Online debates happen both intentionally and unintentionally. I’ve had my fair share of ’em, in fact I’ve had too many debates to keep track of. Many are on the free will topic, and many are on other topics. I still have them but only when I can find the time, something limited. They are a great tool to get feedback and to provoke other thoughts or ways to go about addressing a topic of concern. They can also be a great tool for spreading information to others. Continue reading »
It is interesting the hoops compatibilists will jump through in order to qualify their definition of free will in an attempt to make it coherent given any number of counter-points. These qualifiers almost always miss the point entirely.
If you are unfamiliar with the term compatibilist, it’s just someone who thinks “free will” is compatible with determinism. In other words, regardless if the universe is entirely deterministic, or has some indeterminism, free will is something that is entirely compatible with causal processes. Compatibilists build this compatibility by a semantic shift, meaning they change the definition of free will to something that is actually compatible with determinism. Some compatibilists might argue that they have the “true” version of free will, but when they do this, it is done ignoring the abilities the common layperson actually thinks they and others have. Continue reading »
I am going to start a “Bad Free Will Logic” series of articles, this first starting with a sort of “responsibility therefore free will” argument.
For each article I am going to point to either part of an argument that has been made by some free will proponents, or an entire argument. A single “Bad Free Will Logic” post may only address one part and why it is illogical, or if the argument is condensed enough I may be able to complete the entire criticism in one post. There also may be different versions of a similar argument that will be addressed in individual posts.
I’m a proponent for the logical case that if one is postulating a cause and effect relationship, without any non-caused event interaction, then what I call “must lead to” causality follows logically if the cause itself is not to hold a contradiction. “Must lead to” causality is, in formal language, called sufficient causality (a term I’m not fond of), which means that if a cause takes place, it must lead to a specific effect and no other effect instead. Continue reading »
There seems to be an irony that often occurs when someone moves away from their free will belief. It’s often an unexpected irony that takes place after going through several phases of misinterpretation, denial, acceptance, and eventually a full-fledged understanding of why free will doesn’t exist and what that implies. Continue reading »
Warning, this article will assume some education on quantum mechanics. In fact it’s specifically for people who claim that quantum probability is both real and something that can help with a notion of “free will”. I expect those people to be familiar with some things, for example, the distinction between quantum mechanics and interpretations of quantum mechanics, what a wave function is, collapse of the wave function vs decoherence, and the like.If you aren’t at least somewhat familiar you can still read this, but be forewarned that many of the terms will not be unpacked in this article, as that would bloat it.
In this article I’m going to eventually disregard the logical incoherence of probability being “real” (or in philosophical terms “ontic”) and pretend that there is this magical type of event that is neither caused nor uncaused (in any appropriate conception of being uncaused)….but rather the event itself is, in actuality, probabilistic. A special third option (probabilistic) between two dichotomous events that are in opposition to each other (caused/uncaused). Continue reading »
“Ho ho ho”, said the jolly Santa as he walked into his elf production factory. The elves each had devices on their heads and were working hard. With the disbelief in Santa that happened after a certain age, and with the extreme population growth that bumped the world from 1.5 billion to over 7 billion people in just over a hundred years, the traditional process Santa used to keep track of children and give gifts was no longer feasible. No longer could Santa make it to each child infested home that celebrated Christmas, even with his magical powder and flying reindeer. Continue reading »
