Humans have discovered the ethics of liberty over and over again throughout history. Of course, an ethical system for rational animals has to take account of the dynamic aspects of conflict, and not just zero sum scenarios. All other species in the world are not characterized after a vigorous a) capability and b) need, for owning and creating property. Men profit from a more advanced division of labor, whereas the animals and plants suffer when they compete for scare resources, since they cannot create more or just conceive of any alternatives for large numbers. The need for property is now evident. But how are we to validate the justice behind property and -of course- its allocation?
The best answer available to us (yet) is Hoppe’s development of Habermas-Apel’s concept of discourse or communicative ethics. Those German thinkers have written about it to justify democracy and even dialog for the sake of dialog. Hoppe, a student of Habermas and a scholar on both, took the concept one step beyond. Thus, we can properly speak of Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics.
Prof. Hoppe studied and applied the epistemological breakthrough that Ludwig von Mises provided as an answer to Kant’s dilemma: how are categories of the mind supposed to fit reality. Is it that humans create reality or at least that there is no reality but our mind makes sense (arbitrarily) of a senseless cosmos? Is it that reality created the human mind, and because of that human mind can understand reality around him?
The last position fits perfectly with what Neurobiology teaches us about the human brain. Our brain is not, by any means, a tabula rasa. We are born with a brain (mind) that is the result of millions of years of evolution, and even if free will is a fact (which it is), we still have analogical processes that allow us to understand concepts which are key to our survival.
One of those concepts is the concept of property. Intuitively or rationally, men have always known that property homesteaded (by mixing labor with a resource) or created, belongs to the actor. But a contract to homestead a forest implies understanding more than meets the eye: the capitalist is the homesteader, and the employees just play a limited role and accept to receive a reward for it from his capital fund. That someone now owns the forest after some labor exerted over it, may be intuitive to some point. What cannot be is the fact that the capitalist existed, since he hired them over the phone and was not present to the eye of the natives in the zone. Those subtle categories of action (contract, fraud, wages) and the fact of -inevitably- limited information in an individual brain (no human being is omniscient, although I couldn’t know, since I am not and so I have to deal with categories and generalizations). Those categories require reflection upon the meaning of human action, and in this case, human relations. The capitalist-wage earner relation is not self-evident, as we see. But neither is property. From the simplest to the most advanced form of property (say, company stocks or insurance policies), the human mind has to reflect upon basic categories of action in order to establish the proper relation between owner and property.
What about the human body? Nature (before us, that is) never had to deal with organ donation or robbery. Donation implies contract through the will of the parts. Robbery implies just the opposite. In order to distinguish both to a degree that will satisfy the victim or a judge, proper ownership of body parts has to be established.
But it is action what creates property around us. Isn’t action capable of determining property of ourselves too? A right to self-determination embodied (yes, literally) on self-ownership?
Argumentation as action: the act of engaging in an argument is certainly revealing of some facts. First of all, we are willingly interacting in a peaceful way with the interlocutor. Argument, after all, is not any form of talking: it implies at least two people engaging voluntarily and freely in it. A speech to the slaves in a galley may not be an argument although it certainly is communication, of course. But if we talk about ethics, we are talking about principles equally valid (the universalizability of rights is a vital part of its definition, as a table has to hold things from falling to the ground in order to be a table) for all humans in the same situation.
Second, then, some ethical principles are revealed in the course of argumentation. One of them is contract, of course (and this is not tautological by any means, just keep in mind the galley example). But contract requires property. So denying self-ownership to the parts, would be denying the whole argumentation possibility. And yet, the one denying it would be engaging in some sort of argument if he was free to do it or not from the start. So in this case, we have a clear case of proof by contradiction of the opposite.
Human beings have a right to own themselves, as the act of argumentation clearly shows: nobody else can have command of their own bodies.
