> Claiming a different definition of free will does not make you right about free will existing.
You are missing my point. I explicitly said that I used a different term, "making choices", instead of the term "free will", exactly because it allows one to avoid all the pointless arguing about whether free will "exists" or not.
> Defining free will as "making choices", such as building a fire to warm your house because you are cold is not proving free will exists.
Again, you are missing the point. Sure, you can say that "free will" doesn't exist because "particles react to their environment". And my response is, who cares? Sure, people are ultimately made of particles reacting to their environment. That doesn't mean they can't make choices, and it doesn't mean the choices they make don't make a difference, to themselves and to others. It doesn't mean that some people's bad choices don't cause other people to suffer. It is perfectly possible to both understand that, at a microphysical level, everything is "particles reacting to their environment", and that, at a personal level, people make choices and their choices have consequences. And if you focus solely on the former and ignore the latter, the result is worse consequences, not better ones.
Free will does not exist, so telling people they have a form of free will called "making choices" is a misdirection. You aren't actively making choices even if you feel like you are. You are only reacting to the stimulus you receive from the environment. Change the stimulus, and the behavior changes.
Your definition of free will is useless because it doesn't accurately reflect the reality. I make what "feels" like a choice, but it isn't really a choice.
This kind of reasoning actually does lead to better consequences, not worse.
You can disagree. You can assert that believing people can't make choices in a true sense of free will causes other to suffer. You can also be dismissed for said assertion without providing any evidence.
For instance, if your assertion is true, why do I, as someone who does not believe I make my own choices, do no harm to others? Shouldn't I be on a killing spree according to your logic? Shouldn't I be repressing and hurting people left and right? All I have to do is prove it's possible to not believe you make your own choices and not do harm. That single data point is enough to prove your claims wrong.
> You can assert that believing people can't make choices in a true sense of free will causes other to suffer.
I didn't assert anything about "believing people can't make choices in a true sense of free will". Nor did I assert anything about individual cases.
Since you are apparently unable to properly understand statements that use terms like "choice", I will rephrase my assertion using your ultra-physicalist language:
There are causal processes that happen inside human brains. Those causal processes have effects outside of the particular human brains in which they take place. Those effects can include effects on what happens to the particular human in whose brain the causal processes are taking place, and effects on other humans besides that particular human.
The question is whether the causal processes that happen inside a particular human's brain have a much greater impact, on net, on what happens to that particular human, than causal processes that happen in other human brains; or, by contrast, whether causal processes that happen in other human brains have a much greater impact, on net, on what happens to that particular human.
My assertion is that a society in which the former is the case will have less human suffering, and more good things, than a society in which the latter is the case.
Note that the effects the causal processes inside human brains have outside those brains, whether on that particular human or on other humans, happen regardless of the beliefs held by the particular human in whose brain the causal processes are happening, unless you count the beliefs themselves as part of the causal processes. Which is fine with me personally, but in fact, in your ultra-physicalist language, the word "belief" is just as out of place as the word "choice"; in your ultra-physicalist language, people don't have beliefs any more than they make choices. But the causal processes happening in their brains have the effects they have regardless of what language you use to describe them. Using obfuscatory ultra-physicalist language to describe them, instead of the common, intuitive language of beliefs and choices that everyone understands, just makes it harder to think clearly about what is going on. It's like doing arithmetic using Roman numerals; yes, it's possible, but it's just making things much harder than they need to be for no good reason.
How can you claim things that happen inside the human brain have causal influences on things outside the brain and yet at the same time ignore the causal influences the outside world has on the internal brain processes? Information flow is a two way street if it can happen in one direction as far as I am aware. What you seem to not grasp is the idea that external events can influence your behavior.
> How can you claim things that happen inside the human brain have causal influences on things outside the brain and yet at the same time ignore the causal influences the outside world has on the internal brain processes?
I have done no such thing. Obviously the causal influences go both ways.
> What you seem to not grasp is the idea that external events can influence your behavior.
What you seem not to grasp is that one of the key roles that causal processes inside a person's brain play is to control how external events influence the person's behavior. The brain is not just a big switchboard where input A always leads to output B. Of course, vastly oversimplifying what actually happens in people's brains in order to avoid having to question one's theoretical model is a common mistake, going back at least to B. F. Skinner.
Can you ever willfully choose option C, if you never knew or had anything lead you to think that option C was even an option?
Or better yet, can you willfully imagine a new color that's not in any way related to the colors or any combination of colors you've already seen before? Or further, not related to ANY CONCEPT you're already aware of?
You can't. But if you could, how would you ever describe it to someone? After all, if you describe this new color using other ideas you're already acquainted with, then it is thus in some way related to those very ideas used to describe it...
