I was told by someone on here that in order to be a Communist, I must "believe" in "Free Will." Somehow, I doubt this is truly a prerequisite, but if it really is the case, then so be it.
Before getting into "Free Will," there is no good evidence that human beings possess an immaterial “soul” that thinks, chooses, or survives bodily death. All available evidence indicates that what we have hitherto called a “person,” is an activity of a living brain in a living body. Mental states reliably track brain states; damage the brain and you damage memory, personality, judgment, and agency; destroy it entirely and the person disappears. No additional essence remains.
Human brains are biological systems governed by physical law. They are extraordinarily complex, adaptive, and self-modeling, which produces the powerful subjective experience and outward appearnce of "authorship" and "choice," but nothing in neuroscience suggests that brains initiate actions independently of prior physical causes. Also, introducing indeterminism or randomness does not rescue “free will” in the libertarian sense, since randomness adds noise, rather than control.
The popular notion of "Free Will" as an uncaused, self-originating power of the "soul" or of the brain, in more secular accounts of "Free Will," is therefore unsupported. What exists instead are constrained decision-making processes embedded in biology, development, and environment. Responsibility is not metaphysical; it is a social practice invented and enforced by humans to shape behavior while brains are still alive and responsive to incentives.
There is no evidence that accountability survives death. When the brain permanently ceases to function, the person is gone. What remains is matter, not an observing subject.
These conclusions are not radical inventions of modern science. The dependence of mind on the condition of the brain has been observable since antiquity through injury, disease, and degeneration, and has been progressively clarified by advances in biology, chemistry, and physics. What is new is not the insight itself, but the precision.
Resistance to these conclusions is understandable. They undermine comforting narratives of cosmic justice, personal exceptionality, and ultimate moral reckoning. Many cultures have developed religious and metaphysical systems that posit souls, absolute free will, and post-mortem reward or punishment. Whatever other functions these systems serve, they also operate as tools of behavioral regulation, offering meaning and order in exchange for compliance.
None of this "proves" that such metaphysical entities "cannot" exist, it merely establishes that we have no reason to believe they do, and that our best explanations of human behavior, morality, and identity do not require them. Nevertheless, those who make positive claims must provide evidence. If I propose ridiculous things without providing evidence, others are not obliged to "disprove" my claims, especially if they cannot be tested and/or concern alleged entities which exist beyond measurable matter and energy.
251 posts and 34 image replies omitted.>>2670503>not him but why is everything in marxism like this? thats how all of science and philosophy is because the enlightenment came out of religious scholars in the middle ages where the church was the center of education and everyone was bi-tri-lingual and studied latin and greek.
also when you have to distinguish between two closely related concepts. like knowing and understanding. they arent inventing technical differences they are just being precise
>But then you have anons on here who insist that nearly every worker in the 1800s read Capital with massive ease people do say that but they are wrong. workers werent reading capital they were reading pamphlets. you dont have to read it to participate but the leaders of the vanguard should know what they are talking about
>>2670509>If you're asking why they specifically use terms that already have "colloquial" definitions which are completely different and easily confused with their special poetic definitions inherited from Hegel?i think its the other way around. the words had specific definitions that get watered down by their popularization
>>2670528>How did Hegelians manage to transform the original definition: no its the other way around
><true understanding comes from the ability to explain concepts clearly and simply, often as if teaching them to a child.nah thats just anti-intellectualism. learning any science takes just as much work some things are just complex and dumbing it down loses the meaning such that the explanation does not map onto the subject
>but wasn't theological christian free will inventedpretty sure they got it from people who came before them
>>2670925free will isn't real whether or not the universe is "random" or "deterministic"
>>2670944>nah thats just anti-intellectualism. learning any science takes just as much work some things are just complex and dumbing it down loses the meaning such that the explanation does not map onto the subject it's hard to walk the tightrope between vulgarization, i.e. "watering stuff down" and obscurantism, i.e. "making it hard and confusing on purpose to limit who gets in."
both are anti-intellectualism imo
>>2671264>it's hard to walk the tightrope between vulgarization, i.e. "watering stuff down" and obscurantism, i.e. "making it hard and confusing on purpose to limit who gets in."
>both are anti-intellectualism imoAgreed. You see this a lot.
Vulgarization: “Quantum physics proves reality isn’t real, man.”
Obscurantism: “Nonlocal ontological indeterminacy arises from Hilbert space formalism.”
Tightrope: “At very small scales, particles don’t behave like everyday objects, and we need probability to describe them.”
