Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Unseen on August 27, 2011 at 2:24am

Well, the problem with your explanation is that it can't rescue free will because free will is just a juxtaposition of two words which, put together, don't yield a coherent idea. That is the actual problem with the free will debate. WTF does "free will" mean? Does it mean freedom from causality. Terms like "random complexity" probably don't provide much comfort to most people. "Oh, I have free will because of random complexity" is almost the paradigm of a "Huh?" sentence. There is no free will. We are not the exception to the rule as to how everything else happens.

Permalink Reply by Mike Donohoe on September 23, 2012 at 12:28pm

Hey Unseen. I elaborate in a reply below on how I see it.

Permalink Reply by Greg Gorey on February 18, 2010 at 12:04pm

compatibalism works just fine in the wake of Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner.

Permalink Reply by Pope OoO (Out of Order) on September 24, 2012 at 7:27pm

I read this a long time ago and didn't get it. Now, just reading the first paragraph in that link makes enough sense to me to explain our conundrum! It's all about imprecision and differences in our most basic definitions.

So now the only question (to me) is why people hang on so tightly to their preferred definitions, other than a need they feel to negate other definitions.

Permalink Reply by Unseen on September 24, 2012 at 7:45pm

Sure you can define free will into existence. You just need to ignore the facts. If you like the definitional ploy, it's easy enough to define God into existence with ideas like "God is everything" or "God is the mind of which every mind is but an instance." Stick to the facts of how nature works, and we are not free. Once again I pose the problem that the word "will" is basically meaningless anyway.

At any rate, it's pointless to create a definition that flies in the face of how the language is actually used by most people.

Permalink Reply by Pope OoO (Out of Order) on September 24, 2012 at 10:09pm

I'm willing to loosen up the definition of spirituality, soul, free will, and so on if it keeps a dialog going with theists. I feel that we'll eventually be able to use concepts like these in atheist conversations, instead of denying them outright. Abrupt conversation enders (like "it's just an illusion") are like denying the word love from romantics. I mean come on, even love is an illusion, right? Unless you allow it to include an audience broader than atheists.

I'm not saying that you should always feel the same about this as I, and I'm sure you don't. However, forgive me for finding more ways to communicate than just via the standardized, legacy language etched in static/dogmatic exposition, like stone.

See, I just can't shake the realization that we wouldn't even be here at ThinkAtheist, unless there were a significant population of theists in the first place.

Permalink Reply by Unseen on September 25, 2012 at 8:56am

The only definition worth talking about is the one in current use. Deviate from that and you're just talking to yourself.

Permalink Reply by Pope OoO (Out of Order) on September 25, 2012 at 12:33pm

Tooshay. I shall take my leaves now.

Permalink Reply by Brooke Bender on August 26, 2010 at 12:43am

I don't think it is true. I also do not think it could be scientifically falsifiable: how would you determine if something was destined/predestined/eventually had no choice of occurring? If anyone could put that into terms of a falsifiable scientific thesis that would be super, but I doubt it. From a less scientific point of view, I have always thought Calvinists had the sanest religious theory of all time: from what I learned in history class they were predestined, before birth, to either be saved or be hellbound. So, literally, some of them were damned if they do, damned if they don't! Where they went wrong is evaluating themselves constantly and trying to figure out if they were saved or damned instead of grabbing some beer and hitting the beach.

Also I think that a deterministic view of the universe makes you more prone to belief in a creator, because it kind of makes sense that if things are predestined that someone should have, er, destined them? Although it is possible to have a deterministic view of the world without a creator, frankly its a lot more pointless and a lot less satisfying.

Permalink Reply by Radu Andreiu on January 3, 2011 at 4:29am

I also do not think it could be scientifically falsifiable: how would you determine if something was destined/predestined/eventually had no choice of occurring?

 

Well, we could know if something was "predestined" (by the laws of nature) to happen if we could predict it before happening. However, that would take enormous amounts of information, because humans are so complex, and could only work in certain situations. For example, it would be insane to try and predict your own future, because the knowledge that you would gain would alter it. This would only work on unsuspecting subjects.

 

Another problem would be if our minds were affected by quantum randomness, but that's another story.

 

P.S. So far, there is no indicator that events can't be predicted beforehand within the limitations of quantum randomness. We are predicting weather increasingly better, the orbits of planets and stars, and yes, even human behavior. The more complex the event, the more data we need to acquire in order to predict it more and more accurately.

Permalink Reply by Kenneth Montville D.D. on January 12, 2011 at 5:51pm

Unless of course, we are not destined to prove destiny exists. Shit sucks.

Permalink Reply by Unseen on September 23, 2012 at 11:33am

I don't think it is true. I also do not think it could be scientifically falsifiable: how would you determine if something was destined/predestined/eventually had no choice of occurring?

Let's be clear about something. In order for something (e.g., free will) to be falsifiable, it has to make sense in the first place. Free will is meaningless mumbo-jumbo. It appears to mean that, if there is determinism operating everywhere else, there is one exceptional place where miracles happen that allow people to make choices independent of determinism. The problem with miracles is that, by their nature, they just happen without explanation.

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