This shows that, any "new" ideas you imagine, are nothing but a combination of ideas you're already familiar with. Otherwise, to become familiar with ideas that are not in any way related to what you're already familiar with, can ONLY come from your senses. Hence, all concepts/thoughts/ideas you ever have ultimately stem from your senses (seeing, hearing, etc).
Since all ideas ultimately originate from our senses, then the thoughts we have and decisions we make are ultimately subject to the stimuli inputted to us. Thus we are as mechanical as anything else in this world. Fundamentally no different than a rock in how it operates on the physical stimuli inputted on it. Granted we are much more complex than a rock and hence have much more complex responses to our stimuli, but nonetheless just as deterministic.
The brain may attempt to control what's external to it, but the way it does so has been programmed from the stimuli inputted on it (from DNA instructions, to nutrition, to physical stimuli).
Yes it is, because you are defining free will to be the illusion of choice, and that is not the common understanding of what free will means. You are intentionally misleading people who will read your comments about "free will" as a justification to continue believing free will actually exists.
What is invalid about them? You claim free will exists. Yet if you admit "free will" is simply believing you have a choice when the underlying reality is that you don't actually have a choice, only the illusion of it, you are intentionally not admitting the truth which is your definition of free will is a LIE!
External events are the only meaningful thing you can experience. Your whole internal world is built entirely around what you experience externally. It's why you don't wall around talking about dead people waking amongst us without having psychologists commit you to intuitions.
> why is my outcome not worse for believing I don't have free will?
You still don't get it. Your brain is doing the thing that I call "making choices", but which I called "causal processes" because you have trouble with words like "choices", whether you believe in free will or not. Those causal processes in your brain have a significant effect on your outcomes, whether you believe in free will or not. And how much of an effect the causal processes in your brain have on your outcomes, as compared with the effect that causal processes in other people's brains have on your outcomes, which is the thing I have said is important, has little or nothing to do directly with whether you or anyone else "believes in free will". It does have to do with whether you and other people respect other people's right to make choices, which I have also said is important.
But the has nothing to do with the idea that one has free will, only that I exhibit behavior that allows you to pursue your own desires, I.E I'm not actively harming you or putting you into prison. Redefine what free will means all you want, it doesn't make your arguments any more true.
Theoretically, if I could fix your brain without you even being aware of it so that you don't die from brain cancer, I would.
If I had to physically do it via surgery like our best attempts in science can do today, I would operate if you came to the hospital for the procedure.
When it comes to altering your brain so that you like vanilla instead of chocolate, I would not do that. Some things require consent absolutely. Some things do not, like resuscitating a person if you are an EMT and sworn to do no harm. Consent isn't the end all be all of the debate, not by a long shot.
For example, do you ask the murder to consent to going to jail or do you put the murderer in jail against their will?
> Theoretically, if I could fix your brain without you even being aware of it so that you don't die from brain cancer, I would.
Am I not even aware of it because I'm unconscious and incapacitated, and you're asking the consent of someone else who is empowered (say by my medical power of attorney) to give consent on my behalf?
Or am I not even aware of it because you have a stealthy way of doing it that I can't perceive even though I'm conscious?
I suspect it's the latter, but I'd like you to confirm.
> If I had to physically do it via surgery like our best attempts in science can do today, I would operate if you came to the hospital for the procedure.
Is this because you think it's important that I consent to the procedure, or just because our limited technology of today won't let you do it in a way I can't perceive at all?
Again, I suspect it's the latter, but I'd like you to confirm.
> When it comes to altering your brain so that you like vanilla instead of chocolate, I would not do that. Some things require consent absolutely. Some things do not, like resuscitating a person if you are an EMT and sworn to do no harm.
Oh, so you do think consent is important in some cases? Then where do you draw the line? I get the EMT resuscitating a person, that's an easy case--but it's an easy case because there is a default presumption that if the person were able to consent to being resuscitated, they would. But you are also saying (I think--see above) that you would cure my brain cancer without my consent if you could. Where's the line between that and you not being willing to alter my brain so I like vanilla instead of chocolate?
> do you ask the murder to consent to going to jail or do you put the murderer in jail against their will?
The murderer has already harmed others. That's where I am drawing the line about when consent is no longer required to imprison them.
The later for both, yes, and the line is when you make a judgment for what is likely to happen as a result of current events. If you have the power to make a better outcome happen 90 percent of the time versus 80 percent of the time, you choose 90 percent even if you are wrong some of the time. No ones has perfect information, yet we still make decisions that alter things despite perfect information. We just do the best we can, and sometimes that means we get ot wrong but should be moving in the better direction whenever possible.
