Batman.

And not all events are causally determined. There are indeterminate events as well, which assert that Free Will exists.

Since when?

Quote from: Val 'Ketam on February 15, 2015, 03:19:39 PM

And not all events are causally determined. There are indeterminate events as well, which assert that Free Will exists.

Since when?

The chain of events behind a particular cause may go back things that are causally determined like living conditions, education, etc. But some may go back to uncaused creative events in our minds during deliberations.

When we deliberate, our direction of action is all over the place. Every time you deliberate this will happen, and the results will be different, which is randomness. No cause, just a decision.

Edit: I'm thinking Turkey said it far better than I did.
Pretty much what he said.

I don't think they're mutually exclusive. When I make a decision, I subconsciously use my experiences to determine what I want. At the end of the day, everything I do is causally linked. The ability to recognize the impossibility of prediction is what I consider free will. Until the human mind can be accurately modeled to predict our actions, and can include the feedback loop of bias caused by knowing those things, free will is a reality. Though to me, free will is a misnomer; call it sapient uncertainty.

I literally logged in just to like this post

Everything is fated to happen.

Quote from: HurtfulTurkey on February 15, 2015, 03:35:44 PM

Though to me, free will is a misnomer; call it sapient uncertainty.

You've essentially reduced a fundamental, metaphysical concept to "we don't know". I don't see how the existence of 'free will', so-called, is dependent upon our ignorance.

If you were to flip it round, you could say water wasn't H2O until we determined that it was.

I'm definitely not saying we don't know whether reality is determinant. I'm saying that, just like the apparent randomness of a gambling event, we can't know the causes of our decisions, and when we are able to know or control the conditions that go into that decision process, it loses its "freedom". The world, at least the macroscopic world, is determined and bound by causality. Everything I'm typing right now is the direct result of some inexplicable combination of neurons firing, whose creation was formed through various experiences in some other inexplicable way. How we weigh decisions, how that physically works, is simply unknown. We're not even close to understanding how that sort of behavior came to be or how it functions. I really don't see any value in the discussion of free will vs determinism; we know everything is causal. We are not free from the initial conditions of our existence, and when I say I want a piece of cake, it's because of some chain of events that happened in the past, not because my consciousness is removed from reality to the point that I can freely decide what I want. And even if it were, how could that be? I would still admit my choices are based on conditions; am I hungry? Do I want something sweet? Can I afford the calories? Etc.

There's really interesting avenues to discuss, far beyond some untenable notion of freedom of will. Consciousness is where the discussion should be. Consciousness is physical metaphysics. It's real, but ethereal. Even ideas are causal; the firing of a group of neurons affects the surrounding ones and influence how we think. Even more substantial, the physical expression of our ideas into actions has measurable impact on the world.

Please go read I Am a Strange Loop. Then we can have even more absurd conversations.