Free will

[quintessentone]

My interpretation of what you wrote is that Gods Will, would be to follow the Ten Commandments. We on earth have the Free Will to either follow the Ten Commandments or not as our Free Choice. But thats just the ten commandments. We have a Free Will as to how to treat someone and have the free  choice to treat them bad, good or average manner.

I was trying to delve into a deeper understanding of where one's free will is or is not still one's free will when following others' will or other's orchestration of one's reality as in division of power and/or will. Is it simply making choices within a structured society/world of others' making, or is everyone's free will a part of the whole if one continues to be a part of that structure?

[Bootless]

I was trying to delve into a deeper understanding of where one's free will is or is not still one's free will when following others' will or other's orchestration of one's reality as in division of power and/or will. Is it simply making choices within a structured society/world of others' making, or is everyone's free will a part of the whole if one continues to be a part of that structure?

Just writing some of my thoughts here. Not speaking for Waterglass.

What I did was look up the Catholic Catechism Part Three, Section Two, The Ten Commandments. Then I thought about it a bit, watched a couple of Youtube videos, took a nap, then thought a bit more.

The Roman Catholic Church is very old. It was founded in what may have been the height of the Roman Empire. I'm not a Historian so some details are most likely erroneous. Nevertheless, I proceed. Back in those days it was pretty much understood that people were moral agents, capable of following laws. Whether some Romans were followers of Pre-Christian state religion only, or members of philosophical schools, or members of cults of one deity or another. They mostly all shared the common assumption that laws can be followed by people. People being moral agents, not NPCs.

The Christian belief that God not only spoke laws at some time, but actually wove them into the fabric of creation is not much different from the Stoic idea of Logos. It's like everyone took it for granted that moral rules were discoverable and could be followed. They were, in fact, moral libertarians.

Years and centuries passed. Eventually, the laws of physics started getting codified. Physical objects were seen to follow totally predictable courses due to gravity, momentum, air resistance, and etc.

The idea of materialism as a worldview gained popularity. Then people thought up determinism and tried to prove that everything is determined by cause and effect on purely material terms.

As far as I'm concerned, the new must prove itself to be true. That is: prove there is no moral agency. I for one am not convinced.

So the tension remains: Libertarian Vs No Moral Agency.

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Like I wrote earlier: Free Will is purely a Christian concept. It goes with the Christian myth of man created perfect, imbued by God with the ability to obey God's command or not. Man chose not to. Thus the perfect World became corrupt and subject to death and decay. Man's soul became depraved, cut off from God.

Man cannot will himself to reconciliation with God. Only God, by grace can do that. That grace comes through the sacraments, which join one in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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Now personally, I don't believe that man was ever immortal or ever will be. We're just evolved animals. Eternal life isn't a real thing. Therefore, salvation has no meaning. But, animals are predisposed to choose behavior best suited for survival. Many species have gone extinct. I don't blame the animals. A local bad event can take out a specie if it hasn't had time to spread out very far.

To me: An evolutionary predisposition isn't the same as a materialist physics determinism. Moral agency can be part of the psychological make up of animals. Predisposition does not equal predetermined.

I would say that on a Libertarian-Compatibilist-Determinist scale I would be Compatibilist leaning Libertarian.

[Ignorant]

The idea of materialism as a worldview gained popularity. Then people thought up determinism and tried to prove that everything is determined by cause and effect on purely material terms.

As far as I'm concerned, the new must prove itself to be true. That is: prove there is no moral agency. I for one am not convinced.

So the tension remains: Libertarian Vs No Moral Agency.

What does it mean to have moral agency? How would "the new" ever be able to prove itself to be true? If you're talking about determinism there, it's impossible to prove that it's true, so you're setting it up for failure. Whether or not existence, or at least this universe, is fully deterministic we will only ever be able to guess at. Maybe as time goes on we will become more and more convinced that it's deterministic, but it can never be proven (or disproven).
 

I would say that on a Libertarian-Compatibilist-Determinist scale I would be Compatibilist leaning Libertarian.

I don't know if this makes sense as a scale.

