GunnerJ

Point proven. Thank you, linuxpup, for demonstrating the idiocy of blurring the meaning of words by using definitions of them in contexts in which they do not belong.

The term "free will" is used to denote the idea of humans (or other sentient beings) being able to make choices of their own volition. Thus, "free" in this contect means "not fated" or "not pre-determined."

The term "freethinker" is a label used by people to show that they do not limit their opinions to the limits of religious dogma. Thus, "free" in this context means "free" from the intellectual slavery of religion.

Arguing that, if god doesn't exist, we have no free will, and therefore, no one can be a freethinker, is a fallacy of equivocation. Even if our wills are not free, this does not mean that people cannot think outside the box of religious myth and superstition- even if they were fated/pre-determined to do so. You use the meaning of a word in a context in which it doesn't belong in order to make a deeply flawed argument seem plausible.

Not toddle off to your preacher and see if you can mine some answers from him.

Edited to add: Damn. Cross posted by LiquidRage. Good job though.

[ May 28, 2002: Message edited by: Rimstalker ]</p>

Jobar

Linuxpup:
"If there is no non-physical "soul", to humans, then there is no free will... if there is no free will, there is no freethinking. So essentially if materialism is true, then one cannot be a freethinker."

Tragedies like this result when one puts the mouth in motion without putting the brain in gear.

Since Tronvillain forbore to send this to rants&raves so shall I. Still, it is a farrago of unjustified assertions, improper word usage, and general fuzzy thinking.

Goliath

LinuxPup,

Unproven assertion.

I give value to my life and the lives of others. You are therefore demonstrably wrong.

Now, LinuxPup, are you going to continue to ignore me, or are you going to atleast pretend to be interested in a discussion?

Sincerely,

Goliath

Taffy Lewis

What's wrong with understanding free will as the ability to choose between alternative courses of action such that one is responsible for that choice? If this is correct then determinism/chance cannot exhaust the categories that describe how events occur in the world.

If we are determined then we cannot choose between alternatives and if our choices are due to chance it is hard to see how we can be responsible. So free will requires something besides determinism and/or chance. (Of course one might deny that we have the ability to choose among alternative courses of action or deny that we are ever responsible for what we do.)

If one is willing to claim that the intuition of alternative courses of action and genuine responsibility is really just an illusion then one seems to be approaching a radical sort of scepticism.

If a feature of our mental lives, which is as pervasive as the intuition of free will, is illusory then how can we have confidence in our sensory/cognitive faculties? Why stop the scepticism with the will?

Dr. Retard

LinuxPup writes

A few questions:

1. What does the existence of God have to do with the existence of human freedom?

2. What does the existence of a substantial soul (or, what implies its nonexistence, the truth of materialism) have to do with the existence of human freedom?

3. For that matter, if I may be allowed some compatibilist waggishness, what does the truth of determinism have to do with human freedom?

4. What does human freedom have to do with freethinking?

5. What does the existence of God have to do with whether there is an instrinsic value to life?

Apparently, you see secret connections among apparently unrelated philosophical issues -- you solve one problem and you've solved them all. Care to substantiate this view?

braces_for_impact

Well said Dr. Retard! <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

What I see in this thread are assumptions. Please be reminded folks, though your statements may make perfect sense to you, you must proveyour correlation to others. I have seen stated that no god = no free will, that no soul = no free will, etc. Please explain how item 'A' correlates to item 'B', and so on.

I am reminded of a quote that goes to the effect of "You are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts". What seems obvious to your way of thinking may not be so to another. If you make an assertion, please demonstrate how what you say is true, or you're likely to be considered another troll, or at the very least, an unsubstantiated idiot.

Pomp

LinuxPup,

Others have already pointed out a number of weknesses in your argument, but I'd like to address one that I haven't seen mentioned yet.

In much the same manner as your "Are Humans Rational?" thread, you begin by asserting that, if there is no god, then some feature of human beings that we take for granted (rationality, free will) cannot exist. You then go on to state that such a feature (reationality, free will) does, indeed, exist and, therefore, we can safely conclude that a god exists.

The problem with all of this is that, while your assertions that X cannot exist if no god exists may be defensible in a very narrow sense of X, the majority of us here do not use X in that sense. For example, you appear to be defining free will as something like "the complete freedom of an agent to make choices without influence from external sources." Most of us here would agree that no such free will exists. I personally believe that all my actions are determined, but that they are determined by processes internal to myself, so I can be validly said to have volition, or free will.

In essence, your argument, previously portrayed as:

P1: X cannot exist without God.
P2: X exists.
C: God exists.

...is more correctly portrayed as:

P1: X' cannot exist without God.
P2: X'' exists.
C: God exists.

In this modified form, we can see that the argument is clearly fallacious.

If you're interested, you might check out an excellent book on the topic of free will, Daniel Dennet's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262540428/internetinfidelsA/" target="_blank">Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free WIll Worth Wanting</a>.

abe smith

What difference, if any, does it make to your-all, or to anyone's, behaviour , whether you [believe you] have or don't have "freewill"? WORDS will never suffice to justify ANYthing; altho The-Powers-That-Be love to try to bully us into believing that words do; and bully us into letting Them get-away w/ that=bullshit. Abe

Stephen T-B

Free will?
What free will? I wish I'd had some. Well. I think I do (people refer to it as though it were something desirable.)
All my life I've been faced by choices - dozens of choices every day - and every single decision I've made has been the one that most suited me. I cannot do anything, given a choice, which I don't want to do.
Could I go to a casino and gamble all my income away playing blackjack?
I could not.
Could I go to a club tonight instead of going home, get stinking drunk and have sex in a doorway with a hooker? No I could not.
That's not Free Will.
My behaviour and the choices I make are all consistent with the person I am and the way I have reacted to my up-bringing and my back-ground.
If I go into a shop to choose a tie, do I then exercise free will? No. I choose the tie which I find most pleasing; why would I buy one I thought was horrible (unless to get the pleasure of shocking my colleagues/wife/children)?
My life is held within rigid bounds.
Someone out there please tell me that yours is not. That you can exercise Free Will.
I think I need instruction.
For a start I'd begin to understand what it is the Christians bang on about when they talk of God goving as Free Will.

JB01

Could you elaborate on this assertion? I don't understand what would preclude a mind operating within a deterministic physical substrate from being able to choose between alternative courses of action.