Compatibilism

I'm going to be a faggot and just give my compatibilist argument "in a nutshell". That means it'll be easier for you guys to criticize it because I left out a ton of related stuff you have to know but here we go…

I believe determinism and freewill are compatible. Most people when talking about freewill are all like "but you can't be free if your actions follow from prior causes". So what would the alternative be? That you make choices in a completely random way? I have to then ask if it really is a choice if it's completely random. What's so special about doing things in a random way, so "spiritual" and whatever else?

Here is the real issue. It's who made the choice. It's a question of identity. You could be playing Dota 2 and random a hero or pick one but either way you made a choice. We own our choices and we might be living in a deterministic, causal universe but it is still choices being made and it is being done by us.

The will belongs to us.

Examining further though that freedom aspect, I need to point out that freedom must always be defined as "from" or "to" something. Freedom from responsibility for example seems to be the driving motive behind feminism, women just don't want to be responsible for anything ever, which makes sense as they are submissive by nature and would rather surrender their wills to a man. If is still an act of freewill btw to submit to and conform to a greater will.

If god has a plan for the universe and we are able to deviate from it to a certain extent then we are able to defy god or submit to him and either way our freewill is preserved.

I think we are limited in a certain sense by our choices. Freewill is absolute for every man, but part of this means also being able to impose limitations, forget things, and live the life of a man. Our lives are necessary for god to fulfill himself.

I need to say a LOT more than this but I will just let you guys fire away your thoughts and I will fill you in where necessary so you can understand me better. My stance on freewill has implications for the nature of god, meaning, purpose, identity, and many related matters that all tie in.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_cases
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism
random.org/
withchrist.org/volition.htm
plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

I should really show this to Holla Forums en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_cases

(since they, rightly so, hate the frankfurt school)

didnt read, determinism is fact , unless you agree youre coping hard bro

You're a special retard. Please read: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

ProTip: Comaptibilism is the philosophical view that reconciles freewill with determinism.

Free will is a meme, it doesn't exist. We are here to serve a purpose for our people (our family our race). No one has free will, we are all governed by nature, no person just goes out and does whatever he wants because he will just die.

You're a special retard. Please read:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/coping
also nice reddit spacing bro! xD

asian thread?

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So is your stance.


In what sense do you mean "exist"? You could be meaning a lot of different things here and I need you to lay things down for me.


Yes life is purposeful and there is an abundance of meaning in reality.


We own our nature, we own our choices, and as a matter of fact we always do exactly what we want, in line with the balance of our desires.

In the sense that the fear of dying impedes us from making choices, and in fact, fear and various negative forms of reinforcement do limit us, in an "undesirable" way… but this is also relative and not absolute.


Can you explain to me what I'm coping with? When I was first introduced to the problem of freewill in a philosophy class about a decade ago my first response was "whether or not I have freewill does not bother me, I could just as well not have it, and it makes no difference to me". So I'm certainly not "coping" with anything. It's just that over time I eventually realized the full meaning of "I am" including all that implies for the self / identity and I realized what makes us free is that we own our choices.

Listen, if the universe was indeterminate, and random actions were possible without prior cause, HOW DOES THAT MAKE US FREE IN ANY MEANINGFUL WAY? Clearly determinism DOES NOT invalidate freewill.

Guy spamming the gooks get the fuck out of my thread. I will delete my own thread if you shit it up with gooks.

meep meep randomness is a component of the universe that can augment your reality if you cross the street and randomly get hit by a car and become a paraplegic then you will be unable to become a professional athlete who must use his legs to compete that is just the reality that we live in no amount of personal aspiration can make your broken legs operate correctly so you are subject to the effects of the environment to some extent tbh no homo
meep meep if I give you the choice between coke and pepsi you can choose pepsi a thousand times over and your choice is still not free because you were only ever given two options and the point is that no choice is ever going to be made under such conditions that allow you to have any outcome that you like when you're choosing pepsi you're just choosing based on the two variables that are available and if it were the choice between having the coke or getting your arm chopped off then you'd choose the former because it is in our nature to avoid incredible bodily harm tbh no homo

meep meep nothing you choose is determined by you and you are the product of your environment tbh no homo

There is at the core of our being a part of ourselves which is absolutely free, at every moment, forever, in eternity.