In sum, Hans-Hermann Hoppe has discovered and developed a system of rights that is grounded on the fact that humans act, that humans have a mind that is analogical to its circundating reality and that does not require an “is-ought” duality in order to show us the proper ethical system for rational animals. We are the rightful owners of our bodies and of property we create through the use of our minds, ourselves or through contract. If slaves in a galley can dream of freedom in the near future, so can citizens of an statist world. Argumentation Ethics provides us with a template based on facts of how to untangle, understand and finally free a world ridden with contradition and denial of justice.
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PE> Do you really think the reason you don’t believe in free will is due to your reasoning skills and a lack of evidence?
Yes, thinking is reasoning, by definition. Lack of evidence is a reason to be unconvinced and to unbelieve.
PE> And if you were to happen to change your mind on the subject, one day, it will again, naturally be because it was necessary, again as explained by determinism?
{Laughs} Sure. Nature could have endowed me with a sometime-to-come brain tumor wherein I would lose my current razor sharp brain. Just because I don’t know about the congenital defect doesn’t mean it couldn’t be true. It is sorta like free will itself, except the case for free will can’t be examined under a microscope like a tumor can. ooops!
PE> Why do you pretend that it is reason and evidence on which you decide these things when you know very well that for whatever the reason, logical or illogical, with good evidence or none, whatever you believe was set from the beginning of the universe, and that you have really no genuine choice in the matter?
Reason can’t be illogical, by definition. What you say makes no sense. And now you are calling “not believing” its opposite (“believing”). It is the same for the religious battles: the religious say atheists “believe in no god.” Somehow a null turns into an assertion. What a crock.
[Mises] that human action is purposeful behaviour That language is born of not really knowing the future, but having a nature given ability to attempt to sketch it. It is as if you folks think a god created humans with free will, and then thought, oh by the way, to implement free will this creature will need reason. Ironically, if reasoning power became great enough, the future could be more accurately predicted, and (yikes!) determined by the reasoning creatures. “Free will” would be ironically extinguished by powerful reasoning. uh oh. Mises didn’t prove free will there. I don’t have a general problem with his shorthand.
Fund.> In addition to Mises, Greg ought to read Hayek’s “Fatal Conceit.”
Buzz off. I have read it, several times.
Fund.> Hayek distinguishes between real reasoning and pseudo reasoning: real reasoning humbles itself before the accumulated wisdom of humanity,…
Yeah, and he’s talking about interpersonal — meaning social — rules of conduct. Here we are talking about the beliefs and non-beliefs of individuals. No one is proposing a reordering if society — the thing Hayek is saying to be humble about. Do you think Hayek is saying a housewife needs to be “humble” in attempting to discover a quicker way to wash the dishes? She would be, after all, violating the established tradition of her lineage of dish washing housewives. “Free will” is more personal than washing dishes.
Fund.> Real reason is willing to give tradition the benefit of the doubt, knowing that one person can [sic, can't] understand everything.
Blah Blah Blah. Okay, let’s assume in your assertion of free will for this paragraph. If one doesn’t know any better, and is uncertain how to proceed, following the rules of conduct established by accumulated wisdom is a reasonable avenue, given the constraints. You confound a “safe bet,” which is (conservatively) reasonable in the sense of playing the odds established by apparent similarities (pattern cognition), with specific reasoning about which there are few or no guideposts. But so what? We’ve already agreed that it won’t make a whit of functional difference, since we have no choice but to act as if we have a choice. But just following established rules is about as low a form of “free will” as one can find in humans, so it is ironic you should choose this as a good example. It requires the least amount of free will possible to simply do as others have already done. Strange.
Fund.> If Hayek is correct about true and false reasoning, then the burden of proof lies with the determinists, not with the free will thinkers.
Oh great, another hack version of Hayek. Maybe “Hackek.” You are making the assertion that something exists. The burden is your’s. A null is not an assertion, it is a void. My advice is don’t waste your time; it can’t be done and it makes not a whit of functional difference. I’m not going to waste any more of mine.
