Originally posted by wildgrass
You already pinned me down 4 pages ago about my belief in free will, and I agreed with Rudy Carnap.

I can't find the exact post, but if I recall correctly, the definition you gave does not, in any way, rule out determinism. So you either didn't understand it, or you are contradicting yourself.

Did I say determinism rendered false anything that is measurable?
Yes.

I said that it rendered free will false, and since empirical evidence suggests free will exists, then there's something wrong with determinism.
So basically yes.
Seriously. Take a course or two on basic logic.

In other words, philosophers agree with me that determinism is useless drivel.
Your reading comprehension is as bad as your logic.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I can't find the exact post, but if I recall correctly, the definition you gave does not, in any way, rule out determinism. So you either didn't understand it, or you are contradicting yourself.

What is the relevance of this statement? I've called it useless, pointless drivel, but it doesn't seem like you are comprehending what I am saying about it.

Originally posted by wildgrass
What is the relevance of this statement?

You would know if you paid attention.

I've called it useless, pointless drivel, but it doesn't seem like you are comprehending what I am saying about it.
You have lost track of what is a reply to what.

You have claimed that free will is incompatible with determinism, but simultaneously support a definition of 'free will' that is not incompatible with determinism.

If you are calling your own posts 'pointless drivel' them maybe you are making some sense at last.

Originally posted by humy
for all purely practical purposes, at least for now correct!
But it does have one great use; to satisfy people (us) who get kicks from endlessly arguing the toss over something that doesn't matter.

It can't be random, since only one of those two events occurred.

Here you are making the logical error of equivocation; in this case, equivocatin ...[text shortened]... r previous assertion of equivocation that is in error, your latter assertion not being in error.

Yes! I agree. So happy we finally agree. Thanks for the post.

Confusingly, however, twhitehead answered "not true" to the exact same statement.

Originally posted by wildgrass

Confusingly, however, twhitehead answered "not true" to the exact same statement.

not confusing at all; he was thinking in the context of a possible future where we might prove determinism correct hence his words "..one day..." while I was thinking only in the context of the present (and determinism isn't proven in the present) which is why I qualified my statement with "...at least for now...". So there is no contradiction between what he said and what I said because we were speaking in different contexts (specifically, context of tense). The concept of determinism is of not practical use in the present but might be in some future time.

Originally posted by wildgrass
Confusingly, however, twhitehead answered "not true" to the exact same statement.

Declaring a concept 'worthless' just because you cannot find an answer to the question is just plain intellectual laziness. Determinism and the concepts around it have occupied philosophers for a very long time for a very good reason. It is a fundamental question with far reaching consequences. And as one extreme of a continuum, it is hardly 'useless' even if proven not to be the case. In programming there is the question of purely functional programs that are deterministic in nature making them very reliable, but generally unusable for most use cases. But it is not dismissed a 'useless' just because it cannot be achieved, but rather studied as a useful concept that may yet have an impact on other methodologies.

Originally posted by twhitehead
In programming there is the question of purely functional programs that are deterministic in nature making them very reliable, but generally unusable for most use cases.

"generally unusable for most use cases" ? In what sense?

Originally posted by humy
"generally unusable for most use cases" ? In what sense?

The vast majority of computer programs require interaction with the environment and cannot be purely functional.

Originally posted by humy
not confusing at all; he was thinking in the context of a possible future where we might prove determinism correct hence his words "..one day..." while I was thinking only in the context of the present (and determinism isn't proven in the present) which is why I qualified my statement with "...at least for now...". So there is no contradiction between what he s ...[text shortened]... concept of determinism is of not practical use in the present but might be in some future time.

I didn't say contradictory, just confusing. It is confusing since the argument "Correct at least for now, but maybe not in the future..." isn't the same as "Not true". If I point to someone sitting on a bench and claim "That person is not riding a horse", the a reply of "Correct, but maybe later he will be..." would be clear but "Not true. In a future scenario one day he might want to ride a horse" is confusing. There are lots of possible future scenarios.

The validity of determinism isn't a hypothesis or a question. It is not rooted in some prior observations with a right/wrong answer. I don't want my wagon hitched to a vague doctrine without a foundation in empirical evidence to build from. I am not alone in this, as philosophers Carnap and Kaplan seem to agree. It's very unscientific, in my view.

What would a proof of determinism look like in your view? In light of the scenario I brought up earlier in which "There are processes which can equally well be analyzed as deterministic systems of classical mechanics or as indeterministic semi-Markov processes, no matter how many observations are made...” how would this ever be decided?

I will retract a bit, and say that calling determinism useless, pointless drivel is too far fetched, because I think the Carnap's of the world understood the historical context of the terms in philosophy, and their use in building other, better concepts. It seems like both you and twhitehead are using words like "not practical" and "generally unusable" which isn't too far off from "useless". If we're agreeing that it's not practical, now all I have to do is convince you that free will is a useful scientific concept worth studying. What would that take?