Libertarian = Free will is incompatible with determinism. Determinism is not true, so humans do have free will (they are able to act in ways that are not predetermined).
Hard determinist = Free will is incompatible with determinism. Determinism is true, so humans don't have free will.
Compatibilist = Humans have free will, regardless of whether determinism is true or not.

The weird thing about putting compatibilism in the middle of this scale is that libertarians and hard determinists actually agree with each other about the compatibility of free will with determinism. So on that spectrum they would be on one side and compatibilists on the other.

It's therefore also strange to be a compatibilist leaning libertarian. Being a compatibilist, you say determinism is irrelevant to whether or not we have free will, yet you lean towards free will being incompatible with determinism. They are opposites in that.

I think what you probably mean is that you don't think the universe is deterministic, so you lean towards libertarian in that sense, but you actually don't think it's relevant to whether or not we have free will, so you lean compatibilist in that sense. Am I close?

[Bootless]

What does it mean to have moral agency? 

What people call free will, but I don't use that term. It confuses the issue. To me, moral agency just means the ability to make a choice. I don't feel any constraint. Occasionally I may feel a twinge of conscience. Conscience may be a predisposition by evolution and experience. Conscience is probably a real part of human psychology.

 I don't know if this makes sense as a scale.

It probably doesn't. Let's say that I don't understand the argument completely.

I think what you probably mean is that you don't think the universe is deterministic, so you lean towards libertarian in that sense, but you actually don't think it's relevant to whether or not we have free will, so you lean compatibilist in that sense. Am I close?

I only understand Physics up to Newton level. I don't understand Relativity, space-time and such. To me gravity is a force determined by mass. Smart people may say "we don't know if gravity is a force or not." Depends on some frame of reference or another.

Having said that; I don't want to say that laws of physics are not determined. They sure seem to be.

Living things though, are animate. They can move in ways other than what is determined by physics alone. Is that an un-caused causation? Maybe. Maybe I am Libertarian after all when it comes to living things, but determinist about inanimate objects.

But I'm not a Biologist or a Psychologist.

--------
I'm pretty slow at things. My default was Libertarian, never really considered any different. It was only about 10 years ago that I first heard that there is no free-will from a Sam Harris talk. That freaked me out. So I read Robert Wright's The Moral Animal: Why We Are The Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. I don't remember much about it, but it did seem to make more sense to me.

I've watched a lot of Atheist videos, it almost seems that hard determinism has become a default for atheism. Biology is not Physics. Biology is more. There are processes besides the laws of physics involved.

[Orby]

There is no free will. Totally impossible. Crack a piece of glass in an exact manner and the results will be guaranteed. There is no free will. The initial action and point that makes the crack determines everything that follows.

[Ignorant]

There is no free will. Totally impossible. Crack a piece of glass in an exact manner and the results will be guaranteed. There is no free will. The initial action and point that makes the crack determines everything that follows.

So if our actions were not predetermined (there's randomness somewhere), then we would have free will?

[Ignorant]

What people call free will, but I don't use that term. It confuses the issue. To me, moral agency just means the ability to make a choice. I don't feel any constraint. Occasionally I may feel a twinge of conscience. Conscience may be a predisposition by evolution and experience. Conscience is probably a real part of human psychology.

It probably doesn't. Let's say that I don't understand the argument completely.
I only understand Physics up to Newton level. I don't understand Relativity, space-time and such. To me gravity is a force determined by mass. Smart people may say "we don't know if gravity is a force or not." Depends on some frame of reference or another.

Having said that; I don't want to say that laws of physics are not determined. They sure seem to be.

Living things though, are animate. They can move in ways other than what is determined by physics alone. Is that an un-caused causation? Maybe. Maybe I am Libertarian after all when it comes to living things, but determinist about inanimate objects.

But I'm not a Biologist or a Psychologist.

So to clarify, you would say we have moral agency because choices we make are not deterministic? If they were deterministic, we wouldn't have moral agency?
 