Greg,
“PE> Do you really think the reason you don’t believe in free will is due to your reasoning skills and a lack of evidence?
“Yes, thinking is reasoning, by definition. Lack of evidence is a reason to be unconvinced and to unbelieve.â€
Ok.
“PE> And if you were to happen to change your mind on the subject, one day, it will again, naturally be because it was necessary, again as explained by determinism?
“{Laughs} Sure. Nature could have endowed me with a sometime-to-come brain tumor wherein I would lose my current razor sharp brain.â€
But perhaps it is not a tumor you have, but something else equally detrimental that leads you to currently perceive yourself in this way. How can you know that you are not simply determined to take a certain view, and how can you know that this view you take must be accurate if you are not even capable of genuinely choosing it? Surely you are not exempt from the laws of physics as laid out in determinism that we know must determine the views of others.
“Just because I don’t know about the congenital defect doesn’t mean it couldn’t be true.â€
Naturally. But it is not about congenital defects; it is about the laws of physics, and the chain of events that began at the start of the universe and culminated (partially) in you and the views you hold today. Surely you can see that it is not a genuine choice you make whether you will reason and observe reality accurately or not, and that nor can it be due to a genuine choice you will make to recognize this or not. You cannot choose yourself (via reason or anything else) out of believing about determinism whatever it is you are destined to believe about determinism; notwithstanding your perhaps false perceptions of your good health and good reasoning capabilities.
“It is sorta like free will itself, except the case for free will can’t be examined under a microscope like a tumor can. ooops!â€
I’m not sure if you are missing my point or not. You seem to be suggesting that that your current conclusion regarding determinism is due to your ability, tendency and choice to apply reason to the evidence you chose to accurately observe and genuinely, consciously come to the conclusions you come to. That it, that it is within your powers, your will and you ability to genuinely choose, to put reason over other more psychological considerations as you decide to arrive to your conclusions. You seem to imply that your reasoning and insight into life transcends the conclusions that determinism may otherwise have imposed on you. And yet, by advancing determinism as valid, you cling to the argument that there is no such thing as doing just that. Maybe it is me who is subject to determinism, and that my viewing your position as a contradiction is due to determinism, but that your position is both determined and reasoned, because you choose to use reason and I something else.
“PE> Why do you pretend that it is reason and evidence on which you decide these things when you know very well that for whatever the reason, logical or illogical, with good evidence or none, whatever you believe was set from the beginning of the universe, and that you have really no genuine choice in the matter?
“Reason can’t be illogical, by definition. What you say makes no sense. And now you are calling “not believing” its opposite (“believing”). It is the same for the religious battles: the religious say atheists “believe in no god.” Somehow a null turns into an assertion. What a crock.â€
Now I know you’re not following me. I agree with you that reason can’t be illogical. But then, I am not seriously accusing you of being logical. I am asking you if you think you have a choice in the matter of the conclusions you draw about anything at all. Whether you think you genuinely choose to apply reason and relevant facts towards the pursuit of accurate conclusions, or do you suppose that it is not your choice to do so, but rather it was determined eons ago that you would. If so, then you might recognize that by the same token, if your reasoning or facts were a bit off – or a way off – and therefore your conclusions a bit or a way off, it is purely a result of the physics of the universe that occurred eons ago as well. Is it not that all of your mistakes and blind spots are not at all truly subject to your decision to rectify them, but rather if you do or not, it is purely a chance occurrence determined far in the past, at the beginning of the universe, in fact.
By asking these questions, I hope to perhaps reveal what I see as something in the camp of the determinists that closely approximates a logical contradiction, and therefore, how I come to be highly skeptical of the proposition implied in determinism: there is no genuine free will.
PE> How can you know that you are not simply determined to take a certain view, and how can you know that this view you take must be accurate if you are not even capable of genuinely choosing it?
In that case, there is no free will. And that is okay with me.
