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I myself am not any sort of expert on the topic, I present only casual interest, so everyone is competent enough to participate in the discussion. Just saying~ Now, I assume at least some of you have wondered by now, what even determinism is. I am sure you could go on and on about it for whole pages, yet I prefer shortening it to lenght of one sentence. It's a philosophical theory stating that everything is determined by something else that has happened beforehand (I think you can go full butterfly effect here), even moral choices of our own consciousnesses. Naturally, there cannot exist free will in such model... but is that really the case? Well, as with everything in philosophy and similliar, there are special names for views for every possible combination of multiple statements. The ones used in determinism-free will debate are "Is determinism true?" and "Is free will possible?". This breaks everything down into four conceptions, which can be grouped into two thesis of a bit wider range. The first one of those "wider" ones is incompatibility. As the name suggests, it assumes free will and determinism are not compatible with each other. The three subunits of this category are as follows: hard determinism, metaphysical libertarianism — this one's bound to have the best name — and hard incompatibilism. It is actually pretty simple (well, except for the last one). Hard determinism says determinism is real therefore free will may not be possible, metaphysical libertarianism the opposite. The third one is a bit weirder, as it states that free will just cannot exists, whether deterministic thougt is right or not. But hey, there were three positions mentioned there, what about the fourth? Well, it's compatibilism, opposite of hard incompatibilism, stating that wether really everything we do is predetermined, or at least caused by something we don't have any control over, free will is at least possible.
GoodApple
What do you think? Is there someone competent enough out there as to explain to me the reasoning behind both hard incompatibilism and compatibilism? I can get a slight grasp on them, however it still doesn't make much sense... Are you sure about one of those options and you have some strong proofs? Or maybe you just lean towards one or another? Alternatively, maybe your way of thinking about the matter doesn't fit into those four or you just want to mess arround? I believe philosophy should be the freest of fields of knowledge, so do share what you came up with! TL;DR Is free will just an illusion?
Anonymous
the thread looks p interesting but I'm too lazy to read and I don't feel good enough with English to discuss about philosophy
Anonymous
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>>4550182 >Is free will just an illusion? no. but it is hard to achieve as society tells how to act and how to think what is right and what is wrong to truly be free willed you must remove society from life and go back to mankind's birth
GoodApple
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>>4550202 As long as you convey the meaning, the form doesn't matter, so don't worry about language skills. I guess not much can be done about the former though~
Anonymous
>>4550174 I believe in compatiblism. If you can control all of the variables, you can absolutely determine what a particular person will do, but they still have to evaluate the conditions and make their own choice on what to do, even if it is predictable.
Anonymous
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>>4550174 Free will isn't an illusion as long as you follow my direct will, do exactly as I say, and think how I think.
anonymous
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Didn't read. My personal philosiphy, weather or not free will exists, I see choosing to believe your choices are your own is the most beneficial of the two veiws.
GoodApple
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>>4550247 Wouldn't that evaluation be possible to predict beforehand too? Assuming you posses the whole knowledge of the Universe of course.
Anonymous
>>4550174 There is a reason why astrology and stuff like zodiacs exists - it sometimes feels like people always wanted to become slaves of their destiny, to find a reasonable pretext for their actions and bad life chocies - after all it was all above him. He couldn't do better, could he?
There was a point in medieval Europe, when even religions weren't safe from the zodiacs. I don't remember it that good, but I believe that there were some subparts of astrology theories - one including Platon's repeating horizon.
Damn, my English really isn't that good for such topic, especially when mixed with my lack of knowledge and failure which's my memory. This might seem like a nonsense ramble or a cowardly excuse but I the truth is that I would gladly talk about things like this - independently from my beliefs. I just.. can't :c
GoodApple
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>>4550379 Interesting, I have never looked at those this way. It makes a lot of sense too. I wonder if the opposite doesn't take place nowadays, where some people are too grounded in the ideas such as determinism, that they try to break out of it, using the same, but differently worded spiritual means.
Feel free to speak however you like. The intent I have made this thread in was for everyone to feel comfortable talking about the matter, despite their language or maybe some unpopular views. Hence simple explanations of the stuff and the last paragraph. I myself am not any better, I just know those five terms, that's all~
Anonymous
>>4550174 There are random events that occur at the quantum level, determinism is a meme.
anonymous
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>>4550592 B-but muh multiverse
GoodApple
>>4550592 I'm sorry, I don't know much about quantum mechanics and similliar fields of high physics, so excuse me asking. Is there undesputable proof, that leaves no doubt whatsoever and cannot ever be contradicted, stating that those events are truly random? If there, in fact, is one like that, then surely. If not however, I am afraid it's too early to make such big claims.
Anonymous
>>4550674 They're not random. They're stochastic. Those two words are often confused but they mean slightly different things. It doesn't (necessarily) mean that they are unpredictable. It just means that we as people cannot 100% predict these events happening, and instead we assign them statistical values. That's AFAIK
Anonymous
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>>4550758 TL;DR if something is random, then it's stochastic, but not necessarily the other way around
anonymous
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>>4550758 >>4550758 >>>4550674 >It doesn't (necessarily) mean that they are unpredictable. It just means that we as people cannot 100% predict these events happening. GoodApple
>>4550758 Do you mean, we are not able to right now? Or won't we ever? The former is quite understandable, worse with the latter...
Anonymous
>>4550848 I *think* won't ever. Because of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. But I'm not entirely sure as I'm still kinda new in the subject matter. At that point I suppose you could ask yourself the question, if something can't be predicted by humans, does that mean it's inherently, fundamentally unpredictable? But that's a really, really tough question to answer.
Anonymous
>>4550174 Free will is an abstract concept and only incompatible with determinism because our current definition of it is shit
Anonymous
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GoodApple
>>4550903 This is so confusing... Like all quantum mechanics. As much as I want to trust scientists, this has always seemed more like magic than anything else. Getting contradictory information about it here and there has been an issue too...
>>4550919 Which definition though? The whole divide between incompatibilism and compatibilism emerged from there being more than one definition.
Anonymous
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>>4550996 Well you don't really have to trust scientists on this. The truth is, the hard physicists tend to make the claim that their quantum physics model is not suitable for use in philosophical questions.
Ofcourse that being said, there are VERY little people around who have both highly advanced knowledge in physics AND philosophy.
Anonymous
>>4550996 Most people think your "free will" can act independently from your surroundings (which is obviously wrong)
The only reason i still cling to free will as a concept is religion. I should try to think of a definition sometime
Anonymous
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GoodApple
>>4551052 I am afriad I don't see where does the obviousness lie in there. Could you explain it to me?
Anonymous
>>4551095 Every event has a cause. There is your answer. Free will is not a magical dimension where our decisions come from, it's the word we use to describe conscious decision making. Any decision can be predicted if we have enough data. There even have been some tests on this which support what i said, although i think it's redundant since obviously nothing can happen without a prior cause, if we can't even agree on this axiom, then there is no use discussing it further honestly (although i can get behind pyrrhonism even though in practical reality, we will always use our experience to judge reality)
Anonymous
>>4551203 That's not objectively true. Even assuming everything is theoretically predictable, there's still the possibility that a prediction is computationally infeasible. As in, the time you take to calculate the prediction is longer than the time it takes for the prediction to take place. Thus rendering it useless
Anonymous
>>4551238 that made me think
Anonymous
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>>4551495 Yeah man this shit has many angles from many different academic branches. Probably plenty more still that none of us can come up with on the spot