Look at this shit. This dude basically says that free will doesn't exist. He gives this example where he asks you to think of any random city, and then he argues that, because you have seemingly no direct control over which random city pops into your head, you have no free will. Isn't this kind of bullshit? I mean, couldn't you argue that you have the freedom to choose between a number of cities that you randomly thought about, and you merely chose one at random for the sake of fulfilling the parameters of his request? Moreover, couldn't you just say, "fuck you, I don't want to do your stupid exercise" and refrain from thinking about any cities at all in the first place? Are these not examples of exerting free will?
Yeah, the video is long, but I pretty much described his argument in a nutshell. He argues that free will doesn't exist because we have no direct control over random ideas that flow through the mind. I think this is retarded, and that we have free will because we have the ability to entertain or ignore those random ideas and determine our own behavior.
There is all types of forms of metaphysics that dispute the notion of free will which stem from a field of thought called determinism.
The objective of these doctrines are not to try and assert that you should stop holding people accountable for bad things they do, or that you should stop believing in your free will. It's more abstract than that. It claims that your agency and your ability to act, although it may seem like it has a causation effect on future universal events, truly doesn't - and that your thinking this is just a delusion.
Hard and soft libertarianism claim that free will does exist and does have an effect on future universal events.
Then there's stuff like epiphenomalism but if you're not interested in studying philosophy I wouldn't suggest reading up on it.
But to try and discredit him and form your own metaphysics I would at least suggest reading philosophy first.
Kevin Carter
Oh and just so it's known, most people in the philosophy world don't take Sam Harris very seriously. Philosophers like Daniel Dennett have written many an essay refuting many things Sam Harris says and paints him as being intellectually dishonest.
He only has an undergrad in Philosophy FWIW, his studies after that were all neuroscience-related.
Parker Young
No, not at all, I'm sorry but you're very dumb. I'm not watching that shit but anyway this seems to be 2deep4u senpai, try something else.
Leo Morales
He's right, free will doesn't exist. At least it doesn't in the sense that you have this thing called a 'will' which would allow you to choose different things under identical circumstances.
Jeremiah Flores
So, you're saying that, despite your best efforts, what you choose to do or not do likely has a very small impact on the outcome of new events? That sounds more reasonable than what this dude's saying, which is basically that, "you exist in a state where all of your likely choices were predetermined by prior events that predisposed you to behave in a specific way". Maybe that has some basis to some extent, but this doesn't allow for humans to have any agency at all, if that's the case.
Why don't you try explaining why you feel the way you do?
But you agree that we still have the agency to decide in the first place, right? Isn't the freedom to decide to do anything in the first place a sort of free will? Why did you choose to eat eggs this morning instead of cereal? You could have had one or the other or both. This is a circumstance that you likely face every morning. Maybe some mornings you don't have any milk or you run out of eggs, but assuming that you're in a situation where you have these items, you could choose either one, and it's merely a matter of what you feel like having.
Maybe you could argue that your biochemical state at any given time is influencing your behavior without you even knowing it. Even if that's the case, you could choose to not have breakfast at all. Is your current state, as it was informed by whatever events that brought you to the current point in time, so influenced by prior causes that you have no ability to be aware of or resist the path that you're given?
James Barnes
I'm tending towards compatibilitism, specifically the view that even if our thoughts and actions are determined by natural causes, they are still attributable to you, and you can still be judged for them.
You can evaluate a car as a good car if it drives fast, even if it has no choice but to drive in the direction you want it to. Why, then, do we make an exception when it comes to people? We shouldn't, for all I know. A person that decides to drive through a group of children is still a shitty person whether his action is causally related to a series of past events or not.
I haven't entirely made up my mind about this, and I'm open to the idea of hard-libertarianism being correct after all. Honestly, this entire debate is a bit tedious. It could be so fruitful, but there's about a million too many fags that keep citing the newest neurological research to prove that free will doesn't real without even looking at the philosophical arguments for it. Likewise, there's a million libertarians that claim free will is real, but don't really look at what the determinists have to say. Not all, but many philosophers are talking past each other, although I'd say the determinists are worse in that regard.