PE> [I]t is not about congenital defects; it is about the laws of physics,…
A congenital defect obeys the laws of physics.
PE> Surely you can see that it is not a genuine choice you make whether you will reason and observe reality accurately or not, and that nor can it be due to a genuine choice you will make to recognize this or not. You cannot choose yourself (via reason or anything else) out of believing about determinism whatever it is you are destined to believe about determinism; notwithstanding your perhaps false perceptions of your good health and good reasoning capabilities.
Same deal. In that case, there is no free will.
PE> You seem to be suggesting that that your current conclusion regarding determinism is due to your ability, tendency and choice to apply reason to the evidence you chose to accurately observe and genuinely, consciously come to the conclusions you come to.
You keep changing the argument. I don’t have any conclusion regarding “determinism.” I wonder if I’ve read 1 hour’s total worth of material written by determinists or anti-determinists in my entire life. My comments were with regard to the statement that “free will is a fact.” But what conclusions I do reach on any topic are related to my abilities and the constraints I face. Um, of course.
PE> [T]hat it is within your powers, your will and you[r] ability to genuinely choose, to put reason over other more psychological considerations as you decide to arrive to your conclusions.
I find your lingo in that sentence annoying and poor; I no choice but to reason that my response is emotional.
PE> You seem to imply that your reasoning and insight into life transcends the conclusions that determinism may otherwise have imposed on you.
Nonsense.
PE> And yet, by advancing determinism as valid,…
I advanced no such thing. I said there was no evidence of free will, but that more or less we would have to just go on behaving as if there was, since we ironically have no choice in the matter of choice.
PE> …you cling to the argument that there is no such thing as doing just that.
Nothing I did speaks as you say it does.
PE> Maybe it is me who is subject to determinism, and that my viewing your position as a contradiction is due to determinism, but that your position is both determined and reasoned, because you choose to use reason and I something else.
Maybe it is both of us. So what. I’ll say I don’t agree with your line of thought — your reasoning.
PE> I am asking you if you think you have a choice in the matter of the conclusions you draw about anything at all.
If it turns out I have no choice — that is, I didn’t choose the logic — then it is happening inside my brain because that is how I am built. That does not negate the logic itself. You are conflating choice with the logic of a proposition. A computer can give a correct answer and have no choice in the matter.
PE> Whether you think you genuinely choose to apply reason and relevant facts towards the pursuit of accurate conclusions, or do you suppose that it is not your choice to do so, but rather it was determined eons ago that you would. If so, then you might recognize that by the same token, if your reasoning or facts were a bit off – or a way off – and therefore your conclusions a bit or a way off, it is purely a result of the physics of the universe that occurred eons ago as well.
If true, then I have nothing to worry about in that regard. Of course, I don’t worry about it.
PE> Is it not that all of your mistakes and blind spots are not at all truly subject to your decision to rectify them, but rather if you do or not, it is purely a chance occurrence determined far in the past, at the beginning of the universe, in fact.
Sheesh. If it was determined far in the past, why would that be chance itself? Why “choose” to pin “the undetermined” — since you seem to apply chance occurance to the determinate (illogical) — to some arbitrary time in the past? Anyway, same as before — I’ll lose no sleep about it.
PE> By asking these questions, I hope to perhaps reveal what I see as something in the camp of the determinists that closely approximates a logical contradiction, and therefore, how I come to be highly skeptical of the proposition implied in determinism: there is no genuine free will.
What “camp of determinists?” You want to call people who don’t just assume in free will as “believers in determinism.” Okay, you go right ahead and say that. “Determinate” is the implication of the null, not a
camp of determinists promoting this or that, or especially “believing.” It is a null, a void. Yes, the implication is on the razor’s edge. Free will is nowhere in sight.
This is sort of like an argument I heard from a believer in the afterlife.
Believer: you are somewhere right now, correct?
Me: Correct.
