Determinism and free will

[jinminn]

Interesting discussion. Though I’m leaning heavily toward a materialist understanding, I disagree with the OP in that I do not find that this forces one into understanding our human state as ‘just’ anything. Matter and energy being all the comprises the universe does not mean that ‘all we are’ is automatons, predestined, or otherwise.

Part of this comes from asking the question in a self-answering manner: ‘if all we are is matter and matter behaves predictably, how do we have free will?’

However, even if one were to think of our minds as mere transistors (with either a 0 or 1 state), contemplate flipping a coin (0 or 1 state) 10 million times. Then do this 10 million times. Then ask:

• Would any set be identical? (almost certainly not)
• Would one have been able to predict any set even though one had very good knowledge about the way coin tosses work? (almost certainly not)
• Could any set have been different than it turned out? (odd question… does a tree falling in a forest when no one is around…)

The last question is similar to the OP question… do we have free will? When asked as if standing at the end result of all or our life’s choices and asking if it could have been different… probably not. However, does this mean that we did not actually have freedom throughout… I don’t think this is a necessary conclusion. Think of the coin: we understand it’s behavior and still would not have predictive power over its outcomes.

Regarding evidence for duality or lack thereof, I would say two things:

• Just because Aquinas or Plato hypothesized some type of substance which acted immaterially upon material does not mean that this is the case. Responses which ultimately reduce to either ‘because I said so’ or ‘because the Church/this theologian said so’ are non-answers. We have no evidence-based reasons to suppose that something other than matter exists in other realms… why jump there for humans?
• Regarding a tangible case for monism, check HEREj.

When hypothesizing something that cannot be tested or seen, it typically is on the one suggesting it to give good reasons to believe in its existence. This is even more the case given that neuroscience has begun to show that action upon the physical brain produces extremely strong effects on thought processes, speech, recognition of loved ones, political and religious beliefs, etc.

If having a ‘soul’/‘mind’ looks exactly as if there isn’t one… why suppose one does exists?

 

[wanstronian]

The reasons he mentioned are, presumptuous, incomplete and invalid.

The reasons are totally valid and true. The inference one draws is one’s own business. My inference was clear. I did not state it as a fact, merely my belief. Stating belief as fact is the theist’s remit.

You’ll be right if you can prove the mind is a material thing.

Typical dumb theist response - claiming that I must prove a negative, rather than realising that the theist must prove their positive claim.

Care to post some of it? ANY of it?

Would you buy and read the books I list? ANY of them? I suspect not. However, there have been plenty of documented cases where damage to the brain causes damage to the personality and behaviour of individuals. Where that damage can be reversed, the behaviour is generally reversed. Without any dualistic presuppositions, the logical conclusion is that the brain is the source of the mind.

Check out Ramachandran et al “Phantoms in the Brain”, and Ken Heilman “Matter of Mind.”

He didn’t make a case for free will. He questioned whether it’s a valid concept. Neither of you has proven a thing.

Nor have I attempted to. I’ve just expressed an opinion. Your inability to read what is written is not my problem.

If there’s no free will, you’re a robot. Is that what you believe?

Well, your first statement is a typically narrow-minded and innacurate assertion demonstrating your inability to grasp the concept; which renders your question moot.

However, since you’re so convinced of your views, how about you prove that free will exists?

 

[Ferde_Rombola]

If having a ‘soul’/‘mind’ looks exactly as if there isn’t one… why suppose one does exists?

Because we have the evidence, of our minds, at least. Our emotions are not manifest in our bodies; they are not comprised of matter, yet we know they exist, even though all we se of them is the result. Since they exist, they must have a point of origin, which is our mind. The soul is another story.

 

[wanstronian]

Because we have the evidence, of our minds, at least. Our emotions are not manifest in our bodies; they are not comprised of matter,

Your supporting evidence for this assertion is…?

 

[jinminn]

Because we have the evidence, of our minds, at least. Our emotions are not manifest in our bodies; they are not comprised of matter, yet we know they exist, even though all we se of them is the result. Since they exist, they must have a point of origin, which is our mind. The soul is another story.

Re. the mind: did you check the link I posted above? Though thoughts occur, I do not see why this results in the conclusion that something intangible exists. We track thoughts via monitoring electrical impulses in the brain and can even track what type of thoughts because neurology has been able to determine what types of thoughts occur in what parts of the brain.

Re. the soul: you still have not presented what it does or why we need to suspect it exists.

