Does Evolution Have An Objective?

But I agree with you about the factuality of determinism. As do others in this thread. Yet we see still see freewill as an illusion where you do not. Why is that?Consider this - If I told you I would do something that would make you "happy" but I then also informed you that I would redefine "happy" to mean something entirely conceptually different to your meaning would you consider yourself "happy" as a result of my efforts?If people consider genuinely non-deterministic forms of freewill to be necessary for moral responsibility (as the evidence suggests) what is the point of redefining "freewill" to be compatible with determinism?What purpose does it serve?

I see free will as being an incoherent undesirable thing that we thankfully don't possess. If you insist we have freewill, then I'm happy to run with that, but only if freewill is quite different than you might otherwise think.There is an illusion of 'could have chosen otherwise' which is a result of not knowing which actual world we live in from all the possible worlds that are consistent with our knowledge. I don't know, would people unaware of your definition call my emotional state 'happy'? Since if we all agree that I am 'happy' and that I am happy in that I have an elated mood etc., then in that case I would consider myself 'happy' as a result of your efforts.Remember, we have to both be able to point at it and agree when it occurs. I can point to someone making a choice and you will agree regardless of your metaphysical position. It's an empirically observable phenomenon, the explanation for which is less certain.If you were to tell me that being 'happy' was actually deterministic set of chemicals interacting in the human brain I will still smile. The point of 'redefining' freewill is so as to resolve the tensions between our appearance of having volition being noncausal while living in a deterministic universe. It also allows us to have moral responsibility. The non-causal route leaves us with an incoherent mess and no moral responsibility. It seems the point is to make sense.There are a number of ways of resolving the tension:
We don't have freewill
We do have freewill, and the universe is not deterministic.
We do have freewill, but freewill is deterministic.

Yes alright, I accept that a choice was made. It is not the definition of choice or freewill that needs redefining. It is the definition of self that needs redefining. We conceive of ourselves to be like Thor when in reality we are more like the thunderstorm. (Edit: Which brings us back to what is the difference between you and a mud puddle?)As we discover the ways and means of our brains our sense of self will go the way of Thor. Like the disappearing humour of a joke explained. Love is still love even after it is reduced to a string of chemicals and hormones and receptors but wouldn’t you agree that it doesn’t feel quite the same?If ignorance is bliss ‘tis folly to be wise.Edited by Dogmafood, : No reason given.

According to the evidence (Message 227) 95% of people consider human choices to be non-deterministic acts of selecting between genuine, metaphysically robust alternative possibilities. This is entirely in line with the objections that have been made in this thread. Your deterministically compatible use of the word "choice" and insistence that we all mean the same thing when we use that term flies in the face of the evidence regarding what people actually mean. The term "choice" conceptually entails far more than just a physical act. It entails that there exist genuine, metaphysically robust alternative possibilities. That is why the concept is so key to the freewill debate. That a choice conceptually requires genuine, metaphysically robust alternative possibilities is only indirectly related to who or what is making those "choices". I am no insisting we have freewill at all. I think freewill is an illusion. I think the idea that we are making actual choices is also illusory. So in other words it is just like a conjurer or illusionist describing what they are doing as "magic". It is an intentional conflation with what is considered real magic for reasons related to convincing an audience of something that isn't strictly true through an act of presentation. And I say that freewill doesn't exist. But the fact that the illusion is so utterely personally convicing makes it an illusion that is valid to all practical intents and purposes. An operationally valid human construction. Dennett argues (and I would agree) that the notion of "self" is an operationally valid illusion. If the concept of self is an operationally valid illusion then so is any notion of a self that can be held morally responsible. If we are assigning moral responsibility to an operationally valid illusion (i.e. a "self") then I see no harm in assigning moral responsibility on the basis of another operationally valid illusion (i.e. that they "could have done otherwise"). Dennet on "self"

No, because if there are metaphysically robust alternative possibilities, but the person making the 'choice' can't pick any of them then that is important. So it is about the person making the decision and this tells us if there are any metaphysically robust alternatives. The alternatives follow from the thing making the decision.A computer might not make decisions with MRAP where a person might. I know, I was using 'you' as a second person plural. No, it's more like a philosopher trying to get us to see things in way we hadn't previously considered.

Which is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. Debating the philosophical nature of freewill is equivalent to philosophers of science debating as to whether or not science is a genuinely rational pursuit. Intellectually interesting (IMHO) and can potentially provide insights that do add something to the practical side of things by making us really consider exactly what it is we are trying to achieve.But ultimately we can justify both the nature of scientific investigation and our basis for assigning moral responsibility on purely pragmatic grounds.

And you believe this because you believe the universe if fully deterministic?

I have no idea what you mean by "fully deterministic".But if you mean ultimately dictated by events which precede one's own existence - Then - Yes.That is after all what determinism means is it not? I wholly accept the probabalistic nature of reality - But (as many on both sides of this thread have stated) this has little relevance to the question of free-will in terms of "choice" or "freewill" as generally conceived.

By Fully I am referring to strong determinism. http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~svozil/publ/1994-calude.pdfweak determinism refers to how caotic systems tend to fall into a patterns. I read somewhere a statement that randomness is natures way of maximizing entropy. Humans it seems have adapted this concept of freewill as a way of making sense of our place in the world. Perhaps it is our perception that has relevance to the question of free will.

Indeed. From a purely pragmatic point of view our perception is enough to justify moral responsibility.If you wanna get into the nuts and bolts of how real that perception actually is.......Well therein lies the controversy.....