suffering and bikes

Originally posted by knightmeister
Compatabilism just doesn't offer these choices in a real and meaningful way --------------------KM

Well, you'll have to excuse me if I don't take you seriously when you say such things. You've repeatedly shown an inability to support such statements.-----------------------Lemon---------------------

The only support this needs is basic simple log ...[text shortened]... can be provided by it. Compatabilism can provide the illusion of freedom but that's all.

This must set some sort of record for the number of question-begging assertions in one post.

Originally posted by knightmeister
Compatabilism just doesn't offer these choices in a real and meaningful way --------------------KM

Well, you'll have to excuse me if I don't take you seriously when you say such things. You've repeatedly shown an inability to support such statements.-----------------------Lemon---------------------

The only support this needs is basic simple log ...[text shortened]... can be provided by it. Compatabilism can provide the illusion of freedom but that's all.

Whether or not “free will” exists is subjective because it all depends on whether or not you except that “free will” can be correctly defined as “conscious self-determination” where you consciously choose what to think and do and that choice is determined by yourself but it is a determined choice because it is purely determined by the state of your brain a moment before you made that choice. It is not correct or incorrect to define “free will” as “conscious self-determination” for it just depends exactly on what you personally mean by “free will”.

If you define “free will” as “conscious self-determination” then what you refer to as “free will” exists -no problem; although this would mean any “choices” you make are ultimately predetermined, as long as you define those “choices” as real choices, despite, at the same time, being fully aware that those choices are predetermined choices which would mean you would have no ultimate control over what choices you would arrive at, then there is no logical contradiction.

But if you define “free will” as something more than merely “conscious self-determination” then what you refer to as “free will” logically cannot exists! That is because if “free will” something more than merely “conscious self-determination” then that would have to mean that “free will” would give you the ability to make a choice that wasn’t predetermined by the state of your brain or anything else. But if that choice wasn’t predetermined even by yourself then the only other alternative to that is that that choice could only have been generated randomly by some kind of true probability -in other words, that choice was generated by random chance. But if it was generated by random chance then, by definition of random chance, you couldn’t have had any control over it. Thus it wouldn’t be “free will” by any stretch of the imagination because not only you would have no ultimate control over what choices you would arrive at but it wouldn’t even be your consciousness that is determining those choices -it would be chance that is determining those choices.

Of course, this doesn’t exclude the possibility of your choice being partly determined by yourself and partly generated by random chance. But that would simply mean that if you exclude the deterministic part of what caused you to make that choice, all that would be left would be the part that was caused randomly and, by definition of random, you would have no control over its outcome.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
Whether or not “free will” exists is subjective because it all depends on whether or not you except that “free will” can be correctly defined as “conscious self-determination” where you consciously choose what to think and do and that choice is determined by yourself but it is a determined choice because it is purely determined by the state of your b ...[text shortened]... at was caused randomly and, by definition of random, you would have no control over its outcome.

as long as you define those “choices” as real choices, despite, at the same time, being fully aware that those choices are predetermined choices which would mean you would have no ultimate control over what choices you would arrive at, then there is no logical contradiction.
--------------------------------hamilton---------------------------

So as long as you "define" it as a real choice then it IS a real choice even though it's not actually a choice but a pre-determined action?? How does simply "defining" it as a choice make it a choice?

I'm darn sure that if I "defined" suffering as compeletely compatable with a loving God and then said that the contradiction "went away" because of this you would have me for breakfast!!!

You complicate too much. It's a basic fudge. Either the control we have over our choices is a complete illusion and not actually real ( compatabilism) or the control we have over our choices actually exists and is not illusionary (real free will) . Which is it in reality (not by definition)

You cannot say that our conscious choices are illusionary because they are pre-determined but THEN say that because you "define" them as real choices then they become so. What you define something as makes no difference to the actual reality of the thing. A choice is a choice between two options. In compatabilism this "choice" is an illusion , no amount of "defining" can change that.

I hereby declare that God is real because I define him as real. Problem solved ....duh??? NOT!!