> If you have the power to make a better outcome happen 90 percent of the time versus 80 percent of the time, you choose 90 percent even if you are wrong some of the time
I don't see how this leads to your having to get my consent to make me like vanilla instead of chocolate. If you believed making that change in me would "make a better outcome" with 90 percent probability, by your logic as stated above, you would be justified in doing it without my consent. But you said that case requires consent "absolutely". I don't see how your stated rule does that.
Perhaps I should describe my position on this in more detail. My reason why you should not change my brain without my consent, whether it's to cure my brain cancer or make me like vanilla instead of chocolate (actually in my case it would be the other way around), is that you are not the one who has to live with the consequences; I am. So I should be the one to make the choice whether or not to do it. The only exception, which I have already stated, is if someone has already done harm to others and we are imposing consequences as an alternative to whatever the natural consequences of what they did would be (for example, trying someone for murder and imprisoning them if convicted, instead of letting the victim's family and friends take private vengeance). I'll assume we are not talking about a case where that exception applies in the rest of this post.
(Technically, there is a second exception, cases like the EMT resuscitating a person, since the person is incapable of giving consent. But I've already addressed that: there is a default presumption that the person would consent to being resuscitated if they could. And note that in our current legal system, a person can override that presumption by, for example, having a do not resuscitate order on file with their doctor.)
In the brain cancer example, I suspect you are imagining a case where you have some treatment that can be done easily from a distance without my perceiving it and without any side effects--it just makes the cancer vanish and leaves everything else the same. I have commented elsewhere in this discussion that I don't think such a thing is a real possibility; there's no way you could ever know that there are no side effects with such certainty. (And if you don't, if you're only 90 percent sure that there will be no side effects, then my rule above applies and you should let me make the choice since I'm the one that will suffer the side effects.) But let's assume for the sake of argument that you are certain there will be no side effects; let's say you have a mountain of evidence from past usages of the treatment, easily available and easily understandable by anyone.
But if that's the case, you have no need to do the treatment without my consent; you could just, you know, get my consent. After all, the treatment is a slam dunk from what you're saying; you have this mountain of easily understandable evidence that says it works great and has no side effects. So why not just show me the evidence? After I've seen it I have no reason not to consent, so I'd just consent. And then you wouldn't even have to worry about making a judgment and possibly being wrong. You wouldn't be making the judgment at all; I would.
In other words, your rule, which appears to be something like "if you're at least 90 percent sure that it will lead to a better outcome, you can do things to other people without their consent", requires you to make a judgment whose consequences you won't have to live with, someone else will, and all history shows that that is a very bad idea. What gives you the right to judge on my behalf that, say, 90 percent odds of curing my brain cancer is good enough? That's a judgment for me to make, not you, because I'm the one who has to live with the results. And in the truly slam dunk cases where the results are certain to be good ones, getting consent is also a slam dunk, so "always get consent" still covers those cases.
In short, "always get consent" (in cases where the exception I gave above doesn't apply) is a simpler rule that leads to better results than yours--it does the same thing in the easy cases, and puts the judgment in the hard cases where it belongs, with the person who will have to suffer the consequences of the judgment.
"Always get consent" (except here, here, and here)
This if not a simpler rule than to act if the outcome is judged to improve the situation. My rule is that a 90 percent chance is better than an 80 percent chance. It has no exceptions, no caveats.
I could convince you 90 percent of the time to "consent" to brain cancer surgery. If I can fix your brain without you even being aware of the problem 95 percent of the time, I would choose the later not the former, even if you happened to be the 5 percent. It's the same reasoning why we REQUIRE vaccines even though a small percentage of people can die from the vaccine itself. There are no exceptions in my system, it's simply the laws of probability applied precisely rather than some semantic argument you twist and turn at every exception to every case.
You are missing my point. I explicitly said that I used a different term, "making choices", instead of the term "free will", exactly because it allows one to avoid all the pointless arguing about whether free will "exists" or not.
> Defining free will as "making choices", such as building a fire to warm your house because you are cold is not proving free will exists.
Again, you are missing the point. Sure, you can say that "free will" doesn't exist because "particles react to their environment". And my response is, who cares? Sure, people are ultimately made of particles reacting to their environment. That doesn't mean they can't make choices, and it doesn't mean the choices they make don't make a difference, to themselves and to others. It doesn't mean that some people's bad choices don't cause other people to suffer. It is perfectly possible to both understand that, at a microphysical level, everything is "particles reacting to their environment", and that, at a personal level, people make choices and their choices have consequences. And if you focus solely on the former and ignore the latter, the result is worse consequences, not better ones.