Humans are famously known for attempting to find meanings in causes and being completely unsettled if none can be found… even to the point of suggesting completely unfounded assertions in order to provide some answer rather than no answer.

Anyway, do you get the impact of the fact that brain injuries produce very specific results on the ‘thoughts’, ‘emotions’, and even ‘personality’ of the individual? Though I need to say: ‘I do not know exactly how thoughts originate’, I am very able to say, ‘there is good evidence that these thoughts are directly comprised of activities in a physical brain’ based on the evidence I have found out about.

Back to my ending statement: if it looks like physical impacts on the brain produce direct, repeatable, and measurable impacts on the ‘intangibles’ typically ascribed to the mind/soul… why think that this mind exists?

 

[Ferde_Rombola]

Re. the mind: did you check the link I posted above? Though thoughts occur, I do not see why this results in the conclusion that something intangible exists. We track thoughts via monitoring electrical impulses in the brain and can even track what type of thoughts because neurology has been able to determine what types of thoughts occur in what parts of the brain.

I did glance at your link. It’s the work of an athiest. Athiests make presumptions as do believers. Believers cannot support factually what they believe by faith and neither can athiests, so your link does nothing to further our discussion.

Electrical impulses in the brain are generated by thoughts, not the other way around. Science can identify the emotion causing the impulse, but cannot distinguish one from another. Euphoria can be identified, but we cannot say whether it comes from “What a beautiful day!”; “What a beautiful sonata!” or “What a beautiful child!”

Medical examiners dissect cadavers to isolate parts of the body for study. They separate the part they’re interested in, submerge it in formaldehyde to preserve it and eventually cut off some tissue to examine under a microscope. Have you ever heard of a medical examiner separating a mind from a brain, placing it in formaldehyde and examining a piece of it under a microscope? Do you think it’s possible to do that?

Re. the soul: you still have not presented what it does or why we need to suspect it exists.

I think I acknowledged as much. Belief in a soul is based on faith. Belief there is no such thing as a soul is similarly based on faith. Or ‘no faith’ if you prefer.

Humans are famously known for attempting to find meanings in causes and being completely unsettled if none can be found… even to the point of suggesting completely unfounded assertions in order to provide some answer rather than no answer.

It’s in the nature of man. Believers and athiests are both specialists in that area.

Anyway, do you get the impact of the fact that brain injuries produce very specific results on the ‘thoughts’, ‘emotions’, and even ‘personality’ of the individual?

Of course. In exactly the same way physical damage to a computer impedes the computer’s ablity to operate the programs stored in it. I don’t see how this fact is involved in the discussion.

Though I need to say: ‘I do not know exactly how thoughts originate’, I am very able to say, ‘there is good evidence that these thoughts are directly comprised of activities in a physical brain’ based on the evidence I have found out about.

I say you have no evidence that thoughts are comprised of activities in the brain. I say you have evidence that thoughts are the cause of activities in the brain.

Back to my ending statement: if it looks like physical impacts on the brain produce direct, repeatable, and measurable impacts on the ‘intangibles’ typically ascribed to the mind/soul… why think that this mind exists?

My response is the same. You have it backwards.

 

[R_Daneel]

Electrical impulses in the brain are generated by thoughts, not the other way around.

What an “insight”! Next time you will assert that not the muscles in the legs produce the (immaterial) walking, but it is the other way 'round, the walking “makes” the leg’s muscles contract and expand… Absolutely hilarious! How lucky we are to read such entertainment… Comedy Central, eat your heart out!

 

[Ferde_Rombola]

What an “insight”! Next time you will assert that not the muscles in the legs produce the (immaterial) walking, but it is the other way 'round, the walking “makes” the leg’s muscles contract and expand…

Your snide sarcasm might have some bite to it if it were accompanied by intelligence, but, alas, it isn’t. It’s just snide sarcasm.

The obvious implication of your electrical impulse is, it was not generated by anything I said, but by random bursts of energy in your brain which produced thoughts which miraculously coincide with what I said. Remarkable.

Your leg/muscles analogy is similarly lacking in intelligence. You have joined an action to a similar action. Leg muscles are not analogous to thought. What you want to say is, the muscles in your legs inspire you to walk and, in moving your legs, miraculously take you where you want to go. Your electrical impulses are remarkable. TRULY remarkable.

Absolutely hilarious! How lucky we are to read such entertainment… Comedy Central, eat your heart out!

I quite agree you’re hilarious, but I wouldn’t call it comedy.

 

[R_Daneel]

Leg muscles are not analogous to thought.

