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Posts by Obbe
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2018-01-24 at 3:03 AM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while alive
Originally posted by mmQ What if I tell you that it is coherent? What if I say that free will means nothing more than having reason to be held morally responsible for your choices? What if I tell you that despite a deterministic belief, the fact that our ability to consider at any point the moral implications or consequences of our potential actions then stands to reason that we are responsible for them; that determinism accounts for that and therefore it doesn't matter that our actions are ultimately determined by things beyond our control?
What does it mean to take moral responsibility for an action? Consider the following:
1. A 4 year old kills a woman after playing with his father's gun, which had been left loaded and unsecure.
2. A 25 year old man raised by wonderful parents and never abused intentionally shot and killed a woman "for the fun of it."
3. A 25 year old man raised by wonderful parents and never abused intentionally shot and killed a woman "for the fun of it." A brain scan reveals a tumor the size of a golf ball in a region of his brain responsible for the control of emotion and behavioral impulses.
In each case a young woman died. Each death, the result of events arising in the mind of another human. But the degree of moral outrage you feel probably depends on the situation described in each case.
We consider the brain of killer 1 is not fully matured or ready for the responsibilities of personhood. Killer number 2 appears to be a psychopath. Killer number 3 involves the same psychopathic motive and behavior, but somehow the brain tumor seems to clear the killer of all responsibility for his crime. We cannot help but see him as a victim of his own biology.
Despite our attachment to the notion of freewill most of us know that disorders of the brain trump the best intentions of the mind. And the men and women on death row have some combination of bad genes, bad parents, bad environments and bad luck. Which of these were they responsible for? No person is responsible for his genes or upbringing, yet we have every reason to believe these factors determine his character. In fact, it seems immoral not to recognize how much luck is involved in morality itself.
Imagine if we discover a cure for evil. Imagine every relevant change in any individuals brain could be made cheaply, painlessly and safely. Imagine if the cure could be put into the food supply, like a vitamin... evil would become nothing more than a nutritional deficiency.
To say that someone freely chose to squander their life savings at a poker table is to say he had every opportunity to do otherwise and that nothing about what he did was inadvertent. He did not play poker by accident or while in the grip of a delusion. He played because he wanted to, intended to and decided to, over and over. Most of the time it makes sense to just ignore the deeper causes of desires and intentions, like genes, synatipic potentials etc. We do this because it's easier to organize our thoughts and actions. Why did I drink water instead of beer? Because I desired water. Why did I desire water? I don't know, but generally I don't bother asking. Knowing that I want water is all I ever need to know to function in this world. Whatever the reason I prefered one option over the other. Is there freedom in this? None whatsoever. Would I magically reclaim my freedom if I suddenly decided to spite my desire and drink beer instead of water? No, because the roots of such an intention would be as obscure as the desire itself. -
2018-01-23 at 11:21 PM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while alive
Originally posted by Captain Falcon 1. You didn't answer the question, because your viewpoint is flawed. I'm asking you what "on their own" would mean. Would a random number generator be counted as a free agent? How about a robot that's decision making is entirely powered by a QRNG, which is defined as the core or source of its personality? If the ball was able to use whatever energies are necessary to roll itself up the hill, you would ascribe responsibility for something other than the ball. What can the ball claim responsibility for? Assuming it has agency, of course.
2. Then you are retarded. You are defining a one-end-open black box system that spits out decisions that isn't caused by anything. I propose to you that a system that precisely fits this definition is a QRNG, but deny that as being random. Which is it, Obbe?
People don't feel like their thoughts and actions are caused by things they are unaware of or have no control over. People generally feel like they are the conscious source of all their thoughts and actions. That feeling is called free will. It is an illusion, because you and I both know that a person is not the conscious source of their thoughts and actions.
