[ajuc]

> But we're discussing whether free will exists

No, we were discussing whether the argument in the article was circular. It's not circular, because your assertion that influence requires free will is wrong.

> If the universe is deterministic you don't cause or influence anything. Those things would have happened anyway.

No, they wouldn't. Deterministic universe is like a compiler. You give it source code and it produces output. Given different source code (such that you aren't born) the output is different.

> But you can not be said to influence something to happen, because that requires that not influencing it was also a possibility.

No it doesn't. It's not in the definition you provided.

> Society stops looking for a root cause when it hits a person not as an "arbitrary convention", but because it does believe in free will.

Yes, and it's arbitrary, because we don't know if that assumption is true (and I might add it's very unlikely to be true - even if universe is nondeterministic. The rules of physics still work in our heads just as well as elsewhere).

[coldtea]

>No, we were discussing whether the argument in the article was circular.

Actually, on this subthread we were discussing whether the argument of the grandparent ( dziungles) was circular. That's what I called circular and started the circularity discussion -- not something in the article.

>No, they wouldn't. Deterministic universe is like a compiler. You give it source code and it produces output. Given different source code (such that you aren't born) the output is different.

That's not an option in a deterministic universe. Everything you've described, like the ability to give a compiler different source code, depends on non determinism.

In a non-deterministic universe there's only one source code that is given to the compiler, and it's predetermined at the first of the universe's deterministic causal chain. That's the whole point, or the very definition of the universe being deterministic: that it cannot change course.

>Yes, and it's arbitrary, because we don't know if that assumption is true

We haven't proved it, but we do believe it to be true. And that's not arbitrary (it's based on people's inherent experience of free will). It might be illusory, but not arbitrary.

[ajuc]

The source code is "given" from outside of universe. It's the initial conditions during big bang + the rules of physics.

It was you who started the hypothetical "Those things would have happened anyway". That's obviously false - the laws of physics work, so if something was changed in the initial conditions - then results would be different.

It doesn't matter that you can't change the initial conditions from inside the simulation, the code of the simulation still has "if this then that", so "this" influences "that".

> And that's not arbitrary

Ok, then illusory. In any case it's not justified (and in fact you using this make the same mistake you accused dziungles of doing - assuming free will and using it in an argument about free will).

> we do believe it to be true

"You" not "we" :) Free will doesn't fit an universe described by laws of physics (no matter if deterministic or not). Even if universe is nondeterministic it just means sometimes it throws dices to decide if neuron fires or not.

Calling that "free will", is like calling a Geiger counter beeps decisions" :) The fact that they are (probably) random doesn't mean there's some magical entity choosing which result it gives.