You don’t even understand the analogy. Leg muscles are analogous to the neuron firings. Walking is the analogy of thoughts… Just like it is ridiculous to say that thoughts cause the neuron firings, it would be equally ridiculous to say that the walking causes the leg muscles to work. Better luck next time…

 

[rvilbig]

You don’t even understand the analogy. Leg muscles are analogous to the neuron firings. Walking is the analogy of thoughts… Just like it is ridiculous to say that thoughts cause the neuron firings, it would be equally ridiculous to say that the walking causes the leg muscles to work. Better luck next time…

I’m re-posting part of an entry here, but let it be clear that it is entirely reasonable to say that thoughts can cause neurons to fire. The very concept of voluntary and involuntary muscles suggests that willful thoughts produce action potentials in distinct classes of neurons, which thereby initiate muscle contractions at neuromuscular junctions. The functional mechanism by which this is achieved is deducible by the biophysics of action potentials. First, one must understand quantum mechanics and that in the brain, the mind may choose one outcome instead of another, as Catholic physicist and U Delaware professor Stephen Barr has pointed out:

“uppose hypothetically that a person’s brain is in a state where quantum theory says that there are only two things that he can do, A and B, and that they have an equal probability of occurring. Obviously, since the laws of physics say that he must do A or B, and give no preference to A or B, it cannot be a violation of those laws for him to make either choice. His freedom of choice in such a case would be unconstrained by the requirement of satisfying the laws of physics” (Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, page 181).

I propose that these alternative quantum states, A and B, are the open and closed conformations of sodium channel proteins, which spontaneously open and close in the lab. When an individual chooses one, as proposed by Dr. Barr’s model, he effects an action potential corresponding to his will. Similar ideas have been put forth by Oxford Professor Roger Penrose in his book, Shadows of the Mind, although he proposes that this interaction occurs at microtubules.

Hope this helps,

-Ryan Vilbig
ryan.vilbig@gmail.com

 

[R_Daneel]

I’m re-posting part of an entry here, but let it be clear that it is entirely reasonable to say that thoughts can cause neurons to fire. The very concept of voluntary and involuntary muscles suggests that willful thoughts produce action potentials in distinct classes of neurons, which thereby initiate muscle contractions at neuromuscular junctions.

The trouble with this idea is that you already presumed that those willful thoughts exist apart from the brain activity. Obviously, “walking” is the result of some “decision”. While I pondered your post, I went out on the balkony to have a smoke. I realized that I was walking up and down, without consciously deciding to do so - so those thoughts are not necessarily “willful”.

My point was that the immaterial entity of walking does not cause the muscular activity - rather it is the muscular activity that creates the phenomenon of “walking”. The muscular activity of the “walking” does not create the “decision” - it is the other way around.

 

[jinminn]

I did glance at your link. It’s the work of an athiest. Athiests make presumptions as do believers. Believers cannot support factually what they believe by faith and neither can athiests, so your link does nothing to further our discussion.

One slight problem… your defense of the immaterial has resulted from a non-explanation and presuming that without a ‘mind’ we just go round and round – in other words, that physical matter must stay as physical matter and without something else like a ‘mind’ or ‘will’, no choices or actions or thoughts can arise.

Regardless of who composed the synopsis of various disorders, evidence is presented in favor of a direct relationship between the brain and thoughts. This causal link suggests that there may be no ‘middle man’. The ‘mind’ becomes synonymous with ‘that which we do not yet understand.’

Have you ever heard of a medical examiner separating a mind from a brain, placing it in formaldehyde and examining a piece of it under a microscope? Do you think it’s possible to do that?

No, which is why I’m asking for your basis for believing it exists. So far, it comes down purely to ‘Well Mr. Nonbeliever, how do you think thoughts happen, huh?? Therefore… mind’.

I think I acknowledged as much. Belief in a soul is based on faith. Belief there is no such thing as a soul is similarly based on faith. Or ‘no faith’ if you prefer.

Well hold on a second. You asked for proof or evidence several times. Why is it on the one supposing that what exists is matter and energy, a presupposition very well justified in the sciences, to produce evidence that your faith statement (i.e. non-evidence-based) is incorrect?

I just don’t understand that. We could be having the very same conversation about Zeus and Thor, for they were invented to explain lightning and thunder. We have a preoccupation with attributing causes to unexplained phenomenon. You would put the onus on me to figure out the natural causes of these observed occurrences, which at the time I would not have been able to do, and you would have insisted on your explanation’s explanatory power based on… faith. How does that work?

