As for Harris: this free will stuff

[Brian Peacock]

...

As for Harris, this free will stuff, what kind of will is it, if it is not free?

Without free will wherein lies personal responsibility?

[DRSB]

A contradiction in terms: if it is not free, is it a will?

[Brian Peacock]

Indeed.

[Brian Peacock]

Robert Sopolsky: Life and free will...

[JimC]

Even if free will is an illusion, behaving as if it is real seems like a reasonable option. The rule of law also benefits from the assumption that people (with some specific exemptions) have free will, and therefore can be assigned responsibility for their actions, and their consequences.

[Brian Peacock]

To some extent I accept the conceit of free will as a practical necessity, but as Jim hints, if we accept the mounting evidence that free will as we've traditionally understood it is a kind of illusion--that there's a complex of influencing factors which determine our action in any given situation; that our decisions are rarely reasoned but merely expressions of evolved animal behaviour--then the idea that, say, criminals are bad people because their behaviour transgresses certain socially agreed rules becomes difficult to maintain. Without personal responsibility the notions of morality and ethics become moot.

[Hermit]

Determinism and free will - http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 38&t=51729 last post Sun Oct 09, 2016 4:35 pm
Free Will - http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 38&t=50856 last post Tue Mar 29, 2016 1:17 pm
Free Will - http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 23&t=50633 last post Wed Feb 10, 2016 8:55 pm
Free Will. (Split from "She is so proud of being fat") - http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... =2&t=24077
Free will? - http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... =38&t=9788
Free will, the bible and Jesus and stuff - http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... f=2&t=4201

[pErvinalia]

.

[Brian Peacock]

I'm not taking personal responsibility for that.

[laklak]

I wasn't me. It musta been somebody what look like me.

[Rum]

Aside from the usual, and often inconclusive arguments for and against free will, there is a new element I don’t think I’ve seen discussed, and that is the status of the issue in a universe that may well split an almost infinite number of times every second as the quantum fizz generates and branches off an infinite number of times. In such a universe you will have made every choice there is to make on any given subject. In effect whether you have a choice or are free to do so becomes relevant only to the tiny instance of the multiverse your puny one dimensional presence thinks it occupies. In a universe where you have made all available choices the freedom or otherwise to do so becomes irrelevant.

At this juncture I am freely choosing to jump into my flying car and pop out to Joe’s Martian Moondogs for a takeaway.

[PsychoSerenity]

Without free will wherein lies personal responsibility?

That is a really interesting question but whenever I've tried to discuss it in the past it rapidly descends into augments with people insisting that there is free will so therefore there's no point in having the original discussion.

[Brian Peacock]

Without free will wherein lies personal responsibility?

That is a really interesting question but whenever I've tried to discuss it in the past it rapidly descends into augments with people insisting that there is free will so therefore there's no point in having the original discussion.

The best I've done with this is to say that we are responsible by degrees.

[Brian Peacock]

Aside from the usual, and often inconclusive arguments for and against free will, there is a new element I don’t think I’ve seen discussed, and that is the status of the issue in a universe that may well split an almost infinite number of times every second as the quantum fizz generates and branches off an infinite number of times. In such a universe you will have made every choice there is to make on any given subject. In effect whether you have a choice or are free to do so becomes relevant only to the tiny instance of the multiverse your puny one dimensional presence thinks it occupies. In a universe where you have made all available choices the freedom or otherwise to do so becomes irrelevant.

At this juncture I am freely choosing to jump into my flying car and pop out to Joe’s Martian Moondogs for a takeaway.

While, if true, that is an interesting, and perhaps informative notion, perhaps ... yet in an absolute sense we nonetheless experience time as a linear strand, as a singular causal sequence. It matters naught that another version of you is splashing out on a pair of Swedish airline stewardesses off the Tenhausser Gate, the fact is that you are not that person, and you only have your own linear strand of causality to account for.

[DRSB]

We are not a unified entity or mind; I read a book once about the modular brain, how different parts work completely dissociated from one another, this is "how good people do bad things". Also dissociation and adopting different identities, this article tackles this:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018 ... r-identity?
fbclid=IwAR2GCIOnyuq85dHdyiINce10nFwZqd4Fu6g_0oIEPrqecuRa_ve0mq3Elsw