/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

I think asking for degrees of free will is misguided. If you believe cognitive processes are due to physical laws that act deterministically (and perhaps some indeterministically on the quantum scale) then there is no room left for free will. People can‘t wrap their head around that every thought and urge they have is a product of neurochemical processes so they try to reinstate free will again somehow.

>>2421431
So you basically saying that people are just meat robots? Then how can we truly change society if people can't really change?

i would defer to the classical theory of slavery as far as it regards this question. a man is considered to have agency, while a child or animal is not. there is a qualitative difference therefore, which also grants a man a larger social responsibility (such as st. paul saying that adam is responsible over eve's sin, since man has more agency than woman, for example). likewise, a mentally impaired person (such as someone intoxicated or emotional) loses their reason, and so is seen as less responsible for their actions.

in this case, there must be a secondary agent, which we may call "instinct" or "desire" or irrationality. if a man is a slave to his desires, then he has likewise forfeited his freedom as a creature (which is why we arrest criminals and enslave them; since they have lost their reason). what is freedom in this sense however? the principle of self-movement (automobility). this is also what grants qualification for the attributes of the soul (anima) to aristotle; the principle of life is will - and self-will.

free will would imply self-movement, yet aristotle sees how all things in motion have been previously moved, so we lack this larger independence, but within our own ability, if we use reason, we may break the chains of mere instinct, and so this self-mastery allows for the conception of free will; that is, a will toward freedom. what is freedom however? that is a bigger question.

>>2421454
So some people can be a "self moving" being, right? Like you said some people don't have this ability some times, or not at all, but how we separate the influence of the enviroment for example from our self reflection?

its just a stupid theological/philosophical debate

>>2421431
eh, its a bit more complicated. i basically agree on the fundamental level but it is not a satisfactory answer to the question of why we meaningfully experience ourselves as having free will

>>2421383
look into free-will compatibilism OP. its the generally accepted and imo intuitive version of determinism among contemporary philosophers of consciousness. basically, we do in fact live in a deterministic universe, but our perception and experience of our lives include free will in a non-superficial way.

its not that free-will is just "an illusion" or a "benevolent lie" (some people say the latter which i think is retarded), but that self-direction and choice is so central to human experience that it does meaningfully exist even if it doesnt have ultimate causal power. the way i think of it is: all the material & processes that make up an individual human brain, all the events & circumstances & socialization that go into our thoughts & behaviors, are part of the determinative matrix. if that is the case, which i think is true and follows from determinist presumptions, then the experience of free-will is an integral mechanism in the human experience. our "freedom" may not be infinite and metaphysical, but anybody who asserts this in any case is delusional and wrong. the fact that "we were always going to do what we end up doing" is likewise not necessarily a negation of our free-will, since our free-will as it actually exists is not the freedom to act outside of the deterministic universe we are part of, its our freedom to act within our own lives within the tangible boundaries presented to us. one of which boundaries is inevitably time, which makes the question of whether we were "always" going to do something not only practically irrelevant but a question that only makes sense if you presume that there is experience which exists outside of time, ipso facto absurd unless you are a theist of some sort (in which case none of the determinative premises need to apply anyway)

Free will is a nonsense concept that only exists to imply it's absence, to convince people they are destined to do the thing the speaker wants them to do.

Someone that believes they don't have free will behaves differently than one that does, as do both behave differently to someone that either doesn't know about it or rejects it entirely.

Its basically a complete spook isn't it. Whether we do or don't have it, nothing changes practically or subjectively

>>2421584
This is a huge amount of confused rambling
Free will is ultimately about responsibility
If you believe that people can be punished for their actions you ultimately believe in a free will
>But material conditions are what shapes people's beliefs and actions
There is a difference between absolute free will and relative free will. When talking about free will most philisophers and ethicists talk about the latter

A true anti free will position would ultimately entail some sort of radical antinomianism. This takes shapes in psychoanalysis where the individual itself is revealed to be an illusion. And also in Buddhism where the goal is not to be a "good person" (being good implies you have concrete will over your actions) but to realize that individual existence is ultimately an illusion

>>2421603
>Free will is ultimately about responsibility
yes, but "agency" is perhaps a preferable term. are we "free"? perhaps not. but do we have agency? we must, for we are made responsible for our own karmic debt.
>>2421473
a natural slave is someone externally moved, rather than inwardly willed - so this is the circumstance of environmental primacy. self-reflection must then begin by stillness in the body, which brings steadiness in the mind. personal will then represents a fundamental negation or restriction against the unconditional, by appropriating it under the condition of one's own ends. this is basic instrumental reason, where man becomes a master over his environment and so determines it. this is present in any child, whose first act of creation is destruction.

the external then has primacy over us when we allow it to determine us rather than elsewise. fascinating wisdom literature concerns this relation, where to some, resisting nature brings strife, while to others, strife is necessary for a man's own being. the boring but sensible position is to aim for balance. lao tzu recognises that the way of nature is to level everything back toward its own primal order. nature resists man and man resists nature, like the tension of a branch holding a nest, yet in this is also supplication and necessity. as lao tzu correctly discerns, if you sharpen a knife too long, it becomes blunt, and so man can only live in vain, ultimately. if man is a servant of nature, then nature may be a servant to man. that is our hope.