Free will exists. Let me prove it. You can either reply to me or not. That choice is totally up to you and cannot be affected by anything else. Whatever your course of action, you have proven my argument.
>>2673415I can choose to take the bait or not, but I cannot choose to want to take the bait or not. I simply do, or don't.
Your desires are not a product of your own freedom of choice.
>>2665920Compare your life to Chat GPT or a robot vacuum cleaner and you will instantly understand the difference between a being that has free will vs a construct that always follows its preprogrammed algorithms.
>>2673419>I can choose thanks for playing
that's all free will is
the ability to choose
>>2673423Can you choose to like something?
>>2673424Yes, just like you can later choose to dislike it or to hate it later on.
>>2673427No, you cannot choose to like or dislike something. You're not even able to choose to change your mind. You can he convinced, but you cannot choose.
I'll repost this because clearly nobody is reading the thread before posting.
>>2673419>Your desires are not a product of your own freedom of choice.Yes they are but those snap judgements are made so fast that you simply haven't coherently processed them. It's like scrolling through Tinder or a dating app - can you really give a logical reason for every single person you turn down or accept? Free will does not give a shit what your motivation is because that is irrelevant. Free will is not contingent upon any emotional state or desire. Free will is simply being able to select from all available options without being automatically forced down one path. To go back to the dating app example, if you were biologically wired to always accept, say, Jews, and you were literally incapable of not accepting any date with a Jewish person, you could claim that free will doesn't exist. But since you aren't, you can't.
>>2673429the question itself is wrong, it makes no sense to ask if you can "choose to want/like something" as you can just go on ad infinitum by always just asking "well can you choose to choose to want something?" (funny how people use Schopenhauer to "prove" free will doesn't exist when he literally said this exact thing, proving how the discussion about it is worthless)
the point is of course that the entire debate is just nonsensical because it ultimately leads nowhere and you can't extract from it any insights about why people do what they do or don't do what they do and how they think about their problems. Just accept people do what they will and move on
>>2673558> the point is of course that the entire debate is just nonsensical because it ultimately leads nowhere and you can't extract from it any insights about why people do what they do or don't do what they do and how they think about their problems. except changing people's brains changes their behavior, showing there there is a neurochemical determination here. you can in fact extract insights by, for example, observing similar behavioral patterns in people who have had a certain kind of brain surgery vs. people who have not. People who have really bad epilepsy for example often get a Corpus callosotomy, i.e. they get the white matter between their brain hemispheres severed. What is the result of that besides reduced seizures? Speech issues.
Phineas Gage, a railroad foreman who had a spike driven through his skull by a dynamite blast in the 1800s famously survived several years after the incident and had distinct changes to his personality and choices as a result of the incident.
If you were a real materialist you wouldn't believe in conscious experience because it's literally beyond scientific investigation because it's just based on feelings. Must chap your ass that it's also the most obvious and important thing to you, unless you're a p-zombie maybe who knows no one can prove otherwise.
>>2674299> conscious experience because it's literally beyond scientific investigationit's
consciousness is something the brain does, not a spooky extra substance. consciousness is an emergent physical process. you can tell because if I bonk you on the head enough times you become unconscious, and if I bonk you on the head a few more times, you're gone for good.
>Conscious experience is beyond scientific investigation because it’s just feelingsYes, subjective experience is first-person (only you feel your pain). But that doesn’t put it “beyond science.”
>>2673419>Your desires are not a product of your own freedom of choice.No, your desires are not a product of your own freedom of choice, mine are.
>>2673746>except changing people's brains changes their behavior, showing there there is a neurochemical determination here.umm actually correlation does not equal causation. thanks for playing sweaty
>>2677132by that same argument free will isn't real because every time you appear to "choose" something it's just a correlation. there is no causal relation between your "free will" (which is neither Free nor Will) and the resulting action you "chose" to take.
>>2678067well that is the argument you deserved after using it yourself but it wasn't the one I gave you at first.
>>2673429>cannot will what he willsNot true, I can control what I will.
>>2678072you said
>by that same argumentbut that isn't the argument being used to justify free will
>>2678102Oh yeah, freewilltard, then will that you cannot control what you will
>>2678096put all pornbrained mfs in a reeducation camp
>>2678149>will that you cannot control what you willSo a double negative?
(will)(not will)(not will) = (will)
consider it done maestro.
The question of free will is too individualistic. You should argue about determinism vs indeterminism. Either society is determinate or it is not.