But you don't agree that's what free will is. You seem to believe free will is like a ball rolling down a hill. It's incapable of doing anything other that what it must do due to various factors causing it's motion like gravity and little bumps in the hill. But you still think that's free will. What would it take for you to say someone has no free will at all? How would you define a lack of free will? -
2018-01-23 at 11:15 PM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while alive
Originally posted by mmQ Right. You have no idea what those determining factors are which is why you yourself needed to decide one way or the other and follow through with that choice. The determining factors behind your choices NEED YOU to experience your own will of choice in order to fulfill itself. If you already knew everything that's been determined, there'd be no reason to have any ability to make choices and consider things in the first place.
You may as well be a robot that is pre-programmed to do an exact set of instructions if that's the case. And you could in fact say that that is exactly what we are since our outcomes all follow a pattern unbeknownst to us and we can't change. BUT, since our programmed instructions aren't known to us until we complete them and we are programmed in such a way as to be able to feel we're making decisions rather than knowing what they're already programmed to be, whatever set it all in motion wanted us to in the very least have the illusion of free will. Just like with the question of the the objective existence of rainbows, our interpretation of the criteria will differ but we all still have seen and know what we mean when we say rainbow, and with free will it is the same, our interpretation of how it's defined clearly differs, but nonetheless we know of it as a concept and can have this discussion about it.
Ultimately it doesn't matter if we agree on an objective definition of free will, we're still all on the same boat with our unique brains, going througout or lives without the knowledge of what is going to happen, effectively living as though we do have free will even if some of us don't think it should be called that.
Freewill is incoherent mmQ. If you agree that all your thoughts, intentions and actions are determined by factors you are unaware of and exert no control over, how can you claim to have free will? How would it make sense to call that free will? -
2018-01-23 at 11:10 PM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while alive
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2018-01-23 at 11:10 PM UTC in The Retarded Thread: Get Rekt, Faggot!
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2018-01-23 at 7:35 PM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while alive
What would it mean for them to change direction on their own?
For a person to have free will or be the conscious source of their own thoughts and actions they would need to be like a ball rolling itself up a hill, unaffected by any other influences. -
2018-01-23 at 7:24 PM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while alive
Originally posted by mmQ Why do you think people weigh out different possible decisions?
I'm not asking why does it literally take time to do something.. cmon now, I'm wondering why opt to take that more time to decide where they want to go on vacation, but don't take the time to think about if turning their doorknob is gonna is still going to be the way they open their door when they leave?
Who knows why people think this or that or do this or that? Why did I just drink a glass of water instead of a glass of beer?
I mean, I like beer. I like water too. I guess at the moment I decided to drink a glass of water my desire to drink water was stronger than my desire to drink beer. Why? I don't know. Who knows? All I know is that whatever caused my desire to drink water to be stronger than my desire to drink beer, I wasn't the conscious source or exerted any control over it. I just felt like drinking water, because something caused that desire to rise to the surface of my consciousness. -
2018-01-23 at 4:35 PM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while alive
Originally posted by Captain Falcon It's funny that you say that because you keep trying to avoid nailing down a coherent definition of free will like a jedi dodging talking about Israeli crimes against humanity.
Free will is incoherent unless you define it to mean something like a ball rolling down a hill has free will. The problem is that when most people talk about their freewill when deciding what to eat or how to fold their laundry, they don't feel like a ball rolling down a hill, they feel like they could change direction all on their own. But you and I know they cannot. -
2018-01-23 at 4:33 PM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while alive
Originally posted by mmQ Of course our choices are bound by the laws of physics and involve our brain.
Let me ask you this. Why is that we take the time to mull over big decisions, or think about what we want to have for dinner , or consider doing laundry today or not?
Why do you think people weigh out different possible decisions?
The same reason every other chemical or physical process takes time. -
2018-01-23 at 1:54 PM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while alive
Originally posted by aldra not that I want to get into this, but didn't you take the opposite position last time we had this discussion? I distinctly remember saying 'compatibilism' is retarded and ill-defined
Years ago I was arguing with lanny almost identicallly to what c.f. is arguing here. I do agree that freewill is incoherent unless defined under compatibilism. But now I feel that compatibilism is kinda stupid and either misses the point or changes the topic of what people mean when they claim to have free will. -
2018-01-23 at 1:44 PM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while alive
Originally posted by mmQ The ball doesn't have anything but 1 single option to choose from, which doesn't make it a choice at all. There's no potential will in which it could freely choose to begin with.