In the outer circumference of ourselves though, the outward manifestation, the relative part, our freedom is manifested in degree of our maturation / spiritual growth. Not everyone imposes their will upon the universe equally but only because they are struggling with their own limitations… and yes you own your limitations, such as fear.

It appears that the world limits you but it is actually you in relation to the world that limits you. A little more clearly I may speak of a fluidic substance which receives and connects you to the outward influences and could be shut off but with the consequence of shutting out the world and your role in it.

A related tangent; do you value this world or would you like to fall into a dream and not wake up AND do you entertain the very real possibility of escape? You see every time we declare this world "real" and declare our dreams "not real" we are preferencing the one reality over the other and have decided what happens in the one does not matter and the what happens in the other does. If however you suddenly couldn't wake up, you got stuck in a dream with no apparent way out, give it enough time and you might start taking that reality very seriously, as you have to live with it and become familiar with it. The funny thing is that's exactly your situation RIGHT NOW - you are a man in a dream he is having difficulty waking up from, but which he at times gets a little rest from, but not enough to where he seriously questions which reality is the other – not in the way a man who goes to sleep and wakes up in another life which continues sequentially would. Not like Neo who lived two lives and couldn't tell which was real. If you were going through that you might seriously question indeed which is the more "real". What you call reality is simply that which endures and is familiar. Life is "real" because it doesn't just go away, it happens day by day, and we are stuck here. Dreams are "unreal" because for the typical man, he dreams is a disjointed way, each dream being an isolated pocket of experiences that don't carry over to the next. ProTip: both the "unreal dream" and "real life" are real and illusion at the same time. Both are maya and maya does not mean completely fake bullshit having no bearing in reality at all but deceptive appearances

This is some nuanced shit, I shall await your misinterpretations and butthurt though. There are people who are going to agree with me and still not understand me just as there are people who are going to disagree with me and still not get it.

meep meep but what does any of that have to do with the concept of free will you just declared that people have free will and then went on some kind of tirade about the perception of reality you don't make any sense tbh no homo

Chaos theory is ringing at your doorstep. Randomness does not exist in the universe. The universe is deterministic but highly complex and sensitive. It is a chaotic system. Chaotic systems produce very complex, seemingly "random" results, but are none-the-less completely deterministic. Even random number generators like this one (which just generated 88 dubs for me on the first click, praise kek and hail Hitler) random.org/ are not actually random but only seem that way.


You're still making that choice with your own freewill though.


If I choose something, that is still my choice, being exercised by my freewill, in accord with the balance of desires.

Also you saying we are the product of our environment is kind of problematic for the concept of "nature". Our nature determines how we are as well you know.

I'm just going to say this for the moment. Who/what makes our choices? The universe? Ourselves? Us within the universe? Answer me who is making the choice. We will proceed from there.

meep meep you have semantic arguments what I call randomness is merely what I cannot foresee for instance I cannot know if I will die tomorrow by getting into a car accident and also you seem to contradict yourself when you say that 'randomness does not exist in the universe' which is the admittance that our lives would too be deterministic and yet believe that you can freely wrest yourself from that determinism to make your own choices what you call free will is really imperceptible to you tbh no homo

meep meep you operate as nature has designed you to operate so you are a biological organism that reacts to stimulus in predictable ways if you are referring to the concept of "self" then you could say that "you" are acting but in reality there is not "self" as it is also just another mechanism of the mind which as we have established exists in a deterministic environment which means that you are merely witnessing all that you do and you may not even know why tbh no homo

Your half right half wrong. This is only determined by the directive you wish to push as an influence to your ideal response. If the responder aligned along the path you predicted then the reality will shift to your favor.

Not him but i will tell you. We forum our own reality based on our surroundings. People or society around us will have a big impact but the base of the foundation is always the laws our world was made from. We cannot deny those lows no matter how hard we try if we live on this world. Once you understand this system then you can predict the outcomes.

I want to breed a kpop!

