonomy we might as well pack it all in and treat each other as robots. Well, not us, of course, but the unfortunate slob who fails to pay his parking tickets. Let’s make sure he doesn’t leave the courthouse without a chip in his head.
Look, your version of “determinism” is not real determinism. Real determinism must acknowledge ALL causes and causal agents. And it turns out that when those causal chains bump into us a mental process takes place that constructs a plan of action which is consistent with the purpose of our survival and well being. And it is that plan, of our own construction, which determines what happens next. We are purposeful packets of causality who are in fact choosing what becomes inevitable. Sometimes our decision making is rational and sometimes not so much. Sometimes our choices are counter-productive and merely complicate things.
That is how things actually work in the real world.
It is certainly true that our mental process is deterministic, even if it the output is often unpredictable. We can say with confidence that every choice we make of our own free will is also inevitable. You heard right. Every choice we make of our own free will is also inevitable. But that “inevitability” is nothing we can or should do anything about. All we can do is acknowledge it and then ignore it. The more important and significant of the two facts is that it is actually us in the driver’s seat, and inevitability is just along for the ride.
Psychopaths don’t get personal “rights” or “privacy” if they are a harm to others.
We are biological conscious robots.
Sorry, you need to get with the times. 🙂
There is no big distinction between biological brain action and synthetic parts assisting such. There is also no distinction between removing a brain tumor that is pressing on part of a brain so it no longer does that, and placing in a chip that bypasses a problematic part of the brain (e.g. that blocking empathetic reaction).
How does “my determinism” not address this? All determinism means is that every event has a cause:
“Determinism” and “Indeterminism” for the Free Will Debate
I never said that consciousness wasn’t a causal aspect of determinism, in fact I make it quite clear that it is an important causal factor.
It’s not “of our own construction”.
You are more confident in this assertion than I am, but that is why I’m a hard incompatibilist rather than a hard determinist:
Why I’m a Hard Incompatibilist, Not a Hard Determinist.
I never claimed that it wasn’t. I agree with you that many people confuse predictability with determinism.
And I define “fairies” as the little white floating dandelion florets and seeds that the wind carries away, so based on my definition fairies exist. 😉
The point is, you can define any word the way you feel like, but your semantic of “free will” has nothing to do with what most of the history of philosophy refers to and more importantly it just bypasses what the majority of people feel they possess. Sure, if free will just means “make choices” then yes, that free will exists. It’s just not the definition of concern for so many other topics.
You give no reason for us to “ignore it”. You are just claiming we should for no apparent reason. There are good reasons to “acknowledge it” if such is actually true.
If the specific decision you will make right now to either comment back or not comment back was dictated by causal events before you were even born (if we accept determinism), then no, it isn’t really “you” in the driver’s seat at all. It’s every causal event which dictates the decision (including the biological organism that you consider “you”) – all of which was out of your control. 🙂