Believer: if you walk from here, then you will be somewhere else, right?
Me: Yes.
Believer: So in general, that means if you aren’t here, you’re somewhere else, right?
Me: Well I suppose that seems reasonable.
Believer: Then if you die, and you aren’t here anymore, then likewise you must be somewhere else, right?
Me: Hmmm. What about nothingness?
Believer: Impossible. Voids can’t/don’t exist.
Me: That’s amusing, since nonexistance is the definition of a void, and vice versa. I suppose it is to much to ask anyone to conceive the inconceivable.
Now add a third observer who is traveling in the same direction as the train relative to the person on the platform, but twice as fast.
Presumably by “twice as fast” you mean that the train is moving at the same speed in the opposite direction relative to the third observer as the first (on the platform). E.g., if the train is moving at 0.5c relative to the platform, this guy is moving at 0.8c relative to the platform, which isn’t actually “twice” as fast.
To him the photon will hit the front detector first, and so he and the person on the platform will disagree about the order.
Sure, but they’re measuring different things. If the guy on the platform marks the points on the platform where he sees the detectors triggering, and puts clocks there, this third observer will see the clock at the “front detector” position leading the other one, though the guy on the platform thinks they’re synchonized; thus the “first” event occurs at a later time than the “second” event – they’ll obviously agree on what time each detector triggers according to those, or any pair of (momentarily-colocated) clocks, in any reference frame.
Greg: “Oh great, another hack version of Hayek.”
You say you’ve read “Fatal Conceit” twice, but you obviously didn’t understand what Hayek was trying to say about pseudo reasoning in the chapter on Rousseau and others. Your attack on free will is very similar to the socialist attacks on property and free markets that Hayek describes.
Greg: “…he’s talking about interpersonal — meaning social — rules of conduct.”
That’s the theme of the whole book, but he has a chapter devoted to pseudo reasoning that discusses the false reasoning used by socialists. Try it again.
Determinism is NOT a void. It is a positive assertion that every action we take is causally determined.
Anthony> Determinism is NOT a void. It is a positive assertion that every action we take is causally determined.
I take it then that you know more about what “determinists” say than I. And that could hardly be surprising, since I don’t know who they are or what they say. However, I don’t think I said “determinism is a void,” and even if I did I would have to claim now it was an error of language. I believe I said something more like free will is an assertion that does not have to be assumed in without evidence. That is the void: the absence of an assertion.
I do wonder why folks get so hot and bothered by the idea they aren’t in the control they feel they are. It matters not a whit, in the end. You guys should read Hayek’s Fatal Conceit. He warns about that, you know. He talks about the evolution of human society and how a human’s adherence to those societal rules of conduct lie between instinct and reason. That’s sort of like animals running their program, which was “written” by evolution and punctuated equilibria. Awwww… too bad. That idea annoys the hell out of objectivists, and the objectivists have as good an understanding of Hayek as Fundy.
Greg, fair enough. My point was simply that both sides in the debate need to prove their position. Neither enjoys an advantage IMO.
That’s fine. But I will make one assertion: for those taking sides, neither side will acceptably prove it to the other. The good news is that it doesn’t seem to matter.
I’ll agree on that. The entire debate on free will is inconsequential both to Austrian economics and the present article. As Mises wrote, all that matters to the agent is that he/she must choose from his/her perspective.
Greg.
I see our, or rather my, disconnect. I have been assuming that you have an interest and opinion regarding the likelihood of the validity of free will, and that it is grounded to some extent on the philosophy of determinism. I have been grossly mistaken. All you are saying is that you are entirely agnostic on the topic of free will and also determinism. You have no reason to argue for or against either of them, other than to say that neither is of much interest to you, let alone demonstrated as likely true, never mind proven true. Fair enough. I think I am responsible for spinning this discussion way out of control. Ooops. Sorry.
greg: “The good news is that it doesn’t seem to matter.”