DETERMINISM IS NOT INCOMPATIBLE WITH FREEWILL YOU NIGGER I AM A COMPATIBILIST NOT AN INCOMPATIBILIST


Answer me a few things so we can actually argue intelligently here. Is the mind deterministic? Is the body deterministic? Is the universe deterministic? Does prediction invalidate choice? Do we make choices? Do our choices happening from prior causes invalidate we make those choices? Do we have a will? Do we exercise that will in relation to our environment? What does the "free" part of "freewill" mean? Would an nondeterministic universe, mind, or body somehow introduce an element of "freewill" into the picture or would it just be a nonsensical, illogical, mess where choices aren't being made?

If anything in my opinion if you could prove to me there is an indeterminate, random characteristic to the mind and/or the universe (or even substance) that would invalidate our ability to make choices because random actions aren't really choices.

Fuck off back to Mewch.

Yes they are, they are limited by the ability of our plane of existence. We have a limited capability of choice to make. Not who you are responding to BTW.

Ok and your relevant conclusion from your summation here is what exactly?

If you can formally cite the exact stances you are ascribing to I would like that because there is no way you, me, or anyone in this thread is going to have an original thought in the history of humanity and I am sure all our stances are already formalized. What is it the name of your position?

Here are some questions for you though. One: is reality "out there", or is it a "consensus reality" where we are all engaged in constructing reality together, or is it all internal, or some other novel relation? Two: do we model an approximation of reality or do we have a direct perception of reality? Three: By laws are we talking about universal law, principle, and therefore the foundation of reality or are we talking about our approximations of those laws or are we talking about mundane legal systems?

My own position is this: reality as god knows it is absolute, reality as we know it is relative, and also we are not mere observers of reality, but active participants in it also, we aren't sitting at the back of our minds watching thoughts on auto-pilot watching our body act out without our input, but are actually engaged in this dynamic (and the fact we can enter into auto-pilot trances or even desert our mind for awhile and come back and realize a whole bunch of stuff was done in our absence from our own mind and body also indicates our superiority to them, that we are meta to them, and relevant to this convo that the dynamic which we engage in is indeed a real and confirmable thing), passivity is backed by will, will is absolute and at the back of all other functions, and plebs get confused because they don't have a clear view of the actual self, which is why you're all confused niggers who think that your choices being limited somehow is an affront to the sovereignty of your will.

Well first of all random actions don't actually exist.

…but if they did they did they would be the equivalent of not making a choice.

To illustrate; if the/a universe randomly pops into existence one day, isn't that very different from saying the universe created itself? The universe creating itself is a choice the universe makes. A universe just appearing at random isn't a choice.

I don't understand how something that is random, which has no prior cause, can actually be chosen. I think we need deterministic systems to make choices and to have freewill. Random shit happening, truly random (and not just appearing so because of chaos/complexity) is incompatible with choice. Randomness would just happen, without "choice" being a part of the equation.

meep meep yes I am aware of this and I do not see how you can come to this conclusion free will is not possible in a closed system that is the whole point of what I have been trying to say anyway the larger the box the more options that are available but that cannot be considered absolute choice and even within a very large subset of choices there can be deterministic predictability tbh no homo
meep meep yes to all of that they operate in predictable ways because they are all subject to being influenced by the environment tbh no homo
meep meep prediction merely renders choice as an illusion there is no choice if everything is predetermined its a matter of perspective tbh no homo
meep meep you have to live with the result of your actions but youre really asking if agency has anything to do with it and I would say no because we live in a world where virtually everything you do is influenced by a multitude of factors whether they be genetics or learned negative behaviors or lack of opportunity or a combination of these along with anything else that can be thrown into the mix so because so many variables are outside of the realm of influence then it is not reasonable to conclude that any one individual has any say in the matter tbh no homo
meep meep we have the ability to act which is what I call agency so in some understanding of the word we have a "will" to do things but we can only act in relation to our environment and not the other way around for instance we can only make silicon so long as we can procure the necessary resources to produce it and if those resources are gone then so too will our ability to produce the silicone even renewable energy resources are subject to the availability of a naturally occurring phenomenon that we can reap from tbh no homo

meep meep the free part of free will is merely idiomatic phrasing or you could take it to mean that you are not bound by conflict with others in other words you are free to move about and do as you naturally please without being bothered by others who would stand in the way of your endeavors tbh no homo
meep meep I would say yes but man's freewill in relation to the environment would still be rather small and would likely result in very harsh conditions for humanity it would truly be a place where "only the strong survive" tbh no homo

We have limited choices but absolute freewill.