You should be glad there are some somewhat intellectual topics on the front page. That's not usually the case.
Ethan Sullivan
This is essentially what Hard Determinism is. Robert Blatchford wrote a good essay on it called "The Delusion of Free Will"
This is being pedantic and idiotic, in my post I literally relayed extremely elementary information on topical things related to the OP, and somehow I'm a faggot for doing that.
Nice, never change.
Kayden Wilson
This is something only complete retards believe. Of course free will exists, morons.
And OP should feel bad for dignifying this load of shit with a thread in the first place.
Camden Murphy
t. faggots who get intimidated when people are talking over their head
Nathaniel Jackson
i don't question the content of your post. each word means what it means and your rehash of wiki makes perfect sense. my comment referred to the fact that 10 simple words would have better conveyed your proposition. the purpose of philosophical thought is to make clear what is unclear, to drag metaphysics into the realm of science. this is best achieved by humble language and that's where you fail.
It isn't truly deciding at all if you can't potentially choose all options equally, so no. Its just cause and effect at that point.
Gavin Gonzalez
I did not choose eggs, I had pudding. I only 'chose' it from my perspective, once the 'decision' was made it demonstrated that this was all I could have ever done given this particular morning's circumstance and my own neurology.
Caleb Rogers
Not gonna lie, I sometimes have the suspicion that the fags that complain loudest about "deep" topics are really just complete faggots that can't into proper philosophy. Sure that isn't true for all of them, but if the ones that legitimately do know better sound exactly like the faggots that are intimidated, then that is their problem. When you actually do know your shit on a topic, you can share some resources or books even if you're too lazy to educate people yourself. That actually makes you look far more competent than just being a smug faggot, too.
Justin Morgan
any argument for the existence of free-will is compromised by the possibility that f/w is an illusion which is itself a consequence (or an intent) of a determinist universe. arguments against the existence of free-will rely on the lack of proof to the contrary, which amounts to admitting we will never have an answer to this conundrum unless we change the language we use to pose the question in an answerable form. meanwhile, the debate rages on Holla Forums, where a staggering level of ignorance prevails and shit is flies right up until the jews ruin it all.
Asher Martinez
The idea of free will seems like a useless thing to debate over to me Not because I believe one way or the other on it, but rather because I think the concept of free will is redundant and absurd We should shift the argument or reword it to make it more applicable and dissect-able
Angel Bennett
I'm all for the free will debate. But certainly not from this smug fool Sam Harris.
He's an r/iamverysmart, not a true great philosophical mind.
Austin Morgan
Sounds like a good idea. Not sure if that would work, but it might be a good exercise at the very least.
Alexander Wright
so let's start by levelling the field can we agree on a def for f/w?
Levi Green
is one thing, an ability to determine the future by making a decision is quite another. first of all you need to act.
Alexander Baker
Nice projection
Aaron Roberts
Number 2.
Number 1.
Benjamin Thompson
We have to take the second definition into account, but I wouldn't call it free will. "Independence from causality", maybe?
Parker Stewart
1 implies 2.
Jaxson Jenkins
Not if you ask a compatibilitist.
Benjamin Howard
Compatibilism is flat out wrong.
Juan Ramirez
Let me guess, because 1 implies 2? That's fucking weak reasoning.
Michael Rodriguez
For volition to exist there must be at least the simultaneous potential to choose to do or not do an act, the outcome determined by come magical will. This does imply definition 2. How can volition exist without that possibility?
Jack Martin
Authoritarians deny the existence of free will because the FEAR it To them the only will they dare acknowledge is that of Big Brother.
Austin Price
For all that I know, the idea of a choice that's predetermined is at least perfectly coherent. You can also (again, for all I know) differentiate conceptually between choices that are determined by external and internal factors, and declare the latter to be free/volitional. Whether any of this holds when we have the right definition is another question, but right now, when what we have are vague ideas, we cannot say what logically follows from them.
Julian Rodriguez
Okay, we probably can, because we don't have nothing, but you get the idea. I hope.
Anthony Baker
We have several definitions and can add more as needed.