As humans, and as I've said like 10 times now, we have a vast array of options available to us at all times. At any point we could possibly do say or think any one of practically an infinite amount of options. I know you're trying to say that like the ball, there is ultimately only one option that we CAN take, and the choice we end up making is always going to be the choice that has already been determined you'd be most likely to make. I agree with that.
Let me ask you this. Why is that we take the time to mull over big decisions, or think about what we want to have for dinner , or consider doing laundry today or not?
Why do you think people weigh out different possible decisions?
Of course people consider a variety of possibilities but the whole process of "making a decision" is still just chemical interactions bound by the laws of physics. -
2018-01-23 at 1 PM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while alive
Originally posted by mmQ Alright. Fuck this. I changed my mind, and by that I mean I, uhh, am of no choice of my own, switching my position on the matter, apparently because my fingers are typing this and I guess I never had a choice to begin with.
So, I don't have free will, and I never did. I understand it now, that I am just a human-vehicle that exists solely from circumstance, and whose only purpose is to transport the human-driver inside me who already knows exactly where he needs to go without a second thought, and represents the near entire cancellation of anything I've believed to be the unique and individual components of my life and my choices. In the acknowledgement that I have no free will, I accept and understand that I'm merely existing without any unique or self-gratifying presence , rather instead I am am a vessel whose any worth is to carry out that of which has been predetermined. Truth be told I don't even need to refer to myself as I, but will refer to mmQ's embodiment and role in existence as Vehicle-me, or V-me, and I the narrator of this post am Driver-me, or D-me.
Firstly, Vehicle-me understands that though his natural instinct makes him feel like he's coming up with this post, and wants to, because he's feeling the thoughts and process run through his head. The reality is that nothing vehicle-me wants to do is anything more than predetermined desires from the predetermined will that I, Driver-me, represent. V-me is likely confused about what this means and why he's even thinking these things and writing them down. Truth be told, he never had a choice and certainly realizes that this is happening whether he likes or not.
Unfortunately, V-me still has to feel like he's making all the decisions despite now coming to realize that he in fact has never truly made one singular decision in his entire life and he never will.
V-me now understands that although nothing he says, thinks, or does should be held against him or in any way be attributed to him since he isn't actually author of their creation, but only their production. Unfortunately, whichever laws are in existence will always still trump his lack of culpability, which of course means the potential for incarceration, something he is certainly already familiar with.
V-me also understands that the things he considered in life to be his personal accomplishments and failures are no longer defined as such since an opposing outcome was never possible to begin with. Any credit or blame associated to him or felt by him is completely meaningless.
V-me also understands that any and all attributes associated with him will remain applicable though they are ultimately decided by Driver-me and in no way influenced by V-me.
V-me no longer need s to concern himself with the questioning of why he experiences certain feelings or emotions, as they are all permanent fixtures within him and he couldn't choose to feel differently if he wanted to. He understands that anything he has ever cared about was of no choice of his own, and that caring at all about anything should no longer even be considered as a genuine bond or relationship, given that he never truly had a personal choice in the matter.
Finally, a reminder that that, of course, there was no decision made by V-me to create, type, or post this summation, and any readers up to this point may yourselves consider it's application to not only his future self but yours as well. The little humor is that my suggestions to you mean nothing. If you're meant to adopt the absence of free will philosophy, it will happen.
V-me will now go forward with the understanding that everything he's ever been involved in in any way shape or form was in no way under his control, and understands that he has no longer has what was once considered any personal skills, talents, abilities, or anything attributed to self-accomplishment. Knowing that you never have and cannot ever make your own frew willed decision unfortunately renders all former accomplishment as nothing more than the fulfillment of what it is already guaranteed.