>>2678319>The question of free will is too individualistic. You should argue about determinism vs indeterminism. also free will is fake whether the universe is deterministic or random.
Consciousness isn’t a thing; it’s an activity. Dialectical materialism treats consciousness like digestion or locomotion. No single molecule digests food, but digestion is very real. Consciousness is the brain’s ongoing activity of modeling and regulating its interaction with the world, especially social reality.
Organization creates new causal powers. When matter is organized in a specific way, new kinds of causation appear. A neuron can fire; a brain can plan, remember, imagine, and reflect. These aren’t “added on,” they are what neural activity becomes once it’s organized into self-referential, feedback-rich, temporally integrated systems.
Unity comes from self-relation. Consciousness requires the system to relate to its own states over time. Brains do this constantly: monitoring, predicting, correcting themselves. That recursive loop is what produces a single point of view, even though it’s materially distributed.
The subject is the process, not a part. Asking “which neuron experiences consciousness?” is like asking “which gear in the engine is running?” The experiencing subject is the total dynamic process, not a component hidden inside it.
In dialectics quantity transforms into quality. This is the emergent property. At a certain level of complexity, interaction density, and historical development (language, labor, social practice), neural activity undergoes a qualitative transformation. Consciousness isn’t gradual glow-up of neurons; it’s a phase change in organized matter.
So yeah, consciousness is real, but free will and souls are not.
>>2678319"indeterminism" or "randomness" is
appearance NOT essence.Something deterministic APPEARS "random" in the absence of a sufficient predictive computational model. It's an absence of the ability to measure things in the necessary speed/quantity to determine the outcome in advance. All "randomness" is really
pseudorandom.
What is the difference between determinism and fatalism?
>>2679620nothing. none of these uyghurs think communism can happen hence why they're resorting to all these retarded copes like
>well actually free will doesn't exist so nothing will ever happen and capitalism wins foreverdefeatist scum should be shot
>>2678954>plurality is really the illusory appearance of a unified orderjust like plato says
>>2678940>its not a thing, it is an activityactivities are things
>I was told by someone on here that in order to be a Communist, I must "believe" in "Free Will."
This wasn't perchance related to the discussion about existentialism was it?
Because if it was, it's got nothing to do with free will as indeterminism. The notion we have a will ('irrational' as it is) and are "free" has to do with realizing we're morally responsible for our choices and recognize this, and we're condemned to assuming this responsibility. Animals are not "free" in this sense because they lack of the cognitive means to evaluate the moral character of their actions, and cannot subordinate their own survival to their own authenticity or moral obligation. (They also lack an understanding of "history" and their role in it as Engels described). You can train a corvid or (great) ape to understand rudimentary language. But I've never seen any non-human grasp ethics.
And yes the pursuit of communism is anchored in both rejecting any outside authorities (including "The People", "The Masses", "The Proletariat", etc) beyond man himself and realizing the pursuit of communism is a matter of will and (ethical) choice not cosmic inevitability.
>>2665533Free will does exist but it's conditional on the correct understanding of the world, if you don't have the correct understanding things seem to happen randomly around you and you can't make real decisions.
>>2665533True. Fuck dualism.
>>2679772>Free will does exist but it's conditional on the correct understanding of the worldi.e. the hard deterministic one 😜
I feel like there's far better discussions we could be having on the nature of consciousness but we're stuck in the swamp wading out to shore while religious retards are trying to drag us back down with dualist mental illness. Even language itself is poisoned by dualism.
>>2679845>Even language itself is poisoned by dualism.This is very true. Layman speak still separates mind from body.
>>2670064Iindeterministic "Free Will" is incoherent because it supposes there is no causal relation between events and actions. The concept of Will itself is compatible with the (latest) findings in neuroscience. We can Will what we want, but aren't able to Will what we Will due to how our Will is also tied up in (neuro)biology, upbringing, culture, social context and so on. In addition to the self being socially constructed (there is no clear boundary between self and other, self and world and so on). Our Will is ever separable from the world we act in and upon. But that doesn't mean it's not there.
>>2680138>We can Will what we want, but aren't able to Will what we Will due to how our Will is also tied up in (neuro)biology, upbringing, culture, social contextand so on. individualist mistake,
you cant,
we can >>2680451individuals are just collectives of cells. stop pretending there's a difference between I and We.
>>2680596>individuals are just collectives of cells.<cellsinterlinked
>>2680451unless we can reverse all of those, combined with disabilities, we cannot!
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