Originally posted by wildgrass
I didn't say contradictory, just confusing. It is confusing since the argument "Correct at least for now, but maybe not in the future..." isn't the same as "Not true". If I point to someone sitting on a bench and claim "That person is not riding a horse", the a reply of "Correct, but maybe later he will be..." would be clear but "Not true. In a future scen ...[text shortened]... convince you that free will is a useful scientific concept worth studying. What would that take?

The validity of determinism isn't a hypothesis

You are equivocating yet again; The validity of a hypothesis is NOT the hypothesis. Determinism is a hypothesis that can be true or false.
The validly of the hypothesis that there are aliens is just fine for it is non-contradictory and possible; so there must aliens? No!
The validly of determinism is just fine for it is non-contradictory and possible; so determinism must be true? No!

What would a proof of determinism look like in your view?

observable evidence of causes of otherwise specific apparently random quantum outcomes being what they are thus proof they aren't truly random but merely pseudo random.
This proof hasn't happened yet but might happen in the future; don't know why you have a problem with that.

now all I have to do is convince you that free will is a useful scientific concept worth studying. What would that take?

simple; for the first time in your life, define free will in a non-vague and non-self-contradictory way with that definition being such that most people can agree this is what they can exactly mean by it.
Else what you have there is pseudo-scientific gibberish. Unless its a study of madness, it is NEVER worth a scientific study of a gibberish concept.

Originally posted by wildgrass
I don't want my wagon hitched to a vague doctrine without a foundation in empirical evidence to build from.

Nobody here has suggested that the universe is fully deterministic. And nobody here has asked you to 'hitch your wagon' to an unproved doctrine. That is religion not science. But hypotheses are the stuff of science and if you can't live with something unproven being considered then you shouldn't be any where near science. I fully accept that one can go a bit to far with an unproven hypothesis. String theory for example. But to call String Theory 'useless pointless drivel' is also going way too far.

I am not alone in this, as philosophers Carnap and Kaplan seem to agree. It's very unscientific, in my view.
Wrong. Unscientific would be to take determinism as fact. Nobody here does.

It seems like both you and twhitehead are using words like "not practical" and "generally unusable" which isn't too far off from "useless".
Actually I used the phrase 'generally unusable in a paragraph explaining just how useful something was. Way to fail to read!

If we're agreeing that it's not practical, now all I have to do is convince you that free will is a useful scientific concept worth studying. What would that take?
A clear definition of 'free will' that isn't incoherent and has some relevance to science. Right now, you can't seem to make up your mind whether or not your definition is compatible with determinism. If it isn't compatible, then there is an obvious problem because we are back in 'unprovable' territory. I wouldn't call such a definition 'useless meaningless drivel'. I reserve that for incoherent definitions.

Originally posted by humy
Unless its a study of madness

Now we're getting some where!!! Madness a.k.a mental illness.... a.k.a. loss of free will?

"... mental disorders as conditions that compromise free will and reduce moral responsibility...the rationale for the assessment of criminal responsibility is often explained by referring to the fact that mental disorders can compromise free will."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20931360

Originally posted by humy
[quote]simple; for the first time in your life, define free will in a non-vague and non-self-contradictory way with that definition being such that most people can agree this is what they can exactly mean by it

We've been over this repeatedly. I was trying to explain it in biological terms based on the basic science literature I had read on the subject, and then some computer conversation sidetracked us. Did you see the NY Mag piece I posted earlier? [1] They discuss two recent studies on free will in neuroscience, defining it as the ability to make decisions [1]. Please point out the part of this article that is pseudoscience.

It was initially confounding that you were explaining on the first page of this thread why free will cannot exist, when a basic definition of free will as "the ability to make decisions" or the "the ability to choose" seemed to be a useful, pragmatic working definition that scientists were using to study the subject. Others refer to it more scientifically as "the consequence of a decision process" but this essentially boils down to the same definition [2]. I have defined it this way throughout the thread until I was forced to read philosophy and look up Rudy Carnap, a legit philosopher, who had this to say [3]. I agree with him.

Free will isn't vague. Determinism, however, is vague pseudoscience.

[1] http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/02/a-neuroscience-finding-on-free-will.html
[2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136466131500279X
[3] https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/33431/rudolf-carnaps-opinion-about-free-will

Originally posted by wildgrass
Now we're getting some where!!! Madness a.k.a mental illness.... a.k.a. loss of free will?

unambiguously define what you actually mean by 'free will' else the question is meaningless and unanswerable.
Saying you mean "the ability to make decisions" is not what you actually mean because computers can sometimes make decisions and you say computers don't have 'free will'; contradiction!

Originally posted by wildgrass
. a basic definition of free will as "the ability to make decisions"

I can (and, being an AI expert, actually have done) program a computer to make decisions and even, if you want this, occasionally in a totally unpredictable way that not even me the programmer can predict from the program (by, for example, programming it to respond at least in part to random quantum noise from a sensor which nobody can predict) so that whenever it is faced with two choices that according to its criteria are equally 'good' (this situation can happen often) it makes a random choice between them (else it just chooses the 'best' choice). So why doesn't it have 'free will' according to that definition?