It’s in the nature of man. Believers and athiests are both specialists in that area.

Easy now. Should we compile a list of each party’s attempts to answer the unknown? Atheists typically stick with a set of presuppositions and the best theories science has to offer. These evolve as better and better evidence, studies, and hypotheses come to light. Theists can never change their presuppositions or beliefs about the world.

Of course. In exactly the same way physical damage to a computer impedes the computer’s ablity to operate the programs stored in it. I don’t see how this fact is involved in the discussion.

I guess I would expect the mind to be able to do things without the brain. The typical evidence I hear for the mind involves out of body experiences or ‘thoughts’ people had when observed to be clinically dead (no heart, respirations, or brain activity). When revived, they recount a ‘dream’ or ‘thoughts’ or what have you. The hypothesis put forth by theists, then, is that even when the brain was useless, the mind was active.

I won’t pretend that I can answer that observance with a proven answer… my initial thought is that we have little concept of time during sleep-like states and that the thoughts and ‘dreams’ had could have occurred as the patient was losing consciousness. In any case, they point is that we have yet to observe a functional person who loses activity (due to damage) in specific parts of the brain. So, it has a lot to do with the question. If we had instances of brain damage in which the ‘mind’ was completely functional and the individual suffered no compromise in cognition… we would have rather good evidence for something outside of the brain.

In fact, however, the opposite is true. Neurology has allowed us to map functions to physical brain space and predict exactly what functions will be compromised due to injury. This supports the idea that there is no mind since the mind has not ‘shone through’ and disobeyed the observed hypothesis of a purely physical basis for brain function.

I say you have no evidence that thoughts are comprised of activities in the brain. I say you have evidence that thoughts are the cause of activities in the brain.

Perhaps, although your hypothesis does not warrant jumping to something immaterial yet. What about the bonobos? Are you familiar with them? Check this snippet. They have been shown to recognize vocabulary, communicate, exhibit facial expressions similar to humans, etc. Does this mean that bonobos have ‘minds’ as well? If so, do they have ‘souls’? Why or why not?

My response is the same. You have it backwards.

I don’t know that I do. When supposing something unmeasurable, intangible and unparalleled in other fields… why suppose it at all?

Upon reading more (don’t have a lot of time), it has become evident how complicated this debate actually is. Thinkers far greater than your or I have attempted to tackle these answers and may not have succeeded in convincing anyone of a unanimous, definitive conclusion. If you’re interested (from a non-atheist site if that helps palatability):

• Mental Causation
• Dualism
• Consciousness

 

[MindOverMatter2]

the idea that everything, including our thoughts and actions, are the result of a succession of causes all leading back to a first cause.

simply put, it makes since to me, and when i think about it it makes me question free will. here’s my argument.

I think its self evident that we have freewill. How it is possible that we have freewill is a mystery that we cannot comprehend. It is impossible for us to explain how freewill is possible, and in our attempts to explain it we tend to assume that some “mechanism” is involved; and thus we fall into the trap of losing our freewill to deterministic causes. Only God knows what freewill is and how we have it. Essentially God wills us to have freewill; but i don’t know how to explain that possibility without falling in to some kind of determinism. However i know that we have freewill, because i experience it.

you think you do because of consciousness

so, what are your thoughts?

Argument 1. There is to much consistent meaning in our actions to think that it is all just random or determined from some unknown beginning.

Argument 2. It is not rational to question your free will because you are assuming that you have the freewill to question it, and that we can freely and meaningfully respond to you.

Argument 3. Out of nothing comes nothing. If there is no such thing as freewill, then it doesn’t make sense that physics would actualize an understanding of it. Its not like actualizing the idea of a unicorn, since a unicorn is based on the parts of things that we have experienced. Through a method of cutting and pasting, our minds have put different things together from different preexisting ideas to produce the singular idea of a unicorn. But you cannot positively experience that which is nothing at all. All our ideas are abstractions from our experience of reality. Assuming that we don’t have freewill, we must assume that we have never experienced freewill, and thus our knowledge of the idea of freewill is contradictory and therefore impossible. To know freewill we must first experience it in order to meaningfully make a distinction between deterministic effects and freely chosen actions. To put it another-way, it is impossible for us to have knowledge of freewill, let alone moral freewill, and at the same time not have freewill.

 

[wwilligan]

Free will is a faculty of the human soul and it is a gift of God. It doen not reside in the brain or in anything material. The soul, directly created by God, is entirely a spiritual substance. It cannot be discovered by science. It is known only by Faith. For more on the Catholic teaching and understanding on this you can read the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas.

