Lack of free will as an objective disproof of Mormonism

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Whatever it is that you think is controlling you, decide that it's part of you. Now you're free.

Or you have the illusion of having made that choice. Like, you can think that you chose to write that above, but there were a million neurochemical processes that kicked in prior to you hitting enter on your keyboard. Each one was an auto response to some mandate that came before it, all of it being kicked off by the stimulus of having read words that were input into your visual system. Just as a Trachelius ciliate



responds to its environment, a human being isn’t really any different; our complexity gives us reason to believe we’re in control, but we’re just a cosmopolitan community of microorganisms acting in concert with one another based off an evolutionary advantage of doing so.

Just because we can’t put our finger on our conscious emergence, doesn’t mean that we have free will any more than any of of the microscopic systems working with one another to eventual produce a response to outside stimulus. In other words, ignorance of our conscience doesn’t open the door to design or to a magical effect that produces free will. Perhaps complexity arises out of layered systems, but choice? I don’t know. It seems to me it’s a continual cascading effect of cause and effect.

For example, I’m not choosing to make my tummy growl right now. I’m not choosing the signals being sent by my gut biome asking for certain nutrients. I’m barely ‘conscious’ of the images running through my mind of various food options. What makes my eventual choice of food my choice? How do I know that the same subconscious or subliminal machinations that kicked off my hunger pangs aren’t the same one that settled on a type of food depending on the environment I find myself? If I stay home the foods that are available are whole foods. If I go out, all sorts of garbage is available. If I decide not to eat whole foods at home, and instead go and buy a donut, how do I know it wasn’t a series of cascading signals sent by my body to move itself toward quick carbs and fat? I don’t, really. The enteric nervous system, our “second brain”, could be behind a lot of behaviors not fully understood by our grey matter.

Or. Consciousness arises out of complexity, and at some point humans have, in fact, developed an independent state apart form our bodies where an ethereal reality exists, and we control our destiny independent of outside stimuli and internal processes.

I mean, I don’t like the idea of being an automaton and I definitely don’t like removing personal responsibility away from the individual, so it’s not like I’m an ardent believer of being the sum of automated processes, but when you think things through. Like really think them through, I just don’t know where encoded activity stops and non-encoded behavior could start.

- Doc

[huckelberry]

If a person had freewill what would it be that would cause them to choose differently than all the causes in time that people see as preventing free will. If freewill is a choice completely uncaused would it not then be random. I imagine living my life by random decisions would be the least free life I can imagine.

[dastardly stem]

Whatever it is that you think is controlling you, decide that it's part of you. Now you're free.

I do think we get stuck in conversing about it because everyone conceives of free will differently. Even if we try to define whatever it is, no one seems to agree. Determinists speak as if everyone's making choices on their own volition. The issue for them is not that people don't get to choose. its that their choice is a result or consequence of everything that came before. In that sense we're each just a conglomeration of inputs mixed with whatever biology may play a factor in us. That just means any choice an individual makes is inevitable. Once a similar choice comes up and the individual decides differently they do so because of the previous inputs. But in a sense people are talking past each other. One concern in the conversation about this is compatibilism is simply determinism but changing the meaning of free will to make it seem like there is no contradiction. But at that point, it feels like the conversation ends. its a whole bunch of talking about different things.

[drumdude]

If a person had freewill what would it be that would cause them to choose differently than all the causes in time that people see as preventing free will. If freewill is a choice completely uncaused would it not then be random. I imagine living my life by random decisions would be the least free life I can imagine.

I suppose it would seem random to the material being, but it wouldn’t be random to the independent supernatural soul which is actually calling the shots.

But then we have the same question about free will in the supernatural realm. I guess that realm would need to be free of the limitations of cause and effect.

[Physics Guy]

I agree that arguments about free will are often people talking past each other, but I don't think compatibilists like me are simply making anything "seem" like anything. I think it's that non-compatibilists are simply not thinking through their own positions.

Suppose you somehow really are every bit as free as you would have to be for it to count to you as being free, however that is. Are there not still some things that would never be different in you, as long as you were still you? Isn't there some fundamental set of wishes or principles or preferences that define who you fundamentally are and that could never change while you are still you and not some other person? Those definitional wishes don't have to be simple rules; they can be complicated functions that take into account a lot of possible circumstances. You don't have to be aware of them consciously, either. If they don't exist at all, though, then what are or who are you, anyway?

If being yourself, rather than anyone else, implies anything about your actions or wishes, then even though you are free, there are things that you cannot want to do, because you just are not the person who could ever want that.

From this I conclude that, regardless of whether or not people have immaterial souls or are part of the physical universe, and regardless of whether or not the physical universe is deterministic, in any case absolute freedom is still perfectly compatible—even necessarily must be compatible—with fixed limitations on what people can want, how people can feel, and what people can do. Character is destiny. If you don't have a character that defines you, then what are you, after all, anyway?

[Physics Guy]

Once I'm happy with determinism, and accept that being free means being determined only by my own most essential character, then it seems easy enough to accept materialism and physical determinism. If my essential bits are set, anyway, to define who I am, then it doesn't matter much what hardware it is that stores those set bits.

In principle my essential character bits could have been stored in an immaterial soul flitting around in the astral plane, returning function calls from my brain through a silver cord. Or those bits that define who I am could be stored in a bunch of subtle correlations among zillions of particles in the initial conditions of the physical universe, affecting my brain through physical causation. What difference would it make to how free I was?

[dastardly stem]

I’ll leave Sabine Hossenfelder’s shortish video for anyone’s thoughts. I think she explains my take fairly well.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zpU_e3jh_FY

[huckelberry]

If our brains are just a set determined cause and effect stream how is it that people think of, invent, new things?
.

[huckelberry]

If a person had freewill what would it be that would cause them to choose differently than all the causes in time that people see as preventing free will. If freewill is a choice completely uncaused would it not then be random. I imagine living my life by random decisions would be the least free life I can imagine.

I suppose it would seem random to the material being, but it wouldn’t be random to the independent supernatural soul which is actually calling the shots.

But then we have the same question about free will in the supernatural realm. I guess that realm would need to be free of the limitations of cause and effect.

durmdude, I think a realm free of cause and effect would be utter chaos. It would be so meaningless that we would be unable to perceive anything or do anything.

I think it only makes sense to value the cause and effect patterns that make our thought and decisions possible.

[Rivendale]

I’ll leave Sabine Hossenfelder’s shortish video for anyone’s thoughts. I think she explains my take fairly well.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zpU_e3jh_FY

Great video and such a fatal blow for the Kalam. For some strange reason I never made the connection between randomness and uncaused events.