Remember. Since there's no will, there's no way.
There is a distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions but it does not support the common idea of free will. A voluntary action is accompanied by the felt intention to carry it out while an involuntary action isn't. It makes sense to treat a man who enjoys murdering differently than one who accidentally hit and killed a person with his car. The conscious intentions of the former give us a lot of information about how likely he is to behave in the future. But where intentions come from and what determines their character in every instance remains mysterious. Our sense of free will results from a failure to appreciate this: we do not know what we intend to do until the intention arises in our mind like any other thought. To understand this is to realize that we are not authoring our thoughts and actions in the way people generally believe we do. -
2018-01-23 at 12:44 PM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while alive
Originally posted by Captain Falcon In my opinion, predetermination is simply irrelevant to what makes a choice free or not. You don't need to be some kind of decision making engine outside of causality to be free. Do you want to do something? Is someone else stopping you from doing it or forcing you to do otherwise? That's a free choice.
It's "free" in the same sense that a ball rolling down a hill is "free" to continue rolling in that direction unless something disrupts it. But it's not like the ball has any choice to do anything else. The ball is incapable of rolling up the hill on its own, or stopping, just as your will is incapable of doing anything other than what the factors you are unaware of and exert no control over have determined your will to be. Calling that free will is ridiculous because when people claim they have free will they mean they feel like they can stop or change direction at will, unlike the ball rolling down the hill. -
2018-01-23 at 3:24 AM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while alive
Originally posted by Captain Falcon If the ball has agency and moves under its own motive then what is to say it's not free?
Even if the ball "had agency", you and I both know that spherical lump of plastic is incapable of doing anything without something else causing it to do something, and that any appearance of motive or intention is really just an illusion. Even if the ball had a brain and consciousness and could think like a human, those thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes which we are unaware of and over which we exert no control. Free will cannot be made conceptually coherent. Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them. -
2018-01-23 at 3:02 AM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while alive
Originally posted by Captain Falcon And if our will, however that may arise, is not subject to constraints by outside agents then it is free.
It is no more free than a ball rolling down a hill. The ball, like your will, cannot suddenly stop or change direction unless something else cause it to. There is no freedom in that.
You already agree with me that we are like that ball. We cannot change our directions. But most people feel like they can. Most people feel like they are the conscious source of their own actions and thoughts. As if the ball were rolling, bouncing and changing direction all by it's own intention. That is what a person means when they talk about their free will. Nobody describes freedom as being incapable of doing anything except the only things they must do. -
2018-01-23 at 2:11 AM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while alive
Originally posted by Captain Falcon My answer is of course: everything has proximal, intermediate and ultimate causes. Every event's proximal cause, or direct cause, can be said to be responsible for its successive event, by definition. Thus whatever constitutes your conception of "self" is responsible for whatever emerges from it. And when it is unconstrained by another agent, it is free.
Here you are basically agreeing with me. Everything that you think or do is caused by something you are unaware of and have no control over. Whatever you think of as your self is not really different than a ball rolling down a hill. It does only what it can do and nothing else. You want to call that free will, but when people feel that they are doing something out of their own free will, they don't mean they feel like a ball rolling down a hill. -
2018-01-23 at 12:55 AM UTC in The Retarded Thread: Get Rekt, Faggot!
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2018-01-23 at 12:54 AM UTC in I just wanna go on a date with a beautiful girl. :(
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2018-01-23 at 12:42 AM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while aliveThe popular conception of free will rests on a few assumptions. One assumption is that each of us could have behaved differently than we did in the past. Another is that we are the conscious source of most of our thoughts and actions. Both these assumptions are false.
Our wills are not our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes which we are unaware of and over which we exert no control. Free will cannot be made conceptually coherent. Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them. -
2018-01-23 at 12:18 AM UTC in Policeman beheaded and son has heart/skin removed while alive