 

[jinminn]

To know freewill we must first experience it in order to meaningfully make a distinction between deterministic effects and freely chosen actions. To put it another-way, it is impossible for us to have knowledge of freewill, let alone moral freewill, and at the same time not have freewill.

Is this so? I do realize that you are getting at establishing free will as a necessary presupposition. I do not debate this as we cannot get ‘outside’ ourselves our ‘outside’ of our 4 dimensions to understand whether we are really free or not… but I would add that since that is the case, we assert free will as an untestable, unverifiable starting point.

In other words, since it appears to be so, we act as if it is so.

My point is that free will becomes a first principle because we have no good reason to suspect otherwise. This is different however, from your somewhat ontological proof, reworded as ‘I have knowledge of it, therefore it is impossible for me not to have it.’

This is similar to Anselm’s ontological proof of god. He essentially defines a being into existence, namely, one of his premises is that if god exists, it would be better for him to exist in reality vs. only in our minds. Since we can conceive of god, a greater being would be present in reality… so therefore, a greater being is present in reality and as such god exists.

I believe you are doing the same thing…
(1) Something I can think of and hypothesize about is real
(2) I can think of and hypothesize about free will
(3) Therefore, free will is real

My slight tweak is that I can gain knowledge about theoretical powers, abilities, ways things could be, etc. that are in the same category as free will (untestable, unknowable) and just because I can paint you a picture of them and how they would work does not mean that they do.

For this reason, I think free will needs to stay in a presupposition bucket and is not proven via an ontological method as above. It just is a starting point based on, as you pointed out, experience and having no reason to think otherwise.

Once an all knowing, all powerful being who created everything from nothing before all time enters the picture, however, it actually becomes more difficult to figure out how we really do have free will. Aquinas’ ideas actually do have a deterministic nature, which is why some choose Molina instead who posited different ‘types’ of god’s foreknowledge such that he wouldn’t have had to outrightly know what we would do, but would merely need to know the possibilities and leave the rest up to us. This is a paraphrase which could be skewed; read more on your own via something like the Catholic Encyclopedia if you want to know the subtleties.

As a materialist, I think it would be possible to understand the workings of the brain at some point in order to have predictive power regarding human actions and choices. We already understand huge factors about environmental influences. For example, what one learns and experiences in the first years of childhood will impact the rest of life far more than we may ever know.

I believe this factor alone, in fact, determines what one will believe and hold dear religiously for the rest of one’s life in most cases. I would go so far as to say that thoroughly indoctrinated religious children who do not encounter a traumatic religious situation and have parents who appear satisfied as full believers are almost not truly free to look into the possibility that their religion could be wrong.

I really mean that. As a questioning believer, I cannot believe how difficult it is for any of my closest friends and role models to even contemplate the objections I bring up seriously. I am finding answers so far from obvious that it’s ridiculous. Anyway, just wanted to add that in. I think that what we pick up as children heavily, heavily, heavily impacts the rest of life enough to challenge the idea of ‘free will’. It nearly takes a bomb to rattle the cages enough to make us rethink some of our beliefs about the world.

 

[jinminn]

Free will is a faculty of the human soul and it is a gift of God. It doen not reside in the brain or in anything material. The soul, directly created by God, is entirely a spiritual substance. It cannot be discovered by science. It is known only by Faith. For more on the Catholic teaching and understanding on this you can read the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas.

This is just a recitation. It’s a hypothetical solution to explain some things, but with mass failure to explain other things. The soul ‘animates’ the body, yet if the body is damaged physically, is the soul not able to overcome this issue and continue to animate?

The mind is the seat of reason and thought… yet if the brain is damaged, the mind apparently is not able to function. This is odd since the typical scientific evidence for duality cited are out of body experiences and ‘dreams’ experienced after clinical death but before chance revivals. In other words, dualists believe that the mind is acting though the brain stopped working.

In other cases of injury, however this does not occur. The mind fails to act when the brain is damaged. In fact, radical belief changes occur predictably in individuals who undergo certain brain anomolies and illnesses - religious, political, ability to use both sides of the body harmonically… so, which is it?

I already know the answer. Ra puts a small amount of sun energy in all of us. It’s like a real star with only a certain amount of life span. As we age, it begins to degrade and eventually dies out. This is why we fade. Science will never detect this energy as it is spiritual. I know it’s real because of how much I love to be in the sun, how the sun is the source of all life and energy on our planet, and how we get Seasonal Affective Disorder when we don’t have access to our source of life in the winter months. I was feeling down one day and prayed to Ra and the sun came out of the clouds so I knew he answered my prayer and revealed his will in my life. His faithfulness is evident by the fact that the sun keeps appearing each and every day. I love Ra for his goodness.

