When someone precedes their statement with 'look' or proceeds/finalizes with 'at the end of the day' as David Albert does too many times it often means something close to 'I'm right and whatever you have to say to the contrary is of little relevance imo'.

It was more a display of arrogance than an intellectual discussion imo. A good example is right at the end after David reasserts Sean's proposition as being silly or trivial and quickly after Sean erroneously predicts and states 'I'll bite my tongue' David falsely concedes verbally saying 'yes' while physically showing genuine disagreement by shaking his head 'no' while and after Sean defines his point, as from David's perspective no further discussion is required.

I think a video on 'determinism vs free will' would offer more content to better spark a conversation.

I think there's enough content to spark a conversation about free will, discourse analysis aside. Excerpts I found interesting enough to be worthy of expansion:

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by Boise_Lib.

One of my favorite quotes on this is from Schopenhauer

"We can do as we will, but we cannot will as we will"

I have never heard a good explanation for free will ever. Properly defined to the strength we all mean it by, it makes no sense, and try and change it into something we can make sense of, it is no longer the thing which we meant by free will. Let me expand on that.

What we all want to mean when we first set out on talking about free will is the notion that we (our consciousness) are self determining demigods in a sense. That our consciousness somehow is able to transcend all conditions, and make unbound and almost other worldly interjections on our behalf. I am not a materialist, so this isn't a problem for me on the onset. However, even if our brains contains some otherworldly processing engine, the data which populates it for most all decisions in life are from this existence. And those "things" all seem to behave in a way that is bound by predetermined rules. In fact, it is impossible to think of a realty that is not bound by conditions and rules. All reality that we can understand comes from reason and associations. In a world where something could exist by not existing, or where circles are also squares...would make no sense to us. The only world we can understand is a world where things change in a way reason can map to. This undermines the entire notion of a transcendent, boundless "free will", for even the will itself would have a set of rules and conditions it was playing by, or else just be a random number generator of sorts. And when we talk about free will, random number generation isn't what comes to mind, but it is the only thing that can remain if you take away reason, and determinism.

However, I do submit that our choices "feel" unbounded. There is a "feeling" of free will that defies an ability to define it well. But that is typically how feelings operate, outside of ways to completely explain them. But that doesn't make what they appear to represent any more real, only the feeling is real. I can have a feeling that contradictions exist, for example, but be bound by the laws of how I think to not be able to resolve that in reality (IE, if I believe conditions exist, I could still not preform one, like draw a circular square).

That is why many philosophers turns to certain forms of Compatibilism, while others changed what free will meant in their Compatibilism. I think the latter is cheating, and the former is how we as humans experience "free will". Ultimately, if the universe doesn't exist on causality, then my argument will be undermine, and indeed, some form of Occasionalism might be the true nature of reality. Even so, even Occasionalism can't account for free will, only random number generation can, and that isn't what we mean by freedom, or willing.


>> ^messenger:

I think there's enough content to spark a conversation about free will, discourse analysis aside. Excerpts I found interesting enough to be worthy of expansion:

That feeling of unboundedness we have with regards to our choices is I think what Carroll was trying to get to. And it's not just a feeling either -- it's difficult to describe in words, but there is a qualitative difference, beyond it just being convenient to talk about humans that way. Babies have a different (reduced?) set of factors guiding their behaviour. We identify them as missing the ability to consciously choose what they do. They act on impulse only. We adults have the conscious choice of what we do, at least in comparison to babies, and that's what we call "free will".

Our free wills are indeed not randomizers, because then they would be free, but lack will. Rather, they follow laws, which could bring about a direction, but remove freedom. Either way, we clearly have more internal influence on our decisions than babies. Perhaps what we adults uniquely have is self-awareness, including the awareness that we can choose our behaviour. Other creatures don't know that. How does that sit as a definition of what we call "free will"?

Accepting this puts "free will" in the category of social constructs, like friendship, jobs, and personal property. Does anybody argue that friendship, jobs and personal property don't exist? No, as a social construct, something we can talk about and identify with surely exists. Whether we really have any control over what we do outside of determinism is a different question, and IMO the answer can only be "No".

As for Compatibilism, the beginning of the Wikipedia article says it well: "Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas, and that it is possible to believe both without being logically inconsistent. It may, however, be more accurate to say that compatibilists define "free will" in a way that allows it to co-exist with determinism (in the same way that incompatibilists define "free will" such that it cannot)". Inasmuch as we know the general human concept of free will, it exists, and is compatible with determinism. Inasmuch as our will and actions are 100% determined by conditions and physical laws, they are not free, thus it cannot exist.>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

One of my favorite quotes on this is from Schopenhauer
"We can do as we will, but we cannot will as we will"
I have never heard a good explanation for free will ever. Properly defined to the strength we all mean it by, it makes no sense, and try and change it into something we can make sense of, it is no longer the thing which we meant by free will. Let me expand on that.
What we all want to mean when we first set out on talking about free will is the notion that we (our consciousness) are self determining demigods in a sense. That our consciousness somehow is able to transcend all conditions, and make unbound and almost other worldly interjections on our behalf. I am not a materialist, so this isn't a problem for me on the onset. However, even if our brains contains some otherworldly processing engine, the data which populates it for most all decisions in life are from this existence. And those "things" all seem to behave in a way that is bound by predetermined rules. In fact, it is impossible to think of a realty that is not bound by conditions and rules. All reality that we can understand comes from reason and associations. In a world where something could exist by not existing, or where circles are also squares...would make no sense to us. The only world we can understand is a world where things change in a way reason can map to. This undermines the entire notion of a transcendent, boundless "free will", for even the will itself would have a set of rules and conditions it was playing by, or else just be a random number generator of sorts. And when we talk about free will, random number generation isn't what comes to mind, but it is the only thing that can remain if you take away reason, and determinism.
However, I do submit that our choices "feel" unbounded. There is a "feeling" of free will that defies an ability to define it well. But that is typically how feelings operate, outside of ways to completely explain them. But that doesn't make what they appear to represent any more real, only the feeling is real. I can have a feeling that contradictions exist, for example, but be bound by the laws of how I think to not be able to resolve that in reality (IE, if I believe conditions exist, I could still not preform one, like draw a circular square).
That is why many philosophers turns to certain forms of Compatibilism, while others changed what free will meant in their Compatibilism. I think the latter is cheating, and the former is how we as humans experience "free will". Ultimately, if the universe doesn't exist on causality, then my argument will be undermine, and indeed, some form of Occasionalism might be the true nature of reality. Even so, even Occasionalism can't account for free will, only random number generation can, and that isn't what we mean by freedom, or willing.

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Saturday, April 7th, 2012 11:30am PDT - promote requested by kulpims.

Nice to see a bit more of an ignostic flavored argument around these parts.

*length=7:30

The duration of this video has been updated from unknown to 7:30 - length declared by jonny.