A chellange to anyone who think free will exists

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Then I have no disagreement with you if that's what you think.

We have no reason to think that they cannot facilitate a truthful outcome, and our web of knowledge already contains reason to think they CAN facilitate truthful outcomes, FINALLY, most our mental processes are unconscious ANYWAY, thus not subject to conscious choice, making the epistemic situation the same for a person with free will or without as both are relying on mental processes with truth-tracking that is outside of the control of the person.


And this is a difference..... hoW???

People can produce untrue outcomes. It is dependent on the process for a person as well. In fact, with the right chemical stimulation, or even physical manipulation, we have untrue outcomes produced by people. After all, a person on drugs can easily develop false beliefs, and they might not even KNOW the beliefs are false.

Going further..... how is free will a guaranteer? It doesn't follow from a mystical construct that "truth can be derived", as a free will agent that has continually false beliefs involves no logical contradiction to imagine, and we have no real reason on grounds of free will alone to really believe that the probability that a person has truth is higher if free will exists compared to its non-existence all else equal.

And finally, although no philosophical analysis has been used, even if it were used, we'd probably have more reason to doubt it than a body of empirical facts. After all, the notion "properly justified beliefs require free will", is a much more trickier issue in terms of the raw analysis(and more likely to be flawed) than the claim that whatever we empirically observe in psychology does not correspond to our intuitions on free will.

The issue I see is that because neither is free will, and yet premise 1 seems inclusive of all possible actions, (random can be interpreted as meaning ~determined) the argument seems valid to me. I can see how a person wouldn't dislike it for seeming to beg the question though, but it is hard to really attack premise 1.

I posted this before and I always wondered if Bell's inequality may one day provide some way for free will to exist (since neither determinism or randomness can accomodate free will). Here's an interesting quote from one of the philosophy of physics papers on interpretations of Bell's inequality:

This aspect of non-locality is especially problematic for microphysical reductionists (and epiphenomenalists) who,

"...often argue that only the most basic physical properties possessed by individual parts of systems can be truly causally efficacious. There can be no higher level or ontologically emergent properties-for, if there were such properties, they would either be powerless epiphenomena or, if causally empowered, they would somehow violate the microphysical laws governing the smallest parts.

But, if microphysical systems can have properties not possessed by individual parts, then so might any system composed of such parts. Were the physical world completely governed by local processes, the reductionist might well argue that each biological system is made up of the microphysical parts that interact, perhaps stochastically, but with things that exist in microscopic local regions; so the biological can only be epiphenomena of local microphysical processes occurring in tiny regions. Biology reduces to molecular biology, which reduces in turn to microphysics. But the Bell arguments completely overturn this conception."

http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/H/James.A.H ... s_Toll.pdf

'No reason to think' really?

I see the AG logic has not improved. The claim here is that if free will does not exist the probability of our having reliable faculties is reduced. This statement can be true and your examples can be true, they simply do not function as a refutation. Since, citing situations where are faculties are unreliable does nothing against the statement that more unreliable faculties would produce more unreliable results.

This statement is testable through the probability calculus:
F= Naturalistic laws of the universe.
E=The belief that human beings have evolved in conformity with current evolutionary theory.
R=The likelihood that the deliverances of the mind are true.

Then it is the simple statement of the probability of R given F and E

Basically any imputing of fully deterministic values into F gives a much lower probability than those of free will. Its a simple use of Bayesian probability, citing an example of deterministic or subconscious brain activity does nothing to disprove it. For you to disprove the probability statement, you would need to show that naturalism and determinism would be MORE likely to produce a truthful outcome than one with free will. Given the thousands of logically contradictory situations that emerge... the best I can say is... good luck.

Neither naturalistic laws nor evolution imparts rationality in a logically direct sense. Free will does, since it allows one the power to choose p or not p. I do not dispute that naturalistic laws and evolution can both facilitate rationality, only that it is extremely less likely without free will. If the only choice function is survival, then this itself is undermined by hard-core determinism.... since the setup would be for survivability not for rationality.

Free will naturally imparts rationality and it imparts warrant for basic beliefs since with it one can adjudicate between two concepts. No doubt people can choose the lesser concept, however there is a capacity for oversight of the process. Under naturalism combined with determinism, there is no such oversight. Essentially the lack of free will would be a 'defeater' for one's own beliefs; so believing it would entail taking on the 'defeater' for it... hence its contradictory nature.

Some slightly off-topic but an interesting similar work:
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/philosop ... feated.pdf

I have sworn a mighty oath.

I will say here, free will is.

I will say here, free will is not authority.

I will say here, deniers AND proponents of free will EITHER exercise Free Will in so doing, or their denial or endorsement is predeternined. Either way, there is little point rehearsing it - I would not ineterfere with your free will, not can I prevent the foreordained.

I will say here, from this post on I will not contribute to any public discussion of Free Will in this venue except to pint out egregious abuse of language, fact, or logic OTHER than the stupidity of saying that the fact I cannot change my skin colotr merans I have no free will. Responding to even a fraction of the instances of THAT annoyance wouyld be too much work.

If I break my word here givem may this oath eat me.

The AG logic doesn't have to improve. It's still top of the line.

Given that argument you had proposed was only a logical argument, no empirical data or anything whatsoever, a possibility is all that is needed for a refutation. If free will and its non-existence are both compatible with truth, then unless you have a further argument, we have no reason to privilege one over the other as possible.


