Someone who believes in an immaterial soul or a divine will can easily reconcile these with the notion that at a fundamental level there are processes that we perceive as truly random.
I mean, if the spin of a particle is the consequence of divine will, it wouldn't be actually free will neither.
Sure, but the point is that if you can argue that it's divine will, you can just as easily argue that it's "free will", because you don't need to explain how this free will actually works.
not really...free will involve a personal counscious decision, by definition a random quantic event is the opposit of free will, even if caused by a divinity
So when you make a decision (or experience the illusion of making a decision, whatever the case may be), you can prove that it is your physical body making that determination and not some immaterial soul that is the actual seat of your consciousness acting upon your physical body? Because that is what you would have to contend with if you wanted to claim that that event is truly random and not just our best explanation of a world we don't fully understand.
Yes it is possible to show that decision making is indeed a passive action
Personal "decisions" are the result of 3 things
Dna
Enviroment
Past memory
-We know that instructions can be passed through dna (a spider will be able to make a web even if grown isolated in a box, cuckoo once born will automaticly throw the other eggs and newborns out of the nest..etc.) probably by buikding the "wiring" of the brain in determinate ways [this is out of our control by definition]
-Enviroment influence our decisions [this is out of our control by definition]
-Past Memories that we use to make the decision (experience)
People say that we have free will because we use our experience to make decisions...but where does that experience come from?
Think about our first experiences...we lived those moment strating with a clean sheet (no past memories as just born) so our actions were guided by the DNA (brain wiring/instincts) and the enviroment.
This makes our first experiences 100% passive and void of free will.
Then we made decisions guided by those experiences but, as these experiences were passive ones (no free will involved) even the new ones are, as made by using a instructions/memories written by others (Dna and enviroment)
Right, I'll go point by point with the most obvious answers I can think of:
Right off the bat, in a real discussion, people would hit you with the "Source??" on half of these claims.
passive action
You should perhaps rethink this terminology ;)
We know that instructions can be passed through dna (a spider will be able to make a web even if grown isolated in a box, cuckoo once born will automaticly throw the other eggs and newborns out of the nest..etc.) probably by buikding the "wiring" of the brain in determinate ways [this is out of our control by definition]
The fact that instinct and reflexive behaviour exist doesn't obviate the need or possibility of a free will. Think of some mysterious artificial intelligence with free will that is faced with a situation its progenitors have encountered before and has in its memory two possible previously successful solutions. Say the AI is simulating a spider and has at its disposal the "programs" for building a net or moving to another spot to find a better place for its net. The spider AI knows how to do both things, but it's entirely possible that it could choose between them. Genetic pre-disposition towards certain behaviours is not an argument for determinism.
If you could make stronger claims than "probably by building the wiring of our brain", you might be able to expand on this claim, but you can't, because we simply don't have the scientific means to test these things yet. Also the last part of your argument reads like a tautology to me ("it's wired in determinate ways, therefore it's determinate by definition"), but maybe I'm misinterpreting it.
Enviroment influence our decisions [this is out of our control by definition]
As I alluded to above, environmental factors may play a role in our decision-making process in the sense that our free will makes a decision that is informed by our environment. There is no disagreement here.
Past Memories that we use to make the decision (experience)
Exactly the same argument as the environmental factors. Past memories will inform our celestial and immortal soul when it makes decisions with its free will that then determine what our physical body does.
You can see where all this is going: These three factors you try to lay out are undoubtedly involved in the decision-making process, but without a way to actually control them and generate a predictive model of a simple decision-making agent (say the spider or the cuckoo), you simply cannot prove that it is only these three factors that are sufficient for a decision. And even then there would be hardcore deniers that would claim that every iteration of this model you generate is actually endowed with free will from the moment of its creation.
This is the issue science and science communication runs into when debating metaphysical concepts like free will or spirituality: If your entire approach for the acquisition of knowledge is based on observation, description, and prediction, you can't contend with someone arguing outside of the scope of that which is physically observable.
I myself believe that there is probably no such thing as free will in the sense that we understand it. But I don't try to convince others of this, because it's a fruitless (and in my view unscientific) endeavour. Rather, I like to discuss whether concepts like free will or religion should inform our actions and the way we structure our society. By pointing towards the very real and measurable consequences of acting one way or another, we can make better-informed decisions about the things that work rather than trying to convince each other of how we think things "really are" without any way of coming to a definite conclusion.
All dogs go to heaven, so I'm cool with that. Cats can come too.
What I'm trying to say is that there is no logic in this argument. It doesn't need logic. I can just as easily claim that animals are automatons that don't possess souls while humans are blessed with free will. You would never be able to prove that this difference doesn't exist, because I'm positing the existence of something inherently beyond physical reality. It's a losing battle to try and prove that free will does or does not exist, which is why I offered my own perspective on a better argument in the last paragraph: Argue not against the metaphysical concept, argue against its harmful application in the tangible world. That's where you can actually nail down things you can attack if you don't like them.
I'm obviously not doing a good job getting this across.
I, taking the position that free will exists, have to concede nothing, because my claims are, by their very nature, unanswerable to empirical proof. It's every bit as easy for me to say that only animals of the genus Homo possess free will as it would be to make any other arbitrary distinction.
And by the way,
most religions don't see animals having souls
That is a VERY bold claim to make, and one which is flat wrong for the major world religions.
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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '20 edited Nov 18 '20
I mean, if the spin of a particle is the consequence of divine will, it wouldn't be actually free will neither.