I'm pretty slow at things. My default was Libertarian, never really considered any different. It was only about 10 years ago that I first heard that there is no free-will from a Sam Harris talk. That freaked me out. So I read Robert Wright's The Moral Animal: Why We Are The Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. I don't remember much about it, but it did seem to make more sense to me.

I've watched a lot of Atheist videos, it almost seems that hard determinism has become a default for atheism. Biology is not Physics. Biology is more. There are processes besides the laws of physics involved.

To me this is a rather outlandish claim. The laws of physics apply to everything except life? Why would that be the case? What evidence do we have to suggest that our brains are anything more than very complex machines that run on food instead of electricity?

Physics is just a collection of observations about the world. Life is one such observation. Biology is (applied) physics.

[Orby]

So if our actions were not predetermined (there's randomness somewhere), then we would have free will?

Yeah I guess so yet there is no evidence whatsoever of free will if the entity with the toffee hammer hits the piece of glass in the exact pace. It will still crack in the same way. An exact hit will mean it breaks the same time over, assuming of course that the glass itself has no imperfections and is 100% perfect.

[quintessentone]

Just writing some of my thoughts here. Not speaking for Waterglass.

What I did was look up the Catholic Catechism Part Three, Section Two, The Ten Commandments. Then I thought about it a bit, watched a couple of Youtube videos, took a nap, then thought a bit more.

The Roman Catholic Church is very old. It was founded in what may have been the height of the Roman Empire. I'm not a Historian so some details are most likely erroneous. Nevertheless, I proceed. Back in those days it was pretty much understood that people were moral agents, capable of following laws. Whether some Romans were followers of Pre-Christian state religion only, or members of philosophical schools, or members of cults of one deity or another. They mostly all shared the common assumption that laws can be followed by people. People being moral agents, not NPCs.

The Christian belief that God not only spoke laws at some time, but actually wove them into the fabric of creation is not much different from the Stoic idea of Logos. It's like everyone took it for granted that moral rules were discoverable and could be followed. They were, in fact, moral libertarians.

Years and centuries passed. Eventually, the laws of physics started getting codified. Physical objects were seen to follow totally predictable courses due to gravity, momentum, air resistance, and etc.

The idea of materialism as a worldview gained popularity. Then people thought up determinism and tried to prove that everything is determined by cause and effect on purely material terms.

As far as I'm concerned, the new must prove itself to be true. That is: prove there is no moral agency. I for one am not convinced.

So the tension remains: Libertarian Vs No Moral Agency.

--------------
Like I wrote earlier: Free Will is purely a Christian concept. It goes with the Christian myth of man created perfect, imbued by God with the ability to obey God's command or not. Man chose not to. Thus the perfect World became corrupt and subject to death and decay. Man's soul became depraved, cut off from God.

Man cannot will himself to reconciliation with God. Only God, by grace can do that. That grace comes through the sacraments, which join one in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
-----------
Now personally, I don't believe that man was ever immortal or ever will be. We're just evolved animals. Eternal life isn't a real thing. Therefore, salvation has no meaning. But, animals are predisposed to choose behavior best suited for survival. Many species have gone extinct. I don't blame the animals. A local bad event can take out a specie if it hasn't had time to spread out very far.

To me: An evolutionary predisposition isn't the same as a materialist physics determinism. Moral agency can be part of the psychological make up of animals. Predisposition does not equal predetermined.

I would say that on a Libertarian-Compatibilist-Determinist scale I would be Compatibilist leaning Libertarian.

I am not dismissing the evolutionary predisposition along with knowledge gained along one's life, with influence added in there too where our choices could be considered as being 'steered' rather than free will.

"Thou shalt not kill", but kill those people over there and you will get a medal."

What do people get out of being moral/kind/generous etc. - there must be a driving factor. Follow God's laws and get the promise of salvation/heaven, be generous and help others and feel less guilty about something else? or get something in return?, be kind to others/treat others the way you want to be treated and hope that others will validate and not harm you (?). Could these be all seen as selfish/steered behaviours, or behaviours being influenced by other factors?

[UltraBudgie]

here is blob post that is interesting about stoicism and freewheel
https://classicalwisdom.substack.com/p/f...-free-will

you can read it or not as you like