That has nothing to do with rationality though. The power to choose p or not p, does not mean that the choice made is a rational choice, that the foundational reasonings undergirding the choice are rational, and so on and so forth.

In fact, one could argue that indeterministic choosing actually UNDERMINES epistemic confidence in that it means that epistemic decisions are not delivered by truth-tracking methods of any form at all, but rather by arbitrary decision. IF something is known to be true, then the methods are compelling, thus denying us the ability to choose. We do not choose to believe addition, but rather we are compelled by our implicit understandings of reality to believe it.


The "argument" is hogwash though. Just because there is choice, doesn't mean the choices are reasonable. Unless you are going to say that being massively intoxicated denies free will(which... I would want to see an argument as to why you'd think this), we have in this massive numbers of non-truth-tracking choices. Even further, without neural mechanism, you still can't really deal with the inability to choose of people with certain brain injuries, such as with this: http://psych.utoronto.ca/users/peterson ... 201996.pdf They cannot arrive at truth, BUT, the damage is physical. If free will adjudicates, then this problem shouldn't be possible. Either free will is actually neurology(which is materialist) or free will has no necessary adjudication abilitieis.


But "free choice" as truth-tracking doesn't add anything to the entire process, as we have no reason to believe it is a better truth-tracker than an equivalent naturalistic process. You're basically asserting MAGIC STUFF WILL SOLVE THIS!! ! And.... nobody has any reason to take you seriously. I mean, MCalavera, even though I don't fully agree with his reasoning, had a point by pointing out that free will is dead unless somebody can give an intelligible(rather than magical) account for it, and you haven't done this despite using this as part of a structure of explanation of choice.

Lol... You really have not studied the probability calculus have you.



You missed the point... utterly

Free will allows a rational agent to chart a course among various alternatives to a truthful outcome. Free will does not provide rationality... in my view.. animals also have free will but I would not call them rational. So in that sense you are right... but it is a non-sequitur since all I am saying is that free will + a rational agent is more likely to find truth than arbitrary determinism + arbitrary evolution.

From here you have three options. 1) Make the case that arbitrary determinism + arbitrary evolution is more likely to produce a truthful outcome than free will + a rational agent, using the probability calculus. 2) Deny the possibility of free will. 3) Deny rationality.

The problem is that by choosing 2 you are undermining the likelihood that your statement is true. By choosing 3 you are creating a total defeater for your own statement... since if there is no rational agent... then why should what you are saying be considered truthful.

This is why I stay out of philosophy, it's pointless.

Well, one thing's for sure. Sometimes I feel like a m***et here among the giants of this land.

People look up to me intellectually in real life, but some of the members here have crazy unimaginable minds (in a good way, I mean).

That's why I love this place.

You are throwing a lot of term which you are not defining.

What does 'truthful outcome' mean?

What do you mean by 'knowing' an outcome is truthful or not? If a person has such magical ability while a computer does not, why not everyone get 100% in a math exam? (Another example, you calculate 1900877 * 534299021, how do you 'know' your answer is truthful or not?)

What do you mean by "guarantee that any truth can be obtained"? Is it to be understood in the sense as saying "the law of physics does not guarantee the formation of life"?

That is nonsense because

1) Your statement that "free will + a rational agent is more likely to find truth than arbitrary determinism + arbitrary evolution." is at best hypothetical.
2) "undermining the likelihood that your statement is true." does not imply the statement is false.
As a counter example you may say it is 'more likely for some super-advanced alien than humans to build a jet plane".

Indeed, a lion capable of accurately judging the speed and distance of its prey has massive survival advantage. Based on what do you say agents capable of producing truthful results is unlikely to be a result of natural laws?

A truthful outcome is literally a truthful outcome. The human has no magical ability it just has a process by which it can review the system from outside of its own programming. In point of fact, a computer, designed by humans is far more likely to get a truthful outcome if the aim is in line with its programing. A creature that is entirely deterministic to the point where said determinism is incompatible with free will (which is the basically the position of determinists who claim free will does not exist), has no such design. Further, the likelihood that said creature would develop reliable faculties in such a situation is far less likely than the chance that it would develop totally unreliable faculties (just think of all of the factors involved). Hence the person who holds to incompabitbilst determinism has an intrinsic 'defeater' for the belief in the ability of his/her own ability to produce a truthful outcome and faces a drastically reduced, if not non-existent epistemological warrant for such a position.

What do you mean by 'outside of its own programming'?


In point of fact, we spend a lot of efforts to train out child (20-25 years from primary school to PhD!).



Again what does "epistemological warrant" mean? I propose a hypothesis in physics and experiments confirm my hypothesis. So my hypothesis is true. What 'epistemological warrant' is required?

Epistemological Warrant, refers to the question of how justified we are in holding certain beliefs. Take your example of physics, you can use verification to prove a hypothesis but verification cannot be what is considered a 'properly basic belief', since the concept of verification cannot be proven without verification. One then faces a question of how one holds to certain truths. Essentially (under most forms of modern epistemology), if a person holds a belief, he/she is justified in the holding of said belief unless a 'defeater' is applied to it. In the case of free will a person who holds to incompatiblistic determinism faces the reality that their own claim is undermined (for the reasons I outlined above).

^^^
Are you saying that an incompatiblistic determinist has no reason to believe that he is capable of having any truth belief?