I think it does matter, not as much as some things, like the socialist/capitalist debates. Judges are letting criminals go free because they believe that society is responsible for the person becoming a criminal. Those judges are acting on a philosophy of determinism. Determinism destroys society by destroying morality and reason among those who try to live consistently with their beliefs. Fortunately, most determinists say they believe in determinism and act as if they believe the opposite. But I would think that such hypocracy would breed cynicism and further dishonesty among the children who see such in their parents.
The whole socialist argument that capitalism causes people to be more materialistic is based on a type of determinism that says society shapes the character of its people.
Muslim societies are fatalistic to a large degree because of their theology of determinism. And of the ten poorest countries in the world, nine are Muslim. There are many reasons for their poverty, but I believe their fatalism causes them to not plan and not take personal responsibility for their actions. As a result, they fail to grasp cause and effect relations.
As for Hayek’s views on free will (or the lack thereof), I’ll simply point everyone to Gary T. Dempsey’s interesting paper on the subject: http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/hayekee.html
To boil down Hayek’s position, it seems to be rather Nietzschean: i.e., we are determined, but we have no choice but to behave as if we have free will because we can never know what we are determined to do. Or, to borrow from Godel’s incompleteness theorem, you cannot know your own mind “because the ‘set’ that we call the mind cannot contain itself,” as Dempsey writes.
Fundamentalist, you bring up a good point. Free will or lack thereof is fundamental to questions of punishment and dessert. Many determinists are willing I have noticed to do away with dessert, but some recoil at the idea of doing away with punishment. Utilitarian determinists like JCC Smart have ways of getting around this, but they’re also problematic (e.g. why not punish someone innocent if it deters crime?)
Frank, Thanks for the link to the article about Hayek. It’s very interesting. However, I have some problems with definitions and conclusions that Dempsey makes.
First, Dempsey defines free will: …”defined as a will that is not the exclusive and necessary result of the interaction of physical material.”
I don’t know if this is his own definition or if that is a commonly used one for free will, but it seems strange to me. Does anyone else use that definition? If that is the definition that Greg had in mind, then I apologize; I admit that free will doesn’t exist and we are determined. But most people mean the ability to choose between alternative courses of action when they refer to free will. So if we accept Dempsey’s definition, we’ll have to invent other words for our concepts of free will and determinism if we’re to make sense to each other and communicate clearly. However, since the debate over free will has existed long before modern science and the definitions of “free will” and “determinism” were established centuries ago, I suggest that Dempsey find a different word for his concept.
Second, he writes “But if this account is correct, why should we do anything purposeful at all? Doesn’t Hayek’s materialism destroy the idea of goal-directed action?” Now purposeful and goal-directed action are included in the traditional definition of free will. So Dempsey is asking “doesn’t my definition of free will eliminate free will?” Of course it does; he has defined away the traditional definition of free will.
What Dempsey should ask is “does the fact that our brains are purely material (no soul or spirit) contradict the traditional concept of free will?” Hayek’s answer is no: “The chief fact would continue to be, in spite of our knowledge of the principle on which the human mind works, that we should not be able to state the full set of particular facts which brought it about that the individual did a particular thing at a particular time…”
In other words, the brain is too complex for us to understand how it works in its totality. We can know some things that are true about the brain, such as that it’s made up of neurons and connectors and works with chemical/electrical impulses. But that doesn’t explain the way the brain works. The brain is probably the least explored territory in modern science.
Hayek seems to say that the material part of the brain is like the paper upon which experience, reason, and other influences, many of them contradictory, are stored. But the complex structure of the brain also enables rapid retrieval, analysis and choice of alternatives which make purposeful action and planning possible.
Dempsey concludes that “In other words, Hayek does not assert that our will is free, but that we are incapable of knowing how to behave like our will is unfree.” I don’t agree at all that that is what Hayek asserts. I don’t see how Dempsey extracts that conclusion from what Hayek writes. In fact, Demspey appears to be guilty of using two different definitions of “free will”. This latter instance is the traditional definition, which he defined away above. He really needs choose one definition and stick with it.
