| >Pure semantics. You can replace "choice" with "the action that occurs" in the context of my point. When we talk about "free will" it's all in the semantics. The term must have a specific meaning -- else we're discussing in vain. The action that occurs is either a: 1) a conscious choice (i.e. free will) or: 2) a predetermined / random action (i.e. no free will) In either case, (2) is beyond the subject's control, and that's not a merely nominal or semantic difference, it's a very real difference. In fact, it's exactly what we're debating. >> If free will doesn't exist, then evidence and argumentation doesn't matter -- as those are not the causes that shape our beliefs. > I genuinely don't see why not. Probably because I didn't clarified that. I use "shape our beliefs" in the meaning that we would use the term everyday: that they enter our minds, we judge them and consider them, and through this we are influenced by them in our beliefs. They could still "shape our beliefs" in the sense that kicking a ball will make it move. But not in any way in which our conscious self participates in that shaping. More like a trauma would "shape" our beliefs. >I think I'm starting to understand your perspective. It's like you're so entrenched in a belief that free will exists that you're clinging very tightly to definitions of words/concepts that somehow presuppose the existence of free will. Not really. I'm actually pointing the consequences of free will not existing. I don't believe it exists except in a very specific way myself, which is in accordance with a deterministic universe (to sum, that our free will is exactly the inevitable choice we make because we are who we are -- i.e. directly the sum product of our prior space-time history -- and that it's both free -- as in uniquely expressing our self -- and inevitable). >For example you seem determined that the external state of the world cannot alter our internal narratives unless we have the "free will" to make that alteration ourselves. I gave the example in another comment on this post about a person being surgically altered to not have free will, which is the different side of the same coin. The actions of that person would indeed be controlled by the outside world (e.g. the surgeon). But without free will, in other words, without an agent, there are no "internal narratives". What remains would be an internal "program" -- like the bots in your example. But a program is not a narrative in the sense of an agent consciously talking to itself. |
> Per definition, if free will doesn't exist, then you can't say that "the illusion of the free will influences our lives more and in multiple ways."
By teasing apart your arguments, I now realise that you have bundled up the word "influence" into a package of meaning. You're presupposing "influence" to mean an agent consciously - and with free will - modifying their belief based on the environment. Same as what you mean by "shape our beliefs" just now. But I doubt OP was using the word "influence" that strongly; I think they were allowing for us to be machines without the free will necessary to "shape" their own beliefs. Therefore their point stands without the "endless loop".