Just read the great Egyptian theologians for proof. They figured all this stuff out a long time ago. Who are we to question them?!

 

[MindOverMatter2]

This is similar to Anselm’s ontological proof of god.

No it is not.

(1) Something I can think of and hypothesize about is real
(2) I can think of and hypothesize about free will
(3) Therefore, free will is real

Is this really my argument? I don’t think so. I would appreciate it if you challenge my actual argument instead of inventing straw-men.
How about quoting my actual argument.

 

[jinminn]

Is this really my argument? I don’t think so. I would appreciate it if you challenge my actual argument instead of inventing straw-men.
How about quoting my actual argument.

No problem. No need to get huffy

MindOverMatter:

To put it another-way, it is impossible for us to have knowledge of freewill, let alone moral freewill, and at the same time not have freewill.

On second thought, why don’t you put some premises and conclusions to this and we’ll compare. I don’t see much different about this summary statement and something akin to ‘if I can be thinking about this, it exists.’

Or perhaps you wish to enter into something of a circularity? If I can think of free will, I must be free to think, which must mean I have the free will to think of free will, which means I must be free to think…

Or propose your own set of premises! It doesn’t matter to me. I’m more than happy to meet you on your terms. For the record, I don’t think that we are lacking in free will… by the way. Don’t know if you took my response to be a challenge of the existence of free will. It wasn’t. I merely wanted to suggest that if falls into a ‘first premise’ category rather than a provable one.

We’ll never really know if we’re in the matrix, but as you said, since we live and experience free will, we have every reason to suspect we actually do have it.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

On second thought, why don’t you put some premises and conclusions to this and we’ll compare. I don’t see much different about this summary statement and something akin to ‘if I can be thinking about this, it exists.’

Its really not surprising that you continue to take my argument out of context. Superficially the part you quoted may seem like the ontological argument, but that’s only if you abstract it from the rest of what i said. The part you quoted rests on premises that were stated before hand, and is not to be understood by itself. It is a conclusion; not the whole argument.

Or perhaps you wish to enter into something of a circularity? If I can think of free will, I must be free to think, which must mean I have the free will to think of free will, which means I must be free to think…

This is not my argument.

Essentially, my argument rests on the following premise**:** You cannot think of an idea that is not already built upon ones experiences. Ideas don’t pop out nothing; they are abstractions of the real world. We build up new ideas and meaningful concepts by rearranging and assembling the parts of other ideas and concepts that have been abstracted from our experiences of objective reality. Without that information, you cannot manifest new ideas or concepts. We have a meaningful concept of large and small, because we experience large and small in the real world. We didn’t just manifest it out of no where. The idea of freewill has quite a different context to other ideas since it is tied up in our experience as persons rather than our experience of objects. If you want to refute my argument, you have to provide a detailed way of how we can gain the concept of free will and at the same time make the meaningful distinction between freewill and determinism without first having conceptual and experiential knowledge its objective existence. The problem is you require the meaningful experience of freewill in order to make the meaningful distinctions between freewill and determinism. We need the experience of both in order to meaningfully recognize the difference. If we have no freewill (this is to say that we are not the cause of our ideas, the meaning of ideas or the abstract thoughts that we have), and our ideas are merely manifestations of deterministic physics mixed with experience, then how does physical reality recognize freewill as a meaningful concept, given the fact that it doesn’t exist in our experience of physical reality. The crux of my conclusion is that if we cannot find a logical basis for it outside of our experience of it, then it would mean that our idea of it popped out of absolutely nothing; which is impossible. Therefore we necessarily and truly have freewill because we have a concept of it and thus an objective experience of it that cannot be abstracted from physical reality.

As for the ontological argument, it is apparent to me that we can develop our experience of infinite and the other attributes of God from our experience of “finiteness” and human nature without knowing that God exists; and i am not too happy with the idea that the concept of God necessarily implies Gods actual existence. I don’t think the argument works; and thus i don’t agree with the ontological argument. My argument is fundamentally quite different, although the difference is perhaps subtle in nature.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

You cannot recognize slavery if you have not first had the experience freedom in some form. Determinism will never be meaningful to you, unless you view it from a position of freewill. You require the objective experience of both in order to draw meaningful conclusions about them.

Therefore freewill exists.