On 26 Jun 2017, at 09:08, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Mon, 26 Jun 2017 at 2:42 pm, Adrian Chira <[email protected]>
wrote:
A discussion of what contributed to free-will denial: Is Free Will
an Illusion? Part 1 - The Origins of Free-Will Denial.
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I await Part 2. My response to Part 1:
The claim that free will does not exist is not due to materialism,
reductionism, scientism, logical positivism or determinism. It is
due to the fact that, as commonly conceived, "free will" is a
logically impossible concept, like "square circle" or "married
bachelor". Even an omnipotent God could not make free will exist.
Inconsistent theories of free-will are inconsistent. I agree, but that
does not say much.
Yet, I think free-will is a key concept in the development of high
level competence. It appears when consciousness is reflexive enough to
become conscience and ponder on the consequence of its and other
actions, with permit to have an idea of partial responsibility, or of
the lack of it. It emerges from the "real/accurate" feeling that we
cannot predict our acts completely, and is independent of tha fact
that some super-alien creature might be able to determine my acts
(from outside and without interfering with me).
You need free-will to smoke the first cigarette, and you need free-
will to smoke the last one, (in case you want it), or to continue.
Free-will is partial self-determination. It is indeed, like Adrian
Chira wrote, an ability to do what you want, modulo what is possible.
It can make the parents nervous, as the kids will try to explore the
limit of their free-will/freedom, which is on the frontier between
liberty and security.
Orwell gave my favorite definition of freedom: the right to say 2+2+4.
Free will, similarly, in the same vein, would be the ability to follow
laws, but like in a game of Chess or Go, it is the complexity
constraints and the goal which gives a role to consciousness,
conscience and free-will. That is used in a game and in life, for the
best and/or the worst.
The idea that free will needs randomness does not make sense, no more
that it would need magic or ether/stuff.
The position that free-will makes sense in a deterministic context is
named compatibilism, and seems to me rather widespread.
There is a danger, I think, in claiming that free-will does not exist,
because it can lead people to fatalism, including in front of their
own negative pulsion, leading in more sufferings.
Free-will might not exist in God eyes, but God see that each 1p, if a
bit complex, is confronted to free will, bad conscience and many
things like that, and that it can make relative sense (even badly
exploited, because that *is* complex, and like all weapon against
suffering can become itself a torture tool).
I think that if free will did not exist, pain and pleasure would not
exist. But, that is a current intuition (not yet a theorem of
arithmetic!).
Bruno
--
Stathis Papaioannou
--
Stathis Papaioannou
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