Choosing to believe in free will because it would be better or “more rational” than not is “argument from consequence”. It also privileges “rationality” as though those concepts were divine and beyond examination.
It’s saying that Free Will is a concept so essential to dear ideas like religion and social order that arguing against it rocks the boat too much. It would be better if it were true, so let’s just go with that.
While I think you make some fair points, I also don’t hear an argument against the belief in free will :)
For what it’s worth, my argument was never that free will must be true, so I didn’t fall for the argument from consequence fallacy. I merely said it’s better that we should believe in it for our own good. There’s a recognition of the limits of the argument in there.
But even though we recognise such limits exist, doesn’t mean we should come to the conclusion that free will itself doesn’t exist. I’m also not limiting my argument to rational ones, as I cite several empirical studies that also conclude that a belief in free will is better for us.
So yeah, it’s fair to point out some limitations, but I wouldn’t say that any of these arguments are divine or beyond examination. Please do examine them! But until there is a convincing argument against the belief in free will (rational or otherwise), I’ll stick with my conviction that believing in it is indeed better for us.
Hossenfelder has put some out on her youtube channel. Its basically since everything can be determined from previous states and mehanisms we don’t have free will. I think I would need to go through it again. Personally I find free will and not free will to be sorta pointless. If everything we do is based on processes but those same processes dictate our personality and how we react to our environment. Well that just as well is just the framework of our will. Yeah you could call it not free because we like what we like and don’t like what we don’t like but life itsself is an opportunity to test the levels of those choices. We overindulge and don’t like something as much for some time or get completely turned off and we grow to like something we used to hate. Its the process of life itself this recieving of sensory input and action output that acts and interacts with the world and other life that also acts and interacts. We define ourselves with our actions which influence how we make decisions in the future and the world molds us to do it as well. Its all the same.
This is effectively Spinoza’s argument indeed, which relies on nature / the universe to be fully deterministic. As I mentioned in the post, I don’t agree with determinism though. Science doesn’t either, because as we know from quantum mechanics, reality is probabilistic rather than deterministic. So saying that everything can be determined from previous states is an assumption that is not supported by science.
Choosing to believe in free will because it would be better or “more rational” than not is “argument from consequence”. It also privileges “rationality” as though those concepts were divine and beyond examination.
It’s saying that Free Will is a concept so essential to dear ideas like religion and social order that arguing against it rocks the boat too much. It would be better if it were true, so let’s just go with that.
While I think you make some fair points, I also don’t hear an argument against the belief in free will :)
For what it’s worth, my argument was never that free will must be true, so I didn’t fall for the argument from consequence fallacy. I merely said it’s better that we should believe in it for our own good. There’s a recognition of the limits of the argument in there.
But even though we recognise such limits exist, doesn’t mean we should come to the conclusion that free will itself doesn’t exist. I’m also not limiting my argument to rational ones, as I cite several empirical studies that also conclude that a belief in free will is better for us.
So yeah, it’s fair to point out some limitations, but I wouldn’t say that any of these arguments are divine or beyond examination. Please do examine them! But until there is a convincing argument against the belief in free will (rational or otherwise), I’ll stick with my conviction that believing in it is indeed better for us.
Hossenfelder has put some out on her youtube channel. Its basically since everything can be determined from previous states and mehanisms we don’t have free will. I think I would need to go through it again. Personally I find free will and not free will to be sorta pointless. If everything we do is based on processes but those same processes dictate our personality and how we react to our environment. Well that just as well is just the framework of our will. Yeah you could call it not free because we like what we like and don’t like what we don’t like but life itsself is an opportunity to test the levels of those choices. We overindulge and don’t like something as much for some time or get completely turned off and we grow to like something we used to hate. Its the process of life itself this recieving of sensory input and action output that acts and interacts with the world and other life that also acts and interacts. We define ourselves with our actions which influence how we make decisions in the future and the world molds us to do it as well. Its all the same.
This is effectively Spinoza’s argument indeed, which relies on nature / the universe to be fully deterministic. As I mentioned in the post, I don’t agree with determinism though. Science doesn’t either, because as we know from quantum mechanics, reality is probabilistic rather than deterministic. So saying that everything can be determined from previous states is an assumption that is not supported by science.