Let’s use the traditional definition of free will, that humans can make real, meaningful choices between alternate courses of action, which makes purposeful, goal-directed action possible. Though Dempsey doesn’t state it explicitly, his argument is against the idea of the existence of a soul or spirit that directs the operation of the brain. Now that may be a popular concept of free will, but it’s not a necessary one. In fact, the religious groups who deny free will all believe in the existence of a soul, Calvinists and Muslims especially. So you can have determinism (using the traditional definition of a lack of choice) and a soul at the same time. My point is that having a soul is not essential to having free will because the determinist theologies include a soul, too.
No is having a soul essential to a free will in Christianity. The emphasis on the “soul” that we find in modern Christianity isn’t Biblical, nor was it a part of early Christianity. It leaked into Christian theology from Greek philosophy, which dominated theology until the Reformation. The New Testament does mention the existence of a bodiless soul in heaven, but it plays a minor role in NT theology. Believers don’t spend enternity in heaven in a bodiless state (much less setting on clouds). The primary emphasis in the NT is on the body. Jesus’s resurrection was of his physical body. The hope of Christians is the bodily resurrection. Of course, those resurrected bodies will be eternal and without defect, but they will be our recognizable, physical bodies and we will spend enternity on a physical planet, the new earth.
I would not attempt to argue for the existence of a soul, mind or spirit behind the brain. I accept them only because the NT mentions them, but they’re not essential to Christianity or the Christian doctrine of a free will. Biblical Christianity would suffer very little loss if we did away with those concepts entirely.
In the same way, I don’t see how the fact that the brain is matter has anything to do with free will. The complexity of the brain, and the fact that it constantly takes in new information, much of which contradicts stored information, can sift through vast amounts of information and present a multitutde of alternative courses of action, then choose one of those alternatives, gives it, and us, free will in the traditional sense. Our brains can even invent alternatives that can’t possibly exist in reality, such as socialism. In other words, the brain isn’t limited to experience, but is creative. That’s one of the ways in which we are like God.
“Our brains can even invent alternatives that can’t possibly exist in reality, such as socialism.”
Too true.
I don’t know about others, but I found the way you phrased that very funny.
Fundamentalist,
“First, Dempsey defines free will: …”defined as a will that is not the exclusive and necessary result of the interaction of physical material.”
“I don’t know if this is his own definition or if that is a commonly used one for free will, but it seems strange to me. Does anyone else use that definition? If that is the definition that Greg had in mind, then I apologize; I admit that free will doesn’t exist and we are determined.â€
I think you will find that determinism asserts exactly this. So your view of free will appears to be that of the “soft†determinists. In other words, as you put it, “free will doesn’t exist and we are determinedâ€. The way the soft determinists would say it is There is delusional free will, but no genuine free will as we sometimes act as, or pretend there is.
“…In the same way, I don’t see how the fact that the brain is matter has anything to do with free will.â€
The argument is as you have already read above and understood: a will that is the exclusive and necessary result of the interaction of physical material is not a genuine free will at all. Right? How can it possibly be otherwise? And if the proposition is correct then it stands to reason: one physical event is a result of a previous physical event, the laws of physics and the laws of cause and effect. Essentially this boils down to the necessary reality that our every thought, value, circumstance and choice are all absolutely determined from the start of the physical universe. Therefore, any free will we imagine we have, is in fact and of necessity merely a delusion, and not genuine at all. We are in every manner, just like the rock that rolls down the hill; determined strictly by the laws of physics. Ultimately, what most significantly distinguishes us from the rocks and other inert material in the universe is that we are apparently the only delusional entities. Do you see how the hard determinists come to this conclusion? Does it not indeed seem to be an insurmountable conclusion to you? And if not, how so?
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