I do not think so. The choices are still choices and still being made. Just because you can predict them doesn't make them an illusion. They'd only be an illusion if we had the appearance but not the reality of choice.


Just because our choices are influenced doesn't mean they still aren't our choices and backed by freewill.


The freedom you seem to care about is the freedom not to be bound by prior causes or influenced by externalities. I don't think prior causes or external influences invalidate our choices or contradict our freewill.


Life itself is not really possible if everything is random as life is a systematic process that requires consistency and repetition to continue to function. A truly random universe might be an incomprehensible static. It would not function, create forms, or do anything that made any sense. Reason and knowledge and choice couldn't exist in such a universe. Freewill could not exercise itself in such a universe. If freewill requires randomness, then freewill is an abomination, and entirely undesirable. It would be illogical, irrational – random. I think freewill has to exist in a deterministic universe.

I am curious do ascribe to the idea we aren't responsible for our actions? What do you think the implication of that is for law?

Maybe freewill is a thing possessed by god but not by us. So freewill exists but we don't have it.

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Is freewill a spook?

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chaos is a lack of knowledge of the existence you are in. Its the lesser beings excuse to write off their negative actions. The "choice" they make is only relevant based on the idea of the outcome. If the outcome is logical and matches the reality of this world then it can be executed to an ideal or predicted outcome. Most don't know how to do this because they are basic when it comes to comprehending how our world operates. So those people shoot in dark and hope for the best when the best can be comprehended.

Too dogmatic.

What use is a "free will" that is random?

I can not fathom what a free will that won't act in an orderly manner can be used for.

Please tell me how to make use of freewill if it's just random. Isn't a random free will aimless, shifting, etc.? How then do we concentrate?

"free will" is not random, Its emotions. That can be predicted therefore the ones who state that that it is random cannot comprehend their own actions and the effects. They are lesser beings in understanding the function on this world.

No free will is definitely not emotions. It acts in accord with emotions but I'm pretty sure it's a separate thing.

Too dogmatic. Release yourself.

You don't understand. Spend time thinking about it and you will get it. One if a precursor to the other.

The thing is, They follow BY NECESSITY.
not necessarily. Let me elaborate:
Let's take about as trivial a decision as possible for example. You're betting on a toss of an evenly weighted coin. If free will exists, then there is some probability that you'll choose either heads or tails in this particular instance. maybe it wouldn't be 50/50, as would be the case if it were "completely random," you could historically just have better luck with heads than tails. The point is the possibility that you could choose one or the other is there. If free will does not exist, however, there was no possible way you would end up choosing anything other than what you chose.

Imagine there were a parallel universe where, up until that very moment, literally everything was identical. This includes the chemistry in your brain. If free will exists, your parallel self could very well choose the opposite in his universe than your own. However, since our decisions are primarily coming from the chemistry in our brains (which is a notable deterministic process) your parallel self would choose the same thing as you because the chemicals in his brain told him so.

Saying prior causes makes you not have freewill is almost like saying laws mean god can't be omnipotent.

withchrist.org/volition.htm

This blows my mind.

If I said "freewill doesn't exist" then would you conclude something like "we are puppets"?

…because I'm not a puppet. Nobody is pulling my strings. I'm also not riding this body, not observing from the back of the mind uninvolved.


Ok this is complete bullshit. You've got your causality reversed. Chemicals in the brain are patterned after the thoughts (which cause those chemical changes) and not vice versa. You think a thought and there are chemical changes in the brain. Chemical changes in the brain don't produce the thought. Materialism is fake and gay.

Seriously everyone should just read this before making anymore posts in this thread.

Everyone should read this as well: plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/

No. A puppet implies there's a master.
then where do thoughts come from?

Thoughts reside on the mental plane. They are basically energetic bundlings of eternal somethings (maybe "platonic forms" or archetypes) that never change (aka 🜍 ), but the specific bundlings do dissipate and reform themselves along the lines of association and desire (or vital power) (aka ☿). Thoughts influence the body (aka 🜔) and the world and the individual mind. There are thoughts which are more immediate and strongly connected to and rooted in something as well as stuff that is more extraneous. If you learn to work with the ☿ and 🜍 you can accomplish a great many things btw.

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This thread has nothing to do with economics.

Oh I get it: you're retarded.